Chapter I: Warriors and Wild Beasts (6)

With large estates in the country, a new house in town, a list of acquaintances which included everybody worth knowing in Paris and more notables in foreign countries than even he could write to or receive letters from, and a keen interest in the politics, philanthropy, and commerce of two hemispheres, he might have passed for a busy man. Yet he found time for an entirely new enthusiasm. A German doctor named Mesmer had made what he believed to be important discoveries in a new force and a new mode of healing, called animal magnetism. Lafayette enrolled himself as a pupil. "I know as much as ever a [Pg 177]sorcerer knew!" he wrote enthusiastically to Washington. On paying his initiation fee of a hundred golden louis he had signed a paper promising not to reveal these secrets to any prince, community, government, or individual without Mesmer's written consent, but the disciple was eager to impart his knowledge to his great friend and hoped to gain permission. Louis XVI was satirical. "What will Washington think when he learns that you have become first apothecary boy to Mesmer?" he asked.

Lafayette was planning a visit to America and sent a message to Mrs. Washington that he hoped "soon to thank her for a dish of tea at Mount Vernon." "Yes, my dear General, before the month of June is over you will see a vessel coming up the Potomac, and out of that vessel will your friend jump, with a panting heart and all the feelings of perfect happiness." He did indeed make the visit during the summer of 1784, though a few weeks later than June. Whether they had time during his ten days at Mount Vernon to talk about Mesmer history does not state. The hours must have been short for all the things clamoring to be said. Then Lafayette made a tour that carried him to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as far west as Fort Schuyler, for another treaty-making powwow with his red brothers the Indians, and south to Yorktown. Everywhere bells pealed and balls and dinners were given. Before he turned his face toward France he had a few more quiet days at Mount Vernon with Washington, who accompanied him on his homeward way as far [Pg 178]as Annapolis. At parting the elder man gave him a tender letter for Adrienne, and on the way back to Mount Vernon wrote the words of farewell which proved prophetic: "I have often asked myself, since our carriages separated, whether that was the last sight I ever should have of you; and though I wished to say No, my fears answered Yes."

Washington lived fourteen years longer; but in the mean time the storm of the French Revolution broke and everything that had seemed enduring in Lafayette's life was wrecked. Until that storm burst letters and invitations and presents flashed across the see as freely as though propelled by Mesmer's magic fluid. Mrs. Washington sent succulent Virginia hams to figure at dinners given by the Lafayettes in Paris. A picture of the household in the rue de Bourbon has come down to us written by a young officer to his mother:

"I seemed to be in America rather than in Paris. Numbers of English and Americans were present, for he speaks English as he does French. He has an American Indian in native costume for a footman. This savage calls him only 'father.' Everything is simple in his home. Marmontel and the Abbé Morrolet were dinner guests. Even the little girls spoke English as well as French, though they are very small. They played in English, and laughed with the Americans. This would have made charming subjects for English engravings."

Lafayette on his part sent many things to that house on the banks of the Potomac. He sent his friends, and a letter from him was an [Pg 179]infallible open sesame. He sent his own accounts of journeys and interviews. He sent animals and plants that he thought would interest Washington, the farmer. Asses, for example, which were hard to get in America, and rare varieties of seeds. In time he sent the key of the Bastille. But that, as romancers say, is "another story," and opens another chapter in Lafayette's life.

[Pg 180]XX

THE PASSING OF OLD FRANCE

Lafayette took his business of being a soldier seriously, and in the summer of 1785 made another journey, this time in the interest of his military education. Frederick II, King of Prussia, was still living. Lafayette obtained permission to attend the maneuvers of his army, counting himself fortunate to receive lessons in strategy from this greatest warrior of his time. He was not surprised to find the old monarch bent and rheumatic, with fingers twisted with gout, and head pulled over on one side until it almost rested on his shoulder; or to see that his blue uniform with red facings was dirty and sprinkled with snuff. But he was astonished to discover that the eyes in Frederick's emaciated old face were strangely beautiful and lighted up his countenance at times with an expression of the utmost sweetness. It was not often that they transformed him thus from an untidy old man to an angel of benevolence. Usually they were keen, sometimes mockingly malicious.

It was certainly not without malice that he seated the young French [Pg 181]general at his table between two other guests, Lord Cornwallis and the Duke of York; and in the course of long dinners amused himself by asking Lafayette questions about Washington and the American campaigns. Lafayette answered with his customary ardor, singing praises of his general and even venturing to praise republicanism in a manner that irritated the old monarch.

"Monsieur!" Frederick interrupted him in such a flight. "I once knew a young man who visited countries where liberty and equality reigned. After he got home he took it into his head to establish them in his own country. Do you know what happened?"

"No, Sire."

"He was hanged!" the old man replied, with a sardonic grin. It was plain he liked Lafayette or he would not have troubled to give him the warning.

