Chapter XXVI: The Throne Assailed

Angry Interview between the King and the Mayor.--Decisive
Action of La Fayette.--Expectations of the Queen.--Movement of
the Prussian Army.--Efforts of the Priests.--Secret Committee
of Royalists.--Terror in the Palace.--The Queen's View of the
King's Character.--Parties in France.--Energetic Action of the
Assembly.--Speech of Vergniaud.

The next day after the fearful scenes of the 20th of June, the Assembly held a very tumultuous sitting. Various measures were proposed to prevent a repetition of armed petitions, and the filing of processions through the hall. The Jacobins were, however, in sympathy with the mob; and the Royalists, waiting the approach of foreign armies, had no wish to introduce order but by the sword of invasion. It was apprehended that the mob, who had now risen above the power of law, might again invade the palace. In the afternoon of the 21st, crowds began to assemble at various points, but the mayor, Petion, succeeded in inducing them to disperse. He then hastened to the king, and said to him,

"Sire, there is no longer cause for alarm. Order is restored. The people have become tranquil and satisfied."

The king, who now appreciated the peril of his position, was exasperated, and replied, with suppressed emotion, "That is not true."

"Sire--" rejoined Petion.

"Be silent," said the king sternly, interrupting him.

"It befits not the magistrate of the people," replied Petion, "to be silent when he does his duty and speaks the truth."

"The tranquillity of Paris rests on your head," added the king.

"I know my duty," Petion replied, "and shall perform it."

The king could no longer restrain himself, and passionately exclaimed, "Enough; go and perform it. Retire."

Petion, thus summarily turned out of doors, bowed and left. The report of the angry interview was speedily spread through Paris. It was rumored _through the palace_ that the mob were preparing to rise to murder the king and all the royal family. It was rumored _through the streets_ that the Royalists were endeavoring to provoke the people to rise, that they might shoot them down with artillery. The mayor issued a proclamation urging the people not to allow themselves to be excited to fresh commotions. The king issued a proclamation, spirited and defiant in its tone, and yet calculated only to exasperate those whom he had no power to restrain.[330]

La Fayette, who was at this time with his division of the army on the frontiers, heard these tidings from Paris with intense alarm. Had the court not prevented his election as mayor, the outrages of the 20th of June could not have occurred. His only hope for France was in the Constitution. The invasion of the Legislative Assembly by the mob, the irruption into the palace, and the outrages inflicted upon the royal family, impressed him with shame and horror. He saw the terrific reign of anarchy approaching, and was fully conscious that no one could attempt to resist the popular torrent but at the peril of his life. He wrote a very earnest letter of remonstrance to the Assembly, and resolved to hasten immediately to Paris, and to brave every possible danger in endeavoring to restore to his country the dominion of law. Making all the arrangements in his power, that his temporary absence might not be detrimental to the military operations then in progress, he set out for the capital, and arrived there on the 28th of June.[331] He thought that he might rely upon the National Guard to aid him in maintaining the Constitution, and that, throwing himself into the breach to save the monarchy and the king, he might place some reliance upon the co-operation of the court. But the court hated La Fayette and constitutional liberty, and wished for no assistance but from the armies of the allies, through whom they might dictate terms to the re-enslaved people.

La Fayette, immediately upon his arrival in Paris, sent a message to the Assembly that he wished for permission to address them. At half-past one of the 28th of June, he entered the hall. The Constitutionalists received him with plaudits. The Republicans, both the Girondists and the Jacobins, were silent. The general, in his bold and spirited address, spoke of the disgrace which the outrages of the 20th of June had brought upon the nation, and the indignation which it had excited in the army, and urged that the instigators of the riot should be prosecuted; that the Jacobin Club, ever urging violence and revolution, should be suppressed; and that the Constitution and the laws should be maintained by all the armed force of the government.

This speech introduced an angry debate, in which La Fayette was reproached with neglecting his own duties in the army to meddle with matters in which he had no concern. La Fayette left the Assembly in the midst of the debate, and repaired to the palace to see what assistance he could render to the king and queen. The courtiers surrounding the monarch, with their wonted infatuation, assailed La Fayette with the most abusive epithets. The king and queen received him with great coldness, and refused to accept from him of any sympathy or aid.

