Chapter IV: The Fall of the Monarchy (2)

To this somewhat confused cry for a Republic came the very sharp announcement from no less a person than Condorcet. Condorcet, the moderate and illumined, was also half a visionary, and there had always floated in his mind the system of contract by which England had excused the movement of 1688, but which France took seriously. England had for him the attraction which it had for all the professionals of that date—an attraction which lasted till the disasters of 1870, and which you may yet discover here and there among those who are the heirs of Lamartine. England had given them Locke, and Condorcet’s reasoning on the King’s flight[89] reads like a passage from the Bill of Rights. Yet he was a good and sincere man, and died through simplicity of heart.

On the 4th of July, ten days or more after the King had been brought back to Paris,[90] it was Condorcet who made the demand for the Republic; in a speech at Fauchet’s club he asked for a National Convention to settle the whole matter. He wrote so in the papers[91] all through July, and even after the affair of the Champ de Mars he continued his agitation.

Now how do we know Danton’s attitude? The Cordeliers presented a petition of June 21st itself and demanded the Republic. It is largely from this document that the error has arisen. But Danton was not then with the Cordeliers; his name does not appear. It is at the Jacobins that he is heard, and the Jacobins took up a distinctly monarchical position. They all rose in a body on the 22nd and passed a unanimous vote in favour of the constitution and the King.[92] Danton was present when this vote was passed, and he had just heard the hissing of the Cordeliers’ petition; he was silent. Thomas Payne is demanding the Republic in the _Moniteur_; Sieyès replies for the monarchy;[93], even Robespierre tardily speaks in favour of ideas and against change of etiquette; Marat shouts for a dictator;[94] Danton, almost alone, refuses to be certain. On June 23rd he spoke at the Jacobins in favour of a council to be elected by the Departments immediately, but he proposed nothing as to its actions; it was merely his permanent idea of a central, strong power.

Lafayette amused himself by arresting people who repeated this in the street, but Lafayette hated Danton blindly. Nothing republican can be made of a speech which his enemies said was “a loophole for Orleans.”

Danton attacked Lafayette: he saw persons more clearly than ideas, and Lafayette was Danton’s nightmare. He was that being which of all on earth Danton thought most dangerous, the epitome of all the faults which he attacked to the day of his death; in Louis, in Robespierre, “The weak man in power.” He drove him out of the Jacobins on the 21st, and later in the day gave the cry against his enemy in the street, which the fears of the Assembly so much exaggerated.

For the events of the twenty-four hours had all added to his natural opposition to Lafayette, and as we relate them from Danton’s standpoint, we shall see this much of truth in the idea that he led the movement, namely, that the three days of the King’s flight and recapture, while they put Lafayette into a position of great power, made also Danton his antagonist, the leader of the protest against the general’s methods. It is the more worthy of remark that in such conditions the word “Republic” never crossed his lips.

At eleven o’clock at night on the Monday of the King’s flight, Danton and Desmoulins were coming home alone from the Jacobins. Each remarked to the other the emptiness of the streets and the lack of patrols, and at that moment, when the evasion was little suspected, each was in a vague doubt that Lafayette had some reason for concentrating the National Guard.[95] Desmoulins will even have it that he saw him enter the palace, as the two friends passed the Tuilleries.

The next morning at the Cordeliers Danton cried out against Lafayette for a moment, and then at the Jacobins he made the speech that has been mentioned above. Continually he attacks the man who was preparing a counter-revolution, but I do not believe he would have attached the least importance at that moment to a change in the etiquette of government. Thus, as the Department was sent for by the Assembly in the afternoon, Danton came later than his colleagues, provided himself with a guard, and as he crossed the Tuilleries gardens he harangued the people, but against Lafayette, not against the King.

Now, to make sure of this feature, the duel between Lafayette and Danton, and to see that it is the principal thing at the time, turn once more to the scene at the Jacobins, and compare it with Lafayette’s Memoirs, and you will find that Danton was the terror of the saviour of two worlds, and that it was upon Lafayette that Danton had massed his artillery.

Here is Danton at the Jacobins, sitting by Desmoulin’s side; he goes to the tribune and speaks upon the disgrace and danger that the Moderates have brought about. When Lafayette entered during the speech, he turned upon him suddenly, and launched one of those direct phrases which made him later the leader of the Convention: “I am going to talk as though I were at the bar of God’s justice, and I will say before you, M. Lafayette, what I would say in the presence of Him who reads all hearts.... How was it that you, who pretend to know nothing of me, tried to corrupt me to your views of treason?... How was it that you arrested those who in last February demanded the destruction of Vincennes? You are present; try to give a clear reason.... How was it that the very same men were on guard when the King tried to go to St. Cloud on the 18th of April were on guard last night when the King fled?... I will not mention the 6000 men[96] whom you have picked as a garrison for the King; only answer clearly these three accusations. For in their light you, who answered with your head that the King should not fly, are either a traitor or a fool. For either you have permitted him to fly, or else you undertook a responsibility which you could not fulfil: in the best case, you are not capable of commanding the guard.... I will leave the tribune, for I have said enough.”[97]