Lafayette continued his journey to Prague and Vienna and Dresden, where he saw other soldiers put through their drill. Then he returned to Potsdam for the final grand maneuvers under the personal direction of Frederick, but a sudden acute attack of gout racked his kingly old bones, and the exercises which, in his clockwork military system, could no more be postponed than the movements of the planets, were carried out by the heir apparent, to Lafayette's great disappointment. He wrote Washington that the prince was "a good officer, an honest fellow, a man of sense," but that he would never have the talent of his two uncles. As for the Prussian army, it was a wonderful machine, but "if the resources of France, the vivacity of her soldiers, the intelligence [Pg 182]of her officers, the national ambition and moral delicacy were applied to a system worked out with equal skill, we would as far excel the Prussians as our army is now inferior to theirs--which is saying a great deal!"

_Vive la France! Vivent_ moral distinctions! He may not have realized it, but Lafayette was all his life more interested in justice than in war.

Almost from the hour of his last return from America the injustice with which French Protestants were treated filled him with indignation. Though not openly persecuted, they were entirely at the mercy of official caprice. Legally their marriages were not valid; they could not make wills; their rights as citizens were attacked on every side. To use Lafayette's expression, they were "stricken with civil death." He became their champion.

Everybody knew that very radical theories had been applauded in France for many years, even by the men who condemned them officially. Dislike of liberal actions, however, was still strong, as Lafayette found when he attempted to help these people. His interest in them was treated as an amiable weakness which might be overlooked in view of his many good qualities, but should on no account be encouraged. "It is a work which requires time and is not without some inconvenience to me, because nobody is willing to give me one word of writing or to uphold me in any way. I must run my chance," he wrote Washington. He did, however, get permission from one of the king's ministers to go to Languedoc, where [Pg 183]Protestants were numerous, in order to study their condition and know just what it was he advocated. Evidence that he gathered thus at first hand he used officially two years later before the Assembly of Notables. So his championship of the French Protestants marks the beginning of this new chapter in Lafayette's life, his entrance into French politics.

Outwardly the condition of the country remained much as it had been; but discontent had made rapid progress during the years of Lafayette's stay in America. An answer attributed to the old Maréchal de Richelieu sums up the change. The old reprobate had been ill and Louis XVI, with good intentions, but clumsy cruelty, congratulated him on his recovery. "For," said the king, "you are not young. You have seen three ages." "Rather," growled the duke, "three reigns!" "Well, what do you think of them?" "Sire, under Louis XIV nobody dared say a word; under Louis XV they spoke in whispers; under your Majesty they speak loudly."

This education in discontent had proceeded under three teachers: extravagance, hunger, and the success of America's war of independence. Louis really desired to see his people happy and prosperous. He had made an attempt at reforms, early in his reign, but, having neither a strong will nor a strong mind, it speedily lapsed. Even under his own eyes at Versailles many abuses continued, merely because they had become part of the cumbersome court etiquette which Frederick II had condemned back in the days of Louis's grandfather. Many other [Pg 184]abuses had increased without even the pretense of reforming them. There was increased personal extravagance among the well-to-do; increased extortion elsewhere. Tax-collectors were still going about shutting their eyes to the wealth of men who had influence and judging the peasants as coldly as they would judge cattle. In one district they were fat; they must pay a heavier tax. Chicken feathers were blowing about on the ground? That meant the people had poultry to eat; the screw could be given another vigorous turn. Among all classes there seemed to be less and less money to spend. With the exception of a few bankers and merchants, everybody from the king down felt poor. The peasants felt hungry. The poor in cities actually were very hungry; almost all the nobles were deeply in debt. In short, the forces for good and ill which had already honeycombed the kingdom when Lafayette was a boy had continued their work, gnawing upward and downward and through the social fabric until only a very thin and brittle shell remained. And, as the Maréchal de Richelieu pointedly reminded his weak king, people were no longer afraid to talk aloud about these things.

The success of the Revolution in America had done much to remove the ban of silence. Loans made by France had added to the scarcity of money; and it was these loans which had brought America success. The people across the ocean had wiped the slate clean and begun afresh. Why not follow their example? In the winter of 1782, when Paris was [Pg 185]suffering from the Russian influenza, a lady with a clever tongue and the eye of a prophet had said, "We are threatened with another malady which will come from America--the _Independenza!_" Thoughtful people were beginning to believe that a change was only a matter of time; but that it would come slowly and stretch over many years.

Meanwhile the months passed and the glittering outer shell of the old order of things continued to glitter. Lafayette divided his time between Paris, the court, and Chavaniac. He made at least one journey in the brilliant retinue of the king. He dined and gave dinners. He did everything in his power to increase commerce with the United States. He took part in every public movement for reform, and instituted small private ones of his own. One of these was to ask the king to revoke a pension of seven hundred and eighty livres that had been granted him when he was a mere baby, and to divide it between a retired old infantry officer and a worthy widow of Auvergne. Incidentally people seemed to like him in spite of his republicanism. It was no secret to any one that he had come home from America a thorough believer in popular government.

