Chapter XXIV: Book XIII: I (1)

Dumouriez combined all the requisites of boldness, devotion to the cause, and talent that the Girondists required, and yet, until then, a second-rate man, and almost unknown, had no fortune to hope for but as theirs culminated. His name would not give umbrage to their genius, and if he proved incompetent, or rebelled against their projects, they would remove him without fear, or crush him without pity. Brissot, the diplomatic oracle of the Gironde, was evidently to be the minister who was one day to control our foreign relations, and who _en attendant_ was to govern for the moment under the name of Dumouriez.

The Girondists had discovered Dumouriez in the obscurity of an existence, until then very insignificant, through Gensonné, whose colleague Dumouriez had been in the mission which the Constituent Assembly had given him to visit and examine the position of the western departments, already agitated by the secret presentiment of civil war and the early religious troubles. During this inquiry, which lasted several months, the two commissioners had frequent opportunities for an interchange of their most private thoughts on the great events which at this moment agitated men's minds. They became much attached to each other. Gensonné detected with much tact in his colleague one of those intellects repressed by circumstances, and weighed down by the obscurity of their lot, which it is enough to expose to the open daylight of public action, in order to shine forth with all the brilliancy with which nature and study had endowed it: he had too found in this mind the spring of character strong enough to bear the movements of a revolution, and sufficiently elastic to bend to all the difficulties of affairs. In a word, Dumouriez had on the first contact exercised over Gensonné that influence, that ascendency, that empire which superiority, when it displays and humbles itself, never fails to acquire over minds to which it condescends to disclose itself.

This attractive power, the confidence of genius, was one of the characteristics of Dumouriez, and by that he subsequently made a conquest of the Girondists, the king, the queen, his army, the Jacobins, Danton,--Robespierre himself. It was what great men call their star,--a star which precedes them, and prepares their way. Dumouriez's star was fascination of manner; but this fascination was but the attraction of his just, rapid, quick ideas, into whose orbit the incredible activity of his mind carried away the mind of those who heard his thoughts or witnessed his actions. Gensonné, on his return from his mission, had desired to enrich his party with this unknown man, whose eminence he foresaw from afar. He presented Dumouriez to his friends of the Assembly, to Guadet, Vergniaud, Roland, Brissot, and De Grave: communicated to them his own astonishment at, and confidence in, the twofold faculties of Dumouriez as diplomatist and soldier. He spoke of him as of a concealed saviour, whom fate had reserved for liberty. He conjured them to attach to themselves a man whose greatness would enhance their own.

They had scarcely seen Dumouriez before they were convinced. His intellect was electrical: it struck before they had time to anatomise it. The Girondists presented him to De Grave, and De Grave to the king, who offered him the temporary management of foreign affairs, until M. de Lessart, sent before the _Haute Cour_, had proved his innocence to his judges, and could resume the place reserved for him in the council. Dumouriez refused the post of minister _pro tempore_, which would injure and weaken his position before all parties by rendering him suspected by all. The king yielded, and Dumouriez was appointed.

II.

History should pause a moment before this man, who, without having assumed the name of Dictator, concentrated in himself during two years all expiring France, and exercised over his country the most incontestible of dictatorships--that of genius. Dumouriez was of the number of men who are not to be painted by merely naming them, but of those whose previous life explains their nature; who have in the past the secret of their future; who have, like Mirabeau, their existence spread over two epochs; who have their roots in two soils, and are only known by the perusal of every detail.

Dumouriez, son of a commissioner in the war department, was born at Cambrai in 1739; and although his family lived in the north, his blood was southern by extraction. His family, originally from Aix, in Provence, evinced itself in the light, warmth, and sensibility of his nature; there was perceptible the same sky that had rendered so prolific the genius of Mirabeau. His father, a military and well-read man, educated him equally for war and literature. One of his uncles, employed in the foreign office, made him early a diplomatist. A mind equally powerful and supple, he lent himself equally to all--as fitted for action as for thought, he passed from one to the other with facility, according to the phases of his destiny. There was in him the flexibility of the Greek mind in the stirring periods of the democracy in Athens. His deep study early directed his mind to history, that poem of men of action. Plutarch nourished him with his manly diet. He moulded on the antique figures drawn from life by the historian the ideal of his own life, only all the parts of every great man suited him alike: he assumed them by turns, realised them in his reveries, as suited to reproduce In him the voluptuary as the sage, the malcontent as the patriot; Aristippus as Themistocles; Scipio as Coriolanus. He mingled with his studies the exercises of a military life, formed his body to fatigue, at the same time that he fashioned his mind to lofty ideas; equally skilled in handling a sword and daring in subduing a horse.

Demosthenes, by patience, formed a sonorous voice from a stammering tongue. Dumouriez, with a weak and ailing constitution in his childhood, enured his body for war. The stirring ambition of his soul required that the frame which encased it should be of endurance.

III.