This is clear enough in all conscience to show what was Danton’s main pre-occupation in the days of June 1791. And if, upon the other hand, you will turn to Lafayette’s Memoirs, the third volume, the 83rd and following pages, you will find that Danton was Lafayette’s pre-occupation, and that he makes this moment the occasion to deliver the most definite and (luckily) the most demonstrably false of his many accusations of venality. He tells us that he could not reply because it would have “cost Montmorin his life;” that Montmorin “had the receipt for the 100,000 francs;” that Danton had been “reimbursed to the extent of 100,000 francs for a place worth 10,000,” and so forth. We know now exactly the amount of compensation paid to him and his colleagues at the court of appeal,[98] and we know that Lafayette, writing a generation later, animated by a bitter hatred, and remembering that somebody had paid Danton something, and with his head full of vague rumours of bribing, has fallen into one of those unpardonable errors common to vain and vacillating men. But at this juncture the main point that should be seized is that Danton was taking the opportunity of the King’s evasion to attack Lafayette with all his might, and that a generation later the old man chiefly remembered Danton as leading the popular anger which the commander of the guard thought himself bound to repress. It is this that will explain why Danton, who so carefully avoided giving the word for the Republican “false start,” was yet marked out, fled, and returned to lead the opposition.

The Cordeliers followed Danton’s lead. They got up a petition,[99] signed by 30,000 in Paris, demanding that the affair should be laid before the country, but not demanding the abolition of the monarchy. Memdar, their president, declared himself a monarchist. But the petition, though read at the Assembly, was not adopted, and, on the 9th of July, the Cordeliers presented another. Charles de Lameth (who was president that fortnight) refused to read it. The Assembly, in other words, was dumb; it was determined (like its successor a year later) to do nothing—an attitude which (for all it knew) might be very wise, and those who were following Danton determined upon a definite policy. On Friday the 15th, at the Jacobins, it was determined to draw up a petition which begged that the Assembly should _first_ recognise Louis as having abdicated by his flight, unless the nation voted his reinstatement, and _secondly_ (in case the nation did not do so), take measures to have him constitutionally replaced. Now the constitution was monarchist.

The petition was to be taken to be read at the Champ de Mars on the altar, and there to obtain signatures. It was drawn up by Danton, Sergent, Lanthanas, Ducanel, and Brissot, who wrote it out and worded most of it. The events that follow must be noted with some care, because on their exact sequence depends our judgment of Lafayette’s action and of Danton’s politics.

On Saturday[100] the 16th, about mid-day, a deputation of four from the Jacobins came to the Champ de Mars. The petition was read by a little light-haired Englishman on one side, and by a red-haired Frenchman in a red coat on the other; picturesque but unimportant details. Danton leapt on to the corner of the altar, and read it again to the thick of the crowd. The signatures were written in great numbers, and when the completed document was about to start for the Assembly, when the deputation that was to take it was already formed, it was suddenly spread abroad that the Assembly had passed a vote exonerating Louis.

The Jacobins were appealed to, and replied that under the conditions the petition which they had drawn up could not be presented. The Cordeliers, however, lost their tempers, and Robert determined to draw up a new petition. Now in this second action Danton took no part. It was this new petition that (signed by Robert, Peyre, Vachard, and Demoy) was drawn up hastily in the Champ de Mars on Sunday the 17th, to this that the 6000 signatures were attached, and this which demanded a “Convention to judge the King.” There followed the proclamation of martial law, the appearance of Lafayette and Bailly in the Champ de Mars with the red flag, the conflict between the National Guard and the crowd, and all that is called the “Massacre of the Champ de Mars.”

That petition was not signed by Danton.[101] He was not even present,[102] as we know from his speech on his election to be “Substitut-Procureur,” and especially from the fact that in the fortnight of terror, when the red flag stood over the Hotel de Ville, when the democrats were arrested or in hiding, when the door of the Cordeliers was shut and nailed, and when the Radical newspapers were suppressed, no warrant of arrest could be issued, because there existed nothing definite against him. Lafayette was determined, however, to act in a military fashion, and on the 4th of August the arrest of Danton was ordered, on some other plea which he alludes to in his speech of the next January, but the exact terms of which have not come down to us.

