Chapter XIV: Those Left Behind 303 (6)

She was especially influential when it came to choosing persons for the positions in the department which Roland controlled. She flattered herself on her ability to tell a true patriot, and criticised and praised candidates fearlessly. A minister of war was wanted soon after Roland’s call to the cabinet. He thought of Servan, because the man had exposed patriotic principles in a creditable book, because he had a reputation for activity, because he had lost a court position on account of civism, and above all because he declaimed bitterly against the aristocrats. They wished to found a journal to represent their party, and wanted a man “wise and enlightened” as editor. They decided on Louvet, the author of the most licentious novel of the day, because of his “noble forehead, the fire which animated his eye,” and the fine and eloquent political pamphlets he had published. Because Pache had the simplicity suitable to a republican and the manners of the ancients, because he came to his office at seven o’clock in the morning and stayed until three in the afternoon with only a morsel of bread brought in his pocket for lunch, because he was prudent, attentive, zealous as a clerk, he was thought fit to be a minister.

They mistrusted all their colleagues who lacked these qualities. In the ministry was General Dumouriez, a diplomat of skill, devoted to the constitution, skilful with men, wise with the King. He had come to see the Rolands in the Rue de la Harpe with Brissot to announce to them the call to the ministry. When he left, Madame Roland said to her husband: “There is a man I have seen for the first time. He has a penetrating mind, a false eye; perhaps it will be more necessary to suspect him than anybody in the world. He has expressed great satisfaction with the patriotic choice he has been charged to announce, but I should not be astonished if one day he caused you to be dismissed.”

She mistrusted Dumouriez at once because of his courtly manners, and his belief that the King was sincere in his efforts to support the constitution. There was so great a difference between him and Roland that she could not imagine the two working together. In the one she saw “uprightness and frankness personified, severe equity without any of the devices of the courtier or of the society-man.” In the other she believed she recognized “an intelligent _roué_, a bold knight, who sneered at everything except his own interests and his own glory.”

She did not change her idea of Dumouriez, although obliged to confess that he had more _esprit_ than any one else in the ministry, that he was “diligent and brave,” “a good general, a skilful courtier, writing well, capable of great enterprises,” but his “manners!” they were fit only for the ministerial intrigues of a corrupt court.

Her suspicions extended to all his friends. “All these fine fellows,” she said to a friend one day _à propos_ of Dumouriez’s followers, “seem poor patriots to me. They care too much for themselves to prefer the public good to their own interests. I can never resist the temptation to wound their self-sufficiency by pretending not to see the merit of which they are vainest.”

As for the good faith of the King, she would not listen to the idea. During the first three weeks of the ministry of Roland, he and Clavière were disposed to think well of the King, to have confidence in the turn things were going to take. But she would tell them when they started out confidently to the Council meetings: “When I see you go off in that way, it always seems to me that you are going to commit a _sottise_.” And when they came back with less done than she expected she declared the Council was “nothing but a café.” “It is disgraceful. You are in good humor because you experience no annoyance, even because you are well treated. You have the air of doing about what you wish in your departments. I fear that you are being tricked.” When they reminded her that nevertheless affairs were going well, she replied: “Yes, and time is being lost.”

At the moment that Roland was called to office the question of public tranquillity was most serious. It was not alone in the cities that riots, pillage, and bloodshed were of constant occurrence. The provinces were in many places almost uninhabitable. Roland, to cure the disorders, wrote circulars and put up posters.

For example, in his own department, Rhone-et-Loire, the question of the priests was causing more and more difficulty. The provocation came now from one side, now from another. In certain parishes the constitutional priests were supported by the municipality, in others the unsworn were favored. In the midst of these dissensions, births, marriages, and deaths often went unrecorded. Here a priest declaimed against the constitution and incited the people not to pay their taxes, there the National Guard and mayor combined to drive a disturber from the community. In the district of Villefranche, the constitutional _clergé_ of “the former province of Beaujolais” brought a long complaint to the authorities: “The inhabitants of the mountains,” they wrote, “influenced by fanaticism, are in a state of insurrection. They believe the churches to be profaned by the mere presence of the sworn priests; during the services they throw stones against the doors, interrupt the services, insult the new curés in the midst of their duties, force the faithful to desert the churches.... The presbyteries are no longer a safe asylum. Those who inhabit them are forced to keep a guard; they cannot travel alone without being attacked and exposed to the greatest dangers. There is not one of them who has not been driven several times from his home. New-born children are baptized by Non-conformists without the ceremonies of the Church—the fanatical and barbarous mothers declare that they would rather choke them than permit them to be baptized by the priests.”

The religious difficulties were inflamed by the rash and suspicious actions of the various parties, whose wisdom and diplomacy were annulled by excessive party spirit. The whole department, in fact, was racked by religious quarrels, bitter party spirit, fear of _émigrés’_ plots and foreign invasion, hatred of the constitution and “patriots.”

Roland had a formula for such a situation, and when the directory of Rhone-et-Loire asked him for help to restore order, he sent it to them.

