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Title: The French Revolution: A History
Author: Carlyle, Thomas
Language: English
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THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
A HISTORY
by THOMAS CARLYLE
Contents
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A HISTORY
VOLUME I.
BOOK 1.I.
Chapter 1.1.I.
Chapter 1.1.II.
Chapter 1.1.III.
Chapter 1.1.IV.
BOOK 1.II.
Chapter 1.2.I.
Chapter 1.2.II.
Chapter 1.2.III.
Chapter 1.2.IV.
Chapter 1.2.V.
Chapter 1.2.VI.
Chapter 1.2.VII.
Chapter 1.2.VIII.
BOOK 1.III.
Chapter 1.3.I.
Chapter 1.3.II.
Chapter 1.3.III.
Chapter 1.3.IV.
Chapter 1.3.V.
Chapter 1.3.VI.
Chapter 1.3.VII.
Chapter 1.3.VIII.
Chapter 1.3.IX.
BOOK 1.IV.
Chapter 1.4.I.
Chapter 1.4.II.
Chapter 1.4.III.
Chapter 1.4.IV.
BOOK 1.V.
Chapter 1.5.I.
Chapter 1.5.II.
Chapter 1.5.III.
Chapter 1.5.IV.
Chapter 1.5.V.
Chapter 1.5.VI.
Chapter 1.5.VII.
Chapter 1.5.VIII.
Chapter 1.5.IX.
BOOK VI.
Chapter 1.6.I.
Chapter 1.6.II.
Chapter 1.6.III.
Chapter 1.6.IV.
Chapter 1.6.V.
BOOK VII.
Chapter 1.7.I.
Chapter 1.7.II.
Chapter 1.7.III.
Chapter 1.7.IV.
Chapter 1.7.V.
Chapter 1.7.VI.
Chapter 1.7.VII.
Chapter 1.7.VIII.
Chapter 1.7.IX.
Chapter 1.7.X.
Chapter 1.7.XI.
VOLUME II.
BOOK 2.I.
Chapter 2.1.I.
Chapter 2.1.II.
Chapter 2.1.III.
Chapter 2.1.IV.
Chapter 2.1.V.
Chapter 2.1.VI.
Chapter 2.1.VII.
Chapter 2.1.VIII.
Chapter 2.1.IX.
Chapter 2.1.X.
Chapter 2.1.XI.
Chapter 2.1.XII.
BOOK 2.II.
Chapter 2.2.I.
Chapter 2.2.II.
Chapter 2.2.III.
Chapter 2.2.IV.
Chapter 2.2.V.
Chapter 2.2.VI.
BOOK 2.III.
Chapter 2.3.I.
Chapter 2.3.II.
Chapter 2.3.III.
Chapter 2.3.IV.
Chapter 2.3.V.
Chapter 2.3.VI.
Chapter 2.3.VII.
BOOK 2.IV.
Chapter 2.4.I.
Chapter 2.4.II.
Chapter 2.4.III.
Chapter 2.4.IV.
Chapter 2.4.V.
Chapter 2.4.VI.
Chapter 2.4.VII.
Chapter 2.4.VIII.
Chapter 2.4.IX.
BOOK 2.V.
Chapter 2.5.I.
Chapter 2.5.II.
Chapter 2.5.III.
Chapter 2.5.IV.
Chapter 2.5.V.
Chapter 2.5.VI.
Chapter 2.5.VII.
Chapter 2.5.VIII.
Chapter 2.5.IX.
Chapter 2.5.X.
Chapter 2.5.XI.
Chapter 2.5.XII.
BOOK 2.VI.
Chapter 2.6.I.
Chapter 2.6.II.
Chapter 2.6.III.
Chapter 2.6.IV.
Chapter 2.6.V.
Chapter 2.6.VI.
Chapter 2.6.VII.
Chapter 2.6.VIII.
VOLUME III.
BOOK 3.I.
Chapter 3.1.I.
Chapter 3.1.II.
Chapter 3.1.III.
Chapter 3.1.IV.
Chapter 3.1.V.
Chapter 3.1.VI.
Chapter 3.1.VII.
Chapter 3.1.VIII.
BOOK 3.II.
Chapter 3.2.I.
Chapter 3.2.II.
Chapter 3.2.III.
Chapter 3.2.IV.
Chapter 3.2.V.
Chapter 3.2.VI.
Chapter 3.2.VII.
Chapter 3.2.VIII.
BOOK 3.III.
Chapter 3.3.I.
Chapter 3.3.II.
Chapter 3.3.III.
Chapter 3.3.IV.
Chapter 3.3.V.
Chapter 3.3.VI.
Chapter 3.3.VII.
Chapter 3.3.VIII.
Chapter 3.3.IX.
BOOK 3.IV.
Chapter 3.4.I.
Chapter 3.4.II.
Chapter 3.4.III.
Chapter 3.4.IV.
Chapter 3.4.V.
Chapter 3.4.VI.
Chapter 3.4.VII.
Chapter 3.4.VIII.
BOOK 3.V.
Chapter 3.5.I.
Chapter 3.5.II.
Chapter 3.5.III.
Chapter 3.5.IV.
Chapter 3.5.V.
Chapter 3.5.VI.
Chapter 3.5.VII.
BOOK 3.VI.
Chapter 3.6.I.
Chapter 3.6.II.
Chapter 3.6.III.
Chapter 3.6.IV.
Chapter 3.6.V.
Chapter 3.6.VI.
Chapter 3.6.VII.
BOOK 3.VII.
Chapter 3.7.I.
Chapter 3.7.II.
Chapter 3.7.III.
Chapter 3.7.IV.
Chapter 3.7.V.
Chapter 3.7.VI.
Chapter 3.7.VII.
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A HISTORY
By
THOMAS CARLYLE
VOLUME I.—THE BASTILLE
BOOK 1.I.
DEATH OF LOUIS XV.
Chapter 1.1.I.
Louis the Well-Beloved.
President Henault, remarking on royal Surnames of Honour how
difficult it often is to ascertain not only why, but even when,
they were conferred, takes occasion in his sleek official way, to
make a philosophical reflection. 'The Surname of Bien-aime
(_Well-beloved_),' says he, 'which Louis XV. bears, will not
leave posterity in the same doubt. This Prince, in the year 1744,
while hastening from one end of his kingdom to the other, and
suspending his conquests in Flanders that he might fly to the
assistance of Alsace, was arrested at Metz by a malady which
threatened to cut short his days. At the news of this, Paris, all
in terror, seemed a city taken by storm: the churches resounded
with supplications and groans; the prayers of priests and people
were every moment interrupted by their sobs: and it was from an
interest so dear and tender that this Surname of Bien-aime
fashioned itself, a title higher still than all the rest which
this great Prince has earned.' (_Abrege Chronologique de
l'Histoire de France (_Paris, 1775_), p. 701._)
So stands it written; in lasting memorial of that year 1744.
Thirty other years have come and gone; and 'this great Prince'
again lies sick; but in how altered circumstances now! Churches
resound not with excessive groanings; Paris is stoically calm:
sobs interrupt no prayers, for indeed none are offered; except
Priests' Litanies, read or chanted at fixed money-rate per hour,
which are not liable to interruption. The shepherd of the people
has been carried home from Little Trianon, heavy of heart, and
been put to bed in his own Chateau of Versailles: the flock knows
it, and heeds it not. At most, in the immeasurable tide of French
Speech (_which ceases not day after day, and only ebbs towards
the short hours of night_), may this of the royal sickness emerge
from time to time as an article of news. Bets are doubtless
depending; nay, some people 'express themselves loudly in the
streets.' (_Memoires de M. le Baron Besenval (_Paris, 1805_), ii.
59-90._) But for the rest, on green field and steepled city, the
May sun shines out, the May evening fades; and men ply their
useful or useless business as if no Louis lay in danger.
Dame Dubarry, indeed, might pray, if she had a talent for it;
Duke d'Aiguillon too, Maupeou and the Parlement Maupeou: these,
as they sit in their high places, with France harnessed under
their feet, know well on what basis they continue there. Look to
it, D'Aiguillon; sharply as thou didst, from the Mill of St.
Cast, on Quiberon and the invading English; thou, 'covered if not
with glory yet with meal!' Fortune was ever accounted inconstant:
and each dog has but his day.
Forlorn enough languished Duke d'Aiguillon, some years ago;
covered, as we said, with meal; nay with worse. For La Chalotais,
the Breton Parlementeer, accused him not only of poltroonery and
tyranny, but even of concussion (_official plunder of money_);
which accusations it was easier to get 'quashed' by backstairs
Influences than to get answered: neither could the thoughts, or
even the tongues, of men be tied. Thus, under disastrous eclipse,
had this grand-nephew of the great Richelieu to glide about;
unworshipped by the world; resolute Choiseul, the abrupt proud
man, disdaining him, or even forgetting him. Little prospect but
to glide into Gascony, to rebuild Chateaus there, (_Arthur Young,
Travels during the years 1787-88-89 (_Bury St. Edmunds, 1792_),
i. 44._) and die inglorious killing game! However, in the year
1770, a certain young soldier, Dumouriez by name, returning from
Corsica, could see 'with sorrow, at Compiegne, the old King of
France, on foot, with doffed hat, in sight of his army, at the
side of a magnificent phaeton, doing homage the—Dubarry.' (_La
Vie et les Memoires du General Dumouriez (_Paris, 1822_), i.
141._)
Much lay therein! Thereby, for one thing, could D'Aiguillon
postpone the rebuilding of his Chateau, and rebuild his fortunes
first. For stout Choiseul would discern in the Dubarry nothing
but a wonderfully dizened Scarlet-woman; and go on his way as if
she were not. Intolerable: the source of sighs, tears, of
pettings and pouting; which would not end till 'France' (_La
France, as she named her royal valet_) finally mustered heart to
see Choiseul; and with that 'quivering in the chin (_tremblement
du menton natural in such cases_) (_Besenval, Memoires, ii. 21._)
faltered out a dismissal: dismissal of his last substantial man,
but pacification of his scarlet-woman. Thus D'Aiguillon rose
again, and culminated. And with him there rose Maupeou, the
banisher of Parlements; who plants you a refractory President 'at
Croe in Combrailles on the top of steep rocks, inaccessible
except by litters,' there to consider himself. Likewise there
rose Abbe Terray, dissolute Financier, paying eightpence in the
shilling,—so that wits exclaim in some press at the playhouse,
"Where is Abbe Terray, that he might reduce us to two-thirds!"
And so have these individuals (_verily by black-art_) built them
a Domdaniel, or enchanted Dubarrydom; call it an Armida-Palace,
where they dwell pleasantly; Chancellor Maupeou 'playing
blind-man's-buff' with the scarlet Enchantress; or gallantly
presenting her with dwarf Negroes;—and a Most Christian King has
unspeakable peace within doors, whatever he may have without. "My
Chancellor is a scoundrel; but I cannot do without him."
(_Dulaure, Histoire de Paris (_Paris, 1824_), vii. 328._)
Beautiful Armida-Palace, where the inmates live enchanted lives;
lapped in soft music of adulation; waited on by the splendours of
the world;—which nevertheless hangs wondrously as by a single
hair. Should the Most Christian King die; or even get seriously
afraid of dying! For, alas, had not the fair haughty Chateauroux
to fly, with wet cheeks and flaming heart, from that Fever-scene
at Metz; driven forth by sour shavelings? She hardly returned,
when fever and shavelings were both swept into the background.
Pompadour too, when Damiens wounded Royalty 'slightly, under the
fifth rib,' and our drive to Trianon went off futile, in shrieks
and madly shaken torches,—had to pack, and be in readiness: yet
did not go, the wound not proving poisoned. For his Majesty has
religious faith; believes, at least in a Devil. And now a third
peril; and who knows what may be in it! For the Doctors look
grave; ask privily, If his Majesty had not the small-pox long
ago?—and doubt it may have been a false kind. Yes, Maupeou,
pucker those sinister brows of thine, and peer out on it with thy
malign rat-eyes: it is a questionable case. Sure only that man is
mortal; that with the life of one mortal snaps irrevocably the
wonderfulest talisman, and all Dubarrydom rushes off, with
tumult, into infinite Space; and ye, as subterranean Apparitions
are wont, vanish utterly,—leaving only a smell of sulphur!
These, and what holds of these may pray,—to Beelzebub, or whoever
will hear them. But from the rest of France there comes, as was
said, no prayer; or one of an opposite character, 'expressed
openly in the streets.' Chateau or Hotel, were an enlightened
Philosophism scrutinises many things, is not given to prayer:
neither are Rossbach victories, Terray Finances, nor, say only
'sixty thousand Lettres de Cachet' (_which is Maupeou's share_),
persuasives towards that. O Henault! Prayers? From a France
smitten (_by black-art_) with plague after plague, and lying now
in shame and pain, with a Harlot's foot on its neck, what prayer
can come? Those lank scarecrows, that prowl hunger-stricken
through all highways and byways of French Existence, will they
pray? The dull millions that, in the workshop or furrowfield,
grind fore-done at the wheel of Labour, like haltered gin-horses,
if blind so much the quieter? Or they that in the Bicetre
Hospital, 'eight to a bed,' lie waiting their manumission? Dim
are those heads of theirs, dull stagnant those hearts: to them
the great Sovereign is known mainly as the great Regrater of
Bread. If they hear of his sickness, they will answer with a dull
Tant pis pour lui; or with the question, Will he die?
Yes, will he die? that is now, for all France, the grand
question, and hope; whereby alone the King's sickness has still
some interest.
Chapter 1.1.II.
Realised Ideals.
Such a changed France have we; and a changed Louis. Changed,
truly; and further than thou yet seest!—To the eye of History
many things, in that sick-room of Louis, are now visible, which
to the Courtiers there present were invisible. For indeed it is
well said, 'in every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the
eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.' To Newton
and to Newton's Dog Diamond, what a different pair of Universes;
while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most
likely, the same! Let the Reader here, in this sick-room of
Louis, endeavour to look with the mind too.
Time was when men could (_so to speak_) of a given man, by
nourishing and decorating him with fit appliances, to the due
pitch, make themselves a King, almost as the Bees do; and what
was still more to the purpose, loyally obey him when made. The
man so nourished and decorated, thenceforth named royal, does
verily bear rule; and is said, and even thought, to be, for
example, 'prosecuting conquests in Flanders,' when he lets
himself like luggage be carried thither: and no light luggage;
covering miles of road. For he has his unblushing Chateauroux,
with her band-boxes and rouge-pots, at his side; so that, at
every new station, a wooden gallery must be run up between their
lodgings. He has not only his Maison-Bouche, and Valetaille
without end, but his very Troop of Players, with their pasteboard
coulisses, thunder-barrels, their kettles, fiddles,
stage-wardrobes, portable larders (_and chaffering and
quarrelling enough_); all mounted in wagons, tumbrils,
second-hand chaises,—sufficient not to conquer Flanders, but the
patience of the world. With such a flood of loud jingling
appurtenances does he lumber along, prosecuting his conquests in
Flanders; wonderful to behold. So nevertheless it was and had
been: to some solitary thinker it might seem strange; but even to
him inevitable, not unnatural.
For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent
plastic of creatures. A world not fixable; not fathomable! An
unfathomable Somewhat, which is Not we; which we can work with,
and live amidst,—and model, miraculously in our miraculous Being,
and name World.—But if the very Rocks and Rivers (_as Metaphysic
teaches_) are, in strict language, made by those outward Senses
of ours, how much more, by the Inward Sense, are all Phenomena of
the spiritual kind: Dignities, Authorities, Holies, Unholies!
Which inward sense, moreover is not permanent like the outward
ones, but forever growing and changing. Does not the Black
African take of Sticks and Old Clothes (_say, exported
Monmouth-Street cast-clothes_) what will suffice, and of these,
cunningly combining them, fabricate for himself an Eidolon
(_Idol, or Thing Seen_), and name it Mumbo-Jumbo; which he can
thenceforth pray to, with upturned awestruck eye, not without
hope? The white European mocks; but ought rather to consider; and
see whether he, at home, could not do the like a little more
wisely.
So it was, we say, in those conquests of Flanders, thirty years
ago: but so it no longer is. Alas, much more lies sick than poor
Louis: not the French King only, but the French Kingship; this
too, after long rough tear and wear, is breaking down. The world
is all so changed; so much that seemed vigorous has sunk
decrepit, so much that was not is beginning to be!—Borne over the
Atlantic, to the closing ear of Louis, King by the Grace of God,
what sounds are these; muffled ominous, new in our centuries?
Boston Harbour is black with unexpected Tea: behold a
Pennsylvanian Congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill,
DEMOCRACY announcing, in rifle-volleys death-winged, under her
Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-doo, that she is born,
and, whirlwind-like, will envelope the whole world!
Sovereigns die and Sovereignties: how all dies, and is for a Time
only; is a 'Time-phantasm, yet reckons itself real!' The
Merovingian Kings, slowly wending on their bullock-carts through
the streets of Paris, with their long hair flowing, have all
wended slowly on,—into Eternity. Charlemagne sleeps at Salzburg,
with truncheon grounded; only Fable expecting that he will
awaken. Charles the Hammer, Pepin Bow-legged, where now is their
eye of menace, their voice of command? Rollo and his shaggy
Northmen cover not the Seine with ships; but have sailed off on a
longer voyage. The hair of Towhead (_Tete d'etoupes_) now needs
no combing; Iron-cutter (_Taillefer_) cannot cut a cobweb; shrill
Fredegonda, shrill Brunhilda have had out their hot life-scold,
and lie silent, their hot life-frenzy cooled. Neither from that
black Tower de Nesle descends now darkling the doomed gallant, in
his sack, to the Seine waters; plunging into Night: for Dame de
Nesle how cares not for this world's gallantry, heeds not this
world's scandal; Dame de Nesle is herself gone into Night. They
are all gone; sunk,—down, down, with the tumult they made; and
the rolling and the trampling of ever new generations passes over
them, and they hear it not any more forever.
And yet withal has there not been realised somewhat? Consider
(_to go no further_) these strong Stone-edifices, and what they
hold! Mud-Town of the Borderers (_Lutetia Parisiorum or
Barisiorum_) has paved itself, has spread over all the Seine
Islands, and far and wide on each bank, and become City of Paris,
sometimes boasting to be 'Athens of Europe,' and even 'Capital of
the Universe.' Stone towers frown aloft; long-lasting, grim with
a thousand years. Cathedrals are there, and a Creed (_or memory
of a Creed_) in them; Palaces, and a State and Law. Thou seest
the Smoke-vapour; unextinguished Breath as of a thing living.
Labour's thousand hammers ring on her anvils: also a more
miraculous Labour works noiselessly, not with the Hand but with
the Thought. How have cunning workmen in all crafts, with their
cunning head and right-hand, tamed the Four Elements to be their
ministers; yoking the winds to their Sea-chariot, making the very
Stars their Nautical Timepiece;—and written and collected a
Bibliotheque du Roi; among whose Books is the Hebrew Book! A
wondrous race of creatures: these have been realised, and what of
Skill is in these: call not the Past Time, with all its confused
wretchednesses, a lost one.
Observe, however, that of man's whole terrestrial possessions and
attainments, unspeakably the noblest are his Symbols, divine or
divine-seeming; under which he marches and fights, with
victorious assurance, in this life-battle: what we can call his
Realised Ideals. Of which realised ideals, omitting the rest,
consider only these two: his Church, or spiritual Guidance; his
Kingship, or temporal one. The Church: what a word was there;
richer than Golconda and the treasures of the world! In the heart
of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk; the Dead all
slumbering round it, under their white memorial-stones, 'in hope
of a happy resurrection:'—dull wert thou, O Reader, if never in
any hour (_say of moaning midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral
in the sky, and Being was as if swallowed up of Darkness_) it
spoke to thee—things unspeakable, that went into thy soul's soul.