Opposing the desires of his father, who destined him for the war office, the pen was his abhorrence, and he obtained a sub-lieutenancy in the cavalry. As aide-de-camp of marshal d'Armentières, he made the campaign of Hanover. In a retreat he seized the standard from the hands of a fugitive, rallied two hundred troopers round him, saved a battery of five pieces of cannon, and covered the passage of the army. Remaining almost alone in the rear, he made himself a rampart of his dead horse, and wounded three of the enemy's hussars. Wounded in many places by gun-shot and sabre wounds--his thigh entangled beneath a fallen horse--two fingers of his right hand severed--his forehead cut open--his eyes literally singed by a discharge of powder, he still fought, and only surrendered prisoner to the Baron de Beker, who saved his life, and conveyed him to the camp of the English.

His youth and good constitution restored him to health at the end of two months. Destined to form himself to victory by the example of defeats, and want of experience in our generals, he rejoined marshal de Soubise and marshal de Broglie; and was present at the routs which the French owe to their enmity and rivalry.

At the peace he went to rejoin his regiment in garrison at Saint Lô. Passing by Pont Audemer, he stopped at the house of his father's sister. A passionate love for one of his uncle's daughters kept him there. This love, shared by his cousin, and favoured by his aunt, was opposed by his father. The young girl, in despair, took refuge in a convent. Dumouriez swore to take her thence, and went away. On his road, overcome by his grief, he bought some opium at Dieppe, shut himself up in his apartment, wrote his adieus to his beloved, a letter of reproaches to his father, and took the poison. Nature saved him, and repentance ensued--he went, and, throwing himself at his father's feet, they were reconciled.

At four and twenty years of age, after seven campaigns, he brought from the wars only twenty-two wounds, a decoration, the rank of captain, a pension of 600 livres, debts contracted in the service, and a hopeless love, which preyed upon his mind. His ambition, spurred by his love, made him seek in politics that success which war had hitherto refused him.

There was then in Paris one of those enigmatic men who are at the same time intriguers and statesmen. Unknown and unconsidered, they play under some name parts hidden, but important in affairs. Men of police, as well as of politics, the governments that employ and despise them pay their services, not in appointments, but in subsidies. Manoeuvrers in politics, they are paid from day to day--they are urged onwards, compromised, and then disavowed, and sometimes even imprisoned. They suffer all, even captivity and dishonour, for money. Such men are things to buy and sell, and their talent and utility stamp their price. Of this class were Linguet, Brissot, even Mirabeau in his youth. Such at this period was one Favier.

This man, employed in turns by the duc de Choiseul and M. d'Argenson, to draw up diplomatic memoranda, had an infinite knowledge of Europe; he was the vigilant spy of every cabinet, knew their back-games, guessed their intrigues, and kept them in play by counter-mines, of which the minister for foreign affairs did not always know the secret. Louis XV., a king of small ideas and petty resources, was not ashamed to take into his confidence Favier, as an instrument in the schemes he contemplated against his own ministers. Favier was the go-between in the political correspondence which this monarch kept up with the count de Broglie, unknown to, and against the policy of, his own ministers. This confidence, suspected by, rather than known to, his ministers, talent as a very able writer, deep knowledge of national eras, of history, and diplomacy, gave Favier a credit with the administration, and an influence over affairs very much beyond his obscure position and dubious character; he was, in some sort, the minister of the intrigues of high life of his time.

IV.

Dumouriez seeing the high roads to fortune closed before him, resolved to cast himself into them by indirect ways; and with this view attached himself to Favier. Favier attached himself to him, and in this connection of his earlier years, Dumouriez acquired that character for adventure and audacity which gave, during all his life, something skilful as intrigue and as rash as a _coup de main_ to his heroism and his policy. Favier initiated him into the secrets of courts, and engaged Louis XV. and the Duc de Choiseul to employ Dumouriez in diplomacy and war at the same time.

It was at this moment that the great Corsican patriot, Paoli, was making gigantic efforts to rescue his country from the tyranny of the republic of Genoa, and to assure to this people an independence, of which he by turns offered the patronage to England and to France. On reaching Genoa, Dumouriez undertook to deceive at the same time the Republic, England, and Paoli, united himself with Corsican adventurers, conspired against Paoli, made a descent upon the island, which he summoned to independence, and was partially successful. He threw himself into a felucca, to bring to the Duc de Choiseul information as to the new state of Corsica, and to implore the succour of France. Delayed by a tempest, tossed for several weeks on the coast of Africa, he reached Marseilles too late; the treaty between France and Genoa was signed. He hastened to Favier, his friend in Paris.

