Chapter 2
CHAPTER II. Only two courses were now open to the King, this weak and kind-hearted Louis XVI, heir of a hundred years' misrule, if he would maintain his power. One was to join the reformers and cooperate in patriotic work, assisted by progressive ministers, whatever opposition might be raised by nobles and priests, and the second was
to arm himself and put down the deputies. But how could this weak-minded sovereign cooperate with plebeians against the orders which sustained his throne? And if he used violence, he inaugurated civil war, which would destroy thousands, where revolution destroyed hundreds.
Moreover, the example of Charles I was before him. He dared not run the risk. In such a torrent of revolutionary forces, when even regular troops fraternized with citizens, that experiment was dangerous. And then he was tender-hearted and shrank from shedding innocent blood.
His queen Marie Antoinette, the intrepid daughter of Maria Theresa with her Austrian proclivities, would have kept him firm and sustained him by her courageous counsels. But her influence was neutralized by popular ministers. Necker, the prosperous banker, the fortunate financier, advised half measures. Had he conciliated Mirabeau, who led the assembly, then even the throne might have been saved.
But he detested and mistrusted the mighty Tribune of the People, the aristocratic demagogue who, in spite of his political rancor and incendiary attracts, was the only great statesman of the day. He refused the aid of the only man who could have staved off the violence of factions, and brought reason and talent to the support of reform and law.
At this period, after the triumph of the Third Estate, now called the National Assembly, and the paralysis of the court, perplexed and uncertain whether or not to employ violence and disband the assembly by royal decree, a great agitation began among the people, not merely in Paris, but over the whole kingdom. There were meetings to promote insurrection, paid disclaimers of human rights, speeches
without end in the gardens of the Palais Royal, where Marat, Camille des Molines, and other popular orators harangued the excited crowds. There were insurrections at Versailles, which was filled with foreign soldiers. The French guards fraternized with the people whom they were to subdue. Necker, in despair, resigned, or was dismissed.
None of the authorities could command obedience. The people were starving, and the baker's shops were pillaged. The crowds broke open the prisons, and released many who had been summarily confined. Troops were poured into Paris, and the old duke of Broglie, one of the heroes of the Seven Years' War, now war minister, sought to overaw the city.
The gun shops were plundered, and the rabble armed themselves with whatever weapons they could lay their hands upon. The National Assembly decreed the formation of a National Guard to quell disturbances, at the head of it. Bessonval, who commanded the royal troops, was forced to withdraw from the capital.
The city was completely in the hands of the insurgents, who were driven hither and thither by every passion which can sway the human soul. Patriotic zeal blended with envy, hatred, malice, revenge, and avarice. The mob at last attacked the Bastille, a formidable fortress where state prisoners were arbitrarily confined.
In spite of moats and walls and guns, this gloomy monument of royal tyranny was easily taken, for it was manned by only about one hundred and forty men, and had as provisions only two sacks of flour. No aid could possibly come to the rescue. Resistance was impossible, in its unprepared state for defense, although its guns, if properly
manned, might have demolished the whole Fawberg-Saint-Antoine. The news of the fall of this fortress came like a thunder-clap over Europe. It announced the reign of anarchy in France, and the helplessness of the king. On hearing of the fall of the Bastille, the king is said to have exclaimed to his courtiers, It is a revolt, then.
Nay, sire, said the duke of Leoncourt, it is a revolution. It was evident that even then the king did not comprehend the situation. But how few could comprehend it? Only one man saw the full tendency of things and shuddered at the consequences, and this man was Mirabeau.
The king, at last aroused, appeared in person in the National Assembly, and announced the withdrawal of the troops from Paris and the recall of Necker. But general mistrust was alive in every bosom, and disorders still continued to a frightful extent, even in the provinces. In Brittany the towns appointed new municipalities, and armed a civic guard from the royal magazines.
In Cayenne the people stormed the citadel and killed the officers of the salt tax. Nowhere were royal intendants seen. The custom houses at the gates of the provincial cities were demolished. In Franchet Comte, a noble castle was burned every day. All kinds of property were exposed to the most shameful robbery.