Strong was he that had a Church, what we can call a Church: he
stood thereby, though 'in the centre of Immensities, in the
conflux of Eternities,' yet manlike towards God and man; the
vague shoreless Universe had become for him a firm city, and
dwelling which he knew. Such virtue was in Belief; in these
words, well spoken: I believe. Well might men prize their Credo,
and raise stateliest Temples for it, and reverend Hierarchies,
and give it the tithe of their substance; it was worth living for
and dying for.
Neither was that an inconsiderable moment when wild armed men
first raised their Strongest aloft on the buckler-throne, and
with clanging armour and hearts, said solemnly: Be thou our
Acknowledged Strongest! In such Acknowledged Strongest (_well
named King, Kon-ning, Can-ning, or Man that was Able_) what a
Symbol shone now for them,—significant with the destinies of the
world! A Symbol of true Guidance in return for loving Obedience;
properly, if he knew it, the prime want of man. A Symbol which
might be called sacred; for is there not, in reverence for what
is better than we, an indestructible sacredness? On which ground,
too, it was well said there lay in the Acknowledged Strongest a
divine right; as surely there might in the Strongest, whether
Acknowledged or not,—considering who made him strong. And so, in
the midst of confusions and unutterable incongruities (_as all
growth is confused_), did this of Royalty, with Loyalty
environing it, spring up; and grow mysteriously, subduing and
assimilating (_for a principle of Life was in it_); till it also
had grown world-great, and was among the main Facts of our modern
existence. Such a Fact, that Louis XIV., for example, could
answer the expostulatory Magistrate with his "L'Etat c'est moi
(_The State? I am the State_);" and be replied to by silence and
abashed looks. So far had accident and forethought; had your
Louis Elevenths, with the leaden Virgin in their hatband, and
torture-wheels and conical oubliettes (_man-eating!_) under their
feet; your Henri Fourths, with their prophesied social
millennium, 'when every peasant should have his fowl in the pot;'
and on the whole, the fertility of this most fertile Existence
(_named of Good and Evil_),—brought it, in the matter of the
Kingship. Wondrous! Concerning which may we not again say, that
in the huge mass of Evil, as it rolls and swells, there is ever
some Good working imprisoned; working towards deliverance and
triumph?
How such Ideals do realise themselves; and grow, wondrously, from
amid the incongruous ever-fluctuating chaos of the Actual: this
is what World-History, if it teach any thing, has to teach us,
How they grow; and, after long stormy growth, bloom out mature,
supreme; then quickly (_for the blossom is brief_) fall into
decay; sorrowfully dwindle; and crumble down, or rush down,
noisily or noiselessly disappearing. The blossom is so brief; as
of some centennial Cactus-flower, which after a century of
waiting shines out for hours! Thus from the day when rough
Clovis, in the Champ de Mars, in sight of his whole army, had to
cleave retributively the head of that rough Frank, with sudden
battleaxe, and the fierce words, "It was thus thou clavest the
vase" (_St. Remi's and mine_) "at Soissons," forward to Louis the
Grand and his L'Etat c'est moi, we count some twelve hundred
years: and now this the very next Louis is dying, and so much
dying with him!—Nay, thus too, if Catholicism, with and against
Feudalism (_but not against Nature and her bounty_), gave us
English a Shakspeare and Era of Shakspeare, and so produced a
blossom of Catholicism—it was not till Catholicism itself, so far
as Law could abolish it, had been abolished here.
But of those decadent ages in which no Ideal either grows or
blossoms? When Belief and Loyalty have passed away, and only the
cant and false echo of them remains; and all Solemnity has become
Pageantry; and the Creed of persons in authority has become one
of two things: an Imbecility or a Macchiavelism? Alas, of these
ages World-History can take no notice; they have to become
compressed more and more, and finally suppressed in the Annals of
Mankind; blotted out as spurious,—which indeed they are. Hapless
ages: wherein, if ever in any, it is an unhappiness to be born.
To be born, and to learn only, by every tradition and example,
that God's Universe is Belial's and a Lie; and 'the Supreme
Quack' the hierarch of men! In which mournfulest faith,
nevertheless, do we not see whole generations (_two, and
sometimes even three successively_) live, what they call living;
and vanish,—without chance of reappearance?
In such a decadent age, or one fast verging that way, had our
poor Louis been born. Grant also that if the French Kingship had
not, by course of Nature, long to live, he of all men was the man
to accelerate Nature. The Blossom of French Royalty, cactus-like,
has accordingly made an astonishing progress. In those Metz days,
it was still standing with all its petals, though bedimmed by
Orleans Regents and Roue Ministers and Cardinals; but now, in
1774, we behold it bald, and the virtue nigh gone out of it.
Disastrous indeed does it look with those same 'realised ideals,'
one and all! The Church, which in its palmy season, seven hundred
years ago, could make an Emperor wait barefoot, in penance-shift;
three days, in the snow, has for centuries seen itself decaying;
reduced even to forget old purposes and enmities, and join
interest with the Kingship: on this younger strength it would
fain stay its decrepitude; and these two will henceforth stand
and fall together. Alas, the Sorbonne still sits there, in its
old mansion; but mumbles only jargon of dotage, and no longer
leads the consciences of men: not the Sorbonne; it is
Encyclopedies, Philosophie, and who knows what nameless
innumerable multitude of ready Writers, profane Singers,
Romancers, Players, Disputators, and Pamphleteers, that now form
the Spiritual Guidance of the world. The world's Practical
Guidance too is lost, or has glided into the same miscellaneous
hands. Who is it that the King (_Able-man, named also Roi, Rex,
or Director_) now guides? His own huntsmen and prickers: when
there is to be no hunt, it is well said, 'Le Roi ne fera rien
(_To-day his Majesty will do nothing_). (_Memoires sur la Vie
privee de Marie Antoinette, par Madame Campan (_Paris, 1826_), i.
12_). He lives and lingers there, because he is living there, and
none has yet laid hands on him.
The nobles, in like manner, have nearly ceased either to guide or
misguide; and are now, as their master is, little more than
ornamental figures. It is long since they have done with
butchering one another or their king: the Workers, protected,
encouraged by Majesty, have ages ago built walled towns, and
there ply their crafts; will permit no Robber Baron to 'live by
the saddle,' but maintain a gallows to prevent it. Ever since
that period of the Fronde, the Noble has changed his fighting
sword into a court rapier, and now loyally attends his king as
ministering satellite; divides the spoil, not now by violence and
murder, but by soliciting and finesse. These men call themselves
supports of the throne, singular gilt-pasteboard caryatides in
that singular edifice! For the rest, their privileges every way
are now much curtailed. That law authorizing a Seigneur, as he
returned from hunting, to kill not more than two Serfs, and
refresh his feet in their warm blood and bowels, has fallen into
perfect desuetude,—and even into incredibility; for if Deputy
Lapoule can believe in it, and call for the abrogation of it, so
cannot we. (_Histoire de la Revolution Francaise, par Deux Amis
de la Liberte (_Paris, 1793_), ii. 212._) No Charolois, for these
last fifty years, though never so fond of shooting, has been in
use to bring down slaters and plumbers, and see them roll from
their roofs; (_Lacretelle, Histoire de France pendant le 18me
Siecle (_Paris, 1819_) i. 271._) but contents himself with
partridges and grouse. Close-viewed, their industry and function
is that of dressing gracefully and eating sumptuously. As for
their debauchery and depravity, it is perhaps unexampled since
the era of Tiberius and Commodus. Nevertheless, one has still
partly a feeling with the lady Marechale: "Depend upon it, Sir,
God thinks twice before damning a man of that quality."
(_Dulaure, vii. 261._) These people, of old, surely had virtues,
uses; or they could not have been there. Nay, one virtue they are
still required to have (_for mortal man cannot live without a
conscience_): the virtue of perfect readiness to fight duels.
Such are the shepherds of the people: and now how fares it with
the flock? With the flock, as is inevitable, it fares ill, and
ever worse. They are not tended, they are only regularly shorn.
They are sent for, to do statute-labour, to pay statute-taxes; to
fatten battle-fields (_named 'Bed of honour'_) with their bodies,
in quarrels which are not theirs; their hand and toil is in every
possession of man; but for themselves they have little or no
possession. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed; to pine dully in thick
obscuration, in squalid destitution and obstruction: this is the
lot of the millions; peuple taillable et corveable a merci et
misericorde. In Brittany they once rose in revolt at the first
introduction of Pendulum Clocks; thinking it had something to do
with the Gabelle. Paris requires to be cleared out periodically
by the Police; and the horde of hunger-stricken vagabonds to be
sent wandering again over space—for a time. 'During one such
periodical clearance,' says Lacretelle, 'in May, 1750, the Police
had presumed withal to carry off some reputable people's
children, in the hope of extorting ransoms for them. The mothers
fill the public places with cries of despair; crowds gather, get
excited: so many women in destraction run about exaggerating the
alarm: an absurd and horrid fable arises among the people; it is
said that the doctors have ordered a Great Person to take baths
of young human blood for the restoration of his own, all spoiled
by debaucheries. Some of the rioters,' adds Lacretelle, quite
coolly, 'were hanged on the following days:' the Police went on.
(_Lacretelle, iii. 175._) O ye poor naked wretches! and this,
then, is your inarticulate cry to Heaven, as of a dumb tortured
animal, crying from uttermost depths of pain and debasement? Do
these azure skies, like a dead crystalline vault, only
reverberate the echo of it on you? Respond to it only by 'hanging
on the following days?'—Not so: not forever! Ye are heard in
Heaven. And the answer too will come,—in a horror of great
darkness, and shakings of the world, and a cup of trembling which
all the nations shall drink.
Remark, meanwhile, how from amid the wrecks and dust of this
universal Decay new Powers are fashioning themselves, adapted to
the new time and its destinies. Besides the old Noblesse,
originally of Fighters, there is a new recognised Noblesse of
Lawyers; whose gala-day and proud battle-day even now is. An
unrecognised Noblesse of Commerce; powerful enough, with money in
its pocket. Lastly, powerfulest of all, least recognised of all,
a Noblesse of Literature; without steel on their thigh, without
gold in their purse, but with the 'grand thaumaturgic faculty of
Thought' in their head. French Philosophism has arisen; in which
little word how much do we include! Here, indeed, lies properly
the cardinal symptom of the whole wide-spread malady. Faith is
gone out; Scepticism is come in. Evil abounds and accumulates: no
man has Faith to withstand it, to amend it, to begin by amending
himself; it must even go on accumulating. While hollow langour
and vacuity is the lot of the Upper, and want and stagnation of
the Lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing
is certain? That a Lie cannot be believed! Philosophism knows
only this: her other belief is mainly that, in spiritual
supersensual matters no Belief is possible. Unhappy! Nay, as yet
the Contradiction of a Lie is some kind of Belief; but the Lie
with its Contradiction once swept away, what will remain? The
five unsatiated Senses will remain, the sixth insatiable Sense
(_of vanity_); the whole daemonic nature of man will
remain,—hurled forth to rage blindly without rule or rein; savage
itself, yet with all the tools and weapons of civilisation; a
spectacle new in History.
In such a France, as in a Powder-tower, where fire unquenched and
now unquenchable is smoking and smouldering all round, has Louis
XV. lain down to die. With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his
Fleur-de-lis has been shamefully struck down in all lands and on
all seas; Poverty invades even the Royal Exchequer, and
Tax-farming can squeeze out no more; there is a quarrel of
twenty-five years' standing with the Parlement; everywhere Want,
Dishonesty, Unbelief, and hotbrained Sciolists for
state-physicians: it is a portentous hour.
Such things can the eye of History see in this sick-room of King
Louis, which were invisible to the Courtiers there. It is twenty
years, gone Christmas-day, since Lord Chesterfield, summing up
what he had noted of this same France, wrote, and sent off by
post, the following words, that have become memorable: 'In short,
all the symptoms which I have ever met with in History, previous
to great Changes and Revolutions in government, now exist and
daily increase in France.' (_Chesterfield's Letters: December
25th, 1753._)
Chapter 1.1.III.
Viaticum.
For the present, however, the grand question with the Governors
of France is: Shall extreme unction, or other ghostly viaticum
(_to Louis, not to France_), be administered?
It is a deep question. For, if administered, if so much as spoken
of, must not, on the very threshold of the business, Witch
Dubarry vanish; hardly to return should Louis even recover? With
her vanishes Duke d'Aiguillon and Company, and all their
Armida-Palace, as was said; Chaos swallows the whole again, and
there is left nothing but a smell of brimstone. But then, on the
other hand, what will the Dauphinists and Choiseulists say? Nay
what may the royal martyr himself say, should he happen to get
deadly worse, without getting delirious? For the present, he
still kisses the Dubarry hand; so we, from the ante-room, can
note: but afterwards? Doctors' bulletins may run as they are
ordered, but it is 'confluent small-pox,'—of which, as is
whispered too, the Gatekeepers's once so buxom Daughter lies ill:
and Louis XV. is not a man to be trifled with in his viaticum.
Was he not wont to catechise his very girls in the
Parc-aux-cerfs, and pray with and for them, that they might
preserve their—orthodoxy? (_Dulaure, viii. (_217_), Besenval,
&c._) A strange fact, not an unexampled one; for there is no
animal so strange as man.
For the moment, indeed, it were all well, could Archbishop
Beaumont but be prevailed upon—to wink with one eye! Alas,
Beaumont would himself so fain do it: for, singular to tell, the
Church too, and whole posthumous hope of Jesuitism, now hangs by
the apron of this same unmentionable woman. But then 'the force
of public opinion'? Rigorous Christophe de Beaumont, who has
spent his life in persecuting hysterical Jansenists and
incredulous Non-confessors; or even their dead bodies, if no
better might be,—how shall he now open Heaven's gate, and give
Absolution with the corpus delicti still under his nose? Our
Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, for his part, will not higgle with a
royal sinner about turning of the key: but there are other
Churchmen; there is a King's Confessor, foolish Abbe Moudon; and
Fanaticism and Decency are not yet extinct. On the whole, what is
to be done? The doors can be well watched; the Medical Bulletin
adjusted; and much, as usual, be hoped for from time and chance.
The doors are well watched, no improper figure can enter. Indeed,
few wish to enter; for the putrid infection reaches even to the
Oeil-de-Boeuf; so that 'more than fifty fall sick, and ten die.'
Mesdames the Princesses alone wait at the loathsome sick-bed;
impelled by filial piety. The three Princesses, Graille, Chiffe,
Coche (_Rag, Snip, Pig, as he was wont to name them_), are
assiduous there; when all have fled. The fourth Princess Loque
(_Dud_), as we guess, is already in the Nunnery, and can only
give her orisons. Poor Graille and Sisterhood, they have never
known a Father: such is the hard bargain Grandeur must make.
Scarcely at the Debotter (_when Royalty took off its boots_)
could they snatch up their 'enormous hoops, gird the long train
round their waists, huddle on their black cloaks of taffeta up to
the very chin;' and so, in fit appearance of full dress, 'every
evening at six,' walk majestically in; receive their royal kiss
on the brow; and then walk majestically out again, to embroidery,
small-scandal, prayers, and vacancy. If Majesty came some
morning, with coffee of its own making, and swallowed it with
them hastily while the dogs were uncoupling for the hunt, it was
received as a grace of Heaven. (_Campan, i. 11-36._) Poor
withered ancient women! in the wild tossings that yet await your
fragile existence, before it be crushed and broken; as ye fly
through hostile countries, over tempestuous seas, are almost
taken by the Turks; and wholly, in the Sansculottic Earthquake,
know not your right hand from your left, be this always an
assured place in your remembrance: for the act was good and
loving! To us also it is a little sunny spot, in that dismal
howling waste, where we hardly find another.
Meanwhile, what shall an impartial prudent Courtier do? In these
delicate circumstances, while not only death or life, but even
sacrament or no sacrament, is a question, the skilfulest may
falter. Few are so happy as the Duke d'Orleans and the Prince de
Conde; who can themselves, with volatile salts, attend the King's
ante-chamber; and, at the same time, send their brave sons (_Duke
de Chartres, Egalite that is to be; Duke de Bourbon, one day
Conde too, and famous among Dotards_) to wait upon the Dauphin.
With another few, it is a resolution taken; jacta est alea. Old
Richelieu,—when Beaumont, driven by public opinion, is at last
for entering the sick-room,—will twitch him by the rochet, into a
recess; and there, with his old dissipated mastiff-face, and the
oiliest vehemence, be seen pleading (_and even, as we judge by
Beaumont's change of colour, prevailing_) 'that the King be not
killed by a proposition in Divinity.' Duke de Fronsac, son of
Richelieu, can follow his father: when the Cure of Versailles
whimpers something about sacraments, he will threaten to 'throw
him out of the window if he mention such a thing.'
Happy these, we may say; but to the rest that hover between two
opinions, is it not trying? He who would understand to what a
pass Catholicism, and much else, had now got; and how the symbols
of the Holiest have become gambling-dice of the Basest,—must read
the narrative of those things by Besenval, and Soulavie, and the
other Court Newsmen of the time. He will see the Versailles
Galaxy all scattered asunder, grouped into new ever-shifting
Constellations. There are nods and sagacious glances;
go-betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for
this constellation, sighs for that: there is tremor, of hope or
desperation, in several hearts. There is the pale grinning Shadow
of Death, ceremoniously ushered along by another grinning Shadow,
of Etiquette: at intervals the growl of Chapel Organs, like
prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as in a kind of horrid diabolic
horse-laughter, Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!
Chapter 1.1.IV.
Louis the Unforgotten.
Poor Louis! With these it is a hollow phantasmagory, where like
mimes they mope and mowl, and utter false sounds for hire; but
with thee it is frightful earnest.
Frightful to all men is Death; from of old named King of Terrors.
Our little compact home of an Existence, where we dwelt
complaining, yet as in a home, is passing, in dark agonies, into
an Unknown of Separation, Foreignness, unconditioned Possibility.
The Heathen Emperor asks of his soul: Into what places art thou
now departing? The Catholic King must answer: To the Judgment-bar
of the Most High God! Yes, it is a summing-up of Life; a final
settling, and giving-in the 'account of the deeds done in the
body:' they are done now; and lie there unalterable, and do bear
their fruits, long as Eternity shall last.
Louis XV. had always the kingliest abhorrence of Death. Unlike
that praying Duke of Orleans, Egalite's grandfather,—for indeed
several of them had a touch of madness,—who honesty believed that
there was no Death! He, if the Court Newsmen can be believed,
started up once on a time, glowing with sulphurous contempt and
indignation on his poor Secretary, who had stumbled on the words,
feu roi d'Espagne (_the late King of Spain_): "Feu roi,
Monsieur?"—"Monseigneur," hastily answered the trembling but
adroit man of business, "c'est une titre qu'ils prennent (_'tis a
title they take_)." (_Besenval, i. 199._) Louis, we say, was not
so happy; but he did what he could. He would not suffer Death to
be spoken of; avoided the sight of churchyards, funereal
monuments, and whatsoever could bring it to mind. It is the
resource of the Ostrich; who, hard hunted, sticks his foolish
head in the ground, and would fain forget that his foolish
unseeing body is not unseen too. Or sometimes, with a spasmodic
antagonism, significant of the same thing, and of more, he would
go; or stopping his court carriages, would send into churchyards,
and ask 'how many new graves there were today,' though it gave
his poor Pompadour the disagreeablest qualms. We can figure the
thought of Louis that day, when, all royally caparisoned for
hunting, he met, at some sudden turning in the Wood of Senart, a
ragged Peasant with a coffin: "For whom?"—It was for a poor
brother slave, whom Majesty had sometimes noticed slaving in
those quarters. "What did he die of?"—"Of hunger:"—the King gave
his steed the spur. (_Campan, iii. 39._)
But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own
heart-strings, unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death
has found thee. No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous
tapestries or gilt buckram of stiffest ceremonial could keep him
out; but he is here, here at thy very life-breath, and will
extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto was a chimera
and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous
Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity;
Time is done, and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with
hideous clangour round thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open;
there must thou enter, naked, all unking'd, and await what is
appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou turnest, in dull
agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine!
Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all-too possible, in the prospect;
in the retrospect,—alas, what thing didst thou do that were not
better undone; what mortal didst thou generously help; what
sorrow hadst thou mercy on? Do the 'five hundred thousand'
ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many battle-fields from
Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge for an
epigram,—crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the
curses of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable
man! thou 'hast done evil as thou couldst:' thy whole existence
seems one hideous abortion and mistake of Nature; the use and
meaning of thee not yet known. Wert thou a fabulous Griffin,
devouring the works of men; daily dragging virgins to thy
cave;—clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear
but Death's? A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis,
seem these moments for thee.—We will pry no further into the
horrors of a sinner's death-bed.
And yet let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his soul.
Louis was a Ruler; but art not thou also one? His wide France,
look at it from the Fixed Stars (_themselves not yet
Infinitude_), is no wider than thy narrow brickfield, where thou
too didst faithfully, or didst unfaithfully. Man, 'Symbol of
Eternity imprisoned into 'Time!' it is not thy works, which are
all mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than
the least, but only the Spirit thou workest in, that can have
worth or continuance.
But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of poor Louis,
when he rose as Bien-Aime from that Metz sick-bed, really was!
What son of Adam could have swayed such incoherences into
coherence? Could he? Blindest Fortune alone has cast him on the
top of it: he swims there; can as little sway it as the drift-log
sways the wind-tossed moon-stirred Atlantic. "What have I done to
be so loved?" he said then. He may say now: What have I done to
be so hated? Thou hast done nothing, poor Louis! Thy fault is
properly even this, that thou didst nothing. What could poor
Louis do? Abdicate, and wash his hands of it,—in favour of the
first that would accept! Other clear wisdom there was none for
him. As it was, he stood gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal
extant (_a very Solecism Incarnate_), into the absurdest confused
world;—wherein at lost nothing seemed so certain as that he, the
incarnate Solecism, had five senses; that were Flying Tables
(_Tables Volantes, which vanish through the floor, to come back
reloaded_). and a Parc-aux-cerfs.
Whereby at least we have again this historical curiosity: a human
being in an original position; swimming passively, as on some
boundless 'Mother of Dead Dogs,' towards issues which he partly
saw. For Louis had withal a kind of insight in him. So, when a
new Minister of Marine, or what else it might be, came announcing
his new era, the Scarlet-woman would hear from the lips of
Majesty at supper: "He laid out his ware like another; promised
the beautifulest things in the world; not a thing of which will
come: he does not know this region; he will see." Or again: "'Tis
the twentieth time I hear all that; France will never get a Navy,
I believe." How touching also was this: "If I were Lieutenant of
Police, I would prohibit those Paris cabriolets." (_Journal de
Madame de Hausset, p. 293, &c._)
Doomed mortal;—for is it not a doom to be Solecism incarnate! A
new Roi Faineant, King Donothing; but with the strangest new
Mayor of the Palace: no bow-legged Pepin now, but that same
cloud-capt, fire-breathing Spectre of DEMOCRACY; incalculable,
which is enveloping the world!—Was Louis no wickeder than this or
the other private Donothing and Eatall; such as we often enough
see, under the name of Man, and even Man of Pleasure, cumbering
God's diligent Creation, for a time? Say, wretcheder! His
Life-solecism was seen and felt of a whole scandalised world; him
endless Oblivion cannot engulf, and swallow to endless
depths,—not yet for a generation or two.
However, be this as it will, we remark, not without interest,
that 'on the evening of the 4th,' Dame Dubarry issues from the
sick-room, with perceptible 'trouble in her visage.' It is the
fourth evening of May, year of Grace 1774. Such a whispering in
the Oeil-de-Boeuf! Is he dying then? What can be said is, that
Dubarry seems making up her packages; she sails weeping through
her gilt boudoirs, as if taking leave. D'Aiguilon and Company are
near their last card; nevertheless they will not yet throw up the
game. But as for the sacramental controversy, it is as good as
settled without being mentioned; Louis can send for his Abbe
Moudon in the course of next night, be confessed by him, some say
for the space of 'seventeen minutes,' and demand the sacraments
of his own accord.
Nay, already, in the afternoon, behold is not this your Sorceress
Dubarry with the handkerchief at her eyes, mounting D'Aiguillon's
chariot; rolling off in his Duchess's consolatory arms? She is
gone; and her place knows her no more. Vanish, false Sorceress;
into Space! Needless to hover at neighbouring Ruel; for thy day
is done. Shut are the royal palace-gates for evermore; hardly in
coming years shalt thou, under cloud of night, descend once, in
black domino, like a black night-bird, and disturb the fair
Antoinette's music-party in the Park: all Birds of Paradise
flying from thee, and musical windpipes growing mute. (_Campan,
i. 197._) Thou unclean, yet unmalignant, not unpitiable thing!
What a course was thine: from that first trucklebed (_in Joan of
Arc's country_) where thy mother bore thee, with tears, to an
unnamed father: forward, through lowest subterranean depths, and
over highest sunlit heights, of Harlotdom and Rascaldom—to the
guillotine-axe, which shears away thy vainly whimpering head!
Rest there uncursed; only buried and abolished: what else
befitted thee?
Louis, meanwhile, is in considerable impatience for his
sacraments; sends more than once to the window, to see whether
they are not coming. Be of comfort, Louis, what comfort thou
canst: they are under way, those sacraments. Towards six in the
morning, they arrive. Cardinal Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon is here,
in pontificals, with his pyxes and his tools; he approaches the
royal pillow; elevates his wafer; mutters or seems to mutter
somewhat;—and so (_as the Abbe Georgel, in words that stick to
one, expresses it_) has Louis 'made the amende honorable to God;'
so does your Jesuit construe it.—"Wa, Wa," as the wild Clotaire
groaned out, when life was departing, "what great God is this
that pulls down the strength of the strongest kings!" (_Gregorius
Turonensis, Histor. lib. iv. cap. 21._)
The amende honorable, what 'legal apology' you will, to God:—but
not, if D'Aiguillon can help it, to man. Dubarry still hovers in
his mansion at Ruel; and while there is life, there is hope.
Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, accordingly (_for he seems to be in
the secret_), has no sooner seen his pyxes and gear repacked,
then he is stepping majestically forth again, as if the work were
done! But King's Confessor Abbe Moudon starts forward; with
anxious acidulent face, twitches him by the sleeve; whispers in
his ear. Whereupon the poor Cardinal must turn round; and declare
audibly; "That his Majesty repents of any subjects of scandal he
may have given (_a pu donner_); and purposes, by the strength of
Heaven assisting him, to avoid the like—for the future!" Words
listened to by Richelieu with mastiff-face, growing blacker;
answered to, aloud, 'with an epithet,'—which Besenval will not
repeat. Old Richelieu, conqueror of Minorca, companion of
Flying-Table orgies, perforator of bedroom walls, (_Besenval, i.
159-172. Genlis; Duc de Levis, &c._) is thy day also done?
Alas, the Chapel organs may keep going; the Shrine of Sainte
Genevieve be let down, and pulled up again,—without effect. In
the evening the whole Court, with Dauphin and Dauphiness, assist
at the Chapel: priests are hoarse with chanting their 'Prayers of
Forty Hours;' and the heaving bellows blow. Almost frightful! For
the very heaven blackens; battering rain-torrents dash, with
thunder; almost drowning the organ's voice: and electric
fire-flashes make the very flambeaux on the altar pale. So that
the most, as we are told, retired, when it was over, with hurried
steps, 'in a state of meditation (_recueillement_),' and said
little or nothing. (_Weber, Memoires concernant Marie-Antoinette
(_London, 1809_), i. 22._)
So it has lasted for the better half of a fortnight; the Dubarry
gone almost a week. Besenval says, all the world was getting
impatient que cela finit; that poor Louis would have done with
it. It is now the 10th of May 1774. He will soon have done now.
This tenth May day falls into the loathsome sick-bed; but dull,
unnoticed there: for they that look out of the windows are quite
darkened; the cistern-wheel moves discordant on its axis; Life,
like a spent steed, is panting towards the goal. In their remote
apartments, Dauphin and Dauphiness stand road-ready; all grooms
and equerries booted and spurred: waiting for some signal to
escape the house of pestilence. (_One grudges to interfere with
the beautiful theatrical 'candle,' which Madame Campan (_i. 79_)
has lit on this occasion, and blown out at the moment of death.
What candles might be lit or blown out, in so large an
Establishment as that of Versailles, no man at such distance
would like to affirm: at the same time, as it was two o'clock in
a May Afternoon, and these royal Stables must have been some five
or six hundred yards from the royal sick-room, the 'candle' does
threaten to go out in spite of us. It remains burning indeed—in
her fantasy; throwing light on much in those Memoires of hers._)
And, hark! across the Oeil-de-Boeuf, what sound is that; sound
'terrible and absolutely like thunder'? It is the rush of the
whole Court, rushing as in wager, to salute the new Sovereigns:
Hail to your Majesties! The Dauphin and Dauphiness are King and
Queen! Over-powered with many emotions, they two fall on their
knees together, and, with streaming tears, exclaim, "O God, guide
us, protect us; we are too young to reign!"—Too young indeed.
Thus, in any case, 'with a sound absolutely like thunder,' has
the Horologe of Time struck, and an old Era passed away. The
Louis that was, lies forsaken, a mass of abhorred clay; abandoned
'to some poor persons, and priests of the Chapelle Ardente,'—who
make haste to put him 'in two lead coffins, pouring in abundant
spirits of wine.' The new Louis with his Court is rolling towards
Choisy, through the summer afternoon: the royal tears still flow;
but a word mispronounced by Monseigneur d'Artois sets them all
laughing, and they weep no more. Light mortals, how ye walk your
light life-minuet, over bottomless abysses, divided from you by a
film!
For the rest, the proper authorities felt that no Funeral could
be too unceremonious. Besenval himself thinks it was
unceremonious enough. Two carriages containing two noblemen of
the usher species, and a Versailles clerical person; some score
of mounted pages, some fifty palfreniers; these, with torches,
but not so much as in black, start from Versailles on the second
evening with their leaden bier. At a high trot they start; and
keep up that pace. For the jibes (_brocards_) of those Parisians,
who stand planted in two rows, all the way to St. Denis, and
'give vent to their pleasantry, the characteristic of the
nation,' do not tempt one to slacken. Towards midnight the vaults
of St. Denis receive their own; unwept by any eye of all these;
if not by poor Loque his neglected Daughter's, whose Nunnery is
hard by.
Him they crush down, and huddle under-ground, in this impatient
way; him and his era of sin and tyranny and shame; for behold a
New Era is come; the future all the brighter that the past was
base.
BOOK 1.II.
THE PAPER AGE
Chapter 1.2.I.
Astraea Redux.
A paradoxical philosopher, carrying to the uttermost length that
aphorism of Montesquieu's, 'Happy the people whose annals are
tiresome,' has said, 'Happy the people whose annals are vacant.'
In which saying, mad as it looks, may there not still be found
some grain of reason? For truly, as it has been written, 'Silence
is divine,' and of Heaven; so in all earthly things too there is
a silence which is better than any speech. Consider it well, the
Event, the thing which can be spoken of and recorded, is it not,
in all cases, some disruption, some solution of continuity? Were
it even a glad Event, it involves change, involves loss (_of
active Force_); and so far, either in the past or in the present,
is an irregularity, a disease. Stillest perseverance were our
blessedness; not dislocation and alteration,—could they be
avoided.
The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand years; only in
the thousandth year, when the woodman arrives with his axe, is
there heard an echoing through the solitudes; and the oak
announces itself when, with a far-sounding crash, it falls. How
silent too was the planting of the acorn; scattered from the lap
of some wandering wind! Nay, when our oak flowered, or put on its
leaves (_its glad Events_), what shout of proclamation could
there be? Hardly from the most observant a word of recognition.
These things befell not, they were slowly done; not in an hour,
but through the flight of days: what was to be said of it? This
hour seemed altogether as the last was, as the next would be.
It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles not of what was
done, but of what was misdone or undone; and foolish History
(_ever, more or less, the written epitomised synopsis of Rumour_)
knows so little that were not as well unknown. Attila Invasions,
Walter-the-Penniless Crusades, Sicilian Vespers, Thirty-Years
Wars: mere sin and misery; not work, but hindrance of work! For
the Earth, all this while, was yearly green and yellow with her
kind harvests; the hand of the craftsman, the mind of the thinker
rested not: and so, after all, and in spite of all, we have this
so glorious high-domed blossoming World; concerning which, poor
History may well ask, with wonder, Whence it came? She knows so
little of it, knows so much of what obstructed it, what would
have rendered it impossible. Such, nevertheless, by necessity or
foolish choice, is her rule and practice; whereby that paradox,
'Happy the people whose annals are vacant,' is not without its
true side.
And yet, what seems more pertinent to note here, there is a
stillness, not of unobstructed growth, but of passive inertness,
and symptom of imminent downfall. As victory is silent, so is
defeat. Of the opposing forces the weaker has resigned itself;
the stronger marches on, noiseless now, but rapid, inevitable:
the fall and overturn will not be noiseless. How all grows, and
has its period, even as the herbs of the fields, be it annual,
centennial, millennial! All grows and dies, each by its own
wondrous laws, in wondrous fashion of its own; spiritual things
most wondrously of all. Inscrutable, to the wisest, are these
latter; not to be prophesied of, or understood. If when the oak
stands proudliest flourishing to the eye, you know that its heart
is sound, it is not so with the man; how much less with the
Society, with the Nation of men! Of such it may be affirmed even
that the superficial aspect, that the inward feeling of full
health, is generally ominous. For indeed it is of apoplexy, so to
speak, and a plethoric lazy habit of body, that Churches,
Kingships, Social Institutions, oftenest die. Sad, when such
Institution plethorically says to itself, Take thy ease, thou
hast goods laid up;—like the fool of the Gospel, to whom it was
answered, Fool, this night thy life shall be required of thee!
Is it the healthy peace, or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on
France, for these next Ten Years? Over which the Historian can
pass lightly, without call to linger: for as yet events are not,
much less performances. Time of sunniest stillness;—shall we call
it, what all men thought it, the new Age of Gold? Call it at
least, of Paper; which in many ways is the succedaneum of Gold.
Bank-paper, wherewith you can still buy when there is no gold
left; Book-paper, splendent with Theories, Philosophies,
Sensibilities,—beautiful art, not only of revealing Thought, but
also of so beautifully hiding from us the want of Thought! Paper
is made from the rags of things that did once exist; there are
endless excellences in Paper.—What wisest Philosophe, in this
halcyon uneventful period, could prophesy that there was
approaching, big with darkness and confusion, the event of
events? Hope ushers in a Revolution,—as earthquakes are preceded
by bright weather. On the Fifth of May, fifteen years hence, old
Louis will not be sending for the Sacraments; but a new Louis,
his grandson, with the whole pomp of astonished intoxicated
France, will be opening the States-General.
Dubarrydom and its D'Aiguillons are gone forever. There is a
young, still docile, well-intentioned King; a young, beautiful
and bountiful, well-intentioned Queen; and with them all France,
as it were, become young. Maupeou and his Parlement have to
vanish into thick night; respectable Magistrates, not indifferent
to the Nation, were it only for having been opponents of the
Court, can descend unchained from their 'steep rocks at Croe in
Combrailles' and elsewhere, and return singing praises: the old
Parlement of Paris resumes its functions. Instead of a profligate
bankrupt Abbe Terray, we have now, for Controller-General, a
virtuous philosophic Turgot, with a whole Reformed France in his
head. By whom whatsoever is wrong, in Finance or otherwise, will
be righted,—as far as possible. Is it not as if Wisdom herself
were henceforth to have seat and voice in the Council of Kings?
Turgot has taken office with the noblest plainness of speech to
that effect; been listened to with the noblest royal
trustfulness. (_Turgot's Letter: Condorcet, Vie de Turgot
(_Oeuvres de Condorcet, t. v._), p. 67. The date is 24th August,
1774._) It is true, as King Louis objects, "They say he never
goes to mass;" but liberal France likes him little worse for
that; liberal France answers, "The Abbe Terray always went."
Philosophism sees, for the first time, a Philosophe (_or even a
Philosopher_) in office: she in all things will applausively
second him; neither will light old Maurepas obstruct, if he can
easily help it.
Then how 'sweet' are the manners; vice 'losing all its
deformity;' becoming decent (_as established things, making
regulations for themselves, do_); becoming almost a kind of
'sweet' virtue! Intelligence so abounds; irradiated by wit and
the art of conversation. Philosophism sits joyful in her
glittering saloons, the dinner-guest of Opulence grown ingenuous,
the very nobles proud to sit by her; and preaches, lifted up over
all Bastilles, a coming millennium. From far Ferney, Patriarch
Voltaire gives sign: veterans Diderot, D'Alembert have lived to
see this day; these with their younger Marmontels, Morellets,
Chamforts, Raynals, make glad the spicy board of rich ministering
Dowager, of philosophic Farmer-General. O nights and suppers of
the gods! Of a truth, the long-demonstrated will now be done:
'the Age of Revolutions approaches' (_as Jean Jacques wrote_),
but then of happy blessed ones. Man awakens from his long
somnambulism; chases the Phantasms that beleagured and bewitched
him. Behold the new morning glittering down the eastern steeps;
fly, false Phantasms, from its shafts of light; let the Absurd
fly utterly forsaking this lower Earth for ever. It is Truth and
Astraea Redux that (_in the shape of Philosophism_) henceforth
reign. For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be
'happy'? By victorious Analysis, and Progress of the Species,
happiness enough now awaits him. Kings can become philosophers;
or else philosophers Kings. Let but Society be once rightly
constituted,—by victorious Analysis. The stomach that is empty
shall be filled; the throat that is dry shall be wetted with
wine. Labour itself shall be all one as rest; not grievous, but
joyous. Wheatfields, one would think, cannot come to grow
untilled; no man made clayey, or made weary thereby;—unless
indeed machinery will do it? Gratuitous Tailors and Restaurateurs
may start up, at fit intervals, one as yet sees not how. But if
each will, according to rule of Benevolence, have a care for all,
then surely—no one will be uncared for. Nay, who knows but, by
sufficiently victorious Analysis, 'human life may be indefinitely
lengthened,' and men get rid of Death, as they have already done
of the Devil? We shall then be happy in spite of Death and the
Devil.—So preaches magniloquent Philosophism her Redeunt Saturnia
regna.
The prophetic song of Paris and its Philosophes is audible enough
in the Versailles Oeil-de-Boeuf; and the Oeil-de-Boeuf, intent
chiefly on nearer blessedness, can answer, at worst, with a
polite "Why not?" Good old cheery Maurepas is too joyful a Prime
Minister to dash the world's joy. Sufficient for the day be its
own evil. Cheery old man, he cuts his jokes, and hovers careless
along; his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so be he may
please all persons. The simple young King, whom a Maurepas cannot
think of troubling with business, has retired into the interior
apartments; taciturn, irresolute; though with a sharpness of
temper at times: he, at length, determines on a little smithwork;
and so, in apprenticeship with a Sieur Gamain (_whom one day he
shall have little cause to bless_), is learning to make locks.
(_Campan, i. 125._) It appears further, he understood Geography;
and could read English. Unhappy young King, his childlike trust
in that foolish old Maurepas deserved another return. But friend
and foe, destiny and himself have combined to do him hurt.