“The present troubles which agitate your department at several points,” he wrote them, April 18th, “seem to have their source in the diversity of religious opinions. This diversity of opinion is the fruit of error, and the error comes from ignorance. If, then, we enlighten men, we deliver them from prejudices, and if the prejudices were destroyed, peace would reign on the earth.... It is not by force of arms that one teaches reason.... In the first place a well-organized state has only enough troops to prevent invasions, to meet force by force, and to enable all the citizens to enjoy all the benefits of their own constitution. Second, internal order should be maintained by instruction, by public opinion, and finally by the force of the National Guards.... Elected by the people, you ought to have their confidence. Your instruction ought to produce the greatest effect, and you ought to be able through confidence and reason to form and direct public opinion. These means, used energetically and wisely, are sure. Is there a rare circumstance when they are too slow? You have all the public force of your department; you can use it as it is necessary, and you ought to direct it according to the circumstances. These are your means, sirs, and you rest responsible before the nation and its representatives, before the King and your constituency, for all the disorders that you do not foresee and prevent.”

One can imagine the feelings of a board of county directors harassed by daily riots, by incessant quarrels, by threats and plots, on receiving such a letter from the minister, charged with executing the laws relative to the internal tranquillity of the State. The directory must have been composed of men singularly devoid of humor, if even in their grave situation they did not laugh at Roland’s application of instruction to the Lyons street-fights.

To a department which had asked him for troops to restore order, and secure the free circulation of grain in its territory, he responded that if it was necessary to use force they must take the National Guards, and he added: “But must I counsel this step? So soon as one employs arms to execute the laws, one not only proves that he has not known how to make himself loved, but that he will never be able to do so. A constitution which is enforced by the bayonet only, is not a constitution. Other means are necessary to attach a free people to the laws that it has made.... Instruct the administrations that you direct, and if they deviate from the observation of the rules, use that sweetness which commands so easily, that persuasion which leads to the repentance of a fault often involuntary. It is so easy for a superior administration to make itself agreeable to those that it has under its surveillance that, in fact, I believe I might say it is always the fault of the former when harmony is broken.”

And he continued this doctrinal campaign throughout his ministry. For all the riot-ridden country he had but one formula. And while the people burnt châteaux, stoned priests, pillaged storehouses, waylaid and stole grain, murdered nobles, he serenely preached how easily the difficulty could be ended by applying the dogma. And he believed it with the incomparable naïveté of the theorist. If some one called his attention to the fact that the disorders increased in spite of his preaching, he was unmoved; that was the fault of the “stick in the wheel.” He was not dissatisfied that disorder should increase. It would show the need for a new shock.

Armed with his formulas, his forty years of service, and his “virtue,” Roland could see no reason why he was not adequate to the situation, and why he should not act as he saw best. The conviction of his own sufficiency made him tactless with those who were, in his judgment, less infallible than he. He assumed a pedagogic tone, a severe mien, a stiff, patronizing air towards them. He read them lectures, posed before them as impeccable. To men of experience, used to the world and to politics, as convinced as Roland of their own sincere desire for the good of France, and of the sufficiency of their own ideas, this attitude was exasperating beyond expression.

It was not long before Roland and Servan, who was charged with the portfolio of war, began to regulate the King, “to kill him by pin-pricks,” said Dumouriez. Madame Roland was responsible, to a large extent, no doubt, for their unpatriotic and traitorous conduct. Servan was as completely under her rule as Roland, and she had cured both of them of the confidence and support they gave the King at the beginning of their ministry, and convinced them of his intention to betray the constitution and restore the old régime. To deserve their support he should, she believed, withdraw the vetoes he had put to the measures against priests and _émigrés_.

From the beginning of the Gironde ministry matters had steadily grown worse. In April war had been declared. It had opened badly for the French and terror and suspicion were greater than ever in Paris. Religious troubles flamed up all over the provinces, made more intense by the fear of foreign invasion. As rumors ran, the army was not doing its duty; the generals were traitors; the court party was plotting to receive the Prussians, to massacre the patriots, and to overthrow the constitution. To meet the perils which threatened, Madame Roland had two measures: the proscription of the Non-conformist priests, and a camp of twenty thousand soldiers, five from each canton of France, around Paris, to guard the city from the attack of the foreigners.

This latter plan she persuaded Servan to present to the Assembly on June 4th without the King knowing anything of his minister’s plans and without any of the Council save Clavière and Roland being in the secret. The measure was voted by the Assembly, but it made a noise in Paris. The National Guards regarded it as a reflection on their patriotism and capacity. The Feuillants raised a petition of eight thousand names (largely of women and children, sneered the patriots), protesting against the measure. At the Assembly and at the Jacobins the measure was hotly discussed; in the club it was opposed by Robespierre, now in open rupture with the Girondins, and almost daily attacked by Brissot in the _Patriote français_.

The King hesitated to sign the measure when it was presented to him. In Madame Roland’s eyes this refusal was due to nothing but his disloyalty, and she advised forcing him to a decision. She was, she says, in a kind of “moral fever” at the moment, and felt the absolute necessity of some kind of action which would determine the situation. In her judgment Roland should withdraw from the ministry if the King did not sign the measures. But she wished that if he withdrew everybody should know that he did it because the King would not take his advice.