He had left Paris at once when he saw that Lafayette had practically absolute power for the moment. He first went to his father-in-law’s, Charpentier, at Rosny-sur-Bois, and then escaped to Arcis. Before the warrant was actually made out, Lafayette had sent a man to watch him at Arcis. He was “giving a dinner. It would need a troop of cavalry to arrest him. Everybody was on his side.”[103] Marseilles and Bar spoke up for him. But the attack only grew stronger. On the 31st of July he moved again to Troyes, to the house of Millaud, of his father’s profession, and a friend, because he feared a new arrival from Paris who seemed a spy.[104] He was there when the warrant was sent down to the “procureur” for the arrest; the official in question was Beugnot, and Beugnot told Danton jocularly that he would not arrest him. He did not think this a sufficient guarantee, and as his stepfather, Recordain, was off to England to buy some machinery for a cotton-mill that he thought of starting, Danton went to England with him, and remained in this country for a month, staying in the house of his stepfather’s sons, who were established in London. It was in the last days of July or the first days in August[105] that he arrived, and he did not return to Paris until the appointment of his friend Garran de Coulon as President of the Court of Appeal. He appears again at the Jacobins on the 12th of September; some say he was in Paris on the 10th.[106]

It would be of the utmost interest to know how he passed those thirty or forty days. Unfortunately there is no direct evidence as to whom he met or what negotiations he entered into. As to his English acquaintances, his letters from Priestley and Christie, the relations he had with Talleyrand, and their common diplomacy for the English alliance—all these properly belong to Danton in power, the minister directing France after August 1792, and it is in that place that they will be dealt with. Of historical events in his voyage we have none, and there is no more regrettable gap in the very disconnected series of ascertained facts concerning him.

On his return, he discovered that the Section of the Théâtre Français had named him a member of the electoral college which sat at the Archbishop’s palace. Many members of this Assembly had been arrested, or had fled during Lafayette’s violent efforts of reaction in August and September. The new Parliament which had just met did not decree an amnesty (as it was asked to do on the 5th of September), but it was of course far more democratic than the old Assembly, and it was understood to be tacitly in favour of the return of those whom Lafayette had driven out. Following Danton’s example, they slowly came back; but a curious incident shows how much of the danger remained.

On the 13th of September the Parliament, at the desire of the King, voted the amnesty. While it was actually voting, a constable called Damien got into the gallery of the hall in which Danton and the electors were debating, and sent a note to the president asking him to allow the arrest. The president and the electoral college (who did not like Danton, by the way, and who would not give him more than forty votes when it came to electing members for Paris) yet ordered the arrest by Damien, and it was only when they learnt of the amnesty that, on Danton’s own motion, he was released.

It has just been said that Danton failed to be elected: let us point out the conditions under which the Legislative met, that short Parliament of one year which made the war, and saw to its dismay the end of the monarchy.

The Legislative was not elected in one of those moments of decision which were the formative points of the Revolution. It came upon a very curious juncture, and showed in all its first acts a marked indecision.

The members were chosen under the action of a peculiar combination, or rather confusion of emotions. The King had fled, had been recaptured. France, of many possible evils, had chosen what she believed to be the least when she reinstated him. “The New Pact” was accepted even by those who had spoken of the Republic in July. Condorcet, who had led the civic theorists towards the Republic, leads them also now in this movement of reconciliation. Again, these were the first elections held since the middle class and the peasantry had been given the suffrage over the heads of the artisans: it was the most sober part of France that dictated the policy of the moment. The divisions that the King’s flight had laid bare, the sharp reaction and terror of the Champ de Mars—all these were forgotten.

Thus the Parliament will not have Garran-Coulon for its first president, and yet on the next day passes the extreme democratic etiquette as to the reception of the King should he visit the Assembly. Next day it repeals this, and when the King does visit the Assembly, he is met by an outburst of loyalty and affection.

As to parties, the power lay, as it always does in a French Assembly, with the centre—some three hundred men, unimportant, of no fixed idea, unless indeed it were to keep the Legislative to the work for which it had been elected, that is, to keep it moving moderately on the lines laid down for it by the constitution of 1791.

The right, well organised, loyal and brave, was Feuillant; that is, it was monarchic and constitutional, but more monarchic than constitutional. It was the support of Lafayette, and on the whole the centre would vote with it on any important occasion.

But there sat on the left a group less compact, full of personal ambitions and personal creeds, containing almost all the orators whose names were to make famous the following year. It was but a group of 130 men, even if we include all those who signed the register of the Jacobins when the Assembly met; yet it was destined, ill-disciplined as it was, part wild and part untrue, to lead all France. Why? Because the King was to make impossible the action of the Moderates, because his intrigue made Frenchmen choose between him and France, and in the inevitable war the men who were determined to realise the Revolution could not but be made the leaders.

As has been said above, Danton was not elected. The electoral college, of which he was a member, chose Moderates for the most part, such as Pastoret and De Quincy, and the narrow suffrage represented the true drift of Parisian feeling only in the case of a few—De Séchelles, Brissot, Condorcet, and a handful of others. But though Danton did not sit in the Legislative he was free for action in two other directions, which (as it turned out) were the commanding positions in the great changes that came with the war. He was free to attain an administrative position in the municipality of Paris, and he was free to use his power of oratory at the Jacobins.

As to the first, it came with his moderate but important success in the municipal elections at the close of the year. Bailly, frightened out of place, half-regretting his action of the Champ de Mars, had resigned, and Pétion, on November 16th, was elected in his place. Only ten thousand voted, and he obtained 6700 votes. On the same day the Procureur of the new Commune was to be elected. A Procureur under the new system was a position of the greatest importance. He was, so to speak, the advocate of the town, its tribune in the governing body, and with his two substitutes (who aided and occasionally replaced him) was meant to form a kind of small committee whose business was to watch the interests and to define the attitude of the electorate whenever those interests were in jeopardy or that attitude was opposed to the policy of the elected body. These three positions were dangerous, but would lead to popularity, and perhaps to power, if they were directed by a certain kind of ability. It was precisely such a power, the quality of a tribune, that Danton knew himself to possess.