His fame was by no means confined to France and the lands lying to the west of it. Catherine II of Russia became curious to see this much-talked-of person and invited him to St. Petersburg. Learning that she was soon to start for the Crimea, he asked leave to pay his respects to her there; but that was a journey he never made. Before he could set out Louis XVI called a meeting of the Assembly of Notables, [Pg 186]to take place on February 22, 1787. This was in no true sense a parliament; only a body of one hundred and forty-four men who held no offices at court, selected arbitrarily by the king to discuss such subjects as he chose to set before it. The subject was to be taxation, how to raise money for government expenses, a burning question with every one.

Deliberative assemblies were no new thing in France. Several times in long-past history a king had called together representative men of the nobles, the clergy, and even of the common people, to consider questions of state and help bring about needed reforms. Such gatherings were known as States General. But they had belonged to a time before the kings were quite sure of their power, and it was one hundred and seventy years since the last one had been called. Little by little, in the mean time, even the provincial parliaments, of which there were several in different parts of France, had been sapped of strength and vitality. There was a tendency now to revive them. Lafayette had stopped in Rennes on his way home from Brest after his last trip across the Atlantic, to attend such a gathering in Brittany, where he owned estates, his mother having been a Breton. Favoring representative government as he did, he was anxious to see such assemblages meet frequently at regular intervals.

The call for the Assembly of Notables had come about in an unexpected way. Some years before, the Minister of Finance, Necker, had printed a sort of treasurer's report showing how public funds had been spent. [Pg 187]This was a great novelty, such questions having been shrouded in deepest mystery. Everybody who could read read Necker's report. It was seen on the dressing-tables of ladies and sticking out of the pockets of priests. Necker had meant it to pave the way for reforms, because he believed in cutting down expenses instead of imposing more taxes. It roused such a storm of discussion and criticism that he was driven from the Cabinet; after which his successor, M. Calonne, "a veritable Cagliostro of finance," managed to juggle for four years with facts and figures before the inevitable day of reckoning came. This left the country much worse off than it had been when he took office; so badly off, in fact, that the king called together the Assembly of Notables.

By an odd coincidence it held its first meeting at Versailles on a date forever linked in American minds with ideas of popular liberty--the 22d of February. For practical work, it was divided into seven sections or committees, each one of which was presided over by a royal prince. If the intention had been to check liberal tendencies among its members, the effort was vain. The spirit of independence was in it, and it refused to solve the king's financial riddles for him.

From the beginning Lafayette took an active and much more radical part than some of his friends wished. He worked in behalf of the French Protestants. He wanted to reform criminal law; to give France a jury system such as England had; and he advocated putting a stop to the abuses of _lettres de cachet_. He was very plain-spoken in favor of [Pg 188]cutting down expenses, particularly in the king's own military establishment, in pensions granted to members of the royal family, and in the matter of keeping up the palaces and pleasure-places that former monarchs had loved, but which Louis XVI never visited. He believed in taxing lands and property belonging to the clergy, which had not as yet been taxed at all. He wanted the nobility to pay their full share, too, and he thought a treasurer's report should be published every year. Indeed, he wanted reports printed about all departments of government except that of Foreign Affairs.

This was worse than amiable weakness, it was rank republicanism; the more dangerous because, as one of the ministers said, "all his logic is in action." The queen, who had never more than half liked him, began to distrust him. Calonne, who was about to leave the treasury in such a muddle, declared that he ought to be shut up in the Bastille; and a remark that Lafayette was overheard to make one day when the education of the dauphin was under discussion did not add to his popularity with the court party. "I think," he said, "that the prince will do well to begin his study of French history with the year 1787."

One day he had the hardihood to raise his voice and say, "I appeal to the king to convene a national assembly." There was a hush of astonishment and of something very like fear. "What!" cried a younger brother of the king, the Comte d'Artois, who presided over the section of which Lafayette was a member. "You demand the convocation of [Pg 189]the States General?" "Yes, Sire." "You wish to go on record? To have me say to the king that M. de Lafayette has made a motion to convene the States General?" "Yes, Monseigneur--and better than that!" by which Lafayette meant he hoped such an assembly might be made more truly representative than ever before.

That Lafayette realized the personal consequences of his plain speaking there is no doubt. He wrote to Washington, "The king and his family, as well as the notables who surround him, with the exception of a few friends, do not pardon the liberties I have taken or the success I have gained with other classes of society." If he cherished any illusions, they were dispelled a few months later when he received a request from the king to give up his commission as major-general.