Favier informed him confidentially, that he was employed to draw up a memorial to prove to the king and his ministers the necessity of supporting the republic of Genoa against the independent Corsicans; that this memorial had been demanded of him secretly by the Genoese ambassador, and by a _femme de chambre_ of the Duchesse de Grammont, favourite sister of the Duc de Choiseul, interested, like the brothers of the Du Barry[19], in supplying the army: that 500 louis were the price of this memorial and the blood of the Corsicans; and he offered a portion of this intrigue and its profits to Dumouriez who pretended to accept this, and then hastening to the Duc de Choiseul, revealed the manoeuvre, was well received, believed he had convinced the minister, and was preparing to return, conveying to the Corsicans the subsidies and arms they expected. Next day, he found the minister changed, and was sent from the audience with harsh language. Dumouriez retired, and made his way unmolested to Spain. Aided by Favier, who was satisfied with having jockeyed him, and pitied his candour; assisted by the Duc de Choiseul, he conspired with the Spanish minister and French ambassador to effect the conquest of Portugal, whose topography he was empowered to study in a military point of view, as well as its means of defence. The Marquis de Pombal, first minister of Portugal, conceived suspicions as to Dumouriez's mission, and forced him to leave Lisbon. The young diplomatist returned to Madrid, learned that his cousin, over-persuaded by the priests, had abandoned him, and meant to take the veil. He then attached himself to another mistress, a young Frenchwoman, daughter of an architect established at Madrid, and for some years his activity reposed in the happiness of a participated love. An order of the Duc de Choiseul recalled him to Paris,--he hesitated: his beloved herself compelled him, and sacrificed him as if she had from afar anticipated his fame. He reached Paris, and was named quartermaster-general of the French army in Corsica, where, as everywhere else, he greatly distinguished himself. At the head of a detachment of volunteers, he seized on the Château de Corte, the last asylum and home of Paoli. He retained for himself the library of this unfortunate patriot. The choice of these books, and the notes with which they were covered in Paoli's hand, revealed one of those characters which seek their fellows in the finest models of antiquity. Dumouriez was worthy of this spoil, since he appreciated it above gold. The great Frederic called Paoli the first captain of Europe: Voltaire declared him the conqueror and lawgiver of his country. The French blushed at conquering him--fortune at forsaking him. If he did not emancipate his country, he deserved that his struggle should be immortalised. Too great a citizen for so small a people, he did not bear a reputation in proportion to his country, but to his virtues. Corsica remains in the ranks of conquered provinces; but Paoli must always be in the ranks of great men.

V.

After his return to Paris, Dumouriez passed a year in the society of the literary men and women of light fame who gave to the society of the period the spirit and the tone of a constant orgy. Forming an attachment with an old acquaintance of Madame Du Barry, he knew this _parvenue_ courtezan, whom libertinism had elevated nearly to the throne. Devoted to the Duc de Choiseul, the enemy of this mistress of the king, and retaining that remnant of virtue which amongst the French is called honour, he did not prostitute his uniform to the court, and blushed to see the old monarch, at the reviews of Fontainebleau, walk on foot with his hat off before his army, beside a carriage in which this woman displayed her beauty and her empire. Madame Du Barry took offence at the forgetfulness of the young officer, and divined the cause of his absence. Dumouriez was sent to Poland on the same errand that had before despatched him to Portugal. His mission, half diplomatic, half military, was, in consequence of a secret idea of the king, approved by his confidant, the Count de Broglie, and by Favier, the count's adviser.

It was at the moment when Poland, menaced and half-occupied by the Russians, devoured by Prussia, forsaken by Austria, was attempting some ill-considered movements, in order to repair its scattered limbs, and to dispute, at least, in fragments, its nationality with its oppressors--the last sigh of liberty which moved the corpse of a people. The king, who feared to come into collision with the Empress of Russia, Catherine, to give excuses to the hostilities of Frederic and umbrage to the court of Vienna, was still desirous of extending to expiring Poland the hand of France; but concealing that hand, and reserving to himself the power even to cut it off, if it became necessary. Dumouriez was the intermediary selected for this part; the secret minister of France, amongst the Polish confederates; a general, if necessary--but a general adventurer and disowned--to rally and direct their efforts.

The Duc de Choiseul, indignant at the debasement of France, was secretly preparing war against Prussia and England. This powerful diversion in Poland was necessary for his plan of campaign, and he gave his confidential instructions to Dumouriez; but, thrown out of the administration by the intrigues of Madame Du Barry and M. d'Argenson, the Duc de Choiseul was suddenly exiled to Versailles before Dumouriez reached Poland. The policy of France, changing with the minister, at once destroyed Dumouriez's plans. Still he followed them up with an ardour and perseverance worthy of better success. He found the Poles debased by misery, slavery, and the custom of bearing a foreign yoke. He found the Polish aristocrats corrupted by luxury, enervated by pleasures, employing in intrigues and language the warmth of their patriotism in the conferences and confederation of _Epéries_. A female of remarkable beauty, high rank, and eastern genius, the Countess of Mnizeck, stirred up, destroyed, or combined different parties, according to the taste of her ambition or her amours. Certain patriot orators caused the last accents of independence to resound again in vain. Certain princes and gentlemen formed meetings without any understanding with each other, who contended as partisans rather than as citizens, and who boasted of personal fame, without any reference to the safety of their country. Dumouriez availed himself of the ascendency of the countess, and endeavoured to unite these isolated effects, formed an infantry, an artillery, seized upon two fortresses, threatened in all directions the Russians, scattered in small bodies over the wide plains of Poland, prepared for war, disciplined the insubordinate patriotism of the insurgents, and contended successfully against Souwarow, the Russian general, subsequently destined to threaten the republic so closely.

But Stanislaus, the king of Poland, the crowned creature of Catherine, saw the danger of a national insurrection, which, by drawing out the Russians, would endanger his throne; and he paralysed it by offering to the federates to adhere, in his own person, to the confederation. One of them, Bohuez, the last great orator of Polish liberty, returned to the king, in a sublime oration, his perfidious succour, and then combined the unanimity of the conspirators into the last resource of the oppressed--insurrection. It burst forth. Dumouriez is its life and soul, flies from one camp to the other, giving a spirit of unity to the plan of attack. Cracovis was ready to fall into his hands; the Russians regain the frontier in disorder; but anarchy, that fatal genius of Poland, suddenly dissolves the union of the chiefs, and they surrender one another to the united efforts of the Russians. All desire to have the exclusive honour of delivering their country, and prefer to lose it rather than owe their success to a rival.