In these circumstances Madame Roland proposed to Roland to send a letter to Louis XVI., stating his opinions, urging the King to consent to the proscription of the priests and the camp about Paris, and warning him against the consequences of a refusal. She dashed off this letter in a single sitting, in the passion of conviction and exaltation which possessed her.

“SIRE,—The present condition of France cannot long endure. The
violence of the crisis has reached the highest degree; it must be
terminated by a blow which ought to interest Your Majesty as much as
it concerns the whole Empire.

“Honored by your confidence, and placed in a position where I owe
you the truth, I dare to speak it; it is an obligation that you
yourself have imposed upon me.

“The French have adopted a constitution; there are those that are
discontented and rebellious because of it; the majority of the
nation wishes to maintain it, has sworn to defend it with its blood,
and has welcomed joyfully the war which promises to assure it. The
minority, however, sustained by its hopes, has united all its forces
to overthrow it. Hence this internal struggle against the laws, this
anarchy over which good citizens groan, and of which the wicked take
advantage to heap calumny on the new régime. Hence this discord
which has been excited everywhere, for nowhere is there
indifference. The triumph or the overthrow of the constitution is
desired; everywhere people are eager to sustain it or to change it.
I shall refrain from examining it, and consider simply what
circumstances demand; taking as impersonal attitude as possible, I
shall consider what we can expect and what it is best to do.

“Your Majesty enjoyed great privileges which you believed belonged
to royalty. Brought up in the idea of preserving them, you could not
see them taken from you with pleasure; your desire to recover them
was as natural as your regret at seeing them destroyed. These
sentiments, natural to the human heart, must have entered into the
calculation of the enemies of the Revolution. They counted then on
secret favor, until such times as circumstances permitted open
protection. This disposition could not escape the nation itself, and
it has been driven to defiance. Your Majesty has been constantly
between two alternatives: yielding to your prejudices, to your
private preferences, or making sacrifices dictated by philosophy and
demanded by necessity; that is, either emboldening the rebels by
disturbing the nation; or quieting the nation by uniting with her.
Everything has its course, and this uncertainty must end soon.

“Does Your Majesty ally yourself openly to-day with those who are
pretending to reform the constitution? Are you going generously to
devote yourself without reserve to its triumph? Such is the true
question, and the present state of things makes a solution
necessary.

“As for the very metaphysical question, are the French ripe for
liberty, the discussion is of no importance here; it is not a
question of judging what we shall be in a century, but of seeing of
what the present generation is capable.

“The Declaration of Rights has become a political gospel, and the
French Constitution, a religion for which the people are ready to
die. Already violence has sometimes supplanted the law. When the law
has not been sufficiently vigorous to meet the situation, the
citizens have taken things in their own hands. This is why the
property of the _émigrés_, or persons of their party, has been
exposed to pillage. This is why so many departments have been forced
to punish severely the priests whom public opinion had proscribed,
and who otherwise would have become its victims.

“In the shock of interests, passion has controlled. The country is
not a word that the imagination amuses itself in embellishing; it is
a being for whom one makes sacrifices, to whom one becomes attached
according to the suffering that it causes, who has been created by
great effort, and raised up in the midst of disturbances, and who is
loved for what it has cost as well as for what it promises. Every
attack made upon it inflames enthusiasm for it.

“To what point is this enthusiasm going to rise when the enemy’s
forces, united without, intrigue with those within to deal it the
most fatal blows?

MADAME ROLAND.

From a painting by an unknown artist in the Musée Carnavalet.
]

“The excitement is extreme in all parts of the Empire; unless
confidence in the intentions of Your Majesty calm it, it will burst
forth in terrible fury. Such confidence can never be based on
professions; it must have facts.

“It is evident to the French nation that the constitution will work;
that the government will have the necessary strength the moment that
Your Majesty sincerely desires the triumph of the constitution,
sustains the legislative corps with all your executive power, and
takes away every pretext for uneasiness from the people and every
hope from the discontented.

“For example, two important decrees have been passed; both concern
the tranquillity and the safety of the State. A delay to sanction
them awakens defiance; if it is prolonged, it will cause discontent;
and, it is my duty to say it, in the present state of excitement
discontent may lead to the worst.

“There is no longer time to hesitate; there is no longer any way of
temporizing. The Revolution has been accomplished in the minds of
the people; it will be finished at the price of blood if wisdom does
not forestall the evils that it is still possible to avoid.

“I know that it is imagined that anything can be done by extreme
measures; but when force shall have been used to constrain the
Assembly, terror spread throughout Paris, and disunion and stupor in
the suburbs, the whole of France will rise in indignation, and,
throwing herself into a civil war, will develop that sombre energy
always so fatal to those who have provoked it.

“The safety of the State and the happiness of Your Majesty are
intimately allied; no power can separate them; cruel anguish and
certain misfortune will surround your throne, if you yourself do not
found it on the constitution and if it is not strengthened by the
peace which it ought to bring us.