Meanwhile the fair young Queen, in her halls of state, walks like
a goddess of Beauty, the cynosure of all eyes; as yet mingles not
with affairs; heeds not the future; least of all, dreads it.
Weber and Campan (_Ib. i. 100-151. Weber, i. 11-50._) have
pictured her, there within the royal tapestries, in bright
boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand and Little Toilette;
with a whole brilliant world waiting obsequious on her glance:
fair young daughter of Time, what things has Time in store for
thee! Like Earth's brightest Appearance, she moves gracefully,
environed with the grandeur of Earth: a reality, and yet a magic
vision; for, behold, shall not utter Darkness swallow it! The
soft young heart adopts orphans, portions meritorious maids,
delights to succour the poor,—such poor as come picturesquely in
her way; and sets the fashion of doing it; for as was said,
Benevolence has now begun reigning. In her Duchess de Polignac,
in Princess de Lamballe, she enjoys something almost like
friendship; now too, after seven long years, she has a child, and
soon even a Dauphin, of her own; can reckon herself, as Queens
go, happy in a husband.
Events? The Grand events are but charitable Feasts of Morals
(_Fetes des moeurs_), with their Prizes and Speeches; Poissarde
Processions to the Dauphin's cradle; above all, Flirtations,
their rise, progress, decline and fall. There are Snow-statues
raised by the poor in hard winter to a Queen who has given them
fuel. There are masquerades, theatricals; beautifyings of little
Trianon, purchase and repair of St. Cloud; journeyings from the
summer Court-Elysium to the winter one. There are poutings and
grudgings from the Sardinian Sisters-in-law (_for the Princes too
are wedded_); little jealousies, which Court-Etiquette can
moderate. Wholly the lightest-hearted frivolous foam of
Existence; yet an artfully refined foam; pleasant were it not so
costly, like that which mantles on the wine of Champagne!
Monsieur, the King's elder Brother, has set up for a kind of wit;
and leans towards the Philosophe side. Monseigneur d'Artois pulls
the mask from a fair impertinent; fights a duel in
consequence,—almost drawing blood. (_Besenval, ii. 282-330._) He
has breeches of a kind new in this world;—a fabulous kind; 'four
tall lackeys,' says Mercier, as if he had seen it, 'hold him up
in the air, that he may fall into the garment without vestige of
wrinkle; from which rigorous encasement the same four, in the
same way, and with more effort, must deliver him at night.'
(_Mercier, Nouveau Paris, iii. 147._) This last is he who now, as
a gray time-worn man, sits desolate at Gratz; (_A.D. 1834._)
having winded up his destiny with the Three Days. In such sort
are poor mortals swept and shovelled to and fro.
Chapter 1.2.II.
Petition in Hieroglyphs.
With the working people, again it is not so well. Unlucky! For
there are twenty to twenty-five millions of them. Whom, however,
we lump together into a kind of dim compendious unity, monstrous
but dim, far off, as the canaille; or, more humanely, as 'the
masses.' Masses, indeed: and yet, singular to say, if, with an
effort of imagination, thou follow them, over broad France, into
their clay hovels, into their garrets and hutches, the masses
consist all of units. Every unit of whom has his own heart and
sorrows; stands covered there with his own skin, and if you prick
him he will bleed. O purple Sovereignty, Holiness, Reverence;
thou, for example, Cardinal Grand-Almoner, with thy plush
covering of honour, who hast thy hands strengthened with
dignities and moneys, and art set on thy world watch-tower
solemnly, in sight of God, for such ends,—what a thought: that
every unit of these masses is a miraculous Man, even as thyself
art; struggling, with vision, or with blindness, for his infinite
Kingdom (_this life which he has got, once only, in the middle of
Eternities_); with a spark of the Divinity, what thou callest an
immortal soul, in him!
Dreary, languid do these struggle in their obscure remoteness;
their hearth cheerless, their diet thin. For them, in this world,
rises no Era of Hope; hardly now in the other,—if it be not hope
in the gloomy rest of Death, for their faith too is failing.
Untaught, uncomforted, unfed! A dumb generation; their voice only
an inarticulate cry: spokesman, in the King's Council, in the
world's forum, they have none that finds credence. At rare
intervals (_as now, in 1775_), they will fling down their hoes
and hammers; and, to the astonishment of thinking mankind,
(_Lacretelle, France pendant le 18me Siecle, ii. 455. Biographie
Universelle, para Turgot (_by Durozoir_)._) flock hither and
thither, dangerous, aimless; get the length even of Versailles.
Turgot is altering the Corn-trade, abrogating the absurdest
Corn-laws; there is dearth, real, or were it even 'factitious;'
an indubitable scarcity of bread. And so, on the second day of
May 1775, these waste multitudes do here, at Versailles Chateau,
in wide-spread wretchedness, in sallow faces, squalor, winged
raggedness, present, as in legible hieroglyphic writing, their
Petition of Grievances. The Chateau gates have to be shut; but
the King will appear on the balcony, and speak to them. They have
seen the King's face; their Petition of Grievances has been, if
not read, looked at. For answer, two of them are hanged, 'on a
new gallows forty feet high;' and the rest driven back to their
dens,—for a time.
Clearly a difficult 'point' for Government, that of dealing with
these masses;—if indeed it be not rather the sole point and
problem of Government, and all other points mere accidental
crotchets, superficialities, and beatings of the wind! For let
Charter-Chests, Use and Wont, Law common and special say what
they will, the masses count to so many millions of units; made,
to all appearance, by God,—whose Earth this is declared to be.
Besides, the people are not without ferocity; they have sinews
and indignation. Do but look what holiday old Marquis Mirabeau,
the crabbed old friend of Men, looked on, in these same years,
from his lodging, at the Baths of Mont d'Or: 'The savages
descending in torrents from the mountains; our people ordered not
to go out. The Curate in surplice and stole; Justice in its
peruke; Marechausee sabre in hand, guarding the place, till the
bagpipes can begin. The dance interrupted, in a quarter of an
hour, by battle; the cries, the squealings of children, of infirm
persons, and other assistants, tarring them on, as the rabble
does when dogs fight: frightful men, or rather frightful wild
animals, clad in jupes of coarse woollen, with large girdles of
leather studded with copper nails; of gigantic stature,
heightened by high wooden-clogs (_sabots_); rising on tiptoe to
see the fight; tramping time to it; rubbing their sides with
their elbows: their faces haggard (_figures haves_), and covered
with their long greasy hair; the upper part of the visage waxing
pale, the lower distorting itself into the attempt at a cruel
laugh and a sort of ferocious impatience. And these people pay
the taille! And you want further to take their salt from them!
And you know not what it is you are stripping barer, or as you
call it, governing; what by the spurt of your pen, in its cold
dastard indifference, you will fancy you can starve always with
impunity; always till the catastrophe come!—Ah Madame, such
Government by Blindman's-buff, stumbling along too far, will end
in the General Overturn (_culbute generale_). (_Memoires de
Mirabeau, ecrits par Lui-meme, par son Pere, son Oncle et son
Fils Adoptif (_Paris, 34-5_), ii.186._)
Undoubtedly a dark feature this in an Age of Gold,—Age, at least,
of Paper and Hope! Meanwhile, trouble us not with thy prophecies,
O croaking Friend of Men: 'tis long that we have heard such; and
still the old world keeps wagging, in its old way.
Chapter 1.2.III.
Questionable.
Or is this same Age of Hope itself but a simulacrum; as Hope too
often is? Cloud-vapour with rainbows painted on it, beautiful to
see, to sail towards,—which hovers over Niagara Falls? In that
case, victorious Analysis will have enough to do.
Alas, yes! a whole world to remake, if she could see it; work for
another than she! For all is wrong, and gone out of joint; the
inward spiritual, and the outward economical; head or heart,
there is no soundness in it. As indeed, evils of all sorts are
more or less of kin, and do usually go together: especially it is
an old truth, that wherever huge physical evil is, there, as the
parent and origin of it, has moral evil to a proportionate extent
been. Before those five-and-twenty labouring Millions, for
instance, could get that haggardness of face, which old Mirabeau
now looks on, in a Nation calling itself Christian, and calling
man the brother of man,—what unspeakable, nigh infinite
Dishonesty (_of seeming and not being_) in all manner of Rulers,
and appointed Watchers, spiritual and temporal, must there not,
through long ages, have gone on accumulating! It will accumulate:
moreover, it will reach a head; for the first of all Gospels is
this, that a Lie cannot endure for ever.
In fact, if we pierce through that rosepink vapour of
Sentimentalism, Philanthropy, and Feasts of Morals, there lies
behind it one of the sorriest spectacles. You might ask, What
bonds that ever held a human society happily together, or held it
together at all, are in force here? It is an unbelieving people;
which has suppositions, hypotheses, and froth-systems of
victorious Analysis; and for belief this mainly, that Pleasure is
pleasant. Hunger they have for all sweet things; and the law of
Hunger; but what other law? Within them, or over them, properly
none!
Their King has become a King Popinjay; with his Maurepas
Government, gyrating as the weather-cock does, blown about by
every wind. Above them they see no God; or they even do not look
above, except with astronomical glasses. The Church indeed still
is; but in the most submissive state; quite tamed by
Philosophism; in a singularly short time; for the hour was come.
Some twenty years ago, your Archbishop Beaumont would not even
let the poor Jansenists get buried: your Lomenie Brienne (_a
rising man, whom we shall meet with yet_) could, in the name of
the Clergy, insist on having the Anti-protestant laws, which
condemn to death for preaching, 'put in execution.' (_Boissy
d'Anglas, Vie de Malesherbes, i. 15-22._) And, alas, now not so
much as Baron Holbach's Atheism can be burnt,—except as
pipe-matches by the private speculative individual. Our Church
stands haltered, dumb, like a dumb ox; lowing only for provender
(_of tithes_); content if it can have that; or, dumbly, dully
expecting its further doom. And the Twenty Millions of 'haggard
faces;' and, as finger-post and guidance to them in their dark
struggle, 'a gallows forty feet high'! Certainly a singular
Golden Age; with its Feasts of Morals, its 'sweet manners,' its
sweet institutions (_institutions douces_); betokening nothing
but peace among men!—Peace? O Philosophe-Sentimentalism, what
hast thou to do with peace, when thy mother's name is Jezebel?
Foul Product of still fouler Corruption, thou with the corruption
art doomed!
Meanwhile it is singular how long the rotten will hold together,
provided you do not handle it roughly. For whole generations it
continues standing, 'with a ghastly affectation of life,' after
all life and truth has fled out of it; so loth are men to quit
their old ways; and, conquering indolence and inertia, venture on
new. Great truly is the Actual; is the Thing that has rescued
itself from bottomless deeps of theory and possibility, and
stands there as a definite indisputable Fact, whereby men do work
and live, or once did so. Widely shall men cleave to that, while
it will endure; and quit it with regret, when it gives way under
them. Rash enthusiast of Change, beware! Hast thou well
considered all that Habit does in this life of ours; how all
Knowledge and all Practice hang wondrous over infinite abysses of
the Unknown, Impracticable; and our whole being is an infinite
abyss, over-arched by Habit, as by a thin Earth-rind, laboriously
built together?
But if 'every man,' as it has been written, 'holds confined
within him a mad-man,' what must every Society do;—Society, which
in its commonest state is called 'the standing miracle of this
world'! 'Without such Earth-rind of Habit,' continues our author,
'call it System of Habits, in a word, fixed ways of acting and of
believing,—Society would not exist at all. With such it exists,
better or worse. Herein too, in this its System of Habits,
acquired, retained how you will, lies the true Law-Code and
Constitution of a Society; the only Code, though an unwritten one
which it can in nowise disobey. The thing we call written Code,
Constitution, Form of Government, and the like, what is it but
some miniature image, and solemnly expressed summary of this
unwritten Code? Is,—or rather alas, is not; but only should be,
and always tends to be! In which latter discrepancy lies struggle
without end.' And now, we add in the same dialect, let but, by
ill chance, in such ever-enduring struggle,—your 'thin
Earth-rind' be once broken! The fountains of the great deep boil
forth; fire-fountains, enveloping, engulfing. Your 'Earth-rind'
is shattered, swallowed up; instead of a green flowery world,
there is a waste wild-weltering chaos:—which has again, with
tumult and struggle, to make itself into a world.
On the other hand, be this conceded: Where thou findest a Lie
that is oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to
be extinguished; they wait and cry earnestly for extinction.
Think well, meanwhile, in what spirit thou wilt do it: not with
hatred, with headlong selfish violence; but in clearness of
heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity. Thou wouldst not
replace such extinct Lie by a new Lie, which a new Injustice of
thy own were; the parent of still other Lies? Whereby the latter
end of that business were worse than the beginning.
So, however, in this world of ours, which has both an
indestructible hope in the Future, and an indestructible tendency
to persevere as in the Past, must Innovation and Conservation
wage their perpetual conflict, as they may and can. Wherein the
'daemonic element,' that lurks in all human things, may
doubtless, some once in the thousand years—get vent! But indeed
may we not regret that such conflict,—which, after all, is but
like that classical one of 'hate-filled Amazons with heroic
Youths,' and will end in embraces,—should usually be so
spasmodic? For Conservation, strengthened by that mightiest
quality in us, our indolence, sits for long ages, not victorious
only, which she should be; but tyrannical, incommunicative. She
holds her adversary as if annihilated; such adversary lying, all
the while, like some buried Enceladus; who, to gain the smallest
freedom, must stir a whole Trinacria with it Aetnas.
Wherefore, on the whole, we will honour a Paper Age too; an Era
of hope! For in this same frightful process of Enceladus Revolt;
when the task, on which no mortal would willingly enter, has
become imperative, inevitable,—is it not even a kindness of
Nature that she lures us forward by cheerful promises, fallacious
or not; and a whole generation plunges into the Erebus Blackness,
lighted on by an Era of Hope? It has been well said: 'Man is
based on Hope; he has properly no other possession but Hope; this
habitation of his is named the Place of Hope.'
Chapter 1.2.IV.
Maurepas.
But now, among French hopes, is not that of old M. de Maurepas
one of the best-grounded; who hopes that he, by dexterity, shall
contrive to continue Minister? Nimble old man, who for all
emergencies has his light jest; and ever in the worst confusion
will emerge, cork-like, unsunk! Small care to him is
Perfectibility, Progress of the Species, and Astraea Redux: good
only, that a man of light wit, verging towards fourscore, can in
the seat of authority feel himself important among men. Shall we
call him, as haughty Chateauroux was wont of old, 'M. Faquinet
(_Diminutive of Scoundrel_)'? In courtier dialect, he is now
named 'the Nestor of France;' such governing Nestor as France
has.
At bottom, nevertheless, it might puzzle one to say where the
Government of France, in these days, specially is. In that
Chateau of Versailles, we have Nestor, King, Queen, ministers and
clerks, with paper-bundles tied in tape: but the Government? For
Government is a thing that governs, that guides; and if need be,
compels. Visible in France there is not such a thing. Invisible,
inorganic, on the other hand, there is: in Philosophe saloons, in
Oeil-de-Boeuf galleries; in the tongue of the babbler, in the pen
of the pamphleteer. Her Majesty appearing at the Opera is
applauded; she returns all radiant with joy. Anon the applauses
wax fainter, or threaten to cease; she is heavy of heart, the
light of her face has fled. Is Sovereignty some poor Montgolfier;
which, blown into by the popular wind, grows great and mounts; or
sinks flaccid, if the wind be withdrawn? France was long a
'Despotism tempered by Epigrams;' and now, it would seem, the
Epigrams have get the upper hand.
Happy were a young 'Louis the Desired' to make France happy; if
it did not prove too troublesome, and he only knew the way. But
there is endless discrepancy round him; so many claims and
clamours; a mere confusion of tongues. Not reconcilable by man;
not manageable, suppressible, save by some strongest and wisest
men;—which only a lightly-jesting lightly-gyrating M. de Maurepas
can so much as subsist amidst. Philosophism claims her new Era,
meaning thereby innumerable things. And claims it in no faint
voice; for France at large, hitherto mute, is now beginning to
speak also; and speaks in that same sense. A huge, many-toned
sound; distant, yet not unimpressive. On the other hand, the
Oeil-de-Boeuf, which, as nearest, one can hear best, claims with
shrill vehemence that the Monarchy be as heretofore a Horn of
Plenty; wherefrom loyal courtiers may draw,—to the just support
of the throne. Let Liberalism and a New Era, if such is the wish,
be introduced; only no curtailment of the royal moneys? Which
latter condition, alas, is precisely the impossible one.
Philosophism, as we saw, has got her Turgot made
Controller-General; and there shall be endless reformation.
Unhappily this Turgot could continue only twenty months. With a
miraculous Fortunatus' Purse in his Treasury, it might have
lasted longer; with such Purse indeed, every French
Controller-General, that would prosper in these days, ought first
to provide himself. But here again may we not remark the bounty
of Nature in regard to Hope? Man after man advances confident to
the Augean Stable, as if he could clean it; expends his little
fraction of an ability on it, with such cheerfulness; does, in so
far as he was honest, accomplish something. Turgot has faculties;
honesty, insight, heroic volition; but the Fortunatus' Purse he
has not. Sanguine Controller-General! a whole pacific French
Revolution may stand schemed in the head of the thinker; but who
shall pay the unspeakable 'indemnities' that will be needed?
Alas, far from that: on the very threshold of the business, he
proposes that the Clergy, the Noblesse, the very Parlements be
subjected to taxes! One shriek of indignation and astonishment
reverberates through all the Chateau galleries; M. de Maurepas
has to gyrate: the poor King, who had written few weeks ago, 'Il
n'y a que vous et moi qui aimions le peuple (_There is none but
you and I that has the people's interest at heart_),' must write
now a dismissal; (_In May, 1776._) and let the French Revolution
accomplish itself, pacifically or not, as it can.
Hope, then, is deferred? Deferred; not destroyed, or abated. Is
not this, for example, our Patriarch Voltaire, after long years
of absence, revisiting Paris? With face shrivelled to nothing;
with 'huge peruke a la Louis Quatorze, which leaves only two eyes
"visible" glittering like carbuncles,' the old man is here.
(_February, 1778._) What an outburst! Sneering Paris has suddenly
grown reverent; devotional with Hero-worship. Nobles have
disguised themselves as tavern-waiters to obtain sight of him:
the loveliest of France would lay their hair beneath his feet.
'His chariot is the nucleus of a comet; whose train fills whole
streets:' they crown him in the theatre, with immortal vivats;
'finally stifle him under roses,'—for old Richelieu recommended
opium in such state of the nerves, and the excessive Patriarch
took too much. Her Majesty herself had some thought of sending
for him; but was dissuaded. Let Majesty consider it,
nevertheless. The purport of this man's existence has been to
wither up and annihilate all whereon Majesty and Worship for the
present rests: and is it so that the world recognises him? With
Apotheosis; as its Prophet and Speaker, who has spoken wisely the
thing it longed to say? Add only, that the body of this same
rose-stifled, beatified-Patriarch cannot get buried except by
stealth. It is wholly a notable business; and France, without
doubt, is big (_what the Germans call 'Of good Hope'_): we shall
wish her a happy birth-hour, and blessed fruit.