"If the court and the people attached to the king," writes the Marquis de Ferrieres, a decided Royalist, "had but resolved to support La Fayette, there was force to have annihilated the two factions. But the queen recoiled from any idea of owing her safety to a man whom she had resolved to ruin. They refused to enter into his views, and they thus rejected the only means of safety that Providence offered them. Inexplicable blindness, if an explanation were not afforded by the approaching entry of the foreign troops and the confidence reposed in them."

The historian Toulongeon, describing these events, says, "Retired to his hotel, La Fayette set himself to consider what was the force of which he could avail himself. A review of the first division of the National Guard was fixed for the next morning at break of day. The king was to pass along the line, and La Fayette was then to harangue the troops. But the mayor, Petion, _was advertised of their movements by the queen_, who feared the success of La Fayette even more than that of the Jacobins, and a counter-order was given, and the review did _not_ take place."

La Fayette returned to the army thwarted and disheartened. His retirement in despair from Paris was the last expiring sigh of the Constitutional party. From this moment the Jacobins resolved upon his destruction, and that very evening his effigy was burned at the Palais Royal. Bertrand de Moleville, one of the most false and envenomed of the Royalist writers, condemns La Fayette for thus leaving Paris. But even Professor Smyth, whose English sympathies are strongly with the court, exclaims,

"M. Bertrand de Moleville may surely be asked, on this occasion, what resource was left for La Fayette but to move away from Paris, if the king and the court, for whom he was hazarding both his fame and his safety, would not honor him with the slightest countenance? Was it to be endured that they were to seem neutral and indifferent, at the least, and sitting with folded arms, while he was to be left to rush into a combat in the Assembly and in the streets of Paris with their furious and murderous enemies, and with the men who had just been assailing the king in his palace, and who evidently only waited for an opportunity to rob him of his crown and take away his life; was this, I repeat, to be endured? Many are the sensations by which the heart of man may be alienated and imbittered, but there are few more fitted for that purpose than to find indifference to services offered, and ingratitude for sacrifices made."[332]

Both the king and the queen knew that Prussia had already combined with Austria, and was secretly marching an army of eighty thousand men under the Duke of Brunswick to unite with the emigrants at Coblentz. The queen thought that the allies would be in Paris in six weeks. She was minutely informed of their contemplated movements; when they would be at Verdun, when at Lille; and she, in confidence, informed her ladies that she expected to be rescued in a month.[333]

The peril of France was now truly great, and the patriots were deeply agitated. Foreign armies were approaching. The king not only was taking no effectual measures for the defense of the kingdom, but had vetoed the decrees of the Assembly raising an army for the protection of the capital, and was also believed to be in sympathy and in traitorous correspondence with the foe. France was threatened with invasion, and the court of France was virtually guiding the march of the invading armies, weakening every point of defense, and striving to betray the patriot forces into the hands of the enemy. The only excuse which history can offer for the king is, that he was the tool of others, and so weak and characterless that he was unconscious of the enormity of his crime. But this excuse, which ought to have commended him to pity, could not be an argument for maintaining him upon his throne.

Though it was well known to all intelligent men that the Prussian armies were marching to unite with the Austrian for the invasion of France, yet the king, in grossest violation of duty, had made no communication of the fact to the Legislative Assembly. All the great roads were crowded with priests, nobles, and their partisans, hastening to join the emigrants at Coblentz. Couriers were every where traversing Europe, from St. Petersburg to Rome, from Stockholm to Madrid, from Berlin to Naples, openly announcing the coalition of all Europe to crush the revolution in France, and declaring that the armies would move in such force that the French would not be able to resist them for a single month. The allies were not unwilling to have their plans known and even exaggerated, for some of them hoped that the terror of the threat might be sufficient to drive the French patriots to submission.[334]