“Thus the disposition of the popular mind, the course of events, the
reason of politics, the interest of Your Majesty, make it
indispensable that you unite with the legislative corps and carry
out the desire of the nation; that which principle shows to be a
duty, the present situation makes a necessity.... You have been
cruelly deceived, Sire, by those who have sought to separate you
from your people. It is by perpetually disturbing you that they have
driven you into a course of conduct which has caused alarm. Let the
people see that you are determined to carry out the constitution
upon which they feel that their happiness depends, and you will soon
become the object of their gratitude.

“The conduct of the priests in many places, the pretext which
fanaticism has given the discontented, have led to a wise law
against these agitators. Will not Your Majesty give it your
sanction? Public peace demands it. The safety of the priests depends
upon it. If this law does not go into force, the departments will be
forced to substitute violent measures for it, as they are doing on
all sides; and the irritated people will make up for it by their
excesses.

“The attempts of our enemies, the disturbances in the capital, the
great unrest which the conduct of your guard has excited, the
situation of Paris,—all make a camp in this neighborhood necessary.
This measure, whose wisdom and urgency are recognised by all good
citizens, is waiting for nothing but the sanction of Your Majesty.
Why is it that you delay when promptness would win all hearts?
Already the efforts of the staff of the National Guard of Paris
against this measure have awakened the suspicion that it was
inspired by superior influence; already the declamations of certain
demagogues awaken suspicions of their relations with those
interested in overthrowing the constitution; already the intentions
of Your Majesty are compromised; a little more delay, and the people
will see in their King the friend and the accomplice of the
conspirators!

“Just Heaven! have you struck the powers of the earth with
blindness? will they never have other counsels than those which
bring about their ruin?

“I know that the austere language of virtue is rarely welcomed by
the throne; I know also that it is because it is so rarely heard
there, that revolutions are necessary; I know above all that it is
my duty to use it to Your Majesty, not only as a citizen, obedient
to law, but as a minister honored by your confidence and fulfilling
the functions which it supposes; and I know nothing which can
prevent me from fulfilling a duty which is on my conscience.

“It is in the same spirit that I repeat what I have already said to
Your Majesty on the obligation and the utility of carrying out the
law which provides for a secretary in the Council. The simple
existence of this law speaks so powerfully that it seems as if its
execution would follow without delay; it is a matter of great
importance to employ all possible means to preserve in our
deliberations the necessary gravity, wisdom, and maturity; moreover,
for the ministers, some means of verifying their expressions is
necessary. If such existed, I should not be addressing myself in
writing at this moment to Your Majesty.

“Life is nothing to the man who regards his duties as higher than
everything else; after the happiness of having fulfilled them, the
greatest good that he can know is that he has discharged them with
fidelity; and to do that is an obligation for the public man.

(Signed.) ROLAND.

“10 June, 1792. Year IV. of Liberty.”

Roland sent this letter to the King on June 11th, although he had had the idea of reading it to the Council the day before, but there was no opportunity, so says Madame Roland in her Memoirs. According to Dumouriez, the letter was sent earlier; for he relates that Roland read the letter at the Council, and that when he had finished it the King remarked with _sang-froid_: “M. Roland, it was three days ago that you sent me your letter. It was useless to read it to the Council if it was to remain a secret between us two.”

This letter was the climax to the irritating policy which the Gironde ministers had been pursuing with Louis, and he decided to dismiss them.

Servan received his discharge first. “Congratulate me,” he cried when he saw Madame Roland. “I have been put out.”

“I am piqued,” she replied, “that you are the first to have that honor, but I hope it will not be long before it is accorded to my husband.” It was not, for on the 13th Roland followed Servan. He hurried home to tell his wife.

“There is only one thing to do,” she cried with vivacity: “it is to be the first to announce it to the Assembly, sending along a copy of the letter to the King.”

The idea was put into effect at once. They were convinced that both “usefulness and glory” would result.

If this letter to the King began, as Dumouriez says, with a promise of secrecy, then to send it to the Assembly was, considering the position Roland occupied and the oath he had taken, a most disloyal act. But did it begin so? Madame Roland does not speak of such a promise in her Memoirs. The report of the letter given in the _Moniteur_ contains no such opening phrase, though naturally Roland would have cut it out in sending the document to the Assembly. Many of the memoirs and newspapers of the day, however, either quote the promise or assume that the letter was private.

Dumont, in writing of Madame Roland, says that the greatest reproach that could be made upon her conduct during the Revolution was persuading her husband to publish this letter, which commenced, according to him: “Sire, this letter will never be known save to you and me.”

Mathieu Dumas says in his _Souvenirs_ that it was confidential, and declares that it was read in the Council in the presence of the King, “although the minister had promised to keep it a secret between himself and His Majesty.” Of the presentation to the Assembly he adds: “It was a new violation of the secret that the minister had imposed upon himself. After his retreat propriety made the obligation of secrecy much more rigorous.”