Sapieha, the principal leader, was massacred by his nobles. Pulauwski and Micksenski were delivered up, wounded, to the Russians; Zaremba betrayed his country; Oginski, the last of these great patriots, roused Lithuania at the moment when Lesser Poland had laid down its arms. Abandoned and fugitive, he escaped to Dantzig, and wandered for thirty years over Europe and America, carrying in his heart the memory of his country. The lovely Countess of Mnizeck languished and died of grief with Poland. Dumouriez wept for this heroine, adored in a country wherein he said the women are more men than the men. He brake his sword, despairing for ever of this aristocracy without a people, bestowing on it, as he quitted it, the name of _Asiatic Nation of Europe_.

VI.

He returned to Paris. The king and M. d'Argenson, to save appearances with Russia and Prussia, threw him and Favier into the Bastille, and he there passed a year in cursing the ingratitude of courts and the weakness of kings, and recovered his natural energy in retreat and study. The king changed his prison into exile to the citadel of Caen; there Dumouriez found again, in a convent, the cousin he had loved. Free, and weary of a monastic life, she became softened on again beholding her former lover, and they were married. He was then appointed commandant of Cherbourg, and his indefatigable mind contended with the elements as if it were opposing men. He conceived the plan of fortifying this harbour, which was to imprison a stormy sea in a granite basin, and give the French navy a halting place in the channel. Here he passed fifteen years in domestic life, much troubled by the ill humour and ascetic devotion of his wife; in military studies constant, but without application, and in the dissipation of the philosophic and voluptuous society of his time.

The Revolution, which was drawing nigh, found him indifferent to its principles, and prepared for its vicissitudes. The justness of his penetration enabled him at a glance to measure the tendency of events. He soon comprehended that a revolution in ideas must undermine institutions, unless institutions modelled themselves on the new ideas. He gave himself to the constitution without enthusiasm; he desired the maintenance of the throne, had no faith in a republic, foresaw a change in the dynasty; and was even accused of meditating it. The emigration, by decimating the upper ranks of the army, left space for him, and he was named general, by length of service. He preserved a firm and well-devised conduct, equi-distant from the throne and the people, from the counter-revolutionist and the malcontent, ready to go with the opinion of the court or of the nation, according as events might transpire. By turns he was in communication with all parties, as if to sound the growing power of Mirabeau and de Montmorin, the Duc d'Orleans and the Jacobins, La Fayette and the Girondists. In his various commands during these days of crises, he maintained discipline by his popularity, was on terms with the insurgent people, and placed himself at their head, in order to restrain them. The people believed him certainly on their side; the soldiery adored him; he detested anarchy, but flattered the demagogues. He applied very skilfully to his popularity those able tactics which Favier had taught him. He viewed the Revolution as an heroic intrigue. He manoeuvred his patriotism as he would have manoeuvred his battalions on the field of battle. He considered the coming war with much delight, knowing already all of a hero's part. He foresaw that the Revolution, deserted by the nobility, and assailed by all Europe, would require a general ready formed to direct the undisciplined efforts of the masses it had excited. He prepared himself for that post. The long subordination of his genius fatigued him. At fifty-six years of age he had the fire of youth with all the coolness of age; his earnest desire was advancement; the yearning of his soul for fame was the more intense in proportion to the years he had already unavailingly passed. His frame, fortified by climates and voyages, lent itself, like a passive instrument, to his activity: all was young in him except his amount of years; they were expended, but not by energy. He had the youth of Cæsar, an impatient desire for fortune, and the certainty of acquiring it. With great men, to live is to rise in renown; he had not lived, because his reputation was not equivalent to his ambition.

VII.