As for his appeal for a meeting of the States General, nobody possessed the hardihood to sign it with him, and it had no immediate consequences. Before the Assembly of Notables adjourned it advised the king to authorize legislative assemblies in the provinces, which he did, Lafayette being one of the five men named by the monarch to represent the nobility in his province of Auvergne. At the sessions of this provincial assembly he further displeased the members of his own class, but the common people crowded about and applauded him wherever he went. "He was the first hero they had seen, and they were never tired of looking at him," a local chronicler states, with disarming frankness.

[Pg 190]The situation grew worse instead of better. The country's debt increased daily. The Assembly of Notables held another session; but it was only to arrange details for the meeting of the States General which the king had at last been forced to call. It was to meet in May, 1789, and was to be made up, as the other had been, of nobles, clergy, and more humble folk, called the bourgeoisie, or the Third Estate. But there was one immense difference. Instead of being appointed by the king, these were to be real representatives, nobles elected by the nobles, clergy by the clergy, and the common people expressing their own choice. In addition, people of all classes were invited to draw up _cahiers_--that is, statements in writing showing the kind of reforms they desired.

The nobles and clergy held small meetings and elected delegates from among their own number. The Third Estate elected men of the upper middle class, or nobles of liberal views. Lafayette found considerable opposition among the nobles of Auvergne, but the common people begged him to represent them, promising to give him their unanimous vote if he would do so. He preferred, however, to make the fight in his own order and was successful, taking his seat, when the States General convened, as a representative of the nobility of Auvergne.

[Pg 191]XXI

THE TRICOLOR

When the representatives of the people of France, to the number of more than twelve hundred, came together in a great hall in the palace at Versailles on the 5th of May, 1789, the king opened the session, with the queen and royal princes beside him on a throne gorgeous with purple and gold. Immediately in front of him sat his ministers, and in other parts of the hall were the three orders in separate groups. The nobles were brilliant in ruffles and plumes. The Third Estate was sober enough in dress, but there were six hundred of them; twice as many in proportion as had ever been allowed in a similar gathering. Most of them were lawyers; only forty belonged to the farming class. In the group of clergy some wore the flaming scarlet robes of cardinals, some the plain cassocks of village priests; and events proved that these last were brothers in spirit with the six hundred. The galleries were crowded with ladies and courtiers and envoys from distant lands. Even roofs of neighboring houses were covered with spectators bent on seeing all they could.

[Pg 192]The queen looked anxious. She had no fondness for reforms; but of the two upon the throne she had the stronger character and was therefore the better king. She was brave, quick to decide, and daring to execute. Unfortunately she was also narrow-minded and had little sympathy with the common people. Louis had already proved himself a complete failure as a ruler. He was a good husband, a lover of hunting, and a passable locksmith. It was a bit of tragic irony that his hobby should have been the making of little, smoothly turning locks. After his one attempt at reform he had not even tried to govern, but spent his days in meaningless detail, while the country drifted toward ruin.

Necker, who was once more in charge of the treasury, meant to keep the States General very busy with the duty for which they had been convened, that of providing money. But if the Notables had been refractory, this assembly was downright rebellious. A quarrel developed at the very outset about the manner of voting. In previous States General the three orders had held their meetings separately, and in final decisions each order had cast only one vote. The nobles and clergy could be counted on to vote the same way, which gave them a safe majority of two to one. Expecting the rule to hold this time, very little objection had been raised to the proposal that the Third Estate elect six hundred representatives instead of three hundred. The people liked it and it meant nothing at all. Now that the six hundred had been elected, however, they contended that the three orders must sit in one [Pg 193]assembly and that each man's vote be counted separately, which made all the difference in the world. A few liberals among the nobles and more than a few of the clergy in simple cassocks appeared to agree with them. The quarrel continued for six weeks, and meanwhile neither party was able to do any work.

At the end of that time the number favoring the new way of voting had increased. These declared themselves to be the National Assembly of France and that they meant to begin the work of "national regeneration" at once, whether the others joined them or not. Reforms were to be along lines indicated in the _cahiers_, or written statements of grievances, that voters had been urged to draw up at the time of the election. Tens of thousands of these had been received, some written in the polished phrases of courtiers, some in the earnest, ill-chosen words of peasants. All expressed loyalty to the king; and almost all demanded a constitution to define the rights of people and king alike. Among other things they asked that _lettres de cachet_ be abolished; that the people be allowed liberty of speech; that the States General meet at regular intervals; and that each of the three orders pay its just share of the taxes.