Then took place the emigration of the nobles, among whom were Condé, Polignard, Broglie, to organize resistance to the revolution which had already conquered the king. Meanwhile the triumphant assembly, largely recruited by the liberal nobles and the clergy, continued its sessions, decreed its sittings permanent, and its members inviolable. The sittings were stormy, for everybody made speeches, written or oral, yet few had any
power of debate. Even Mirabeau himself, before whom all succumbed, was deficient in this talent. He could thunder, he could arouse or allay passions, he seemed able to grasp every subject, for he used other people's brains. He was an incarnation of eloquence, but he could not reply to his opponents with much
effect, like Pitt, Webster, and Gladstone. He was still the leading man in the kingdom, all eyes were directed towards him, and no one could compete with him, not even Saez. The assembly wasted days in foolish debates. It had begun its proceedings with the famous declaration of the rights of man, an abstract
question first mooted by Rousseau and re-echoed by Jefferson. Mirabeau was appointed with a committee of five to draft the declaration, in one sense a puerile fiction, since men are not born free, but in a state of dependence and weakness, nor equal, either in regard to fortune or talents or virtue or rank, but in another sense a great truth, so far as men are entitled by nature to equal privileges and freedom
of the person, and unrestricted liberty to get a living according to their choice. The assembly at last set itself in earnest to the work of legislation. In one night, the ever-memorable Fourth of August, it decreed the total abolition of feudalism. In one night it abolished tithes to the church, provincial privileges, feudal rights, serfdom,
the law of primogeniture, signorial dues, and the gabel, or tax on salt. Mirabeau was not present, being absent on his pleasures. These, however, seldom interfered with his labors, which were herculean, from seven in the morning till eleven at night. He had two sides to his character, one exciting abhorrence and disgust, for his pleasures
were miscellaneous and coarse, a man truly abandoned to the most violent passions, the other side pleasing, exciting admiration, a man with an enormous power of work, affable, dignified, with courtly manners, and enchanting conversation, making friends with everybody, but of real kindness of heart, because he really loved the people and sought their highest good, a truly patriotic man, and as wise as he was enthusiastic.
This great orator and statesman was outraged and alarmed at the indecent haste of the assembly, and stigmatized its proceedings as nocturnal orgies. The assembly on that memorable night swept away the whole feudal edifice, and in less time than the English parliament would take to decide upon the first reading of any bill of importance.
The following day brought reflection and discontent. That is just to the character of our Frenchmen, exclaimed Mirabeau. They are three months disputing about syllables, and in a single night they overturn the whole venerable edifice of the monarchy. Saez was equally disgusted, and made a speech of great force to show that to abolish tithes
without an indemnity was spoiling the clergy to enrich the landowners. He concluded, You know how to be free, you do not know how to be just. But he was regarded as an ecclesiastic, unable to forego his personal interests. He gave vent to his irritated feelings in a conversation with Mirabeau, when the latter said, My dear Abbé, you have let loose the bull, and now you complain that he gores you.
It was this political priest who had made the first assault on the constitution, when he urged the third estate to decree itself the nation. The national assembly had destroyed feudal institutions, but it had not yet made a constitution or restored order. Violence and anarchy still reigned.
Then the clubs began to make themselves a power. Come said the lawyer Danton to a friend in the district of the Cordilliers. Come and howl with us, you will earn much money and you can still choose your party afterwards. But it was in the garden of the Palais Royal, and in the church of the old Jacobins, that
the most violent attacks were made on all existing institutions. A fourth estate of able editors also springs up, increases, multiplies, irrepressible, incalculable. Then from the lowest quarters of Paris surge up an insurrection of women, who marched to Versailles in disorder, penetrate the assembly and invade the palace.
On the 5th of October a mob joins them, of the lowest rabble, and succeed in forcing their way into the precincts of the palace. The King to Paris was now the general cry, and Louis XVI appears upon the balcony and announces by gestures his subjection to their will. A few hours after the King is on his way to Paris, under the protection of the National
Guard, really a prisoner in the hands of the people. In 14 days the National Assembly also follows, to be now dictated to by the clubs. In this state of anarchy and incipient violence, Mirabeau, whose power in the assembly was still unimpaired, wished to halt. He foresaw the future.
No man in France had such clear insight and sagacity as he. He saw the state drifting into dissolution, and put forth his hand and raised his voice to arrest the catastrophe which he lamented. The mob of Paris, said he, will scourge the corpses of the King and Queen. It was then that he gave but feeble support to the rights of man, and contended for the
unlimited veto of the King on the proceedings of the assembly. He also brought forward a motion to allow the King's ministers to take part in the debates. On the 7th of October he exhorted the Count de Marque to tell the King that his throne and kingdom were lost if he did not immediately quit Paris.
And he did all he could to induce him, through the voice of his friends, to identify himself with the cause of reform as the only means for the salvation of the throne. He warned him against fleeing to the frontier to join the emigrants as the prelude of civil war. He advocated a new ministry of more vigor and breadth.
He wanted a government both popular and strong. He wished to retain the monarchy, but desired a constitutional monarchy like that of England. His hostility to all feudal institutions was intense, and he did not seek to have any of them restored. It was the abolition of feudal privileges which was really the permanent bequest of
the French Revolution. They have never been revived. No succeeding government has even attempted to revive them. Upon the removal of the National Assembly to Paris, Mirabeau took a large house and lived ostentatiously, and at great expense until he died, from which it is supposed that
he received pensions from England, Spain, and even the French court. This is intimated by Dumont, and I think it probable. It will in part account for the conservative course he adopted to check the excesses of that revolution which he, more than any other man, invoked. He was doubtless patriotic and uttered his warning protests with sincerity.