Dumouriez was of that middle stature of the French soldier who wears his uniform gracefully, his havresac lightly, and his musket and sabre as if he did not feel their weight. Equally agile and compact, his body had the cast of those statues of warriors who repose on their expanded muscles, and yet seem ready to advance. His attitude was confident and proud; all his motions were as rapid as his mind. He vaulted into the saddle without touching the stirrup, holding the mane by his left hand. He sprung to the ground with one effort, and handled the bayonet of the soldier as vigorously as the sword of the general. His head, rather thrown backwards, rose well from his shoulders, and turned on his neck with ease and grace, like all elegant men. These haughty motions of his head made him look taller under the tricoloured cockade. His brow was lofty, well-turned, flat at the temples, and well displayed; his muscles set in play by his reflection and resolution. The salient and well-defined angles announced sensibility of mind beneath delicacy of understanding and the most exquisite tact. His eyes were black, large, and full of fire; his long lids, beginning to turn grey, increased their brilliancy, though sometimes they were very soft; his nose, and the oval of his countenance, were of that aquiline type which reveals races ennobled by war and empire; his mouth, flexible and handsome, was almost always smiling; no tension of the lips betrayed the effort of this plastic mind--this master mind, which played with difficulties, overcame obstacles; his chin, turned and decided, bore his face, as it were, on a firm and square base, whilst the habitual expression of his countenance was calm and expansive cheerfulness. It was evident that no pressure of affairs was too heavy for him, and that he constantly preserved so much liberty of mind as enabled him to jest alike with good or bad fortune. He treated politics, war, and government with gaiety. The tone of his voice was sonorous, manly, and vibrating; and was distinctly heard above the noise of the drum, and the clash of the bayonet. His oratory was straightforward, clever, striking; his words were effective in council, in confidence, and intimacy: they soothed and insinuated themselves like those of a woman. He was persuasive, for his soul, mobile and sensitive, had always in its accent the truth and impression of the moment. Devoted to the sex, and easily enamoured, his experience with them had imbued him with one of their highest qualities--pity. He could not resist tears, and those of the queen would have made him a Seid of the throne; there was no position or opinion he would not have sacrificed to a generous impulse; his greatness of soul was not calculation, it was excessive feeling. He had no political principles; the Revolution was to him nothing more than a fine drama, which was to furnish a grand scene for his abilities, and a part for his genius. A great man for the service of events, if the Revolution had not beheld him as its general and preserver, he would equally have been the general and preserver of the Coalition. Dumouriez was not the hero of a principle, but of the occasion.

VIII.

The new ministers met at Madame Roland's, the soul of the Girondist ministry: Duranton, Lacoste, Cahier-Gerville received there, in all passiveness, their instructions from the men whose shadows only they were in the council. Dumouriez affected, like them, at first, a full compliance with the interests and will of the party, which, personified at Roland's by a young, lovely, and eloquent woman, must have had an additional attraction for the general. He hoped to rule by ruling the heart of this female. He employed with her all the plasticity of his character, all the graces of his nature, all the fascinations of his genius; but Madame Roland had a preservative against the warrior's seductions that Dumouriez had not been accustomed to find in the women he had loved--austere virtue and a strong will. There was but one means of captivating her admiration, and that was by surpassing her in patriotic devotion. These two characters could not meet without contrasting themselves, nor understand without despising each other. Very soon, therefore, Dumouriez considered Madame Roland as a stubborn bigot, and she estimated Dumouriez as a frivolous presuming man, finding in his look, smile, and tone of voice that audacity of success towards her sex which betrayed, according to her estimation, the free conduct of the females amongst whom he had lived, and which offended her decorum. There was more of the courtier than the patriot in Dumouriez. This French aristocracy of manners displeased the engraver's humble daughter; perhaps it reminded her of her lowly condition, and the humiliations of her childhood at Versailles. Her ideal was not the military, but the citizen; a republican mind alone could acquire her love. Besides, she saw at a glance that this man was too great to remain long on the level of her party; she suspected his genius in his politeness, and his ambition beneath his familiarity. "Have an eye to that man," she said to her husband after their first interview; "he may conceal a master beneath the colleague, and drive from the cabinet those who introduced him there."

IX.

Roland, too happy at being in power, did not foresee his disgrace, and encouraging his wife, trusted more and more to the admiration which Dumouriez feigned for him. He thought himself the statesman of the cabinet, and his gratified vanity lent itself credulously to the advances of Dumouriez, and even made him better disposed towards the king. On his entry to the ministry Roland had affected in his costume the bluntness of his principles, and in his manners the rudeness of his republicanism. He presented himself at the Tuileries in a black coat, with a round hat, and nailed shoes covered with dust. He wished to show in himself the man of the people, entering the palace in the plain garb of the citizen, and thus meeting the man of the throne. This tacit insolence he thought would flatter the nation and humiliate the king. The courtiers were indignant; the king groaned over it; Dumouriez laughed at it. "Ah, well then, really, gentlemen," he said to the courtiers, "since there is no more etiquette there is no more monarchy." This jocose mode of treating the thing had at once removed all the anger of the court, and all the effect of the Spartan pretensions of Roland.

The king no longer regarded the discourtesy, and treated Roland with that cordiality which unlocks men's hearts. The new ministers were astonished to feel themselves confiding and moved in the presence of the monarch. Having arrived suspicious and republican to their seats in the cabinet, they quitted it almost royalists.

"The king is not known," said Roland to his wife: "a weak prince, he is one of the best of men; he does not want good intentions, but good advice: he does not like the aristocracy, and has strong affection for the people: perhaps he was born to serve as the medium between republic and monarchy. By rendering the constitution easy to him we shall make him like it, and the popularity he will re-acquire by following our counsels will render government easy to ourselves. His nature is so great that the throne has been unable to corrupt it, and he is equally remote from the silly brute which has been held up to the laughter of the people as from the sensitive and highly accomplished man his courtiers pretend to adore in him; his mind, without being superior, is expansive and reflecting; in a humble position his abilities would have provided for him; he has a general and occasionally sound knowledge, knows the details of business, and acts towards men with that simple but persuasive ability which gives kings the precocious necessity of governing their impressions; his prodigious memory always recalls to him at the right time things, names, and faces; he likes work, and reads every thing; he is never idle for a moment; a tender parent, a model of a husband: chaste in feeling, he has done away with all those scandals which disgraced the courts of his predecessors; he loves none but the queen, and his condescension, which is occasionally injurious to his politics, is at least a weakness 'which leans to virtue's side.' Had he been born two centuries earlier his peaceable reign would have been counted amongst the number of happy years of the monarchy. Circumstances appear to have influenced his mind. The Revolution has convinced him of its necessity, and we must convince him of its possibility. In our hands the king may better serve it than any other citizen in the kingdom; by enlightening this prince we may be faithful alike to his interests and those of the nation--the king and Revolution must be with us as one."