Beaumarchais too has now winded-up his Law-Pleadings
(_Memoires_); (_1773-6. See Oeuvres de Beaumarchais; where they,
and the history of them, are given._) not without result, to
himself and to the world. Caron Beaumarchais (_or de
Beaumarchais, for he got ennobled_) had been born poor, but
aspiring, esurient; with talents, audacity, adroitness; above
all, with the talent for intrigue: a lean, but also a tough,
indomitable man. Fortune and dexterity brought him to the
harpsichord of Mesdames, our good Princesses Loque, Graille and
Sisterhood. Still better, Paris Duvernier, the Court-Banker,
honoured him with some confidence; to the length even of
transactions in cash. Which confidence, however, Duvernier's
Heir, a person of quality, would not continue. Quite otherwise;
there springs a Lawsuit from it: wherein tough Beaumarchais,
losing both money and repute, is, in the opinion of
Judge-Reporter Goezman, of the Parlement Maupeou, of a whole
indifferent acquiescing world, miserably beaten. In all men's
opinions, only not in his own! Inspired by the indignation, which
makes, if not verses, satirical law-papers, the withered
Music-master, with a desperate heroism, takes up his lost cause
in spite of the world; fights for it, against Reporters,
Parlements and Principalities, with light banter, with clear
logic; adroitly, with an inexhaustible toughness and resource,
like the skilfullest fencer; on whom, so skilful is he, the whole
world now looks. Three long years it lasts; with wavering
fortune. In fine, after labours comparable to the Twelve of
Hercules, our unconquerable Caron triumphs; regains his Lawsuit
and Lawsuits; strips Reporter Goezman of the judicial ermine;
covering him with a perpetual garment of obloquy instead:—and in
regard to the Parlement Maupeou (_which he has helped to
extinguish_), to Parlements of all kinds, and to French Justice
generally, gives rise to endless reflections in the minds of men.
Thus has Beaumarchais, like a lean French Hercules, ventured
down, driven by destiny, into the Nether Kingdoms; and
victoriously tamed hell-dogs there. He also is henceforth among
the notabilities of his generation.
Chapter 1.2.V.
Astraea Redux without Cash.
Observe, however, beyond the Atlantic, has not the new day verily
dawned! Democracy, as we said, is born; storm-girt, is struggling
for life and victory. A sympathetic France rejoices over the
Rights of Man; in all saloons, it is said, What a spectacle! Now
too behold our Deane, our Franklin, American Plenipotentiaries,
here in position soliciting; (_1777; Deane somewhat earlier:
Franklin remained till 1785._) the sons of the Saxon Puritans,
with their Old-Saxon temper, Old-Hebrew culture, sleek Silas,
sleek Benjamin, here on such errand, among the light children of
Heathenism, Monarchy, Sentimentalism, and the Scarlet-woman. A
spectacle indeed; over which saloons may cackle joyous; though
Kaiser Joseph, questioned on it, gave this answer, most
unexpected from a Philosophe: "Madame, the trade I live by is
that of royalist (_Mon metier a moi c'est d'etre royaliste_)."
So thinks light Maurepas too; but the wind of Philosophism and
force of public opinion will blow him round. Best wishes,
meanwhile, are sent; clandestine privateers armed. Paul Jones
shall equip his Bon Homme Richard: weapons, military stores can
be smuggled over (_if the English do not seize them_); wherein,
once more Beaumarchais, dimly as the Giant Smuggler becomes
visible,—filling his own lank pocket withal. But surely, in any
case, France should have a Navy. For which great object were not
now the time: now when that proud Termagant of the Seas has her
hands full? It is true, an impoverished Treasury cannot build
ships; but the hint once given (_which Beaumarchais says he
gave_), this and the other loyal Seaport, Chamber of Commerce,
will build and offer them. Goodly vessels bound into the waters;
a Ville de Paris, Leviathan of ships.
And now when gratuitous three-deckers dance there at anchor, with
streamers flying; and eleutheromaniac Philosophedom grows ever
more clamorous, what can a Maurepas do—but gyrate? Squadrons
cross the ocean: Gages, Lees, rough Yankee Generals, 'with
woollen night-caps under their hats,' present arms to the
far-glancing Chivalry of France; and new-born Democracy sees, not
without amazement, 'Despotism tempered by Epigrams fight at her
side. So, however, it is. King's forces and heroic volunteers;
Rochambeaus, Bouilles, Lameths, Lafayettes, have drawn their
swords in this sacred quarrel of mankind;—shall draw them again
elsewhere, in the strangest way.
Off Ushant some naval thunder is heard. In the course of which
did our young Prince, Duke de Chartres, 'hide in the hold;' or
did he materially, by active heroism, contribute to the victory?
Alas, by a second edition, we learn that there was no victory; or
that English Keppel had it. (_27th July, 1778._) Our poor young
Prince gets his Opera plaudits changed into mocking tehees; and
cannot become Grand-Admiral,—the source to him of woes which one
may call endless.
Woe also for Ville de Paris, the Leviathan of ships! English
Rodney has clutched it, and led it home, with the rest; so
successful was his new 'manoeuvre of breaking the enemy's line.'
(_9th and 12th April, 1782._) It seems as if, according to Louis
XV., 'France were never to have a Navy.' Brave Suffren must
return from Hyder Ally and the Indian Waters; with small result;
yet with great glory for 'six non-defeats;—which indeed, with
such seconding as he had, one may reckon heroic. Let the old
sea-hero rest now, honoured of France, in his native Cevennes
mountains; send smoke, not of gunpowder, but mere culinary smoke,
through the old chimneys of the Castle of Jales,—which one day,
in other hands, shall have other fame. Brave Laperouse shall by
and by lift anchor, on philanthropic Voyage of Discovery; for the
King knows Geography. (_August 1st, 1785._) But, alas, this also
will not prosper: the brave Navigator goes, and returns not; the
Seekers search far seas for him in vain. He has vanished
trackless into blue Immensity; and only some mournful mysterious
shadow of him hovers long in all heads and hearts.
Neither, while the War yet lasts, will Gibraltar surrender. Not
though Crillon, Nassau-Siegen, with the ablest projectors extant,
are there; and Prince Conde and Prince d'Artois have hastened to
help. Wondrous leather-roofed Floating-batteries, set afloat by
French-Spanish Pacte de Famille, give gallant summons: to which,
nevertheless, Gibraltar answers Plutonically, with mere torrents
of redhot iron,—as if stone Calpe had become a throat of the Pit;
and utters such a Doom's-blast of a No, as all men must credit.
(_Annual Register (_Dodsley's_), xxv. 258-267. September,
October, 1782._)
And so, with this loud explosion, the noise of War has ceased; an
Age of Benevolence may hope, for ever. Our noble volunteers of
Freedom have returned, to be her missionaries. Lafayette, as the
matchless of his time, glitters in the Versailles Oeil-de-Beouf;
has his Bust set up in the Paris Hotel-de-Ville. Democracy stands
inexpugnable, immeasurable, in her New World; has even a foot
lifted towards the Old;—and our French Finances, little
strengthened by such work, are in no healthy way.
What to do with the Finance? This indeed is the great question: a
small but most black weather-symptom, which no radiance of
universal hope can cover. We saw Turgot cast forth from the
Controllership, with shrieks,—for want of a Fortunatus' Purse. As
little could M. de Clugny manage the duty; or indeed do anything,
but consume his wages; attain 'a place in History,' where as an
ineffectual shadow thou beholdest him still lingering;—and let
the duty manage itself. Did Genevese Necker possess such a Purse,
then? He possessed banker's skill, banker's honesty; credit of
all kinds, for he had written Academic Prize Essays, struggled
for India Companies, given dinners to Philosophes, and 'realised
a fortune in twenty years.' He possessed, further, a taciturnity
and solemnity; of depth, or else of dulness. How singular for
Celadon Gibbon, false swain as he had proved; whose father,
keeping most probably his own gig, 'would not hear of such a
union,'—to find now his forsaken Demoiselle Curchod sitting in
the high places of the world, as Minister's Madame, and 'Necker
not jealous!' (_Gibbon's Letters: date, 16th June, 1777, &c._)
A new young Demoiselle, one day to be famed as a Madame and De
Stael, was romping about the knees of the Decline and Fall: the
lady Necker founds Hospitals; gives solemn Philosophe
dinner-parties, to cheer her exhausted Controller-General.
Strange things have happened: by clamour of Philosophism,
management of Marquis de Pezay, and Poverty constraining even
Kings. And so Necker, Atlas-like, sustains the burden of the
Finances, for five years long? (_Till May, 1781._) Without wages,
for he refused such; cheered only by Public Opinion, and the
ministering of his noble Wife. With many thoughts in him, it is
hoped;—which, however, he is shy of uttering. His Compte Rendu,
published by the royal permission, fresh sign of a New Era, shows
wonders;—which what but the genius of some Atlas-Necker can
prevent from becoming portents? In Necker's head too there is a
whole pacific French Revolution, of its kind; and in that
taciturn dull depth, or deep dulness, ambition enough.
Meanwhile, alas, his Fotunatus' Purse turns out to be little
other than the old 'vectigal of Parsimony.' Nay, he too has to
produce his scheme of taxing: Clergy, Noblesse to be taxed;
Provincial Assemblies, and the rest,—like a mere Turgot! The
expiring M. de Maurepas must gyrate one other time. Let Necker
also depart; not unlamented.
Great in a private station, Necker looks on from the distance;
abiding his time. 'Eighty thousand copies' of his new Book, which
he calls Administration des Finances, will be sold in few days.
He is gone; but shall return, and that more than once, borne by a
whole shouting Nation. Singular Controller-General of the
Finances; once Clerk in Thelusson's Bank!
Chapter 1.2.VI.
Windbags.
So marches the world, in this its Paper Age, or Era of Hope. Not
without obstructions, war-explosions; which, however, heard from
such distance, are little other than a cheerful marching-music.
If indeed that dark living chaos of Ignorance and Hunger,
five-and-twenty million strong, under your feet,—were to begin
playing!
For the present, however, consider Longchamp; now when Lent is
ending, and the glory of Paris and France has gone forth, as in
annual wont. Not to assist at Tenebris Masses, but to sun itself
and show itself, and salute the Young Spring. (_Mercier, Tableau
de Paris, ii. 51. Louvet, Roman de Faublas, &c._) Manifold,
bright-tinted, glittering with gold; all through the Bois de
Boulogne, in longdrawn variegated rows;—like longdrawn living
flower-borders, tulips, dahlias, lilies of the valley; all in
their moving flower-pots (_of new-gilt carriages_): pleasure of
the eye, and pride of life! So rolls and dances the Procession:
steady, of firm assurance, as if it rolled on adamant and the
foundations of the world; not on mere heraldic parchment,—under
which smoulders a lake of fire. Dance on, ye foolish ones; ye
sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your fathers
have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from
of old, written: The wages of sin is death?
But at Longchamp, as elsewhere, we remark for one thing, that
dame and cavalier are waited on each by a kind of human familiar,
named jokei. Little elf, or imp; though young, already withered;
with its withered air of premature vice, of knowingness, of
completed elf-hood: useful in various emergencies. The name jokei
(_jockey_) comes from the English; as the thing also fancies that
it does. Our Anglomania, in fact , is grown considerable;
prophetic of much. If France is to be free, why shall she not,
now when mad war is hushed, love neighbouring Freedom? Cultivated
men, your Dukes de Liancourt, de la Rochefoucault admire the
English Constitution, the English National Character; would
import what of it they can.
Of what is lighter, especially if it be light as wind, how much
easier the freightage! Non-Admiral Duke de Chartres (_not yet
d'Orleans or Egalite_) flies to and fro across the Strait;
importing English Fashions; this he, as hand-and-glove with an
English Prince of Wales, is surely qualified to do. Carriages and
saddles; top-boots and redingotes, as we call riding-coats. Nay
the very mode of riding: for now no man on a level with his age
but will trot a l'Anglaise, rising in the stirrups; scornful of
the old sitfast method, in which, according to Shakspeare,
'butter and eggs' go to market. Also, he can urge the fervid
wheels, this brave Chartres of ours; no whip in Paris is rasher
and surer than the unprofessional one of Monseigneur.
Elf jokeis, we have seen; but see now real Yorkshire jockeys, and
what they ride on, and train: English racers for French Races.
These likewise we owe first (_under the Providence of the Devil_)
to Monseigneur. Prince d'Artois also has his stud of racers.
Prince d'Artois has withal the strangest horseleech: a
moonstruck, much-enduring individual, of Neuchatel in
Switzerland,—named Jean Paul Marat. A problematic Chevalier
d'Eon, now in petticoats, now in breeches, is no less problematic
in London than in Paris; and causes bets and lawsuits. Beautiful
days of international communion! Swindlery and Blackguardism have
stretched hands across the Channel, and saluted mutually: on the
racecourse of Vincennes or Sablons, behold in English
curricle-and-four, wafted glorious among the principalities and
rascalities, an English Dr. Dodd, (_Adelung, Geschichte der
Menschlichen Narrheit, para Dodd._)—for whom also the too early
gallows gapes.
Duke de Chartres was a young Prince of great promise, as young
Princes often are; which promise unfortunately has belied itself.
With the huge Orleans Property, with Duke de Penthievre for
Father-in-law (_and now the young Brother-in-law Lamballe killed
by excesses_),—he will one day be the richest man in France.
Meanwhile, 'his hair is all falling out, his blood is quite
spoiled,'—by early transcendentalism of debauchery. Carbuncles
stud his face; dark studs on a ground of burnished copper. A most
signal failure, this young Prince! The stuff prematurely burnt
out of him: little left but foul smoke and ashes of expiring
sensualities: what might have been Thought, Insight, and even
Conduct, gone now, or fast going,—to confused darkness, broken by
bewildering dazzlements; to obstreperous crotchets; to activities
which you may call semi-delirious, or even semi-galvanic! Paris
affects to laugh at his charioteering; but he heeds not such
laughter.
On the other hand, what a day, not of laughter, was that, when he
threatened, for lucre's sake, to lay sacrilegious hand on the
Palais-Royal Garden! (_1781-82. (_Dulaure, viii. 423._)_) The
flower-parterres shall be riven up; the Chestnut Avenues shall
fall: time-honoured boscages, under which the Opera Hamadryads
were wont to wander, not inexorable to men. Paris moans aloud.
Philidor, from his Cafe de la Regence, shall no longer look on
greenness; the loungers and losels of the world, where now shall
they haunt? In vain is moaning. The axe glitters; the sacred
groves fall crashing,—for indeed Monseigneur was short of money:
the Opera Hamadryads fly with shrieks. Shriek not, ye Opera
Hamadryads; or not as those that have no comfort. He will
surround your Garden with new edifices and piazzas: though
narrowed, it shall be replanted; dizened with hydraulic jets,
cannon which the sun fires at noon; things bodily, things
spiritual, such as man has not imagined;—and in the Palais-Royal
shall again, and more than ever, be the Sorcerer's Sabbath and
Satan-at-Home of our Planet.
What will not mortals attempt? From remote Annonay in the
Vivarais, the Brothers Montgolfier send up their paper-dome,
filled with the smoke of burnt wool. (_5th June, 1783._) The
Vivarais provincial assembly is to be prorogued this same day:
Vivarais Assembly-members applaud, and the shouts of congregated
men. Will victorious Analysis scale the very Heavens, then?
Paris hears with eager wonder; Paris shall ere long see. From
Reveilion's Paper-warehouse there, in the Rue St. Antoine (_a
noted Warehouse_),—the new Montgolfier air-ship launches itself.
Ducks and poultry are borne skyward: but now shall men be borne.
(_October and November, 1783._) Nay, Chemist Charles thinks of
hydrogen and glazed silk. Chemist Charles will himself ascend,
from the Tuileries Garden; Montgolfier solemnly cutting the cord.
By Heaven, he also mounts, he and another? Ten times ten thousand
hearts go palpitating; all tongues are mute with wonder and fear;
till a shout, like the voice of seas, rolls after him, on his
wild way. He soars, he dwindles upwards; has become a mere
gleaming circlet,—like some Turgotine snuff-box, what we call
'Turgotine Platitude;' like some new daylight Moon! Finally he
descends; welcomed by the universe. Duchess Polignac, with a
party, is in the Bois de Boulogne, waiting; though it is drizzly
winter; the 1st of December 1783. The whole chivalry of France,
Duke de Chartres foremost, gallops to receive him. (_Lacretelle,
18me Siecle, iii. 258._)
Beautiful invention; mounting heavenward, so beautifully,—so
unguidably! Emblem of much, and of our Age of Hope itself; which
shall mount, specifically-light, majestically in this same
manner; and hover,—tumbling whither Fate will. Well if it do not,
Pilatre-like, explode; and demount all the more tragically!—So,
riding on windbags, will men scale the Empyrean.
Or observe Herr Doctor Mesmer, in his spacious Magnetic Halls.
Long-stoled he walks; reverend, glancing upwards, as in rapt
commerce; an Antique Egyptian Hierophant in this new age. Soft
music flits; breaking fitfully the sacred stillness. Round their
Magnetic Mystery, which to the eye is mere tubs with water,—sit
breathless, rod in hand, the circles of Beauty and Fashion, each
circle a living circular Passion-Flower: expecting the magnetic
afflatus, and new-manufactured Heaven-on-Earth. O women, O men,
great is your infidel-faith! A Parlementary Duport, a Bergasse,
D'Espremenil we notice there; Chemist Berthollet too,—on the part
of Monseigneur de Chartres.
Had not the Academy of Sciences, with its Baillys, Franklins,
Lavoisiers, interfered! But it did interfere. (_Lacretelle, 18me
Siecle, iii.258._) Mesmer may pocket his hard money, and
withdraw. Let him walk silent by the shore of the Bodensee, by
the ancient town of Constance; meditating on much. For so, under
the strangest new vesture, the old great truth (_since no vesture
can hide it_) begins again to be revealed: That man is what we
call a miraculous creature, with miraculous power over men; and,
on the whole, with such a Life in him, and such a World round
him, as victorious Analysis, with her Physiologies,
Nervous-systems, Physic and Metaphysic, will never completely
name, to say nothing of explaining. Wherein also the Quack shall,
in all ages, come in for his share. (_August, 1784._)
Chapter 1.2.VII.
Contrat Social.
In such succession of singular prismatic tints, flush after flush
suffusing our horizon, does the Era of Hope dawn on towards
fulfilment. Questionable! As indeed, with an Era of Hope that
rests on mere universal Benevolence, victorious Analysis, Vice
cured of its deformity; and, in the long run, on Twenty-five dark
savage Millions, looking up, in hunger and weariness, to that
Ecce-signum of theirs 'forty feet high,'—how could it but be
questionable?
Through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, will be, the
parent of misery. This land calls itself most Christian, and has
crosses and cathedrals; but its High-priest is some Roche-Aymon,
some Necklace-Cardinal Louis de Rohan. The voice of the poor,
through long years, ascends inarticulate, in Jacqueries,
meal-mobs; low-whimpering of infinite moan: unheeded of the
Earth; not unheeded of Heaven. Always moreover where the Millions
are wretched, there are the Thousands straitened, unhappy; only
the Units can flourish; or say rather, be ruined the last.
Industry, all noosed and haltered, as if it too were some beast
of chase for the mighty hunters of this world to bait, and cut
slices from,—cries passionately to these its well-paid guides and
watchers, not, Guide me; but, Laissez faire, Leave me alone of
your guidance! What market has Industry in this France? For two
things there may be market and demand: for the coarser kind of
field-fruits, since the Millions will live: for the fine kinds of
luxury and spicery,—of multiform taste, from opera-melodies down
to racers and courtesans; since the Units will be amused. It is
at bottom but a mad state of things.