His candidature for the principal position was cordially supported by the Cordeliers, but the Jacobins were divided, and they hesitated. Manuel was elected, and Danton obtained only the third place. This vote, however, was not decisive, and there was a second ballot on December the 2nd. In this Manuel was definitely elected.

Cahier de Gerville (the second substitute) was made Minister of the Interior, and Danton, on December 6th,[107] was elected to his place by a majority of 500 over Collot d’Herbois. It was from this position that he prepared the 10th of August, and it was still as substitute that he remained side by side with the insurrectionary commune, and lending it something of legal sanction when the King was overthrown.

Let me, before leaving this point, define exactly the position in which his new dignity placed him. Three men were charged with the advocacy of public opinion, the Procureur and his two substitutes. Manuel, who was elected to the principal position, was energetic, kindly, and conscientious, but a man of no genius; he was good to Madame De Staël in the days of September, as is apparent from her rather contemptuous description of how she appealed to him for safety; he did his very best (with no power in his hands) to stop the massacres at that same time. He was fond of work, and a little pompous in his idea of office; he was, therefore, a man who would only leave his substitutes the less important work to do, and, from close by, would have been the dominating member of the three. On the other hand, his lack of decision and of initiative effaced him in moments of danger or of new departures, and it is thus his second substitute who seems to lead when seen from a distance, from the point of view of the people, who only look round when there is a noise.

The first substitute was Desmousseaux. He had not resigned, and had therefore not been re-elected. Forming part of the old Commune, and in office since the winter of 1790, he was a Moderate by preference and long tradition.

As for Danton himself, standing third in the group, it was for him a position of honour and of dignity. That part of him which was so capable of high office and so desirous of an opportunity to act was well served by the election. It seemed to put a term to the misconceptions which his person, his faults, and the course of the Revolution had created. But the great stream of events moved him at their will. This office wherein he desired to appear settled at last, to show himself an administrator rather than a leader of unreasoning men, was precisely suited in case of danger to call out those other qualities which had made him despised by many whom he himself respected, and had aroused against him hatred—a passion which he himself had never allowed to arise from anger.

If the spirit of 1791 had been kept, and if after so many false promises the Revolution had been really accomplished, then the official, or, if you will, the statesman, would have appeared in him. I can see him in the difficulties which even a settled kingdom would have had to meet, convincing his contemporaries as he has convinced posterity. He was the man to impress on others the true attitude of Europe—the only diplomat among the patriots. His disadvantages were of the kind that are forgotten in the constant proof of ability; and his learning, which was exactly of the kind to be used in the new regime (a knowledge of languages, of law, of surrounding nations, a combination of detail and of comprehension)—this learning would have made necessary a man so popular with the people to be ruled, and, in the matter of the heart, so honestly devoted to his country. Had France, I say, by some miracle been spared her Passion, and had she been permitted to be happier and to do less for the world, then as the new regime settled into the lower reaches of quiet and content, I believe Danton would have remained for us a name, perhaps less great, but certainly among the first. England has been permitted. She has been given good fortune, and no fate has asked her to save civilisation with her blood, and therefore in England we are accustomed to such careers; men whose origin, whose exterior, and whose faults might have exiled them, have yet been seen to rise from the municipal to the imperial office, because they were possessed of supreme abilities, and because they devoted those abilities to the service of England. They have died in honour.

I will not discuss what it was that made the war. There are no causes. Burke raved like a madman, but then so did Marat. The King was alienated by the clerical laws, but nothing is an excuse for treason. Pilnitz was an affront and even a menace, but it was not a declaration of war. There were peoples behind the kings, as Mayence tragically proved; and if France fought intolerable evils, she also seemed the iconoclast when she put out the altar-lamp, which she is lighting again with her own hand. There are no causes. Only, if you will look and see how Europe has lived, and how our great things have been done, you will find nothing but armies upon armies marching past, and our history is an epic whose beginning is lost, whose books are Roncesvalles and Cortenuova and Waterloo, and whose end is never reached. The war came, and with it a definite necessity to choose between France and the Crown. In that crisis Danton is thrown back upon insurrection. He, who desired men to forget the days of October, was compelled to the 10th of August because he was aroused. Even the massacres were attached to his name, and there still trails after him an easy flow of accusation, only a little less sordid or less terrible.

To follow his action during the first months of 1772, to hear his speeches on the war, and to note his policy, we must leave him at his post in the Commune (where we shall find him again when Paris rises in the summer), and see how he stands for the Mountain at the Jacobins.