Soon after the liberals declared their intention of going to work they found the great hall at Versailles closed and were told curtly that it was being prepared for a royal session. They retired to a near-by tennis-court, lifted the senior representative from Paris, an astronomer named Bailly, to a table, elected him president of their [Pg 194]National Assembly, and took an oath not to disband until they had given France a constitution. A few days later the king summoned all the members of the States General to the great hall, scolded them for their recent acts in a speech written by somebody else, commanded that each order meet in future by itself, and left the hall to the sound of trumpets and martial music. The clergy and the nobles obediently withdrew. The Third Estate and a few liberals from the other orders remained. The king's master of ceremonies, a very important personage indeed, came forward and repeated the king's order. Soldiers could be seen behind him. There was a moment's silence; then Mirabeau, a homely, brilliant nobleman from the south of France, who had been rejected by his own order, but elected by the Third Estate, advanced impetuously toward the master of ceremonies, crying, in a loud voice, "Go tell your master that we are here by the will of the people, and that we shall not leave except at the point of the bayonet." Next he turned to the Assembly and made a motion to the effect that persons laying hands upon any member of the Assembly would be considered "infamous and traitors to the nation--guilty of capital crime." The master of ceremonies withdrew and reported the scene to the king. Louis, weak as water, said: "They wish to remain? Let them." And they did remain, to his undoing.

From a contemporary print]

Lafayette was in an embarrassing position. He sympathized with the Third Estate, yet he had been elected to represent the nobles, and his commission bound him to vote according to their wishes. He [Pg 195]considered resigning in order to appeal again to the voters of Auvergne; but before he came to a decision the king asked the nobles and clergy to give up their evidently futile opposition. Lafayette took his place with the others in the National Assembly, but refrained for a time from voting. The king and his ministers seemed to have no settled policy. One day they tried to please the Third Estate; on another it was learned that batteries were being placed where they could fire upon the Assembly and that regiments were being concentrated upon Paris. It was upon a motion of Mirabeau's for the removal of these threatening soldiers that Lafayette broke his silence and began to take part again in the proceedings of the Assembly.

On the 11th of July, about a fortnight after the nobles and clergy had resumed their seats, he presented to the Assembly his Declaration of Rights, modeled upon the American Declaration of Independence, to be placed at the head of the French Constitution. Two days later he was elected vice-president of the Assembly "with acclamations." Toward evening of the 14th the Vicomte de Noailles came from Paris with the startling news that people had been fighting in the streets for hours; that they had gained possession of the Bastille, the gray old prison which stood in their eyes for all that was hateful in the old regime; that its commander and several of its defenders had been murdered; and that their heads were being carried aloft on pikes among the crowds.

[Pg 196]On the 15th the king came with his brothers to the Assembly and made a conciliatory speech, after which Lafayette hurried away to Paris at the head of a delegation charged with the task of quieting the city. They were met at the Tuileries gate and escorted to the Hôtel de Ville, where the City Council of Paris, a parliament in miniature, held its meetings. Lafayette congratulated the city on the liberty it had won, delivered the king's message, and turned to go. As he was leaving the room somebody cried out saying that here was the man Paris wanted to command its National Guard, and that Bailly, who accompanied him, ought to be mayor. It was one of those sudden ideas that seem to spread like wildfire. Lafayette stopped, drew his sword, and, acting upon that first impulse which he was so apt to follow, swore then and there to defend the liberty of Paris with his life if need be. He sent a message to the National Assembly asking permission to assume the new office, and on the 25th took, with Bailly, a more formal oath. The force of militia which he organized and developed became the famous National Guard of Paris; while this governing body at the Hotel de Ville which had so informally elected him, enlarged and changing from time to time as the Revolution swept on, became the famous, and infamous, "Commune." Lafayette himself, not many days after he assumed the new office, ordered the destruction of the old Bastille. One of its keys he sent to Washington at Mount Vernon. Another was made into a sword and presented by his admirers to the man whose orders had reduced the old prison to a heap of stones.

[Pg 197]The court party was aghast. The Comte d'Artois and two of his friends shook the dust of their native land from their feet and left France, the first of that long army of _émigrés_ whose flight still further sapped the waning power of the king. Louis was of one mind one day, another the next. Against the entreaties and tears of the queen he accepted an invitation to visit Paris and was received, as Lafayette had been, with cheers. He made a speech, ratifying and accepting all the changes that had taken place; and to celebrate this apparent reconciliation between the monarch and his subjects Lafayette added the white of the flag of the king to red and blue, the colors of the city of Paris, making the Tricolor. Up to that time the badge of revolution had been green, because Camille Desmoulins, one of its early orators, had given his followers chestnut leaves to pin upon their caps. But the livery of the Comte d'Artois, now so hated, was green, and the people threw away their green cockades and enthusiastically donned the red, white, and blue, echoing Lafayette's prediction that it would soon make the round of Europe.

The passions which had moved the city of Paris spread outward through the provinces as waves spread when a stone is cast into a pool. One town after another set up a municipal government and established national guards of its own. Peasants in country districts began assaulting tax-collectors, hanging millers on the charge that they were raising the price of bread, and burning and looting châteaux in their [Pg 198]hunt for old records of debts and judgments against the common people. July closed in a veil of smoke ascending from such fires in all parts of the realm.