It was consequently proclaimed, not officially, but with great soundings of trumpets, that Spain was to indemnify herself for the war by taking possession of the four beautiful southern provinces of France which lean against the Pyrenees--Navarre, Roussillon, Languedoc, and Guienne. The King of Sardinia was to receive the provinces adjacent to his kingdom, whose romantic valleys penetrated the lower Alps--Dauphiny, Provence, Lyonnois, and Bretagne. The Stadtholder of Holland was to extend his sway over the Provinces of Flanders and Picardy. Austria was to grasp the provinces adjoining the Rhine--Alsace, Lorraine, Champagne. The Swiss were offered Franche Comte if they would join the coalition. And, finally, England was to regain her old possession of Normandy, and was to seize all the colonial possessions of France in the two Indies.[335]

Though the British _government_ was at this time strongly in sympathy with the coalition, it did not venture openly to join the alliance, for the masses of the British _people_ were cordially with the French patriots and rejoiced in the establishment of constitutional liberty in France. These extravagant threats filled Europe. It was every where assumed that only a small minority of the French people were opposed to the Old Regime, and that the mass of the nation would at once arise and welcome the invading armies.

With this terrific storm from without menacing the liberties of France, a large number of priests who had refused to accept the Constitution were plying all the energies of the most potent superstition earth has ever known to rouse the ignorant peasantry against civil and religious liberty. They were told that eternal damnation was their inevitable doom if they were not willing to lay down their lives in defense of the king and the Pope; and that eternal blessedness was the sure inheritance of all who should labor and pray for holy mother Church. The queen, it was well known, was in constant conference with the enemy, counseling, encouraging, and aiding with all the pecuniary means she could obtain from the revenues of France. The king was a weak-minded, fickle man, with no decision of his own, and entirely at the disposal of those who surrounded him. Being quite in subjection to the imperial mind of the queen, he delayed adopting any vigorous measure to repel the approaching foe, thwarted the decrees of the Assembly, and allowed his own enormous salary of six millions of dollars to be appropriated by the queen and her counselors to hasten the march of foreign invaders upon Paris.

In the very palace of the Tuileries a secret committee of old Royalists were in session every day, planning for the enemy, informing them of all the movements in Paris, advising them as to the best points of attack, and organizing, in different parts of the empire, their partisans to rise in civil war the moment the first thunderings of hostile artillery should be heard upon the plains of France. Here surely was a combination of wrong and outrage sufficient to drive any people mad.[336]

During the whole month of July the interior of the palace was the abode of terror. The inmates, apprehensive every hour of attack, had no repose by day or night. Almost daily there was an alarm that the mob was gathering. "During the whole month," writes Madame Campan, "I was never once in bed. I always dreaded some night attack. One morning, about one o'clock, footsteps were heard in the anteroom of the queen's chamber, and then a violent struggle and loud outcries, as the groom of the chambers grasped a man who was stealthily approaching with a dagger, apparently to assassinate the queen."

"I begin to fear," said the queen one day, "that they will bring the king to a trial. Me they will assassinate. But what will become of our poor children? If they assassinate me, so much the better; they will rid me of an existence that is painful."

"One morning, at about four o'clock, near the close of July," writes Madame Campan, "a person came to give me information that the Faubourg St. Antoine was preparing to march against the palace. We knew that at least an hour must elapse before the populace, assembled upon the site of the Bastille, could reach the Tuileries. It seemed to me sufficient for the queen's safety that all about her should be awakened. I went softly into her room. She was asleep. I did not awaken her.

"The king had been awakened, and so had Madame Elizabeth, who had gone to him. The queen, yielding to the weight of her griefs, slept till nine o'clock on that day, which was very unusual with her. The king had already been to know whether she was awake. I told him what I had done, and the care I had taken not to disturb her rest. He thanked me, and said,

"'I was awake, and so was the whole palace. She ran no risk. I am very glad to see her take a little rest. Alas! her griefs double mine.'

"What was my chagrin, when the queen, awaking and learning what had passed, began to weep bitterly from regret at not having been called. In vain did I reiterate that it was only a false alarm, and that she required to have her strength recruited.

"'My strength is not exhausted,' said she; 'misfortune gives us additional strength. Elizabeth was with the king, and I was asleep! I, who am determined to perish by his side. I am his wife. I will not suffer him to incur the smallest risk without my sharing it.'"