This club was now definitely the organ of the left. It was after Danton had been elected, but before he was definitely installed in office,[108] on the 14th of December, a week after the former and five weeks before the latter event, that the debate on the war was begun at the Jacobins,—a debate of the first importance, because it opened the breach between the Girondins and the Mountain, between the orators who insisted on going to meet Europe, and even on a war of propaganda, and the reformers who wished Europe to take the first step, who dreaded war or who thought a war of aggression immoral. At the head of these last was Robespierre. But it is not too much to say that in the first months of the year Danton was more important at the Jacobins than Robespierre. What was his attitude? It was part of the general policy upon which he had determined: he compromised. In his first motion on the 14th of December, he attacked the idea of declaring war. On the 16th he still attacked it, but in other terms. “I know it must come. If any one were to ask me, ‘Are we to have war?’ I would reply (not in argument, but as a matter of fact), ‘We shall hear the bugles,’” But the whole speech is taken up with an argument upon its dangers, and especially upon “those who desire war in the hope of reaction, who talk of giving us a constitution like that of England, in the hope of giving us, later, one like that of Turkey.”

In March and April, the months when the war was preparing and was declared, he was silent. And we can understand his silence when we turn to his speech in the Commune when he was given office. He alludes to the false character given him; he speaks of the reputation which his past actions in Paris had given; he says things that indicate a determination to play the part of a Moderate, and to see whether in his case, as in that of so many others, there would not be permanence in the compromise of the last six months. But there rankled in his mind the insults of the men with whom he sat, Condorcet’s disavowal in his paper of so much as knowing Danton, and he made a peroration which at the time offended, but which possesses for us a certain pathos. “Nature gave me a strong frame, and she put into my face the violence of liberty. I have not sprung from a family which was weakened by the protection of the old privileges; my existence has been all my own; I know that I have kept and shown my vigour, but in my profession and in my private life I have controlled it. If I was carried away by enthusiasm in the first days of our regeneration, have I not atoned for it? Have I not been ostracised?... I have given myself altogether to the people, and now that they are beyond attack, now that they are in arms and ready to break the league unless it consents to dissolve,[109] I will die in their cause if I must, ... for I love them only, and they deserve it. Their courage will make them eternal.”

This outburst is the one occasion of his public life in which Danton spoke of himself, and it has the ring of genuine emotion; for in all his harangues he preserved, both before and after this, an objective attitude, if anything too much bent upon the outward circumstances.

Thus, when the notes came to go between the Austrian and the French governments, he was silent. He fears that France is unprepared; he fears that the King is betraying the nation. How much he was a traitor was not known till a far later period; but when at least it is proved that something is undermining the French people, that, apart from the defeats and the lack of preparation, there is treason, then he leaves his silence. The policy of the Moderate acting in a settled state is no longer possible to any one; the court and the nation stood one against the other, and one side or the other must be taken by every man. Then he put off the conventions which he respected, and which he regretted to the end; he went back into the street; he headed the insurrection, destroyed the monarchy; for twelve months he took upon himself all the responsibility of errors in his own policy, and of crime in that of his associates. He saved France, but at this expense, that he went out of the world with a reputation which he knew to be false, that he saw his great powers vulgarised, and that he could never possess, either in his own mind or before the world, not even in France, his true name. The whole of this tragedy is to be found in his trial, and here and there in the few phrases that escape him in the speeches or with his friends. If you sum it up, it comes to this paraphrase of a great sentence: _Son nom était flétri mais la France était libre_.

It was upon April the 18th that the new Girondin ministry received the note from Vienna rejecting the French proposals of a month before. The poor King, who had been protesting his loyalty to the nation in Paris, had been protesting in Vienna the necessity of sending an army to save him, and Austria gave this reply. On April 20th the Assembly declared war with practical unanimity[110] upon “the King of Hungary and of Bohemia.” But the phrase was useless. You might as well put a match into gunpowder and say, “It is the sulphur I am after, not the charcoal.” Prussia joined, and within a year we shall see all Europe at war with France, in a war that outlawed and destroyed.

Danton was right. France was hopelessly unready. She had not learnt the necessary truth that the soldier is a man with a trade. The orators had mistaken words for things; honest and great as they were, they had fallen in this matter into the faults common to small and dishonest verbiage. The rout and panic under De Dillon, his murder by the troops, the occupation of Quiévrain, came one upon the other. Paris was full of terror and anger in proportion to the greatness of the things she had done, which now seemed all destroyed. “We said and did things that should have convinced the world; we were to be a people unconquerable from our love of liberty, and we appear a beaten, panic-stricken lot—volunteers and babblers who cannot stand fire.” The King dismissed the Girondin ministers, even sent Dumouriez away, heard Roland’s remonstrance, knew that the Assembly was more and more against him; but he remained calm. There was a plan of the simplest. There was to be nothing but a few days of monotonous marching between the allies and Paris. Lafayette with his army of the centre was on his side. The Assembly decreed a great camp of 20,000 men under Paris, and the disbanding of the guard; the guard was disbanded, but the King vetoed the decree. Lafayette wrote his letter menacing the Parliament with his army; the reaction seemed in full success and the invaders secure, when Danton reappeared.