The _Guardian of the Constitution_ of June 16th called the letter “criminal” and its reading sufficient cause for delivering Roland to the public prosecutor. Among the pamphlets which the publication of the letter called forth was an anonymous one, in which the author told the minister that he was under the greater obligation to keep the secret, as he had promised, because the letter was an attempt to regulate the King’s private conduct and because it insinuated that His Majesty intended to betray the constitution.

The result Madame Roland had foreseen, followed the presentation of the letter to the Assembly. The reading was interrupted frequently by applause, and it was ordered printed and distributed throughout the eighty-three departments.

“Usefulness and glory” were attained. The Rolands were convinced that the letter would enlighten France; that it would serve as the shock necessary to start the movement which would crush the remnants of monarchical authority. Madame Roland retired to the Rue de la Harpe more jubilant than she had entered the Hôtel of the Interior. She had not been proud of their appointment to the ministry; she was of their dismissal.

What she and her friends expected would follow the dismissal of the Girondin ministers, was a popular uprising, forcing the King to reinstate them. The disturbance did not come of itself, and they set about to prepare one—the artificial and abortive riot of the 20th of June. On this date fell the anniversary of the oath of the Tennis Court, and the citizens of the faubourgs Saint Antoine and Saint Marcel had asked permission to celebrate it by presenting petitions to the Assembly and to the King, and planting a tree of liberty. In the effervescence of public spirit such a demonstration might easily be turned into a riot, and there was opposition to it from the authorities; however, the Gironde succeeded in securing the permission.

On the 20th, the petitioners assembled, a motley crowd of men, women, and children, armed and carrying banners, and marched to the Assembly, where they demanded admission. It was against the law, but Vergniaud and Guadet contended that it should be granted. It was, and eight thousand persons filed through the hall.

From the Assembly they pressed to the palace of the King, broke down the doors, invaded the rooms, surrounded Louis XVI., put the red cap on his head, but they did not strike. There was no popular fury. There were cries of _Sanction the decrees_, _Recall the patriotic ministers_, _Away with the priests_, _Choose between Coblentz or Paris_, but there were no blows. For the people, the affair was simply a species of Mardi-gras, and when they were tired of gazing at the splendors of the palace and at the poor King, who, fearless and patient, let them surge about him, they retired. The King was still king, the decrees were not signed, the ministers were not recalled. Said Prudhomme in his report of the day: “Paris is in consternation, but it is at seeing that this day has not had the effect that the friends of liberty promised themselves.”

The reaction was terrific. Lafayette left his army and hurried to Paris to protest before the Assembly and to demand measures against the Jacobins. The Feuillants rallied their friends for a desperate effort. The Court—openly contra-revolutionary now—worked with the _émigrés_ to make a _coup_ which would sweep out entirely the new régime.

The patriots were not idle. In their supreme last struggle, never did Girondin eloquence and intrigue run higher. The open contra-revolutions in Paris and the foreign enemies now each day nearer the city were reasons enough for action. By a burst of magnificent eloquence Vergniaud secured a vote from the Assembly that the country was in danger, and a call upon France to enlist for its defence. A movement of superb patriotism followed the declaration. Here was an unmistakable enemy. Vague alarms were at an end. The foreigners were actually approaching the capital, and anybody could understand that they were not wanted. The irritated, harassed country opened its heart and poured out its blood,—young and old, weak and strong, even women and girls, offered themselves.

But this was a movement against foreign invasion—not against the remnants of monarchical authority. The result looked uncertain. Consternation and despair seized the Rolands. They foresaw the triumph of the Court, the hope of a republic lost, and they calculated on what course the patriots ought to pursue if the _émigrés_ and their allies reached Paris and combined with the Court to restore the old régime.

Walking one day in the Champs-Élysées with Lanthenas, Roland met two Southerners who were in Paris on a commission from their department. Their names were Barbaroux and Rebecqui. Since the opening of the Revolution they had been active in the cause of the patriots in Marseilles, Arles, and Avignon. The overthrow of the Girondin ministry had alarmed them. Roland’s letter to the King had inspired them with warm admiration for his courage and patriotism.

Like all the young blood of the country, they were planning action against the dangers which threatened. Their plans were well advanced when they met Lanthenas and Roland. The latter wished to discuss the situation seriously with them, and the next day Barbaroux went to the Rue de la Harpe. Madame Roland was with the ex-minister, and the three were not long in understanding each other. Barbaroux soon won their confidence by his enthusiasm and eloquence. He was young, but twenty-five, and of a beauty that won him the name of Antinoüs from Madame Roland. He was animated, too, by a fiery scorn of “tyrants,” “courts,” and “kings,” as unbelieving as Madame Roland in the sincerity of any party outside his own, profoundly convinced of his call to reverse the monarchy, and already with a record of services rendered to the Revolution. The Rolands found him “active, laborious, frank, and brave,” and they opened their hearts to him on the means of saving France.

“Liberty is lost,” cried Roland, “if the plots of the courts are not immediately checked. Lafayette is meditating treason in the North. The army of the centre is disorganized, in want of munitions, and cannot stand against the enemy. There is nothing to prevent the Austrians being in Paris in six weeks. Have we worked for three years for the grandest of revolutions only to see it overthrown in a day? If liberty dies in France, it is forever lost to the rest of the world. All the hopes of philosophy are deceived. The most cruel tyranny will reign upon the earth. Let us prevent this disaster. Let us arm Paris and the departments of the North. If they fail, let us carry the statue of liberty to the South. Let us found somewhere a colony of independent men.”