The queen appears to have understood very perfectly the character of her dejected, spiritless, long-suffering husband. "The king," said she, "is not a coward. He possesses abundance of passive courage, but he is overwhelmed by an awkward shyness, a mistrust of himself, which proceeds from his education as much as from his disposition. He is afraid to command, and, above all things, dreads speaking to assembled numbers. He lived like a child, and always ill at ease, under the eyes of Louis XV., until the age of twenty-one. This constraint confirmed his timidity. Circumstanced as we are, a few well-delivered words addressed to the Parisians would multiply the strength of our party a hundred-fold. He will not utter them. What can be expected from those addresses to the people which he has been advised to post up? Nothing but fresh outrages. As for myself, I could do any thing, and would appear on horseback if necessary; but, if I really were to begin to act, that would be furnishing arms to the king's enemies. The cry against _the Austrian_, and against the sway of a female, would become general in France, and, moreover, by showing myself I should render the king a mere nothing. A queen who is not regent ought, under these circumstances, to remain passive or to die."[337]

There were now three prominent parties in France. First, the Royalists, with the queen and the court, controlling the ever-vacillating king, at their head. They were plotting, through foreign armies and civil war, to restore the political and ecclesiastical despotism of the Old Regime. This party would have been utterly powerless but for the aid of foreign despots. Second came the Constitutional party, with La Fayette at its head. The king _professed_ to belong to this party, and at times, perhaps, with sincerity, but, overruled by others, he conducted with a degree of feebleness and fickleness which amounted to treachery. This party had originally embraced nearly the whole nation. Never did a nobler set of men undertake national reform than were the leaders of the French Revolution. They sought only the happiness of France, were anxious for peace with all nations, were decidedly conservative in their views. They had no desire to overthrow the French monarchy, but wished only to limit that monarchy by a Constitution which should secure to the nation civil and religious liberty.

But the Constitutional party was now daily growing weaker, simply because its best friends saw that it was impossible to maintain the Constitution while the king himself was co-operating with foreign armies for its overthrow. Why should the people sustain a king, and furnish him with a salary of five millions of dollars a year, only to enable him to overthrow the Constitution and reinstate the rejected despotism? Thus were thousands of the purest men in France driven with great reluctance to the conviction that constitutional liberty could only be preserved by dethroning the king and establishing a republic. They were originally decidedly in favor of a constitutional monarchy. They felt that the transition was altogether too great and too sudden from utter despotism to republican freedom. The vast mass of the peasant population in France could neither read nor write. They were totally unacquainted with the forms of popular government. They were as ignorant as children, and almost entirely under the tutelage of the priests, to whom they believed that the keys of heaven and of hell had been intrusted. The establishment of republican forms would render France still more obnoxious to surrounding monarchies, and therefore they had wished to maintain the monarchy, and they took the British Constitution and not the American republic as their model, wishing, however, to infuse more of the popular element into their Constitution than has been admitted into the aristocratic institutions of England.

But now they found, to their surprise and grief, that all Europe was combining against their liberties, and that the king, instead of being grateful that his throne was preserved to him, was lamenting his loss of despotic power, and was co-operating with combined Europe for the re-enslavement of France. This left the friends of liberty no alternative. They must either hold out their hands to have the irons riveted upon them anew, or they must dethrone the king, rouse the nation to repel invasion, and attempt the fearful experiment of a republican government with a nation turbulent, unenlightened, and totally unaccustomed to self-control. In the old despotism there was no hope. It presented but poverty, chains, and despair. In republicanism, with all its perils, there was at least _hope_. Hence arose republicanism. It was the child of necessity. In the Constituent Assembly not an individual was to be found who advocated a republic.[338] But after the flight of the king to Varennes, republican sentiments, as the only hope of the nation, rapidly gained ground, and at the very commencement of the Legislative Assembly we see that a republican party is already organized. From the beginning there were two divisions of this party--the conservative republicans, called Girondists, because their leaders were from the department of the Gironde; and the radical democrats, called Jacobins from the hall where the club held its meeting.