To mend and remake all which we have, indeed, victorious
Analysis. Honour to victorious Analysis; nevertheless, out of the
Workshop and Laboratory, what thing was victorious Analysis yet
known to make? Detection of incoherences, mainly; destruction of
the incoherent. From of old, Doubt was but half a magician; she
evokes the spectres which she cannot quell. We shall have
'endless vortices of froth-logic;' whereon first words, and then
things, are whirled and swallowed. Remark, accordingly, as
acknowledged grounds of Hope, at bottom mere precursors of
Despair, this perpetual theorising about Man, the Mind of Man,
Philosophy of Government, Progress of the Species and such-like;
the main thinking furniture of every head. Time, and so many
Montesquieus, Mablys, spokesmen of Time, have discovered
innumerable things: and now has not Jean Jacques promulgated his
new Evangel of a Contrat Social; explaining the whole mystery of
Government, and how it is contracted and bargained for,—to
universal satisfaction? Theories of Government! Such have been,
and will be; in ages of decadence. Acknowledge them in their
degree; as processes of Nature, who does nothing in vain; as
steps in her great process. Meanwhile, what theory is so certain
as this, That all theories, were they never so earnest, painfully
elaborated, are, and, by the very conditions of them, must be
incomplete, questionable, and even false? Thou shalt know that
this Universe is, what it professes to be, an infinite one.
Attempt not to swallow it, for thy logical digestion; be
thankful, if skilfully planting down this and the other fixed
pillar in the chaos, thou prevent its swallowing thee. That a new
young generation has exchanged the Sceptic Creed, What shall I
believe? for passionate Faith in this Gospel according to Jean
Jacques is a further step in the business; and betokens much.
Blessed also is Hope; and always from the beginning there was
some Millennium prophesied; Millennium of Holiness; but (_what is
notable_) never till this new Era, any Millennium of mere Ease
and plentiful Supply. In such prophesied Lubberland, of
Happiness, Benevolence, and Vice cured of its deformity, trust
not, my friends! Man is not what one calls a happy animal; his
appetite for sweet victual is so enormous. How, in this wild
Universe, which storms in on him, infinite, vague-menacing, shall
poor man find, say not happiness, but existence, and footing to
stand on, if it be not by girding himself together for continual
endeavour and endurance? Woe, if in his heart there dwelt no
devout Faith; if the word Duty had lost its meaning for him! For
as to this of Sentimentalism, so useful for weeping with over
romances and on pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily will
avail nothing; nay less. The healthy heart that said to itself,
'How healthy am I!' was already fallen into the fatalest sort of
disease. Is not Sentimentalism twin-sister to Cant, if not one
and the same with it? Is not Cant the materia prima of the Devil;
from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations body
themselves; from which no true thing can come? For Cant is itself
properly a double-distilled Lie; the second-power of a Lie.
And now if a whole Nation fall into that? In such case, I answer,
infallibly they will return out of it! For life is no
cunningly-devised deception or self-deception: it is a great
truth that thou art alive, that thou hast desires, necessities;
neither can these subsist and satisfy themselves on delusions,
but on fact. To fact, depend on it, we shall come back: to such
fact, blessed or cursed, as we have wisdom for. The lowest, least
blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous mortals have ever
based themselves, seems to be the primitive one of Cannibalism:
That I can devour Thee. What if such Primitive Fact were
precisely the one we had (_with our improved methods_) to revert
to, and begin anew from!
Chapter 1.2.VIII.
Printed Paper.
In such a practical France, let the theory of Perfectibility say
what it will, discontents cannot be wanting: your promised
Reformation is so indispensable; yet it comes not; who will begin
it—with himself? Discontent with what is around us, still more
with what is above us, goes on increasing; seeking ever new
vents.
Of Street Ballads, of Epigrams that from of old tempered
Despotism, we need not speak. Nor of Manuscript Newspapers
(_Nouvelles a la main_) do we speak. Bachaumont and his
journeymen and followers may close those 'thirty volumes of
scurrilous eaves-dropping,' and quit that trade; for at length if
not liberty of the Press, there is license. Pamphlets can be
surreptititiously vended and read in Paris, did they even bear to
be 'Printed at Pekin.' We have a Courrier de l'Europe in those
years, regularly published at London; by a De Morande, whom the
guillotine has not yet devoured. There too an unruly Linguet,
still unguillotined, when his own country has become too hot for
him, and his brother Advocates have cast him out, can emit his
hoarse wailings, and Bastille Devoilee (_Bastille unveiled_).
Loquacious Abbe Raynal, at length, has his wish; sees the
Histoire Philosophique, with its 'lubricity,' unveracity, loose
loud eleutheromaniac rant (_contributed, they say, by
Philosophedom at large, though in the Abbe's name, and to his
glory_), burnt by the common hangman;—and sets out on his travels
as a martyr. It was the edition of 1781; perhaps the last notable
book that had such fire-beatitude,—the hangman discovering now
that it did not serve.
Again, in Courts of Law, with their money-quarrels,
divorce-cases, wheresoever a glimpse into the household existence
can be had, what indications! The Parlements of Besancon and Aix
ring, audible to all France, with the amours and destinies of a
young Mirabeau. He, under the nurture of a 'Friend of Men,' has,
in State Prisons, in marching Regiments, Dutch Authors' garrets,
and quite other scenes, 'been for twenty years learning to resist
'despotism:' despotism of men, and alas also of gods. How,
beneath this rose-coloured veil of Universal Benevolence and
Astraea Redux, is the sanctuary of Home so often a dreary void,
or a dark contentious Hell-on-Earth! The old Friend of Men has
his own divorce case too; and at times, 'his whole family but
one' under lock and key: he writes much about reforming and
enfranchising the world; and for his own private behoof he has
needed sixty Lettres-de-Cachet. A man of insight too, with
resolution, even with manful principle: but in such an element,
inward and outward; which he could not rule, but only madden.
Edacity, rapacity;—quite contrary to the finer sensibilities of
the heart! Fools, that expect your verdant Millennium, and
nothing but Love and Abundance, brooks running wine, winds
whispering music,—with the whole ground and basis of your
existence champed into a mud of Sensuality; which, daily growing
deeper, will soon have no bottom but the Abyss!
Or consider that unutterable business of the Diamond Necklace.
Red-hatted Cardinal Louis de Rohan; Sicilian jail-bird Balsamo
Cagliostro; milliner Dame de Lamotte, 'with a face of some
piquancy:' the highest Church Dignitaries waltzing, in Walpurgis
Dance, with quack-prophets, pickpurses and public women;—a whole
Satan's Invisible World displayed; working there continually
under the daylight visible one; the smoke of its torment going up
for ever! The Throne has been brought into scandalous collision
with the Treadmill. Astonished Europe rings with the mystery for
ten months; sees only lie unfold itself from lie; corruption
among the lofty and the low, gulosity, credulity, imbecility,
strength nowhere but in the hunger. Weep, fair Queen, thy first
tears of unmixed wretchedness! Thy fair name has been tarnished
by foul breath; irremediably while life lasts. No more shalt thou
be loved and pitied by living hearts, till a new generation has
been born, and thy own heart lies cold, cured of all its
sorrows.—The Epigrams henceforth become, not sharp and bitter;
but cruel, atrocious, unmentionable. On that 31st of May, 1786, a
miserable Cardinal Grand-Almoner Rohan, on issuing from his
Bastille, is escorted by hurrahing crowds: unloved he, and worthy
of no love; but important since the Court and Queen are his
enemies. (_Fils Adoptif, Memoires de Mirabeau, iv. 325._)
How is our bright Era of Hope dimmed: and the whole sky growing
bleak with signs of hurricane and earthquake! It is a doomed
world: gone all 'obedience that made men free;' fast going the
obedience that made men slaves,—at least to one another. Slaves
only of their own lusts they now are, and will be. Slaves of sin;
inevitably also of sorrow. Behold the mouldering mass of
Sensuality and Falsehood; round which plays foolishly, itself a
corrupt phosphorescence, some glimmer of Sentimentalism;—and over
all, rising, as Ark of their Covenant, the grim Patibulary Fork
'forty feet high;' which also is now nigh rotted. Add only that
the French Nation distinguishes itself among Nations by the
characteristic of Excitability; with the good, but also with the
perilous evil, which belongs to that. Rebellion, explosion, of
unknown extent is to be calculated on. There are, as Chesterfield
wrote, 'all the symptoms I have ever met with in History!'
Shall we say, then: Wo to Philosophism, that it destroyed
Religion, what it called 'extinguishing the abomination (_ecraser
'l'infame_)'? Wo rather to those that made the Holy an
abomination, and extinguishable; wo at all men that live in such
a time of world-abomination and world-destruction! Nay, answer
the Courtiers, it was Turgot, it was Necker, with their mad
innovating; it was the Queen's want of etiquette; it was he, it
was she, it was that. Friends! it was every scoundrel that had
lived, and quack-like pretended to be doing, and been only eating
and misdoing, in all provinces of life, as Shoeblack or as
Sovereign Lord, each in his degree, from the time of Charlemagne
and earlier. All this (_for be sure no falsehood perishes, but is
as seed sown out to grow_) has been storing itself for thousands
of years; and now the account-day has come. And rude will the
settlement be: of wrath laid up against the day of wrath. O my
Brother, be not thou a Quack! Die rather, if thou wilt take
counsel; 'tis but dying once, and thou art quit of it for ever.
Cursed is that trade; and bears curses, thou knowest not how,
long ages after thou art departed, and the wages thou hadst are
all consumed; nay, as the ancient wise have written,—through
Eternity itself, and is verily marked in the Doom-Book of a God!
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as we said, Hope is
but deferred; not abolished, not abolishable. It is very notable,
and touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the
French Nation through all its wild destinies. For we shall still
find Hope shining, be it for fond invitation, be it for anger and
menace; as a mild heavenly light it shone; as a red conflagration
it shines: burning sulphurous blue, through darkest regions of
Terror, it still shines; and goes sent out at all, since
Desperation itself is a kind of Hope. Thus is our Era still to be
named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,—when there is nothing
left but Hope.
But if any one would know summarily what a Pandora's Box lies
there for the opening, he may see it in what by its nature is the
symptom of all symptoms, the surviving Literature of the Period.
Abbe Raynal, with his lubricity and loud loose rant, has spoken
his word; and already the fast-hastening generation responds to
another. Glance at Beaumarchais' Mariage de Figaro; which now
(_in 1784_), after difficulty enough, has issued on the stage;
and 'runs its hundred nights,' to the admiration of all men. By
what virtue or internal vigour it so ran, the reader of our day
will rather wonder:—and indeed will know so much the better that
it flattered some pruriency of the time; that it spoke what all
were feeling, and longing to speak. Small substance in that
Figaro: thin wiredrawn intrigues, thin wiredrawn sentiments and
sarcasms; a thing lean, barren; yet which winds and whisks
itself, as through a wholly mad universe, adroitly, with a
high-sniffing air: wherein each, as was hinted, which is the
grand secret, may see some image of himself, and of his own state
and ways. So it runs its hundred nights, and all France runs with
it; laughing applause. If the soliloquising Barber ask: "What has
your Lordship done to earn all this?" and can only answer: "You
took the trouble to be born (_Vous vous etes donne la peine de
naitre_)," all men must laugh: and a gay horse-racing Anglomaniac
Noblesse loudest of all. For how can small books have a great
danger in them? asks the Sieur Caron; and fancies his thin
epigram may be a kind of reason. Conqueror of a golden fleece, by
giant smuggling; tamer of hell-dogs, in the Parlement Maupeou;
and finally crowned Orpheus in the Theatre Francais, Beaumarchais
has now culminated, and unites the attributes of several
demigods. We shall meet him once again, in the course of his
decline.
Still more significant are two Books produced on the eve of the
ever-memorable Explosion itself, and read eagerly by all the
world: Saint-Pierre's Paul et Virginie, and Louvet's Chevalier de
Faublas. Noteworthy Books; which may be considered as the last
speech of old Feudal France. In the first there rises
melodiously, as it were, the wail of a moribund world: everywhere
wholesome Nature in unequal conflict with diseased perfidious
Art; cannot escape from it in the lowest hut, in the remotest
island of the sea. Ruin and death must strike down the loved one;
and, what is most significant of all, death even here not by
necessity, but by etiquette. What a world of prurient corruption
lies visible in that super-sublime of modesty! Yet, on the whole,
our good Saint-Pierre is musical, poetical though most morbid: we
will call his Book the swan-song of old dying France.
Louvet's again, let no man account musical. Truly, if this
wretched Faublas is a death-speech, it is one under the gallows,
and by a felon that does not repent. Wretched cloaca of a Book;
without depth even as a cloaca! What 'picture of French society'
is here? Picture properly of nothing, if not of the mind that
gave it out as some sort of picture. Yet symptom of much; above
all, of the world that could nourish itself thereon.
BOOK 1.III.
THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS
Chapter 1.3.I.
Dishonoured Bills.
While the unspeakable confusion is everywhere weltering within,
and through so many cracks in the surface sulphur-smoke is
issuing, the question arises: Through what crevice will the main
Explosion carry itself? Through which of the old craters or
chimneys; or must it, at once, form a new crater for itself? In
every Society are such chimneys, are Institutions serving as
such: even Constantinople is not without its safety-valves; there
too Discontent can vent itself,—in material fire; by the number
of nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the Reigning
Power can read the signs of the times, and change course
according to these.
We may say that this French Explosion will doubtless first try
all the old Institutions of escape; for by each of these there
is, or at least there used to be, some communication with the
interior deep; they are national Institutions in virtue of that.
Had they even become personal Institutions, and what we can call
choked up from their original uses, there nevertheless must the
impediment be weaker than elsewhere. Through which of them then?
An observer might have guessed: Through the Law Parlements; above
all, through the Parlement of Paris.
Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not
inaccessible to the influences of their time; especially men
whose life is business; who at all turns, were it even from
behind judgment-seats, have come in contact with the actual
workings of the world. The Counsellor of Parlement, the President
himself, who has bought his place with hard money that he might
be looked up to by his fellow-creatures, how shall he, in all
Philosophe-soirees, and saloons of elegant culture, become
notable as a Friend of Darkness? Among the Paris Long-robes there
may be more than one patriotic Malesherbes, whose rule is
conscience and the public good; there are clearly more than one
hotheaded D'Espremenil, to whose confused thought any loud
reputation of the Brutus sort may seem glorious. The
Lepelletiers, Lamoignons have titles and wealth; yet, at Court,
are only styled 'Noblesse of the Robe.' There are Duports of deep
scheme; Freteaus, Sabatiers, of incontinent tongue: all nursed
more or less on the milk of the Contrat Social. Nay, for the
whole Body, is not this patriotic opposition also a fighting for
oneself? Awake, Parlement of Paris, renew thy long warfare! Was
not the Parlement Maupeou abolished with ignominy? Not now hast
thou to dread a Louis XIV., with the crack of his whip, and his
Olympian looks; not now a Richelieu and Bastilles: no, the whole
Nation is behind thee. Thou too (_O heavens!_) mayest become a
Political Power; and with the shakings of thy horse-hair wig
shake principalities and dynasties, like a very Jove with his
ambrosial curls!
Light old M. de Maurepas, since the end of 1781, has been fixed
in the frost of death: "Never more," said the good Louis, "shall
I hear his step overhead;" his light jestings and gyratings are
at an end. No more can the importunate reality be hidden by
pleasant wit, and today's evil be deftly rolled over upon
tomorrow. The morrow itself has arrived; and now nothing but a
solid phlegmatic M. de Vergennes sits there, in dull matter of
fact, like some dull punctual Clerk (_which he originally was_);
admits what cannot be denied, let the remedy come whence it will.
In him is no remedy; only clerklike 'despatch of business'
according to routine. The poor King, grown older yet hardly more
experienced, must himself, with such no-faculty as he has, begin
governing; wherein also his Queen will give help. Bright Queen,
with her quick clear glances and impulses; clear, and even noble;
but all too superficial, vehement-shallow, for that work! To
govern France were such a problem; and now it has grown well-nigh
too hard to govern even the Oeil-de-Boeuf. For if a distressed
People has its cry, so likewise, and more audibly, has a bereaved
Court. To the Oeil-de-Boeuf it remains inconceivable how, in a
France of such resources, the Horn of Plenty should run dry: did
it not use to flow? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of
parsimony, has 'suppressed above six hundred places,' before the
Courtiers could oust him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was.
Again, a military pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian
manoeuvres; with his Prussian notions, as if merit and not
coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion, has disaffected
military men; the Mousquetaires, with much else are suppressed:
for he too was one of your suppressors; and unsettling and
oversetting, did mere mischief—to the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Complaints
abound; scarcity, anxiety: it is a changed Oeil-de-Boeuf.
Besenval says, already in these years (_1781_) there was such a
melancholy (_such a tristesse_) about Court, compared with former
days, as made it quite dispiriting to look upon.
No wonder that the Oeil-de-Boeuf feels melancholy, when you are
suppressing its places! Not a place can be suppressed, but some
purse is the lighter for it; and more than one heart the heavier;
for did it not employ the working-classes too,—manufacturers,
male and female, of laces, essences; of Pleasure generally,
whosoever could manufacture Pleasure? Miserable economies; never
felt over Twenty-five Millions! So, however, it goes on: and is
not yet ended. Few years more and the Wolf-hounds shall fall
suppressed, the Bear-hounds, the Falconry; places shall fall,
thick as autumnal leaves. Duke de Polignac demonstrates, to the
complete silencing of ministerial logic, that his place cannot be
abolished; then gallantly, turning to the Queen, surrenders it,
since her Majesty so wishes. Less chivalrous was Duke de Coigny,
and yet not luckier: "We got into a real quarrel, Coigny and I,"
said King Louis; "but if he had even struck me, I could not have
blamed him." (_Besenval, iii. 255-58._) In regard to such matters
there can be but one opinion. Baron Besenval, with that frankness
of speech which stamps the independent man, plainly assures her
Majesty that it is frightful (_affreux_); "you go to bed, and are
not sure but you shall rise impoverished on the morrow: one might
as well be in Turkey." It is indeed a dog's life.
How singular this perpetual distress of the royal treasury! And
yet it is a thing not more incredible than undeniable. A thing
mournfully true: the stumbling-block on which all Ministers
successively stumble, and fall. Be it 'want of fiscal genius,' or
some far other want, there is the palpablest discrepancy between
Revenue and Expenditure; a Deficit of the Revenue: you must
'choke (_combler_) the Deficit,' or else it will swallow you!
This is the stern problem; hopeless seemingly as squaring of the
circle. Controller Joly de Fleury, who succeeded Necker, could do
nothing with it; nothing but propose loans, which were tardily
filled up; impose new taxes, unproductive of money, productive of
clamour and discontent. As little could Controller d'Ormesson do,
or even less; for if Joly maintained himself beyond year and day,
d'Ormesson reckons only by months: till 'the King purchased
Rambouillet without consulting him,' which he took as a hint to
withdraw. And so, towards the end of 1783, matters threaten to
come to still-stand. Vain seems human ingenuity. In vain has our
newly-devised 'Council of Finances' struggled, our Intendants of
Finance, Controller-General of Finances: there are unhappily no
Finances to control. Fatal paralysis invades the social movement;
clouds, of blindness or of blackness, envelop us: are we breaking
down, then, into the black horrors of NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY?
Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all
Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither,
from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature
is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will
come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on
Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment,—with the
answer, No effects. Pity only that it often had so long a
circulation: that the original forger were so seldom he who bore
the final smart of it! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring,
are passed on; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank;
and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, who with spade
and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in
contact with reality, and can pass the cheat no further.
Observe nevertheless how, by a just compensating law, if the lie
with its burden (_in this confused whirlpool of Society_) sinks
and is shifted ever downwards, then in return the distress of it
rises ever upwards and upwards. Whereby, after the long pining
and demi-starvation of those Twenty Millions, a Duke de Coigny
and his Majesty come also to have their 'real quarrel.' Such is
the law of just Nature; bringing, though at long intervals, and
were it only by Bankruptcy, matters round again to the mark.