On the 18th of June he found the old phrases against Lafayette at the Jacobins. “It is a great day for France; Lafayette with only one face on is no longer dangerous.” He did not make, but he permitted the 20th of June; and as Paris rose, and the immense mob, grotesque, many-coloured, armed with all manner of sharp things, passed before the Assembly and into the Tuilleries, it might have been a signal or a warning. The excited citizen makes a poor soldier, but if Paris moves the whole great body of France stirs. Such giants take long to be fully awake, and it is a matter of months to drill men; still it is better to let great enemies sleep. There was in that foolish, amiable crowd, with its pleasure at the sight of the King, its comic idea of warning him, something serious underlying. Danton will be using it in a very short time; for there are points of attack where mobs are like machine-guns—ridiculous in general warfare, but very useful indeed in special conditions, and in these conditions invincible. This something serious was that vague force (you may call it only an idea) which you will never find in an individual, and which you will always discover in a mass—the great common man which the French metaphysicians have called “Le Peuple;” that, drilled, is called by the least metaphysical an army.

A week later Lafayette appeared. He demanded the right to use the army, and July opened with the certainty of civil war.

July is the month of fevers; the heat has been moving northward, and all France is caught in it. The grapes fill out, and even in Picardy or in the Cotentin you feel as though the Midi were giving her spirit to the north. July made the Revolution and closed it. A month that saw the Bastille fall and that buried Robespierre is a very national time.

If you overlook France at this moment, you may see the towns stirring as they had stirred three years before; it is from them that the opposition rises—especially from Marseilles. A crowd of young men dragging cannon, the common-place sons of bourgeois, whom the time had turned into something as great as peasants or as soldiers, surged up the white deserts along the Rhone, passing the great sheet of vineyards that slopes up the watershed of Burgundy. As they came along they sang an excellent new marching song. When they at last saw Paris, especially the towers of Notre Dame from where they just show above the city as you come in from Fontainebleau, and as the roads came in together and the suburbs thickened they sang it with louder voices. On the evening of the 30th they came to the gates, and the workmen of the south-eastern quarter began to sing it and called it the “Marseillaise.” No one can describe music; but if in a great space of time the actions of the French become meaningless and the Revolution ceases to be an origin, some one perhaps will recover this air, as we have recovered a few stray notes of Greek music, and it will carry men back to the Republic.

For ten days the insurrection grew. In a secret committee which the Sections formed, men violent like Fournier, or good soldiers like Westermann, or local leaders of quarters like Santerre—but all outside the official body—organised the fighting force, and at their head the one man who held the strings of the municipality—Danton. The Assembly had heard Vergniaud’s angry speech, but it had also confirmed the constitution and the monarchy in the “baiser Lamourette.” Paris had to work alone, and the King, seeing only Paris before him, filled the Tuilleries, and stood by with a small garrison to repress the mere movement of the city—“something that should have been done in ’89.”

It was on a Paris thus enfevered, doubtful, nursing a secret insurrectionary plan, but full of men who hesitated and doubted, having still many who were loyal, that there fell[111] the document which the King had asked of his friends—but which he must, on seeing it, have regretted—the manifesto of the commander of the allies. This extraordinary monument of folly is rarely presented in its entirety. It is only in such a form that its full monstrosity can be appreciated, and I have therefore been at pains to translate for my readers the rather halting French in which Charles William proposed to arrest the movements of Providence. It ran as follows[112]:—

“Their Majesties the Emperor and the King of Prussia having given me the command of the armies assembled on the French frontier, I have thought it well to tell the inhabitants of that kingdom the motives that have inspired the measures taken by the two sovereigns and the intentions that guide them.

“After having arbitrarily suppressed the rights and the possessions of the German princes in Alsace and Lorraine, troubled and overset public order and their legitimate government, exercised against the sacred person of the King and against his august family violence which is (moreover) repeated and renewed from day to day, those who have usurped the reins of the administration have at last filled up the measure by causing an unjust war to be declared against his Majesty the Emperor, and by attacking his provinces in the Netherlands.

“Several possessions of the German Empire have been drawn into this oppression, and several others have only escaped from a similar danger by yielding to the imperious threats of the dominant party and its emissaries.

“His Prussian Majesty with his Imperial Majesty, by the ties of a strict and defensive alliance, and himself a preponderant member of the Germanic body (_sic_), has therefore been unable to excuse himself from going to the aid of his ally and of his fellow State (_sic_). And it is under both these heads that he undertakes the defence of that monarch and of Germany.

“To these great interests another object of equal importance must be added, and one that is near to the heart of the two sovereigns: it is that of ending the domestic anarchy of France, of arresting the attacks which are directed against the altar and the throne, of re-establishing the legitimate power, of giving back to the King the freedom and safety of which he is deprived, and of giving him the means to exercise the lawful authority which is his due.