His words were broken by sobs. Madame Roland and Barbaroux wept with him. Rapidly then the young man sketched his plan. It was Roland’s own. Arm Paris; if that failed, seize the South.

A map was brought out and they traced the natural boundaries of the new State. The Vosges, the Jura, the Loire, and a vast plain between mountains and river divide France. The plain they would take for a camp; the river and mountains could be easily defended. If this position was lost, there was a second boundary; on the east, the Doubs, the Ain, the Rhone; on the west, the Vienne, the Dordogne; in the centre, the rocks and rivers of Limoges. Farther still was Auvergne, the mountains of Velay, the Cévennes, the Alps, Toulon. “And if all these points were forced, Corsica remained,—Corsica where Genovese and French had not been able to naturalize tyranny.”

As they traced the boundaries, they devised plans for fortifications and for mobilizing the army, but they concluded their council by the decision that a final effort must be made to save Paris. There must be another revolt if possible; the King must be deposed and a convention called which would give France entire a republic. Barbaroux was ready with a plan to help bring this about and he left them, promising to bring a battalion and two pieces of cannon from Marseilles.

They understood that it was an insurrection that he meant to prepare, but they did not hesitate. All the violence, excess, passion, fear of Paris must be excited this time; there must not be another 20th of June; the stick must come out of the wheel now or never; and indifferent to the possibility that the passion they proposed to use might assert its right to help rule if it helped create, confident in the sufficiency of their theory and of themselves, they awaited the promised insurrection.

But not all of their friends were so serene. Several members of the party had begun to realize the force of the popular fury they had been arousing. They began to feel nervous at the prospect in Paris of the horde of Marseillais Barbaroux had called. The bloodthirstiness of the Cordeliers clubs began to revolt them. They were forced to admit that Marat’s journal was more influential than their own. They saw, too, a threatening thing—hitherto the insurrectionary element had been more or less chaotic, it was now well organized and it had at its head a man whom they feared, Danton. What if the mob should refuse to retire after the overthrow of the King? Would anarchy be an improvement on monarchy? Would a _sans-culotte_ be a more enlightened administrator than an aristocrat?

Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonné tried to frighten Louis XVI. into recalling the ministers by telling him how formidable the threatened insurrection appeared to them to be, and by assuring him that it might be avoided by restoring the Girondins. Brissot in the Assembly denounced “the faction of regicides, which wishes to create a dictator and establish a republic.” He declared that men who were working to establish a republic on the debris of the constitution were worthy to be “smitten by the sword of the law.” If the King was guilty he should not be deposed in haste, but a commission should be appointed to investigate the affair thoroughly. Pétion, who, as mayor, had aided in bringing about the 20th of June, became frightened, and counselled calm.

But this sudden change could effect nothing now. It was too late for the Girondins to do anything but join with the Jacobins, making a pretence to leadership, although already feeling it slipping from them.

Towards the end of July the allied force summoned France to lay down her arms. Suspicion was at its height. Excitement and disorder were increased by the arrival of the Marseillais on July 30th. Either the allies would reach Paris and save the Court, or Paris must lay hands on the Court and go out and subdue the allies. There was no certainty of which it would be. At heart every faction was fearful. The King, the Court, Lafayette, the allies, the _émigrés_, the Feuillants, Girondins, Jacobins, Cordeliers, faubourgs, all hesitated. Something was coming. What was it? There is no period of the Revolution of such awful tension as this,—the months between the fall of the Gironde ministry and the 10th of August.

In this exciting period it was the party of insurrection which organized most thoroughly and most intelligently. The leaders who had taken this organization upon themselves were Barbaroux, Danton, Camille Desmoulins, Santerre. They worked through municipal organizations, which, instituted since the Revolution, were turbulent, impetuous, fierce; these were the forty-eight sections into which Paris had been divided, and in nearly all of which the officials were sympathizers with insurrectionary methods of getting what they wanted. Under the influence of the cry the _Country is in danger, Paris must act_, the sections had aroused the people within their limits. During the first days of August, frequent reunions were held in the Place de la Bastille, at which the most alarming rumors of the treachery of the King and the approach of the enemy were circulated. These sections sent deputations to the Assembly with incendiary addresses. They patrolled the Tuileries lest the _executive power escape_, they said in unintentional irony. They fraternized with the Marseillais, over whom the enthusiasm in revolutionary circles was constant. They swore repeatedly in their gatherings to save the country.

By the 9th of August, the populace was in a tumult of alarm and of exaltation. They were persuaded that they were the providence of France, and they believed every man who did not join them was a traitor. It had taken a long time to work up the sections of Paris to the united effort which Madame Roland had demanded from them in 1789, but it was done at last, and they were as convinced of the falsity of everybody but themselves, and of their own call to save the country, as ever Madame Roland herself had been.