X.

Thus said Roland in the first dazzling of power; his wife listened with a smile of incredulity on her lips. Her keener glance had at the instant measured a career more vast and a termination more decisive than the timid and transitory compromise between a degraded royalty and an imperfect revolution. It would have cost her too much to renounce the ideal of her ardent soul; all her wishes tended to a republic; all her exertions, all her words, all her aspirations, were destined, unconsciously to herself, to urge thither her husband and his associates.

"Mistrust every man's perfidy, and more especially your own virtue," was her reply to the weak and vain Roland. "You see in this world but courts, where all is unreal, and where the most polished surfaces conceal the most sinister combinations. You are only an honest countryman wandering amongst a crowd of courtiers,--virtue in danger amidst a myriad of vices: they speak our language, and we do not know theirs. Would it be possible that they should not deceive us? Louis XVI., of a degenerate race, without elevation of mind, or energy of will, allowed himself to be enthralled early in life by religious prejudices, which have even lessened his intellect; fascinated by a giddy queen, who unites to Austrian insolence the enchantment of beauty and the highest rank, and who makes of her secret and corrupt court the sanctuary of her pleasures and the focus of her vices, this prince, blinded on the one hand by the priests, and on the other by love, holds at random the loose reins of an empire which is escaping from his grasp. France, exhausted of men, does not give to him, either in Maurepas, Necker, or Calonne, a minister capable of supporting him. The aristocracy is barren, and produces nothing but to its shame; the government must be renewed in the holier and deeper fount of the nation; the time for a democracy is here,--why delay it! You are its men, its virtues, its characters, its intelligence. The Revolution is behind you, it hails you, urges you onward, and would you surrender it to the first smile from the king because he has the condescension of a man of the people? No: Louis XVI., half dethroned by the nation, cannot love the nation that fetters him; he may feign to caress his chains, but all his thoughts are devoted to the idea of how he can spurn them. His only resource at this moment is to protest his attachment to the Revolution, and to lull the ministers whom the Revolution empowers to watch over his intrigues. But this pretence is the last and most dangerous of the conspiracies of the throne. The constitution is the forfeiture of Louis XVI., and the patriot ministers are his superintendents. Fallen greatness cannot love the cause of its decadence; no man likes his humiliation. Trust in human nature, Roland--that alone never deceives, and mistrust courts. Your virtue is too elevated to see the snares which courtiers spread beneath your feet."

XI.

Such language amazed Roland. Brissot, Condorcet, Vergniaud, Gensonné, Guadet, and especially Buzot, the friend and most intimate confidant of Madame Roland, strengthened at their evening meetings the mistrust of the minister. He armed himself with fresh distrust from their conversations, and entered the council with a more frowning brow and more resolute determination: the king's frankness disarmed him--Dumouriez discouraged him by his gaiety--power softened him by its influence. He wavered between the two great difficulties of the moment, the double sanction required from the king for the decrees which were most repugnant to his heart and conscience, the decree against the emigrants, and the decree against the nonjuring priests; and he wavered as to war.

During this tergiversation of Roland and his colleagues, Dumouriez acquired the favour of the king and the people, the secret of his conduct being comprised in what he had said a short time before to M. de Montmorin, in a secret conversation he had with that minister. "If I were king of France, I would disconcert all parties by placing myself at the head of the Revolution."

This sentence contained the sole line of policy capable of saving Louis XVI. In a time of revolution every king who is not revolutionary must be inevitably crushed between the two parties: a neutral king no longer reigns--a pardoned king degrades the throne--a king conquered by his own people has for refuge only exile or the scaffold. Dumouriez felt that his first step was to convince the king of his personal attachment, and take him into his confidence, or indeed make him his accomplice in the patriotic part he proposed to play; constitute himself the secret mediator between the will of the monarch and the exactions of the cabinet, to control the king by his influence over the Girondists, and the Girondists by his influence over the king; the part of the favourite of misfortune and protector of a persecuted queen pleased alike his ambition and his heart. A soldier, diplomatist, gentleman, there was in his soul a wholly different feeling for degraded royalty than the sentiment of satisfied jealousy which filled the minds of the Girondists. The _prestige_ of the throne existed for Dumouriez; the _prestige_ of liberty only existed for the Girondists. This feeling, revealed in his attitude, language, gestures, could not long escape the observation of Louis XVI. Kings have twofold tact, misfortune makes them more nice; the unfortunate perceive pity in a look; it is the only homage they are allowed to receive, and they are the more jealous of it. In a secret conversation the king and Dumouriez came to an understanding.

XII.