“Convinced as they are that the healthy part of the French people abhors the excesses of a party that enslaves them, and that the majority of the inhabitants are impatiently awaiting the advent of a relief that will permit them to declare themselves openly against the odious schemes of their oppressors, His Majesty the Emperor and His Majesty the King of Prussia call upon them to return at once to the call of reason and justice, of order, of peace. It is in view of these things that I, the undersigned, General Commander-in-Chief of the two armies, declare—

“(1) That led into the present war by irresistible
circumstances, the two allied courts propose no object to
themselves but the happiness of France, and do not propose to
enrich themselves by annexation.

“(2) That they have no intention of meddling with the domestic
government of France, but only wish to deliver the King, and
the Queen, and the Royal Family from their captivity, and
procure for his Most Christian Majesty that freedom which is
necessary for him to call such a council as he shall see fit,
without danger and without obstacle, and to enable him to work
for the good of his subjects according to his promises and as
much as may be his concern.

“(3) That the combined armies will protect all towns, boroughs,
and villages, and the persons and goods of all those that will
submit to the King, and that they will help to re-establish
immediately the order and police of France.

“(4) That the National Guard are ordered to see to the peace of
the towns and country-sides provisionally, and to the security
of the persons and goods of all Frenchmen provisionally, that
is, until the arrival of the troops of their Royal and Imperial
Majesties, or until further orders, under pain of being
personally responsible; that on the contrary, the National
Guards who may have fought against the troops of the allied
courts, and who are captured in arms, shall be treated as
enemies, and shall be punished as rebels and disturbers of the
public peace.

“(5) That the generals, officers, non-commissioned officers,
and privates of the French troops of the line are equally
ordered to return to their old allegiance and to submit at once
to the King, their legitimate sovereign.

“(6) That the members of departmental, district, and town
councils are equally responsible with their heads and property
for all crimes, arson, murders, thefts, and assaults, the
occurrence of which they allow or do not openly, and to the
common knowledge, try to prevent in their jurisdiction;
that they shall equally be bound to keep their functions
provisionally until his Most Christian Majesty, reinstated in
full liberty, has further decreed; or until, in the interval,
other orders shall have been given.

“(7) That the inhabitants of towns, boroughs, and villages
who may dare to defend themselves against the troops of their
Imperial and Royal Majesties by firing upon them, whether
in the open or from the windows, doors, or apertures of
their houses, shall be punished at once with all the rigour
of the laws of war, their houses pulled down or burnt. All
those inhabitants, on the contrary, of the towns, boroughs,
and villages who shall hasten to submit to their King by
opening their gates to the troops of their Majesties shall
be placed under the immediate protection of their Majesties;
their persons, their goods, their chattels shall be under the
safeguard of the laws, and measures will be taken for the
general safety of each and all of them.

“(8) The town of Paris and all its inhabitants without
distinction shall be bound to submit on the spot, and without
any delay, to the King, and to give that Prince full and entire
liberty, and to assure him and all the Royal Family that
inviolability and respect to which the laws of nature and of
nations entitle sovereigns from their subjects. Their Imperial
and Royal Majesties render personally responsible for anything
that may happen, under peril of their heads, and of military
execution without hope of pardon, all members of the National
Assembly as of the Districts, the Municipality, the National
Guards, the Justices of the Peace, and all others whom it may
concern. Their aforesaid Majesties declare, moreover, on their
word and honour as Emperor and King, that if the Palace of the
Tuilleries be insulted or forced, that if the least violence,
the least assault, be perpetrated against their Majesties, the
King, the Queen, and the Royal Family, and if steps be not at
once taken for their safety, preservation, and liberty, they,
their Imperial and Royal Majesties, will take an exemplary and
never-to-be-forgotten vengeance, by giving up the town of Paris
to military execution and to total subversion, and the guilty
rebels to the deaths they have deserved. Their Imperial and
Royal Majesties promise, on the contrary, to the inhabitants of
Paris to use their good offices with his Most Christian Majesty
to obtain pardon for their faults and errors, and to take the
most vigorous measures to ensure their persons and goods if
they promptly and exactly obey the above command.

“Finally, since their Majesties can recognise no laws in France
save those that proceed from the King in full liberty, they
protest in advance against any declarations that may be made in
the name of his Most Christian Majesty, so long as his sacred
person, those of the Queen and of the Royal Family, are not
really safe, for which end their Imperial and Royal Majesties
invite and beg his Most Christian Majesty to point out to what
town in the immediate neighbourhood of his frontiers he may
judge it best to retire with the Queen and the Royal Family,
under good and sure escort that will be sent him for that
purpose, in order that his Most Christian Majesty may be in
all safety to call to him such deputies and counsellors as he
sees fit, call such councils as may please him, see to the
re-establishment of order, and arrange the administration of
his kingdom.

“Lastly, I engage myself, in my own private name and in my
aforesaid capacity, to cause the troops under my command to
observe everywhere a good and exact discipline, promising to
treat with mildness and moderation all well-meaning subjects
who may show themselves peaceful and submissive, and to use
force with those only who may be guilty of resistance and of
recalcitrance.