All day long on the 4th of August the Assembly listened to reports of these events, a dismaying recital that went on and on until darkness fell and the candles were brought in. About eight o'clock, when the session seemed nearing its end, De Noailles mounted the platform and began to speak. He said that there was good reason for these fires and the hate they disclosed. The châteaux were symbols of that kind of unjust feudal government which was no longer to be tolerated. He moved that the Assembly abolish feudalism. His motion was seconded by the Duc d'Aiguillon, the greatest feudal noble in France, with the one exception of the king. The words of these two aristocrats kindled another sort of fire--an emotional fire like that of a great religious revival. Noble after noble seemed impelled to mount the platform and renounce his special privileges. Priests and prelates followed their example. So did representatives of towns and provinces. The hours of the day had passed in increasing gloom; the night went by in this crescendo of generosity. By morning thirty or more decrees had been passed and feudalism was dead, so far as law could kill it.

The awakening from this orgy of feeling was like the awakening from any other form of emotional excess. With it came the knowledge that neither the world nor human nature can be changed overnight. When the news went [Pg 199]abroad there were many who interpreted as license what had been given them for liberty. Forests were cut down. Game-preserves were invaded and animals slaughtered. Artisans found themselves out of work and hungrier than ever because of the economy now necessarily practised by the nobility. Such mighty reforms required time and the readjustment of almost every detail of daily life. Even before experience made this manifest the delegates began to realize that towns and bishoprics and provinces might refuse to ratify the impulsive acts of their representatives; and some of the nobles who had spoken for themselves alone did not feel as unselfish in the cold light of day as they had believed themselves to be while the candles glowed during that strange night session. The final result was to bring out differences of opinion more sharply and to widen the gulf between conservatives who clung to everything which belonged to the past and liberals whose desire was to give the people all that had been gained and even more.

[Pg 200]XXII

THE SANS-CULOTTES

Lafayette's position as commander of the National Guard of Paris was one of great importance. "He rendered the Revolution possible by giving it an army," says a writer of his own nation, who does not hesitate to criticize him, but who also assures us that from July, 1789, to July, 1790, he was perhaps the most popular man in France. Being a born optimist, he was sure that right would soon prevail. If he had too great belief in his own leadership it is not surprising, since every previous undertaking of his life had succeeded; and he certainly had more experience in revolution than any of his countrymen--an experience gained in America under the direct influence of Washington. He had gone to America a boy afire with enthusiasm for liberty. He returned to France a man, popular and successful, with his belief in himself and his principles greatly strengthened. He was impulsive and generous, he had a good mind, but he was not a deep thinker, and from the very nature of his mind it was impossible for him to foresee the full difficulty of applying in France the principles that had been [Pg 201]so successful in America. In France politics were much more complicated than in a new country where there were fewer abuses to correct. France was old and abuses had been multiplying for a thousand years. To borrow the surgeon's phrase, the wound made by revolution in America was a clean wound that healed quickly, "by the first intention." In France the wound was far more serious and horribly infected. It healed in time, but only after a desperate illness.

It is interesting that three of Lafayette's most influential American friends, Washington, Jefferson, and Gouverneur Morris, had misgivings from the first about the situation in France, fearing that a revolution could not take place there without grave disorders and that Lafayette could not personally ride such a storm. Morris, who was then in Paris, urged caution upon him and advised him to keep the power in the hands of the nobility. When Lafayette asked him to read and criticize his draft of The Declaration of Rights before it was presented to the Assembly, Morris suggested several changes to make it more moderate; "for," said this American, "revolutions are not won by sonorous phrases."

Although keen for reform and liking to dress it in sonorous phrases, Lafayette had no wish to be rid of the king. He did not expect to have a president in France or the exact kind of government that had been adopted in the United States. "Lafayette was neither republican nor royalist, but always held that view half-way between the two which theorists call a constitutional monarchy," says a French writer. "In [Pg 202]all his speeches from 1787 to 1792 he rarely used the word 'liberty' without coupling it with some word expressing law and order."

Events proved that he was too thoroughly a believer in order to please either side. One party accused him of favoring the aristocrats, the other of sacrificing everything for the applause of the mob. What he tried to do was to stand firm in the rush of events, which was at first so exhilarating and later changed to such an appalling sweep of the furies. If he had been less scrupulous and more selfish he might have played a greater role in the Revolution--have risen to grander heights or failed more abjectly--but for a time he would have really guided the stormy course of events. As it was, events overtook him, carried him with them, then tossed him aside and passed him by. Yet even so he managed for three years to dominate that tiger mob of Paris "more by persuasion than by force." This proves that he was no weakling. Jefferson called him "the Atlas of the Revolution."