Dumouriez's restless conduct in his commands in Normandy, the friendship of Gensonné, the favour of the Jacobins for him, had prejudiced Louis XVI. against his new minister. The minister, on his side, expected to find in the king a spirit opposed to the constitution, a mind trammelled by routine, a violent temper, an abrupt manner, and using language imperious and offensive to all who approached him. Such was the caricature of this unfortunate prince. It was necessary to disfigure him in order to make the nation hate him.

Dumouriez found in him at this moment, and during the three months of his ministry, an upright mind, a heart open to every benevolent sentiment, unvarying politeness, endurance and patience which defied the calamities of his situation. Extreme timidity, the result of the long seclusion in which his youth had been passed, repressed the feelings of his heart, and gave to his language and his intercourse with men a stiffness and embarrassment which destroyed his better qualities of decided and calm courage; he frequently spoke to Dumouriez of his death as an event probable and doomed, the prospect of which did not affect his serenity nor preclude him from doing his duty to the last as a father and a king.

"Sire," said Dumouriez to him, with the chivalric sympathy which compassion adds to respect, and with that aspect in which the heart says more than language; "you have overcome your prejudices against myself; you have commanded me by M. de Laporte to accept the post he had refused." "Yes," replied the king. "Well, I come now to devote myself wholly to your service, to your protection. But the part of a minister is no longer what it was in former days: without ceasing to be the servant of the king, I am the man of the nation. I will speak to you always in the language of liberty and the constitution. Allow me then, in order to serve you better, that in public and in the council I appear in my character as a constitutionalist, and that I avoid every thing that may at all reveal my personal attachment towards you. In this respect I must break through all etiquette, and avoid attending the court. In the council, I shall oppose your views, and shall propose as our representatives in foreign courts men devoted to the nation. When your repugnance to my choice shall be invincible and on good grounds, I shall comply; if this repugnance shall tend to compromise the safety of the country and yourself, I shall beg you to allow me to resign, and nominate my successor. Think of the terrible dangers which beset your throne--it must be consolidated by the confidence of the nation in your sincere attachment to the Revolution. It is a conquest which it depends on you to make. I have prepared four despatches to ambassadors in this sense. In these I have used language to which they are unused from courts, the language of an offended and resolute nation. I shall read them this morning before the council: if you approve my labour, I shall continue to speak thus, and act in accordance with my language; if not, my carriage is ready, and, unable to serve you in the council, I shall depart whither my tastes and studies for thirty years call me, to serve my country in the field."

The king, astonished and much moved, said to him, "I like your frankness; I know you are attached to me, and I anticipate all from your services. They had created many prejudices against you, but this moment effaces them all. Go and do as your heart directs you, and according to the best interests of the nation, which are also mine." Dumouriez retired; but he knew that the queen, adored by her husband, clung to the policy of her husband with all the passion and excitement of her soul. He desired and feared at the same time an interview with this princess: one word from her would accomplish or destroy the bold enterprise he had dared to meditate, of reconciling the king with the people.

XIII.

The queen sent for the general into her most private apartments. Dumouriez found her alone, her cheeks flushed by the emotion of an internal struggle, and walking rapidly up and down the room, like a person whose agitated thoughts require corresponding activity of body. Dumouriez placed himself in silence near the fireplace, in the attitude of respect and sorrow, inspired by the presence of so august, so beautiful, and so miserable a princess. She advanced towards him with a mingled air of majesty and anger.

"Monsieur," said she, with that accent that reveals at once resentment against fortune, and contempt for fate; "you are all-powerful at this moment; but it is through popular favour, and that soon destroys its idols." She did not await his reply, but continued, "Your existence depends upon your conduct; it is said that you possess great talents, and you must imagine that neither the king nor myself can suffer all these innovations of the constitution. I tell you thus much frankly, so make your decision." "Madame," returned Dumouriez, "I am confounded by the dangerous disclosure your Majesty has thought fit to make me; I will not betray your confidence, but I am placed between the king and the nation, and I belong to my country. Permit me," continued Dumouriez, with respectful earnestness, "to represent to you that the safety of the king--your own--and that of your children, and the very re-establishment of the royal authority--is bound up with the constitution. You are surrounded by enemies, who sacrifice you to their own interests. The constitution alone can, by strengthening itself, protect you and assure the happiness and glory of the king." "It cannot last long, beware of yourself," returned the queen, with a look of anger and menace. Dumouriez imagined that he saw in this look and speech an allusion to personal danger and an insinuation of alarm. "I am more than fifty years old, madame," replied he, in a low tone, in which the firmness of the soldier was mingled with the pity of the man; "I have braved many perils in my life; and when I accepted the ministry, I well knew that my responsibility was not the greatest of my dangers." "Ah," cried the queen, with a gesture of horror, "this calumny and disgrace was alone wanting! You appear to believe me capable of causing you to be assassinated." Tears of indignation checked her utterance. Dumouriez, equally moved with herself, disclaimed the injurious interpretation given to his reply. "Far be it from me, madame, to offer you so cruel an insult; your soul is great and noble, and the heroism you have displayed in so many circumstances, has for ever attached me to you." She was appeased in a moment, and laid her hand on Dumouriez's arm, in token of reconciliation.