Still it is easy to believe that so corrupt and extravagant a man in his private life was accessible to bribery. Such a man must have money, and he was willing to get it from any quarter. It is certain that he was regarded by the royal family, towards the close of his career, very differently from what they regarded him when the state's general was assembled.
But if he was paid by different courts, it is true that he then gave his support to the cause of law and constitutional liberty, and doubtless loathed the excesses which took place in the name of liberty. He was the only man who could have saved the monarchy, if it were possible to save it. But no human force could probably have arrested the waves of revolutionary frenzy at this time.
On the removal of the assembly to Paris, the all-absorbing questions related to finance. The state was bankrupt. It was difficult to raise money for the most pressing exigencies. Money must be had or there would be a universal anarchy and despair. How could it be raised?
The credit of the country was gone, and all means of taxation were exhausted. No man in France had such a horror of bankruptcy as Mirabeau, and his eloquence was never more convincing and commanding than in his finance speeches. Nobody could reply to him. The assembly was completely subjugated by his commanding talents.
Nor was his influence ever greater than when he supported Necker's proposal for a patriotic a sort of income tax, in a masterly speech which excited universal admiration. Ah, Monsieur Lecompte, said a great actor to him on that occasion, what a speech! And with what an accent did you deliver it? You have surely missed your vocation.
But the finances were in a hopeless state. With credit gone, taxation exhausted, and a continually increasing floating debt, the situation was truly appalling to any statesman. It was at this juncture that Talleyrand, a priest of noble birth, as able as he was unscrupulous, brought forth his famous measure for the spoiliation of the church, to which
body he belonged, and to which he was a disgrace. Talleyrand, as bishop of Autun, had been one of the original representatives of the clergy on the first convocation of the states general. He had advocated combining with the third estate when they pronounced themselves the assembly, had himself joined the assembly, attracted notice by his speeches, been appointed
to draw up a constitution, taken active part in the declaration of rights, and made himself generally conspicuous and efficient. At the present apparently hopeless financial crisis, Talleyrand uncovered a new source of revenue, claimed that the property of the church belonged to the nation, and that as the nation was on the brink of financial ruin, this confiscation was a supreme necessity.
The church lands represented a value of two thousand millions of francs, an immense sum which, if sold, would relieve, it was supposed, the necessities of the state. Mirabeau, although he was no friend of the clergy, shrank from such a monstrous injustice and said that such a wound as this would prove the most poisonous which the country had received. But such was the urgent need of money that the assembly on the 2nd of November 1789 decreed
that the property of the church should be put at the disposal of the state. On the 19th of December it was decreed that these lands should be sold. The clergy raised the most piteous cries of grief and indignation. Veinly did the bishops offer four hundred millions as a gift to the nation. It was like the offer of Darius to Alexander of one hundred thousand talents.
Your whole property is mine, said the conqueror, your kingdom is mine. So the offer of the bishops was rejected and their whole property was taken, and it was taken under the sophistical plea that it belonged to the nation. It was really the gift of various benefactors in different ages to the church, for pious purposes, and had been universally recognized as sacred.
It was as sacred as any other rights of property. The spoiliation was indefinitely worse than the suppression of the monasteries by Henry VIII. He had some excuse, since they had become a scandal, had misused their wealth, and diverted it from the purposes originally intended.
The only wholesale attack on property by the state which can be compared with it was the abolition of slavery by the stroke of a pen in the American rebellion. But this was a war measure when the country was in most imminent peril, and it was also a moral measure in behalf of philanthropy. The spoiliation of the clergy by the National Assembly was a great injustice since it was
not urged that the clergy had misused their wealth or were neglectful of their duties, as English monks were in the time of Henry VIII. This church property had been held so sacred that Louis XIV, in his greatest necessities, never presumed to appropriate any part of it. The sophistry that it belonged to the nation and therefore that the representatives of
the nation had a right to take it, probably deceived nobody. It was necessary to give some excuse or reason for such a wholesale robbery, and this was the best which could be invented. The simple truth was that money at this juncture was a supreme necessity to the state, and this spoiliation seemed the easiest way to meet the public wants.
Like most of the legislation of the Assembly, it was defended on the Jesuit plea of expediency, that the end justifies the means, the plea of unscrupulous and wicked politicians in all countries. In this expediency, doubtless relieved the government for a time, for the government was in the hands of the Assembly.
Royal authority was a mere shadow. In reality, the king was a prisoner, guarded by Lafayette, in the palace of the Toulier, and the Assembly itself was now in fear of the people, as represented by the clubs. There were two hundred Jacobin clubs in Paris and other cities at this time, howling their not only on royalty, but also on everything else which was not already destroyed.
End of section 2.