There was opposition to him from the first. Mirabeau and Lafayette could never work wholeheartedly together, which was a pity, for with Mirabeau's eloquence to carry the National Assembly and Lafayette's popularity with the National Guard they could have done much. The cafés, those people's institutes of his young days, speedily developed into political clubs of varying shades of opinion, most of which grew more radical hourly. Marie Antoinette continued to be resentful and bitter and did all in her power to thwart reform and to influence the [Pg 203]king. In addition to parties openly for and against the new order of things there were individuals, both in high and low places, who strove to spread disorder by underhand means and to use it for selfish ends. One was the powerful Duc d'Orléans, cousin of the king, very rich and very unprincipled, whose secret desire was to supplant Louis upon the throne. He used his fortune to spread discontent through the Paris mob during the long cold winter, when half the inhabitants of the town went hungry. His agents talked of famine, complained of delay in making the Constitution, and gave large sums to the poor in ways that fed their worst passions, while supplying their very real need for bread.

Even after the lapse of one hundred and thirty years it is uncertain just how much of a part he played in the stormy happenings of the early days of October, 1789. On the night of the 2d of October the king and queen visited the hall at Versailles where the Garde du Corps, the royal bodyguard, was giving a banquet. The diners sprang to their feet and drank toasts more fervent than discreet. In the course of the next two days rumor spread to Paris that they had trampled upon the Tricolor and substituted the white of the Bourbons. Out of the garrets and slums of the city the mob boiled toward the Hôtel de Ville, crying that a counter-revolution had been started and that the people were betrayed. Lafayette talked and harangued. On the 5th he held the crowds in check from nine o'clock in the morning until four, when he learned that a [Pg 204]stream of malcontents, many of them women, had broken away and started for Versailles, muttering threats and dragging cannon with them.

Lafayette had confessed to Gouverneur Morris only a few days before that his National Guard was not as well disciplined as he could wish. Whether this was the reason or because he felt it necessary to get express permission from the Hôtel de Ville, there was delay before he and his militia set out in pursuit. He had sworn to use the Guard only to execute the will of the people. For what followed he has been severely blamed, while other witnesses contend just as hotly that he did all any commander could do. That night he saved the lives of several of the Garde du Corps; posted his men in the places from which the palace guard had been withdrawn by order of the king; made each side swear to keep the peace; gave his personal word to Louis that there would be no violence; saw that everything was quiet in the streets near the palace where the mob still bivouacked; then, worn with twenty hours' incessant labor, went to the house of a friend for a little sleep.

That sleep was the cause of more criticism than any act of his seventy-six years of life; for the mob, driven by an instinct for evil which seems strongest in crowds at dawn, hurled itself against the palace gates, killed the two men on guard before the queen's door, and forced its way into her bedchamber, from which she fled, half dressed, to take refuge with the king. Lafayette hurried back with all possible haste; made his way to the royal couple; addressed the crowd in the palace courtyard, telling them the king would show his trust by going [Pg 205]back with them voluntarily to take up his residence in Paris; and persuaded the queen to appear with him upon a balcony, where, in view of all the people, he knelt and kissed her hand. After that he led out one of the palace guard and presented him with a tricolored cockade; and, touched by these tableaux, the mob howled delight. That night, long after dark, the royal family entered the Tuileries, half monarchs, half prisoners. But discontent had been only partly appeased, and during the melancholy ride to the city Marie Antoinette gave the mob its watchword. Seeing a man in the dress of the very poor riding on the step of her coach she had remarked disdainfully that never before had a sans-culotte--a man without knee-breeches--occupied so honorable a position. The speech was overheard and taken up and shouted through the crowd until "sans-culotte" became a symbol of the Revolution.

The events of that day proved that Lafayette had not the quality of a great leader of men. How much of his ill success was due to bad luck, how much to over-conscientiousness in fulfilling the letter of his oath, how much to physical weariness, we may never know. The royal family believed he had saved their lives, and the vilest accusations against him, including the one that he really wished Louis to fall a victim of the mob, appear to have been manufactured twenty-five years later in the bitterness of another political struggle. It is significant that very soon after the king came to Paris Lafayette held a stormy interview with the Duc d'Orléans, who forthwith left France.

[Pg 206]Since that melancholy ride back to Paris the rulers of France have never lived at Versailles. Within ten days the National Assembly followed the king to town, and during the whole remaining period of the Revolution the mob had the machinery of government in its keeping. It invaded the legislative halls to listen to the making of the Constitution, it howled approval of speeches or drowned them in hisses, and called out from the windows reports to the crowds packing the streets below.