The minister profited by this return to serenity and confidence to give Marie Antoinette advice, of which the emotion of his features and voice sufficiently attested the sincerity. "Trust me, madame, I have no motive for deceiving you; I abhor anarchy and its crimes equally with yourself. But I have experience; I live in the centre of the different parties, and I take part in opinion. I am connected with the people, and I am better placed than your majesty for judging the extent and the direction of events. This is not, as you deem it, a popular movement; but the almost unanimous insurrection of a great nation against an old and decaying order of things. Mighty factions feed the flame, and in every one of them are scoundrels or madmen. I alone see in the Revolution the king and the nation, and that which tends to separate them, ruins them both. I seek to unite them, and it is for you to aid me. If I am an obstacle to your designs, and if you persist in them, tell me instantly, and I will retire, and mourn in obscurity the fate of my country and your own." The queen was touched and convinced; the frankness of Dumouriez at once pleased and won her. The heart of the soldier was a guarantee to her of the conduct of the statesman. Firm, brave, and heroic, she preferred to have the weight of his sword in the councils of his king, rather than those politicians, and specious orators, who, nevertheless, bent before every blast of opinion or sedition; and an intimate understanding soon existed between the queen and the general.

The queen was for some time faithful to her promises, but the repeated outrages of the people again moved her, in spite of herself, to anger and conspiracy. "See," said she to the king before Dumouriez, one day, pointing to the tops of the trees in the Tuileries; "a prisoner in this palace, I do not venture to show myself at the windows that look on to the garden. The crowd collected there, and who watch even my tears, hoot me. Yesterday, to breathe the air, I showed myself at a window that looks at the court; an artillery-man on guard addressed the most revolting language to me. 'How I should like,' added he, 'to see your head on the point of my bayonet!' In this frightful garden I see on one side a man mounted on a chair, and vociferating the most odious insults against us, whilst he threatens, by his gestures, the inhabitants of the palace; on the other, the populace is dragging to the basin some priest or soldier, whom they overwhelm with blows and outrages, whilst, at the same time, and close to these terrible scenes, persons are playing at ball or walking about in the _allées_. What a residence--what a life--what a people!" Dumouriez could but lament with the royal family, and exhort them to be patient. But the endurance of the victims is exhausted sooner than the cruelty of the executioner. How could it be expected that a courageous and proud princess, who had been constantly surrounded by the adulation of the court, could love the Revolution that was the instrument of her humiliation and her torture? or see in this indifferent and cruel nation a people worthy of empire and of liberty?

XIV.

When all his measures with the court were concerted, Dumouriez no longer hesitated to leap over the space that divided the king and the extreme party, and to give the government the form of pure patriotism. He made overtures to the Jacobins, and boldly presented himself at their sitting the next day. The chamber was thronged, and the apparition of Dumouriez struck the tribunes with mute astonishment. His martial figure and the impetuosity of his conduct won for him at once the favour of the Assembly; for no one suspected that so much audacity concealed so much stratagem, and they saw in him only the minister who threw himself into the arms of the people, and every one hastened to receive him.

It was the moment when the _bonnet rouge_, the symbol of extreme opinion, a species of livery worn by the demagogues and flatterers of the people, had been almost unanimously adopted by the Jacobins. This emblem, like many similar ones received by the revolutions from the hand of chance, was a mystery even to those who wore it. It had been adopted for the first time on the day of the triumph of the soldiers of Châteauvieux. Some said it was the _coiffure_ of the galley-slaves, once infamous, but glorious since it had covered the brows of these martyrs of the insurrection; and they added that the people wished to purify this head-dress from every stain by wearing it themselves. Others only saw in it the Phrygian bonnet, a symbol of freedom for slaves.

The _bonnet rouge_ had from its first appearance been the subject of dispute and dissension amongst the Jacobins; the _exaltés_ wore it, whilst the _modérés_ yet abstained from adopting it. Dumouriez did not hesitate, but mounted the tribune, placed this sign of patriotism on his head, and at once assumed the emblem of the most prominent party, whilst this mute yet significant eloquence awakened a burst of enthusiasm on every side of the _Salle_. "Brothers and friends," said Dumouriez, "every instant of my life shall be devoted to carrying out the wishes of the people, and to justifying the king's choice. I will employ in all negotiations the force of a free people, and before long these negotiations will produce a lasting peace or a decisive war. (Applause.) If we have this war I will abandon my political post, and I will assume my rank in the army to triumph, or perish a free man with my brethren. A heavy weight presses on me, aid me to bear it; I require your counsels, transmit them to me through your journals. Tell me truth, even the most unpalatable; but repel calumny, and do not repulse a citizen whom you know to be sincere and intrepid, and who devotes himself to the cause of the Revolution and the nation."

The president replied to the minister that the society gloried in counting him amongst its brethren. These words occasioned some murmurs, which were stifled by the acclamations that followed Dumouriez to his place. It was proposed that the two speeches should be printed. Legendre opposed the motion from economical motives, but was hissed by the tribunes. "Why these unusual honours, and this reply of the president to the minister?" said Collot d'Herbois. "If he comes here as a minister, there is no reply to make him. If he comes here as an associate and a brother, he does no more than his duty; he only raises himself to the level of our opinions. There is but one answer to be made,--let him act as he has spoken." Dumouriez raised his hand, and gesticulated to Collot d'Herbois.