But with a Fortunatus' Purse in his pocket, through what length
of time might not almost any Falsehood last! Your Society, your
Household, practical or spiritual Arrangement, is untrue, unjust,
offensive to the eye of God and man. Nevertheless its hearth is
warm, its larder well replenished: the innumerable Swiss of
Heaven, with a kind of Natural loyalty, gather round it; will
prove, by pamphleteering, musketeering, that it is a truth; or if
not an unmixed (_unearthly, impossible_) Truth, then better, a
wholesomely attempered one, (_as wind is to the shorn lamb_), and
works well. Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder grow
empty! Was your Arrangement so true, so accordant to Nature's
ways, then how, in the name of wonder, has Nature, with her
infinite bounty, come to leave it famishing there? To all men, to
all women and all children, it is now indutiable that your
Arrangement was false. Honour to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on
the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all
Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it
rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day,
will sweep it down, and make us free of it.
Chapter 1.3.II.
Controller Calonne.
Under such circumstances of tristesse, obstruction and sick
langour, when to an exasperated Court it seems as if fiscal
genius had departed from among men, what apparition could be
welcomer than that of M. de Calonne? Calonne, a man of
indisputable genius; even fiscal genius, more or less; of
experience both in managing Finance and Parlements, for he has
been Intendant at Metz, at Lille; King's Procureur at Douai. A
man of weight, connected with the moneyed classes; of unstained
name,—if it were not some peccadillo (_of showing a Client's
Letter_) in that old D'Aiguillon-Lachalotais business, as good as
forgotten now. He has kinsmen of heavy purse, felt on the Stock
Exchange. Our Foulons, Berthiers intrigue for him:—old Foulon,
who has now nothing to do but intrigue; who is known and even
seen to be what they call a scoundrel; but of unmeasured wealth;
who, from Commissariat-clerk which he once was, may hope, some
think, if the game go right, to be Minister himself one day.
Such propping and backing has M. de Calonne; and then
intrinsically such qualities! Hope radiates from his face;
persuasion hangs on his tongue. For all straits he has present
remedy, and will make the world roll on wheels before him. On the
3d of November 1783, the Oeil-de-Boeuf rejoices in its new
Controller-General. Calonne also shall have trial; Calonne also,
in his way, as Turgot and Necker had done in theirs, shall
forward the consummation; suffuse, with one other flush of
brilliancy, our now too leaden-coloured Era of Hope, and wind it
up—into fulfilment.
Great, in any case, is the felicity of the Oeil-de-Boeuf.
Stinginess has fled from these royal abodes: suppression ceases;
your Besenval may go peaceably to sleep, sure that he shall awake
unplundered. Smiling Plenty, as if conjured by some enchanter,
has returned; scatters contentment from her new-flowing horn. And
mark what suavity of manners! A bland smile distinguishes our
Controller: to all men he listens with an air of interest, nay of
anticipation; makes their own wish clear to themselves, and
grants it; or at least, grants conditional promise of it. "I fear
this is a matter of difficulty," said her Majesty.—"Madame,"
answered the Controller, "if it is but difficult, it is done, if
it is impossible, it shall be done (_se fera_)." A man of such
'facility' withal. To observe him in the pleasure-vortex of
society, which none partakes of with more gusto, you might ask,
When does he work? And yet his work, as we see, is never
behindhand; above all, the fruit of his work: ready-money. Truly
a man of incredible facility; facile action, facile elocution,
facile thought: how, in mild suasion, philosophic depth sparkles
up from him, as mere wit and lambent sprightliness; and in her
Majesty's Soirees, with the weight of a world lying on him, he is
the delight of men and women! By what magic does he accomplish
miracles? By the only true magic, that of genius. Men name him
'the Minister;' as indeed, when was there another such? Crooked
things are become straight by him, rough places plain; and over
the Oeil-de-Boeuf there rests an unspeakable sunshine.
Nay, in seriousness, let no man say that Calonne had not genius:
genius for Persuading; before all things, for Borrowing. With the
skilfulest judicious appliances of underhand money, he keeps the
Stock-Exchanges flourishing; so that Loan after Loan is filled up
as soon as opened. 'Calculators likely to know' (_Besenval, iii.
216._) have calculated that he spent, in extraordinaries, 'at the
rate of one million daily;' which indeed is some fifty thousand
pounds sterling: but did he not procure something with it; namely
peace and prosperity, for the time being? Philosophedom grumbles
and croaks; buys, as we said, 80,000 copies of Necker's new Book:
but Nonpareil Calonne, in her Majesty's Apartment, with the
glittering retinue of Dukes, Duchesses, and mere happy admiring
faces, can let Necker and Philosophedom croak.
The misery is, such a time cannot last! Squandering, and Payment
by Loan is no way to choke a Deficit. Neither is oil the
substance for quenching conflagrations;—but, only for assuaging
them, not permanently! To the Nonpareil himself, who wanted not
insight, it is clear at intervals, and dimly certain at all
times, that his trade is by nature temporary, growing daily more
difficult; that changes incalculable lie at no great distance.
Apart from financial Deficit, the world is wholly in such a
new-fangled humour; all things working loose from their old
fastenings, towards new issues and combinations. There is not a
dwarf jokei, a cropt Brutus'-head, or Anglomaniac horseman rising
on his stirrups, that does not betoken change. But what then? The
day, in any case, passes pleasantly; for the morrow, if the
morrow come, there shall be counsel too. Once mounted (_by
munificence, suasion, magic of genius_) high enough in favour
with the Oeil-de-Boeuf, with the King, Queen, Stock-Exchange, and
so far as possible with all men, a Nonpareil Controller may hope
to go careering through the Inevitable, in some unimagined way,
as handsomely as another.
At all events, for these three miraculous years, it has been
expedient heaped on expedient; till now, with such cumulation and
height, the pile topples perilous. And here has this
world's-wonder of a Diamond Necklace brought it at last to the
clear verge of tumbling. Genius in that direction can no more:
mounted high enough, or not mounted, we must fare forth. Hardly
is poor Rohan, the Necklace-Cardinal, safely bestowed in the
Auvergne Mountains, Dame de Lamotte (_unsafely_) in the
Salpetriere, and that mournful business hushed up, when our
sanguine Controller once more astonishes the world. An expedient,
unheard of for these hundred and sixty years, has been
propounded; and, by dint of suasion (_for his light audacity, his
hope and eloquence are matchless_) has been got
adopted,—Convocation of the Notables.
Let notable persons, the actual or virtual rulers of their
districts, be summoned from all sides of France: let a true tale,
of his Majesty's patriotic purposes and wretched pecuniary
impossibilities, be suasively told them; and then the question
put: What are we to do? Surely to adopt healing measures; such as
the magic of genius will unfold; such as, once sanctioned by
Notables, all Parlements and all men must, with more or less
reluctance, submit to.
Chapter 1.3.III.
The Notables.
Here, then is verily a sign and wonder; visible to the whole
world; bodeful of much. The Oeil-de-Boeuf dolorously grumbles;
were we not well as we stood,—quenching conflagrations by oil?
Constitutional Philosophedom starts with joyful surprise; stares
eagerly what the result will be. The public creditor, the public
debtor, the whole thinking and thoughtless public have their
several surprises, joyful and sorrowful. Count Mirabeau, who has
got his matrimonial and other Lawsuits huddled up, better or
worse; and works now in the dimmest element at Berlin; compiling
Prussian Monarchies, Pamphlets On Cagliostro; writing, with pay,
but not with honourable recognition, innumerable Despatches for
his Government,—scents or descries richer quarry from afar. He,
like an eagle or vulture, or mixture of both, preens his wings
for flight homewards. (_Fils Adoptif, Memoires de Mirabeau, t.
iv. livv. 4 et 5._)
M. de Calonne has stretched out an Aaron's Rod over France;
miraculous; and is summoning quite unexpected things. Audacity
and hope alternate in him with misgivings; though the
sanguine-valiant side carries it. Anon he writes to an intimate
friend, "Here me fais pitie a moi-meme (_I am an object of pity
to myself_);" anon, invites some dedicating Poet or Poetaster to
sing 'this Assembly of the Notables and the Revolution that is
preparing.' (_Biographie Universelle, para Calonne (_by
Guizot_)._) Preparing indeed; and a matter to be sung,—only not
till we have seen it, and what the issue of it is. In deep
obscure unrest, all things have so long gone rocking and swaying:
will M. de Calonne, with this his alchemy of the Notables, fasten
all together again, and get new revenues? Or wrench all asunder;
so that it go no longer rocking and swaying, but clashing and
colliding?
Be this as it may, in the bleak short days, we behold men of
weight and influence threading the great vortex of French
Locomotion, each on his several line, from all sides of France
towards the Chateau of Versailles: summoned thither de par le
roi. There, on the 22d day of February 1787, they have met, and
got installed: Notables to the number of a Hundred and
Thirty-seven, as we count them name by name: (_Lacretelle, iii.
286. Montgaillard, i. 347._) add Seven Princes of the Blood, it
makes the round Gross of Notables. Men of the sword, men of the
robe; Peers, dignified Clergy, Parlementary Presidents: divided
into Seven Boards (_Bureaux_); under our Seven Princes of the
Blood, Monsieur, D'Artois, Penthievre, and the rest; among whom
let not our new Duke d'Orleans (_for, since 1785, he is Chartres
no longer_) be forgotten. Never yet made Admiral, and now turning
the corner of his fortieth year, with spoiled blood and
prospects; half-weary of a world which is more than half-weary of
him, Monseigneur's future is most questionable. Not in
illumination and insight, not even in conflagration; but, as was
said, 'in dull smoke and ashes of outburnt sensualities,' does he
live and digest. Sumptuosity and sordidness; revenge,
life-weariness, ambition, darkness, putrescence; and, say, in
sterling money, three hundred thousand a year,—were this poor
Prince once to burst loose from his Court-moorings, to what
regions, with what phenomena, might he not sail and drift!
Happily as yet he 'affects to hunt daily;' sits there, since he
must sit, presiding that Bureau of his, with dull moon-visage,
dull glassy eyes, as if it were a mere tedium to him.
We observe finally, that Count Mirabeau has actually arrived. He
descends from Berlin, on the scene of action; glares into it with
flashing sun-glance; discerns that it will do nothing for him. He
had hoped these Notables might need a Secretary. They do need
one; but have fixed on Dupont de Nemours; a man of smaller fame,
but then of better;—who indeed, as his friends often hear,
labours under this complaint, surely not a universal one, of
having 'five kings to correspond with.' (_Dumont, Souvenirs sur
Mirabeau (_Paris, 1832_), p. 20._) The pen of a Mirabeau cannot
become an official one; nevertheless it remains a pen. In defect
of Secretaryship, he sets to denouncing Stock-brokerage
(_Denonciation de l'Agiotage_); testifying, as his wont is, by
loud bruit, that he is present and busy;—till, warned by friend
Talleyrand, and even by Calonne himself underhand, that 'a
seventeenth Lettre-de-Cachet may be launched against him,' he
timefully flits over the marches.
And now, in stately royal apartments, as Pictures of that time
still represent them, our hundred and forty-four Notables sit
organised; ready to hear and consider. Controller Calonne is
dreadfully behindhand with his speeches, his preparatives;
however, the man's 'facility of work' is known to us. For
freshness of style, lucidity, ingenuity, largeness of view, that
opening Harangue of his was unsurpassable:—had not the
subject-matter been so appalling. A Deficit, concerning which
accounts vary, and the Controller's own account is not
unquestioned; but which all accounts agree in representing as
'enormous.' This is the epitome of our Controller's difficulties:
and then his means? Mere Turgotism; for thither, it seems, we
must come at last: Provincial Assemblies; new Taxation; nay,
strangest of all, new Land-tax, what he calls Subvention
Territoriale, from which neither Privileged nor Unprivileged,
Noblemen, Clergy, nor Parlementeers, shall be exempt!
Foolish enough! These Privileged Classes have been used to tax;
levying toll, tribute and custom, at all hands, while a penny was
left: but to be themselves taxed? Of such Privileged persons,
meanwhile, do these Notables, all but the merest fraction,
consist. Headlong Calonne had given no heed to the 'composition,'
or judicious packing of them; but chosen such Notables as were
really notable; trusting for the issue to off-hand ingenuity,
good fortune, and eloquence that never yet failed. Headlong
Controller-General! Eloquence can do much, but not all. Orpheus,
with eloquence grown rhythmic, musical (_what we call Poetry_),
drew iron tears from the cheek of Pluto: but by what witchery of
rhyme or prose wilt thou from the pocket of Plutus draw gold?
Accordingly, the storm that now rose and began to whistle round
Calonne, first in these Seven Bureaus, and then on the outside of
them, awakened by them, spreading wider and wider over all
France, threatens to become unappeasable. A Deficit so enormous!
Mismanagement, profusion is too clear. Peculation itself is
hinted at; nay, Lafayette and others go so far as to speak it
out, with attempts at proof. The blame of his Deficit our brave
Calonne, as was natural, had endeavoured to shift from himself on
his predecessors; not excepting even Necker. But now Necker
vehemently denies; whereupon an 'angry Correspondence,' which
also finds its way into print.
In the Oeil-de-Boeuf, and her Majesty's private Apartments, an
eloquent Controller, with his "Madame, if it is but difficult,"
had been persuasive: but, alas, the cause is now carried
elsewhither. Behold him, one of these sad days, in Monsieur's
Bureau; to which all the other Bureaus have sent deputies. He is
standing at bay: alone; exposed to an incessant fire of
questions, interpellations, objurgations, from those 'hundred and
thirty-seven' pieces of logic-ordnance,—what we may well call
bouches a feu, fire-mouths literally! Never, according to
Besenval, or hardly ever, had such display of intellect,
dexterity, coolness, suasive eloquence, been made by man. To the
raging play of so many fire-mouths he opposes nothing angrier
than light-beams, self-possession and fatherly smiles. With the
imperturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps
answering the incessant volley of fiery captious questions,
reproachful interpellations; in words prompt as lightning, quiet
as light. Nay, the cross-fire too: such side questions and
incidental interpellations as, in the heat of the main-battle, he
(_having only one tongue_) could not get answered; these also he
takes up at the first slake; answers even these. (_Besenval, iii.
196._) Could blandest suasive eloquence have saved France, she
were saved.
Heavy-laden Controller! In the Seven Bureaus seems nothing but
hindrance: in Monsieur's Bureau, a Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop
of Toulouse, with an eye himself to the Controllership, stirs up
the Clergy; there are meetings, underground intrigues. Neither
from without anywhere comes sign of help or hope. For the Nation
(_where Mirabeau is now, with stentor-lungs, 'denouncing Agio'_)
the Controller has hitherto done nothing, or less. For
Philosophedom he has done as good as nothing,—sent out some
scientific Laperouse, or the like: and is he not in 'angry
correspondence' with its Necker? The very Oeil-de-Boeuf looks
questionable; a falling Controller has no friends. Solid M. de
Vergennes, who with his phlegmatic judicious punctuality might
have kept down many things, died the very week before these
sorrowful Notables met. And now a Seal-keeper, Garde-des-Sceaux
Miromenil is thought to be playing the traitor: spinning plots
for Lomenie-Brienne! Queen's-Reader Abbe de Vermond, unloved
individual, was Brienne's creature, the work of his hands from
the first: it may be feared the backstairs passage is open,
ground getting mined under our feet. Treacherous Garde-des-Sceaux
Miromenil, at least, should be dismissed; Lamoignon, the eloquent
Notable, a stanch man, with connections, and even ideas,
Parlement-President yet intent on reforming Parlements, were not
he the right Keeper? So, for one, thinks busy Besenval; and, at
dinner-table, rounds the same into the Controller's ear,—who
always, in the intervals of landlord-duties, listens to him as
with charmed look, but answers nothing positive. (_Besenval, iii.
203._)
Alas, what to answer? The force of private intrigue, and then
also the force of public opinion, grows so dangerous, confused!
Philosophedom sneers aloud, as if its Necker already triumphed.
The gaping populace gapes over Wood-cuts or Copper-cuts; where,
for example, a Rustic is represented convoking the poultry of his
barnyard, with this opening address: "Dear animals, I have
assembled you to advise me what sauce I shall dress you with;" to
which a Cock responding, "We don't want to be eaten," is checked
by "You wander from the point (_Vous vous ecartez de la
question_)." (_Republished in the Musee de la Caricature (_Paris,
1834_)._) Laughter and logic; ballad-singer, pamphleteer; epigram
and caricature: what wind of public opinion is this,—as if the
Cave of the Winds were bursting loose! At nightfall, President
Lamoignon steals over to the Controller's; finds him 'walking
with large strides in his chamber, like one out of himself.'
(_Besenval, iii. 209._) With rapid confused speech the Controller
begs M. de Lamoignon to give him 'an advice.' Lamoignon candidly
answers that, except in regard to his own anticipated Keepership,
unless that would prove remedial, he really cannot take upon him
to advise.
'On the Monday after Easter,' the 9th of April 1787, a date one
rejoices to verify, for nothing can excel the indolent falsehood
of these Histoires and Memoires,—'On the Monday after Easter, as
I, Besenval, was riding towards Romainville to the Marechal de
Segur's, I met a friend on the Boulevards, who told me that M. de
Calonne was out. A little further on came M. the Duke d'Orleans,
dashing towards me, head to the wind' (_trotting a l'Anglaise_),
'and confirmed the news.' (_Ib. iii. 211._) It is true news.
Treacherous Garde-des-Sceaux Miromenil is gone, and Lamoignon is
appointed in his room: but appointed for his own profit only, not
for the Controller's: 'next day' the Controller also has had to
move. A little longer he may linger near; be seen among the money
changers, and even 'working in the Controller's office,' where
much lies unfinished: but neither will that hold. Too strong
blows and beats this tempest of public opinion, of private
intrigue, as from the Cave of all the Winds; and blows him
(_higher Authority giving sign_) out of Paris and France,—over
the horizon, into Invisibility, or outer Darkness.
Such destiny the magic of genius could not forever avert.
Ungrateful Oeil-de-Boeuf! did he not miraculously rain gold manna
on you; so that, as a Courtier said, "All the world held out its
hand, and I held out my hat,"—for a time? Himself is poor;
penniless, had not a 'Financier's widow in Lorraine' offered him,
though he was turned of fifty, her hand and the rich purse it
held. Dim henceforth shall be his activity, though unwearied:
Letters to the King, Appeals, Prognostications; Pamphlets (_from
London_), written with the old suasive facility; which however do
not persuade. Luckily his widow's purse fails not. Once, in a
year or two, some shadow of him shall be seen hovering on the
Northern Border, seeking election as National Deputy; but be
sternly beckoned away. Dimmer then, far-borne over utmost
European lands, in uncertain twilight of diplomacy, he shall
hover, intriguing for 'Exiled Princes,' and have adventures; be
overset into the Rhine stream and half-drowned, nevertheless save
his papers dry. Unwearied, but in vain! In France he works
miracles no more; shall hardly return thither to find a grave.
Farewell, thou facile sanguine Controller-General, with thy light
rash hand, thy suasive mouth of gold: worse men there have been,
and better; but to thee also was allotted a task,—of raising the
wind, and the winds; and thou hast done it.