The 9th of August the ferment was perfect, and the order was given for sounding the tocsin. At that moment the sections decided that three commissioners should be appointed in each quarter of Paris to unite with the Commune, with full powers to devise prompt means of saving the country. The insurrectionary force thus had a legal representation. This representation received at the Hôtel de Ville by the regular municipal council, on evening of August 9th, had before morning superseded it, and was the governing force of Paris. It was a transfer of power, probably with the acquiescence of the legal municipality, glad to escape from the turmoil of things. The new body, to be known as the Commune, was composed of men almost without exception unknown outside of their neighborhoods, and there only for agitation and violence.

While the new Commune was settling itself at the Hôtel de Ville, the populace it represented was in motion. The force with which the Court and constitutional party attempted to control the movement was insufficient, and in part unreliable. In a few hours the leaders of the opposing force had been disposed; Mandat, the commander of the National Guards, had been murdered; Pétion had been “chained by ribbons to his wife’s side”; Louis XVI. and his family had taken refuge in the Assembly; the Swiss guards, who had attempted to defend the château, had been ordered by the King to retire to their barracks, and had been murdered as they went; the château had been invaded.

The mob filled not only the Tuileries, but the _Manège_ where the Assembly sat. That body, composed the 10th of August of Girondins and Jacobins alone, the constitutionals absenting themselves, found itself under the pressure of a new force,—the populace. They had worked for fifty days to arouse it. They had allowed it to organize itself. They had permitted it to do the work of the day. But what were they going to do with it now? Could they use it? Was there not a possibility that it may use them? In any case, the objects for which the insurrection had been prepared must be attained and the suspension of Louis XVI. was voted; the Gironde ministers, Roland, Servan, and Clavière, were returned, Danton, Monge, and Lebrun being added to them.

Madame Roland’s policy had been carried out to the letter; the united sections had acted; the King was out of the way; the patriots were in power.

IX
DISILLUSION

Madame Roland’s plan had carried. Since the beginning of the Revolution she had urged it. In 1789 when she called for “two illustrious heads,” for “the united sections and not the Palais Royal”; throughout 1790 in her demands for “blood, since there is nothing else to whip you and make you go”; in her incessant preaching of civil war; in her remonstrances in 1791 against the seizure of Marat’s sheets, against the arrest of the turbulent, against shutting the doors of the Assembly on those who prevented it doing its work; in the Hôtel of the Interior scoffing at Roland’s weakness in believing in the sincerity of Louis XVI.; in urging Servan to present his plan for a camp of twenty thousand soldiers around Paris without the King’s knowledge; in writing the letter to the King and in pushing Roland to present it to the Assembly; in encouraging Barbaroux in his preparations for the 10th of August,—she had preached the necessity and the wholesomeness of insurrection.

Throughout this period there is not a word to show that she hesitated about the wisdom of her demand. She was convinced, and never wavered. It was her conviction which held Roland. It was her inspiration that fired the Gironde. Now that the force that she had evoked was organized, logically she must unite with it.

Roland began his ministry consistently enough. Within twelve hours after his appointment he had changed every one in his bureaux suspected of sympathy with the constitution. He wrote immediately to the departments describing the Revolution and sending copies of “all the laws and all the pieces relative to the great discoveries of the 10th of August,” and lest the people should not hear of them, he urged the curés and officials to read them aloud whenever they could secure a gathering of people.

Everywhere in the departments he upheld the Jacobin party. Thus at Lyons where the directory of Rhone-et-Sâone had been continually at war with the municipality because of its moderation, the former body was deposed and the latter put into power with the compliment that in all cases it had maintained peace and tranquillity in spite of the fanaticism of the enemies of the Revolution. Chalier, who came to Paris to represent the municipality,—Chalier, who believed that calm could only be obtained in Lyons by filling the streets with “impure blood” and who led in the horrible massacres of the city,—was, through Roland’s influence, sent home “with honors.”

Never was Roland’s energy greater. He worked twenty hours out of twenty-four, and even his four hours of repose were often interrupted. By the 20th of August he was able to present the Assembly with a report on the condition of France. In all his work he was logically in harmony with the Second Revolution.

But Roland soon found himself hindered in his activity by an important part of the insurrectionary force which had produced the 10th of August,—the Commune of Paris. The commissioners who had been sent to the Town Hall the night of the 9th, with orders from their sections to devise means to save the country, had refused to go away; large numbers of violent Jacobins had joined the body, among them Robespierre and Marat. The regular municipality had disappeared.

The Commune believed that there was more need of it now than ever. The passions which had been excited to call it into being were more violently agitated than ever. The body felt, and rightly, that only the greatest vigilance would preserve what had been gained on the 10th of August; for now, as never before, the aristocratic and constitutional part of France was against the Jacobin element; now more than ever the allied powers felt that it was the business of kings to reinstate Louis XVI. The Commune understood the force against it, saw that only audacious and intrepid action would conquer it, and went to work with awful energy to “save the country.”