Political clubs soon became the real censors of public opinion, taking an ever larger place in the life of the people, until, alas! they began to take part in the death of many of them. The most influential club of all was the Jacobins, known by that name because of the disused monastery where it held its meetings. It began as an exclusive club of well-to-do gentlemen of all parties, who paid large dues and met to discuss questions of interest. Then it completely changed its character, took into its organization other clubs in Paris and other cities, and by this means became a vast, nation-wide political machine of such iron discipline that it was said a decree of the Jacobins was better executed than any law passed by the National Assembly. When its decrees grew more radical its membership changed by the simple process of expelling conservative members, until Robespierre became its controlling spirit. Another club more radical still was the Cordelières, in which Marat and Danton, those stormy petrels of the Terror, held sway. This smaller organization influenced even the [Pg 207]Jacobins and through them every village in France. Several of the most radical leaders published newspapers of vast influence, like Marat's _Ami du Peuple_, which carried their opinions farther than the spoken word could do, out into peaceful country lanes. In the cities the great power of the theater was directed to the same violent ends. In vain the more conservative patriots started clubs of their own; the others had too great headway. The Feuillants, that Lafayette and Bailly were instrumental in founding, was called contemptuously the club of the monarchists. All these changes were gradual, but little by little, as time passed, the aims of the revolutionists altered. What had been at first a cry for justice became an appeal for liberty, then a demand for equality, and finally a mad howl for revenge.

[Pg 208]XXIII

POPULARITY AND PRISON

So many local National Guards and revolutionary town governments had been formed that France was in danger of being split into a thousand self-governing fragments. Some of these came together in local federations for mutual benefit; and as the anniversary of the fall of the Bastile rolled around, Paris proposed a grand federation of all such organizations as a fitting way to celebrate the new national holiday. The idea caught popular fancy, and the city made ready for it with a feverish good will almost as strange as that of the memorable night when nobles and clergy in the National Assembly had vied with one another to give up their century-old privileges.

The spot chosen for the ceremonies was the Champs de Mars, where the Eiffel Tower now stands. It is a deal nearer the center of Paris now than it was in 1790, when it was little more than a great field on the banks of the Seine, near the military academy. This was to be changed into an immense amphitheater three miles in circumference, a work [Pg 209]which required a vast amount of excavating and building and civil engineering. Men and women of all classes of society volunteered as laborers, and from dawn till dark a procession, armed with spades and every implement that could possibly be used, passed ceaselessly between the heart of the city and the scene of the coming festivity. Eye-witnesses tell us that on arriving each person threw down his coat, his cravat, and his watch, "abandoning them to the loyalty of the public" and fell to work. "A delicate duchess might be seen filling a barrow to be trundled away by a fishwife"; or a chevalier of the Order of Saint-Louis laboring with a hurried, flustered little school-boy; or a priest and an actor doing excellent team-work together. A hundred orchestras were playing; workers quitted their labors for a few turns in the dance, then abandoned that again for toil.

Lafayette encouraged them by his enthusiastic presence, and filled and trundled a barrow with his own hands; and when the king appeared one day to view the strange scene he was greeted with extravagant joy. Though this went on for weeks, the undertaking was so vast and the best efforts of duchesses and school-boys so far from adequate, that a hurry call had to be sent out, in response to which it was estimated that during the last few days of preparation two hundred and fifty thousand people were busy there. Evil rumors were busy, too, under cover of the music, and whispers went through the crowd that no provisions were to be allowed to enter Paris during the entire week of festivities and that the field had been honeycombed with secret passages and laid [Pg 210]with mines to blow up the whole great throng. Such rumors were answered by a municipal proclamation which ended with the words, "Cowards may flee these imaginary dangers: the friends of Revolution will remain, well knowing that not a second time shall such a day be seen."

The miracle was accomplished. By the 14th of July the whole Champs de Mars had been transformed into an amphitheater of terraced greensward, approached through a great triumphal arch. But on the day itself not a single green terrace was visible, so thick were the masses of people crowding the amphitheater and covering the hills on the other side of the river. Opposite the triumphal arch a central pavilion for the king, with covered galleries on each side, had been built against the walls of the military school. On the level green in the center of the great Champs de Mars stood an altar to "The Country," reached by a flight of fifty steps. One hundred cannon, two thousand musicians, and two hundred priests with the Tricolor added to their vestments, were present to take part in the ceremonies. A model of the destroyed Bastile lay at the foot of the altar. Upon the altar itself were inscriptions, one of which bade the spectators "Ponder the three sacred words that guarantee our decrees. The Nation, the Law, the King. You are the Nation, the Law is your will, the King is the head of the Nation and guardian of the Law."

The multitude was treated first to the spectacle of a grand procession streaming through the three openings of the triumphal arch. Deputies from the provinces, members of the National Assembly, and [Pg 211]representatives of the Paris Commune, with Mayor Bailly at their head, marched slowly and gravely to their places. After them came the visiting military delegations, the Paris guards, and regular troops who had been called to Paris from all parts of the kingdom, to the number of forty thousand or more, each with its distinctive banner. These marched around the altar and broke into strange dances and mock combats, undeterred by heavy showers. When the rain fell the ranks of spectators blossomed into a mass of red and green umbrellas, no longer the novelty they once had been. When a shower passed umbrellas were furled and the crowd took on another color. At three o'clock the queen appeared with the Dauphin beside her. Then the king, in magnificent robes of state, took his seat on a purple chair sown with fleurs-de-lis, which had been placed on an exact line and level with a similar chair upholstered in blue for the president of the National Assembly.