“It is for these reasons that I require and exhort, in the
strongest and most instant fashion, all the inhabitants of this
kingdom not to oppose themselves to the march and operations
of the troops under my command, but rather to give them on all
sides a free entry and all the good-will, aid, and assistance
that circumstances may demand.

“Given at our headquarters of Coblentz, July 28.

(Signed) “CHARLES WILLIAM FERDINAND,
Duke of Brunswick-Lunebourg.”

With that weapon the insurrection was certain of all Paris. Mandat, who had replaced Lafayette at the head of the armed force in the town, was still loyal to the King; he organised, as far as was possible, the forces that he could count upon. The other side also prepared, and the movements had all the appearance of troops entrenching themselves before battle.

Danton went to Arcis and settled an income on his mother in case of his death, came back to Paris, and on the night of August the 9th the Sections named commissioners to act. They met and formed the “insurrectionary commune.” At eight the next morning they dissolved the legal commune, kept Danton, and directed the fighting of the morning.

Meanwhile the King had gathered in the Tuilleries about 6000 men, and depended very largely upon the thick mass of wooden buildings in the Carrousel for cover. The Swiss Guard, whom the decree had removed, were only as far off as Rueil, and were ordered into Paris, over 1500. They were the nucleus, and with them some 2000 of the National Guard, 1500 of the old “Constitutional Guards,” and a group of “Gentilshommes.” Mandat had ordered a battery of the National Guard’s artillery to keep the Pont Neuf; they revolted and joined the people, and Mandat himself, the chief of the defence, was killed on the steps of the Hotel de Ville. Danton, who had not slept, but had lain down in Desmoulin’s flat till midnight, had been to the Hotel de Ville since two in the morning, and he took before posterity—in his trial—the responsibility of Mandat’s death. He did more. He acted during the short night (a night of calm and great beauty, dark and with stars) as the organiser and chief of the insurrection. Especially he appoints Santerre to lead the National Guard. On these rapid determinations the morning broke, and the first hours of the misty day passed in gathering the forces.

Meanwhile all morning the King had waited anxiously in the Tuilleries gardens, and asked Roederer, like a king in comic opera, “when the revolt would begin.”

All night the tocsin had sounded, but the people were slow to gather—“le tocsin ne rend pas”—and it was not till the insurrectionary commune had done its work that a great mob, partly armed, and in no way disciplined, came into the Carrousel.

Westermann (riding, as was Santerre) came up to parley with the Swiss Guard; he asked them in German (which was his native tongue, for he was an Alsatian) to leave the Tuilleries, and promised that if the guard retired and left the palace un-garrisoned the people would also retire. The Swiss—the only real soldiers in Paris—replied that they were under orders, and when Westermann retired to the crowd they opened fire.

Antoinette had said, “Nail me to the Palace,” and even Louis, timid and uncertain, thought that the chances were in his favour. Let only this day succeed, and the city could be kept quiet till the allies should arrive; that had been the boast in the Royalist journal of August 1st; it was Louis’s hope now.

Had the Carrousel been a little more open, the battle might have ended in favour of the garrison, but the numerous buildings, on the whole, helped the attack, and the Swiss, unable to deploy, fought, almost singly, a very unequal fight. There were no volleys except the first. Rapid individual firing from the doors and windows of the palace, the crowd pressing up through the narrowest space (but at a loss of hundreds of lives), and finally, by the end which gave on the “Grande Galerie” the Tuilleries were forced, the garrison killed, and only a small detachment of the Swiss Guard retreated through the gardens, firing alternate volleys, and saving themselves by an admirable discipline.

But while the issue was still doubtful, Louis and his family had gone slowly through the same gardens to the Riding-school, and had taken refuge with the Assembly. The noise of the fusillade came sharply in at the windows, and the event was still uncertain when the Parliament received the King and promised him protection. The president opened for him a small door at the right of the chair, and the King and Queen and their children watched the meaningless resolutions through a grating as they sat in the little dark box that gave them refuge. The debate, I say, lacked meaning, but the battle grew full of meaning as they heard it. The shots were less frequent, the noise of the mob—the roar—was suddenly muffled in the walls of the palace. The crowd had entered it. Then came the few sharp volleys of the retreating guard right under the windows of the Manège, and finally the firing ceased, and the Assembly knew that their oath was of no value, and that the Tuilleries had fallen. Louis also knew it, eating his grotesque roast chicken in the silent and hidden place that was the first of his prisons. He saw in the bright light of the hall many of the faces that were to be the rulers of France, but for himself, in his silence, he felt all power to be gone. He had become a Capet—there was truth in the Republican formula. There had been played—though few have said it, it should be said—a very fine game. The stakes were high and the Court party dared them. They played to win all that the Kings had possessed, and for this great stake they risked a few foolish titles without power. The game was even; it was worth playing, and they had lost. But the man who had been their puppet and their figure-head hardly knew what had happened. Perhaps the Queen alone comprehended, and from that moment found the proud silence and the glance that has dignified her end. In her the legend of the lilies had found its last ally, but now the great shield was broken for ever.