All France was now in a state of alarm. The Assembly passed a very solemn decree announcing that _the country is in danger_. It declared its sitting to be permanent, that the king might not dissolve it. All the citizens were required to give up their arms that they might be suitably distributed to the defenders of the country. Every man, old and young, capable of bearing arms was ordered to be enrolled in the National Guards for the public defense. M. Vergniaud, the leader of the Girondists, a man of exalted virtue and of marvelous powers of eloquence, concluded a speech which roused the enthusiasm of the whole Assembly by proposing a firm but respectful message to Louis XVI., which should oblige him to choose between France and foreigners, and which should teach him that the French were resolved to perish or triumph with the Constitution.

"It is in the name of _the king_," said Vergniaud, "that the French princes have endeavored to raise up Europe against us. It is to avenge the _dignity of the king_ that the treaty of Pilnitz has been concluded. It is to come to the _aid of the king_ that the sovereign of Hungary and Bohemia makes war upon us, and that Prussia is marching toward our frontiers. Now, I read in the Constitution,

"'If the king puts himself at the head of an army and directs its forces against the nation, or if he does not oppose by a formal act an enterprise of this kind, that may be executed in his name, he shall be considered as having abdicated royalty.'

"What is a formal act of opposition? If one hundred thousand Austrians were marching toward Flanders, and one hundred thousand Prussians toward Alsace, and the king were to oppose to them ten or twenty thousand men, would he have done a formal act of opposition? If the king, whose duty it is to notify us of imminent hostilities, apprised of the movements of the Prussian army, were not to communicate any information upon the subject to the National Assembly; if a camp of reserve necessary for stopping the progress of the enemy into the interior were proposed, and the king were to substitute in its stead an uncertain plan which it would take a long time to execute; if the king were to leave the command of an army to an intriguing general (La Fayette) of whom the nation was suspicious. If another general (Luckner) familiar with victory were to demand a re-enforcement, and the king were by a refusal to say to him, _I forbid thee to conquer_, could it be asserted that the king had performed a formal act of opposition.

"If while France were swimming in blood the king were to say to you, 'It is true that the enemies pretend to be acting for me, for my dignity, for my rights, but I have proved that I am not the accomplice. I have sent armies into the field; these armies were too weak, but the Constitution does not fix the degree of their force. I have assembled them too late; but the Constitution does not fix the time for collecting them. I have stopped a general who was on the point of conquering, but the Constitution does not order victories. I have had ministers who deceived the Assembly and disorganized the government, but their appointment belonged to me. The Assembly has passed useful decrees which I have not sanctioned, but I had a right to act so. I have done all that the Constitution enjoined me. It is therefore impossible to doubt my fidelity to it.'

"If the king were to hold this language would you not have a right to reply, 'O king, who, like Lysander, the tyrant, have believed that truth was not worth more than falsehood, who have feigned a love for the laws, merely to preserve the power which enabled you to defy them--was it defending us to oppose to the foreign soldiers forces whose inferiority left not even uncertainty as to their defeat? Was it defending us to thwart plans tending to fortify the interior? Was it defending us not to check a general who violated the Constitution, but to enchain the courage of those who were serving it? No! no! man, in whom the generosity of the French has excited no corresponding feeling, insensible to every thing but the love of despotism, you are henceforth nothing to that Constitution which you have so unworthily violated, nothing to that people which you have so basely betrayed.'"

This was the first time any one had ventured to speak in the Assembly of the forfeiture of the crown, though it was a common topic in the journals and in the streets. The speech of Vergniaud was received with vehement applause. The king, alarmed, immediately sent a message to the Assembly informing them that Prussia had allied her troops with those of Austria in their march upon France. This message, thus tardily extorted, was received by the Assembly with a smile of contempt.

It was now manifest, beyond all dispute, that the foe of French liberty most to be dreaded was the king and the court. M. Brissot, who had been the bosom friend and the ardent eulogist of La Fayette, could no longer sustain the king. Ascending the tribune he gave bold utterance to the sentiment of the nation.