The tocsin was set a-ringing: the conservative printing offices were raided; passports were suspended; barriers were put up; those who had protested against recent patriotic measures were declared unfit for duty; the royal family was confined in the Temple; lists of “suspects” were made out; houses were visited at night to surprise plots, seize suspected persons, examine papers, and search for firearms; a criminal court of commissioners from the sections was chosen; the guillotine was set up in the Carrousel. So much for the interior. To meet the enemy without they seized horses and ammunition, set up stands where volunteers could be enrolled, put every able-bodied man in Paris under marching orders. All of this with a speed, a resolution, a savage sort of fury which terrified the aristocrats, inflamed the populace, rejoiced Marat, and alarmed the Assembly.

From the first Roland found himself in conflict with this new body. He was the law now, and they were called to act above all law. They had a reason, the same that he had held for many months,—the divine right of taking things into your own hands and compelling people to be regenerated according to your notion. But Roland had reached the point where all the essentials in his scheme of regeneration had been gained—the Commune had not. Suddenly he who had been the vigorous champion of revolutions for removing sticks from government wheels, found himself the “stick in the wheel.” If he demanded information of the Commune, he did not receive it. If he complained of its irregularities, he was called a traitor. If he called attention to the law, he was ignored. All through August Roland and the Commune continued to irritate and antagonize one another.

There was one man through whom they might have been reconciled,—Danton, he who, with Robespierre and Marat, formed the triumvirate of the new party of Terror. Danton represented the insurrectionary idea in the ministry and it was through him alone that Roland and the Gironde might have worked with the Commune.

But from the first Madame Roland would have nothing to do with Danton. When it was announced to her that he had been chosen to the ministry, she told her friends: “It is a great pity that the Council should be spoiled by this Danton, who has so bad a reputation.” They told her that he had been useful to the Revolution; that the people loved him; that it was no time to make enemies; that he must be used as he was. She could do nothing to keep him out, but she was not convinced of the wisdom of the choice.

He sought her at once; for after the suspension of the King, Danton never ceased to repeat that the safety of France lay in union,—in an effort of all parties against the foreign invaders. “The enemy is at our door and we rend one another. Will all our quarrels kill a Prussian?” was his incessant warning. Few days passed that he did not drop into the Hôtel of the Interior; now it was for the Council meeting, to which he came early, hunting her up in her little salon for a chat before the meeting began: again he dropped in on the days she was unaccustomed to receive, begging a cup of tea before he went to the Assembly. Fabre d’Eglantine often accompanied him. It was not a warm welcome they received. They talked to her of patriotism, and she replied in a tone of superiority and with a tinge of suspicion which was evident enough to Danton and his colleague and could not fail to irritate them. She gave them to understand that she saw through them, that she felt herself incorruptible, and that no consideration would induce her to unite with an element she suspected.

Danton soon realized her inflexibility and before the end of August he had ceased his visits. Madame Roland had refused the only mediator between Gironde and Mountain, and in so doing had lighted another interior blaze. She was too intelligent a woman for one to suppose that she did not see the danger in further disunion. Why then for the Republic’s sake, for humanity’s sake, did she not unite with him?

The only reason she gives is the physical repugnance that Danton inspired in her. She confessed that no one could have shown more zeal, a greater love of liberty, a livelier desire to come to an understanding for the sake of the public cause, than he. Certainly she had based her judgments thus far in the Revolution on such indications, but Danton was of a different nature from the men who surrounded her. A volcanic animal tremendous in passions as in energy, in intellect, in influence. She says that never did a face seem to her to show brutal passion so perfectly. Her imagination had been awakened. All her life she had been the plaything of this imagination, and every face that came under her eyes had been read, its owner’s character analyzed and his rôle in life assigned. Danton she figured poniard in hand, exciting by voice and gesture a troup of assassins more timid or less bloodthirsty than he. She could not conquer the effect of this vision and for this reason she refused his proffer of reconciliation.

Had Danton offended her by some coarse familiarity? The best reason for rejecting this explanation of her dislike is that she says nothing about it. If an unwarranted gallantry had ever occurred, we may be positive that she would not have kept it to herself. The “confessions” of her Memoirs make such an interpretation impossible; even her friend Lanthenas was not spared on this score. It is impossible to suppose that Danton would have been.

For the first time, Madame Roland found herself face to face with a man who was an embodiment of the insurrectionary spirit. Hitherto that spirit had been an ideal, a theory, an unseen but powerful force which was necessary to accomplish what she wanted. Personally she had never come in contact with it. She had idealized it as an avenging spirit, “terrible but glorious,” cruel but just, awful but divine. That this force had an end to reach, a personal ambition to satisfy, an ideal to attain, that it might come into conflict with her, she had not calculated. In her plan it was simply an avenging fire which she could use, and which, when she had had enough of it, she could snuff out.

But now she saw an insurrection as a bald fact. Danton was a positive, living incarnation of her doctrine. Instead of rhapsodizing over the “divine right of insurrection,” he organized the slums into brigades; instead of talking about Utopia, he gave the populace pikes and showed them how to use them. His policy was one of action. It was a fearful bloody policy, but it was definite and practical, and a logical result of what Madame Roland had been preaching.