"Our peril," said he, "exceeds all that past ages have witnessed. The country is in danger, not because we are in want of troops--not because those troops want courage. No! it is in danger because its force is paralyzed. And who has paralyzed it. A man--_one man_, the man whom the Constitution has made its chief, and whom perfidious advisers have made its foe. You are told to fear the Kings of Prussia and Hungary; I say the chief force of those kings is _at the court_, and it is _there_ we must first conquer them. They tell you to strike at the dissentient priests. I tell you to strike at the _Tuileries_, and fell all the priests with a single blow. You are told to persecute all factious and intriguing conspirators. They will all disappear if you knock loud enough at the door of the _Cabinet of the Tuileries_; for that cabinet is the point to which all these threads tend, where every scheme is plotted, and whence every impulse proceeds. This is the secret of our position; this is the source of the evil, and here the remedy must be applied."[339]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 330: "Immediately after the 20th of June," writes Madame Campan, "the queen lost all hope but from foreign succors. She wrote to implore her own family, and the brothers of the king; and her letters became probably more and more pressing, and expressed her fears from the tardy manner in which the succors seemed to approach."--_Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan_, vol. ii., p. 214.]

[Footnote 331: "Marshal Luckner blamed extremely the intention La Fayette announced of repairing to Paris, 'because,' said he, 'the _sans culottes_ (ragamuffins) will cut off his head.' But as this was the sole objection he made, the general resolved to set out alone."--_La Fayette's Memoirs._]

[Footnote 332: Lectures on the French Revolution, vol. ii., p. 296. "The queen and the court," writes Prof. Smyth, "could never endure La Fayette, as having been the first great mover and originator of the Revolution; the cause, as he thought, of the liberties of his country, but a cause with which they unfortunately had no sympathy."

"The queen said to me," writes Madame Campan, "that La Fayette was offered to them as a resource, but that it would be better for them to perish than to owe their safety to a man who had done them the most mischief, or to place themselves under the necessity of treating with him."--_Memoires of Marie Antoinette, by Madame Campan_, vol. ii., p. 223.]

[Footnote 333: Thiers, vol. i., p. 278.]

[Footnote 334: "The king had committed himself, on the subject of the Constitution, to the allied powers, in the instructions he had given to Mallet du Pan, and was no longer at liberty, even if he had been disposed, on account of any such object as the Constitution, to have united himself with La Fayette, not even though La Fayette was endeavoring to accomplish the great point, of all others to be most desired, the overthrow of the Girondists and the Jacobins. On the whole, the court must be considered as now preferring the chance of the invasion of the allied powers, and the king the chance of some mediation between them and the people of France, that is, the chance of better terms than the Constitution offered. This must, I think, be supposed the line of policy that was now adopted. It was one full of danger, and, on the whole, a mistake; but with the expectation that was then so generally entertained of the certain success of the allied powers, a mistake not unnatural."--_Prof. Smyth's Lectures_, vol. ii., p. 295.]

[Footnote 335: Hist. Phil. de la Rev. de Fr., par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, t. ii., p. 45.]

[Footnote 336: "A court apparently in concert with the enemy resorted to no means for augmenting the armies and exciting the nation, but, on the contrary, employed the _veto_ to thwart the measures of the legislative body, and the _civil list_ (the king's salary) to secure partisans in the interior."--_Thiers_, vol. i., p. 280.]

[Footnote 337: Madame Campan, vol. ii., p. 230.]

[Footnote 338: "It becomes evident that a republic was desired only from despair of the monarchy, that it never was a fixed fact, and that, on the very eve of attaining it, those who were accused of having long paved the way to it, would not sacrifice the public weal for its sake, but would have consented to a constitutional monarchy, if it were accompanied with sufficient safeguards."--_Thiers_, vol. i., p. 308.]

[Footnote 339: M. Brissot was a lawyer of considerable literary distinction, who, when but twenty years of age, had been imprisoned in the Bastille for some of his political writings. He was a passionate admirer of the Americans, and despairing, in consequence of the fickleness or treachery of the king, of a constitutional monarchy, endeavored to secure for France a republic. About a year from the time of the above speech he perished with the rest of the Girondists upon the scaffold.--_Biographe Moderne._]