But now, while Ex-Controller Calonne flies storm-driven over the
horizon, in this singular way, what has become of the
Controllership? It hangs vacant, one may say; extinct, like the
Moon in her vacant interlunar cave. Two preliminary shadows, poor
M. Fourqueux, poor M. Villedeuil, do hold in quick succession
some simulacrum of it, (_Besenval, iii. 225._)—as the new Moon
will sometimes shine out with a dim preliminary old one in her
arms. Be patient, ye Notables! An actual new Controller is
certain, and even ready; were the indispensable manoeuvres but
gone through. Long-headed Lamoignon, with Home Secretary
Breteuil, and Foreign Secretary Montmorin have exchanged looks;
let these three once meet and speak. Who is it that is strong in
the Queen's favour, and the Abbe de Vermond's? That is a man of
great capacity? Or at least that has struggled, these fifty
years, to have it thought great; now, in the Clergy's name,
demanding to have Protestant death-penalties 'put in execution;'
no flaunting it in the Oeil-de-Boeuf, as the gayest man-pleaser
and woman-pleaser; gleaning even a good word from Philosophedom
and your Voltaires and D'Alemberts? With a party ready-made for
him in the Notables?—Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse!
answer all the three, with the clearest instantaneous concord;
and rush off to propose him to the King; 'in such haste,' says
Besenval, 'that M. de Lamoignon had to borrow a simarre,'
seemingly some kind of cloth apparatus necessary for that. (_Ib.
iii. 224._)
Lomenie-Brienne, who had all his life 'felt a kind of
predestination for the highest offices,' has now therefore
obtained them. He presides over the Finances; he shall have the
title of Prime Minister itself, and the effort of his long life
be realised. Unhappy only that it took such talent and industry
to gain the place; that to qualify for it hardly any talent or
industry was left disposable! Looking now into his inner man,
what qualification he may have, Lomenie beholds, not without
astonishment, next to nothing but vacuity and possibility.
Principles or methods, acquirement outward or inward (_for his
very body is wasted, by hard tear and wear_) he finds none; not
so much as a plan, even an unwise one. Lucky, in these
circumstances, that Calonne has had a plan! Calonne's plan was
gathered from Turgot's and Necker's by compilation; shall become
Lomenie's by adoption. Not in vain has Lomenie studied the
working of the British Constitution; for he professes to have
some Anglomania, of a sort. Why, in that free country, does one
Minister, driven out by Parliament, vanish from his King's
presence, and another enter, borne in by Parliament?
(_Montgaillard, Histoire de France, i. 410-17._) Surely not for
mere change (_which is ever wasteful_); but that all men may have
share of what is going; and so the strife of Freedom indefinitely
prolong itself, and no harm be done.
The Notables, mollified by Easter festivities, by the sacrifice
of Calonne, are not in the worst humour. Already his Majesty,
while the 'interlunar shadows' were in office, had held session
of Notables; and from his throne delivered promissory
conciliatory eloquence: 'The Queen stood waiting at a window,
till his carriage came back; and Monsieur from afar clapped hands
to her,' in sign that all was well. (_Besenval, iii. 220._) It
has had the best effect; if such do but last. Leading Notables
meanwhile can be 'caressed;' Brienne's new gloss, Lamoignon's
long head will profit somewhat; conciliatory eloquence shall not
be wanting. On the whole, however, is it not undeniable that this
of ousting Calonne and adopting the plans of Calonne, is a
measure which, to produce its best effect, should be looked at
from a certain distance, cursorily; not dwelt on with minute near
scrutiny. In a word, that no service the Notables could now do
were so obliging as, in some handsome manner, to—take themselves
away! Their 'Six Propositions' about Provisional Assemblies,
suppression of Corvees and suchlike, can be accepted without
criticism. The Subvention on Land-tax, and much else, one must
glide hastily over; safe nowhere but in flourishes of
conciliatory eloquence. Till at length, on this 25th of May, year
1787, in solemn final session, there bursts forth what we can
call an explosion of eloquence; King, Lomenie, Lamoignon and
retinue taking up the successive strain; in harrangues to the
number of ten, besides his Majesty's, which last the livelong
day;—whereby, as in a kind of choral anthem, or bravura peal, of
thanks, praises, promises, the Notables are, so to speak, organed
out, and dismissed to their respective places of abode. They had
sat, and talked, some nine weeks: they were the first Notables
since Richelieu's, in the year 1626.
By some Historians, sitting much at their ease, in the safe
distance, Lomenie has been blamed for this dismissal of his
Notables: nevertheless it was clearly time. There are things, as
we said, which should not be dwelt on with minute close scrutiny:
over hot coals you cannot glide too fast. In these Seven Bureaus,
where no work could be done, unless talk were work, the
questionablest matters were coming up. Lafayette, for example, in
Monseigneur d'Artois' Bureau, took upon him to set forth more
than one deprecatory oration about Lettres-de-Cachet, Liberty of
the Subject, Agio, and suchlike; which Monseigneur endeavouring
to repress, was answered that a Notable being summoned to speak
his opinion must speak it. (_Montgaillard, i. 360._)
Thus too his Grace the Archbishop of Aix perorating once, with a
plaintive pulpit tone, in these words? "Tithe, that free-will
offering of the piety of Christians"—"Tithe," interrupted Duke la
Rochefoucault, with the cold business-manner he has learned from
the English, "that free-will offering of the piety of Christians;
on which there are now forty-thousand lawsuits in this realm."
(_Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 21._) Nay, Lafayette, bound
to speak his opinion, went the length, one day, of proposing to
convoke a 'National Assembly.' "You demand States-General?" asked
Monseigneur with an air of minatory surprise.—"Yes, Monseigneur;
and even better than that."—"Write it," said Monseigneur to the
Clerks. (_Toulongeon, Histoire de France depuis la Revolution de
1789 (_Paris, 1803_), i. app. 4._)—Written accordingly it is; and
what is more, will be acted by and by.
Chapter 1.3.IV.
Lomenie's Edicts.
Thus, then, have the Notables returned home; carrying to all
quarters of France, such notions of deficit, decrepitude,
distraction; and that States-General will cure it, or will not
cure it but kill it. Each Notable, we may fancy, is as a funeral
torch; disclosing hideous abysses, better left hid! The
unquietest humour possesses all men; ferments, seeks issue, in
pamphleteering, caricaturing, projecting, declaiming; vain
jangling of thought, word and deed.
It is Spiritual Bankruptcy, long tolerated; verging now towards
Economical Bankruptcy, and become intolerable. For from the
lowest dumb rank, the inevitable misery, as was predicted, has
spread upwards. In every man is some obscure feeling that his
position, oppressive or else oppressed, is a false one: all men,
in one or the other acrid dialect, as assaulters or as defenders,
must give vent to the unrest that is in them. Of such stuff
national well-being, and the glory of rulers, is not made. O
Lomenie, what a wild-heaving, waste-looking, hungry and angry
world hast thou, after lifelong effort, got promoted to take
charge of!
Lomenie's first Edicts are mere soothing ones: creation of
Provincial Assemblies, 'for apportioning the imposts,' when we
get any; suppression of Corvees or statute-labour; alleviation of
Gabelle. Soothing measures, recommended by the Notables; long
clamoured for by all liberal men. Oil cast on the waters has been
known to produce a good effect. Before venturing with great
essential measures, Lomenie will see this singular 'swell of the
public mind' abate somewhat.
Most proper, surely. But what if it were not a swell of the
abating kind? There are swells that come of upper tempest and
wind-gust. But again there are swells that come of subterranean
pent wind, some say; and even of inward decomposition, of decay
that has become self-combustion:—as when, according to
Neptuno-Plutonic Geology, the World is all decayed down into due
attritus of this sort; and shall now be exploded, and new-made!
These latter abate not by oil.—The fool says in his heart, How
shall not tomorrow be as yesterday; as all days,—which were once
tomorrows? The wise man, looking on this France, moral,
intellectual, economical, sees, 'in short, all the symptoms he
has ever met with in history,'—unabatable by soothing Edicts.
Meanwhile, abate or not, cash must be had; and for that quite
another sort of Edicts, namely 'bursal' or fiscal ones. How easy
were fiscal Edicts, did you know for certain that the Parlement
of Paris would what they call 'register' them! Such right of
registering, properly of mere writing down, the Parlement has got
by old wont; and, though but a Law-Court, can remonstrate, and
higgle considerably about the same. Hence many quarrels;
desperate Maupeou devices, and victory and defeat;—a quarrel now
near forty years long. Hence fiscal Edicts, which otherwise were
easy enough, become such problems. For example, is there not
Calonne's Subvention Territoriale, universal, unexempting
Land-tax; the sheet-anchor of Finance? Or, to show, so far as
possible, that one is not without original finance talent,
Lomenie himself can devise an Edit du Timbre or
Stamp-tax,—borrowed also, it is true; but then from America: may
it prove luckier in France than there!
France has her resources: nevertheless, it cannot be denied, the
aspect of that Parlement is questionable. Already among the
Notables, in that final symphony of dismissal, the Paris
President had an ominous tone. Adrien Duport, quitting magnetic
sleep, in this agitation of the world, threatens to rouse himself
into preternatural wakefulness. Shallower but also louder, there
is magnetic D'Espremenil, with his tropical heat (_he was born at
Madras_); with his dusky confused violence; holding of
Illumination, Animal Magnetism, Public Opinion, Adam Weisshaupt,
Harmodius and Aristogiton, and all manner of confused violent
things: of whom can come no good. The very Peerage is infected
with the leaven. Our Peers have, in too many cases, laid aside
their frogs, laces, bagwigs; and go about in English costume, or
ride rising in their stirrups,—in the most headlong manner;
nothing but insubordination, eleutheromania, confused unlimited
opposition in their heads. Questionable: not to be ventured upon,
if we had a Fortunatus' Purse! But Lomenie has waited all June,
casting on the waters what oil he had; and now, betide as it may,
the two Finance Edicts must out. On the 6th of July, he forwards
his proposed Stamp-tax and Land-tax to the Parlement of Paris;
and, as if putting his own leg foremost, not his borrowed
Calonne's-leg, places the Stamp-tax first in order.
Alas, the Parlement will not register: the Parlement demands
instead a 'state of the expenditure,' a 'state of the
contemplated reductions;' 'states' enough; which his Majesty must
decline to furnish! Discussions arise; patriotic eloquence: the
Peers are summoned. Does the Nemean Lion begin to bristle? Here
surely is a duel, which France and the Universe may look upon:
with prayers; at lowest, with curiosity and bets. Paris stirs
with new animation. The outer courts of the Palais de Justice
roll with unusual crowds, coming and going; their huge outer hum
mingles with the clang of patriotic eloquence within, and gives
vigour to it. Poor Lomenie gazes from the distance, little
comforted; has his invisible emissaries flying to and fro,
assiduous, without result.
So pass the sultry dog-days, in the most electric manner; and the
whole month of July. And still, in the Sanctuary of Justice,
sounds nothing but Harmodius-Aristogiton eloquence, environed
with the hum of crowding Paris; and no registering accomplished,
and no 'states' furnished. "States?" said a lively Parlementeer:
"Messieurs, the states that should be furnished us, in my opinion
are the STATES-GENERAL." On which timely joke there follow
cachinnatory buzzes of approval. What a word to be spoken in the
Palais de Justice! Old D'Ormesson (_the Ex-Controller's uncle_)
shakes his judicious head; far enough from laughing. But the
outer courts, and Paris and France, catch the glad sound, and
repeat it; shall repeat it, and re-echo and reverberate it, till
it grow a deafening peal. Clearly enough here is no registering
to be thought of.
The pious Proverb says, 'There are remedies for all things but
death.' When a Parlement refuses registering, the remedy, by long
practice, has become familiar to the simplest: a Bed of Justice.
One complete month this Parlement has spent in mere idle
jargoning, and sound and fury; the Timbre Edict not registered,
or like to be; the Subvention not yet so much as spoken of. On
the 6th of August let the whole refractory Body roll out, in
wheeled vehicles, as far as the King's Chateau of Versailles;
there shall the King, holding his Bed of Justice, order them, by
his own royal lips, to register. They may remonstrate, in an
under tone; but they must obey, lest a worse unknown thing befall
them.
It is done: the Parlement has rolled out, on royal summons; has
heard the express royal order to register. Whereupon it has
rolled back again, amid the hushed expectancy of men. And now,
behold, on the morrow, this Parlement, seated once more in its
own Palais, with 'crowds inundating the outer courts,' not only
does not register, but (_O portent!_) declares all that was done
on the prior day to be null, and the Bed of Justice as good as a
futility! In the history of France here verily is a new feature.
Nay better still, our heroic Parlement, getting suddenly
enlightened on several things, declares that, for its part, it is
incompetent to register Tax-edicts at all,—having done it by
mistake, during these late centuries; that for such act one
authority only is competent: the assembled Three Estates of the
Realm!
To such length can the universal spirit of a Nation penetrate the
most isolated Body-corporate: say rather, with such weapons,
homicidal and suicidal, in exasperated political duel, will
Bodies-corporate fight! But, in any case, is not this the real
death-grapple of war and internecine duel, Greek meeting Greek;
whereon men, had they even no interest in it, might look with
interest unspeakable? Crowds, as was said, inundate the outer
courts: inundation of young eleutheromaniac Noblemen in English
costume, uttering audacious speeches; of Procureurs,
Basoche-Clerks, who are idle in these days: of Loungers,
Newsmongers and other nondescript classes,—rolls tumultuous
there. 'From three to four thousand persons,' waiting eagerly to
hear the Arretes (_Resolutions_) you arrive at within; applauding
with bravos, with the clapping of from six to eight thousand
hands! Sweet also is the meed of patriotic eloquence, when your
D'Espremenil, your Freteau, or Sabatier, issuing from his
Demosthenic Olympus, the thunder being hushed for the day, is
welcomed, in the outer courts, with a shout from four thousand
throats; is borne home shoulder-high 'with benedictions,' and
strikes the stars with his sublime head.
Chapter 1.3.V.
Lomenie's Thunderbolts.
Arise, Lomenie-Brienne: here is no case for 'Letters of Jussion;'
for faltering or compromise. Thou seest the whole loose fluent
population of Paris (_whatsoever is not solid, and fixed to
work_) inundating these outer courts, like a loud destructive
deluge; the very Basoche of Lawyers' Clerks talks sedition. The
lower classes, in this duel of Authority with Authority, Greek
throttling Greek, have ceased to respect the City-Watch:
Police-satellites are marked on the back with chalk (_the M
signifies mouchard, spy_); they are hustled, hunted like ferae
naturae. Subordinate rural Tribunals send messengers of
congratulation, of adherence. Their Fountain of Justice is
becoming a Fountain of Revolt. The Provincial Parlements look on,
with intent eye, with breathless wishes, while their elder sister
of Paris does battle: the whole Twelve are of one blood and
temper; the victory of one is that of all.
Ever worse it grows: on the 10th of August, there is 'Plainte'
emitted touching the 'prodigalities of Calonne,' and permission
to 'proceed' against him. No registering, but instead of it,
denouncing: of dilapidation, peculation; and ever the burden of
the song, States-General! Have the royal armories no thunderbolt,
that thou couldst, O Lomenie, with red right-hand, launch it
among these Demosthenic theatrical thunder-barrels, mere resin
and noise for most part;—and shatter, and smite them silent? On
the night of the 14th of August, Lomenie launches his
thunderbolt, or handful of them. Letters named of the Seal (_de
Cachet_), as many as needful, some sixscore and odd, are
delivered overnight. And so, next day betimes, the whole
Parlement, once more set on wheels, is rolling incessantly
towards Troyes in Champagne; 'escorted,' says History, 'with the
blessings of all people;' the very innkeepers and postillions
looking gratuitously reverent. (_A. Lameth, Histoire de
l'Assemblee Constituante (_Int. 73_)._) This is the 15th of
August 1787.
What will not people bless; in their extreme need? Seldom had the
Parlement of Paris deserved much blessing, or received much. An
isolated Body-corporate, which, out of old confusions (_while the
Sceptre of the Sword was confusedly struggling to become a
Sceptre of the Pen_), had got itself together, better and worse,
as Bodies-corporate do, to satisfy some dim desire of the world,
and many clear desires of individuals; and so had grown, in the
course of centuries, on concession, on acquirement and
usurpation, to be what we see it: a prosperous social Anomaly,
deciding Lawsuits, sanctioning or rejecting Laws; and withal
disposing of its places and offices by sale for ready
money,—which method sleek President Henault, after meditation,
will demonstrate to be the indifferent-best. (_Abrege
Chronologique, p. 975._)
In such a Body, existing by purchase for ready-money, there could
not be excess of public spirit; there might well be excess of
eagerness to divide the public spoil. Men in helmets have divided
that, with swords; men in wigs, with quill and inkhorn, do divide
it: and even more hatefully these latter, if more peaceably; for
the wig-method is at once irresistibler and baser. By long
experience, says Besenval, it has been found useless to sue a
Parlementeer at law; no Officer of Justice will serve a writ on
one; his wig and gown are his Vulcan's-panoply, his enchanted
cloak-of-darkness.
The Parlement of Paris may count itself an unloved body; mean,
not magnanimous, on the political side. Were the King weak,
always (_as now_) has his Parlement barked, cur-like at his
heels; with what popular cry there might be. Were he strong, it
barked before his face; hunting for him as his alert beagle. An
unjust Body; where foul influences have more than once worked
shameful perversion of judgment. Does not, in these very days,
the blood of murdered Lally cry aloud for vengeance? Baited,
circumvented, driven mad like the snared lion, Valour had to sink
extinguished under vindictive Chicane. Behold him, that hapless
Lally, his wild dark soul looking through his wild dark face;
trailed on the ignominious death-hurdle; the voice of his despair
choked by a wooden gag! The wild fire-soul that has known only
peril and toil; and, for threescore years, has buffeted against
Fate's obstruction and men's perfidy, like genius and courage
amid poltroonery, dishonesty and commonplace; faithfully enduring
and endeavouring,—O Parlement of Paris, dost thou reward it with
a gibbet and a gag? (_9th May, 1766: Biographie Universelle, para
Lally._) The dying Lally bequeathed his memory to his boy; a
young Lally has arisen, demanding redress in the name of God and
man. The Parlement of Paris does its utmost to defend the
indefensible, abominable; nay, what is singular, dusky-glowing
Aristogiton d'Espremenil is the man chosen to be its spokesman in
that.
Such Social Anomaly is it that France now blesses. An unclean
Social Anomaly; but in duel against another worse! The exiled
Parlement is felt to have 'covered itself with glory.' There are
quarrels in which even Satan, bringing help, were not unwelcome;
even Satan, fighting stiffly, might cover himself with glory,—of
a temporary sort.
But what a stir in the outer courts of the Palais, when Paris
finds its Parlement trundled off to Troyes in Champagne; and
nothing left but a few mute Keepers of records; the Demosthenic
thunder become extinct, the martyrs of liberty clean gone!
Confused wail and menace rises from the four thousand throats of
Procureurs, Basoche-Clerks, Nondescripts, and Anglomaniac
Noblesse; ever new idlers crowd to see and hear; Rascality, with
increasing numbers and vigour, hunts mouchards. Loud whirlpool
rolls through these spaces; the rest of the City, fixed to its
work, cannot yet go rolling. Audacious placards are legible, in
and about the Palais, the speeches are as good as seditious.
Surely the temper of Paris is much changed. On the third day of
this business (_18th of August_), Monsieur and Monseigneur
d'Artois, coming in state-carriages, according to use and wont,
to have these late obnoxious Arretes and protests 'expunged' from
the Records, are received in the most marked manner. Monsieur,
who is thought to be in opposition, is met with vivats and
strewed flowers; Monseigneur, on the other hand, with silence;
with murmurs, which rise to hisses and groans; nay, an irreverent
Rascality presses towards him in floods, with such hissing
vehemence, that the Captain of the Guards has to give order,
"Haut les armes (_Handle arms_)!"—at which thunder-word, indeed,
and the flash of the clear iron, the Rascal-flood recoils,
through all avenues, fast enough. (_Montgaillard, i. 369.
Besenval, &c._) New features these. Indeed, as good M. de
Malesherbes pertinently remarks, "it is a quite new kind of
contest this with the Parlement:" no transitory sputter, as from
collision of hard bodies; but more like "the first sparks of
what, if not quenched, may become a great conflagration."
(_Montgaillard, i. 373._)
This good Malesherbes sees himself now again in the King's
Council, after an absence of ten years: Lomenie would profit if
not by the faculties of the man, yet by the name he has. As for
the man's opinion, it is not listened to;—wherefore he will soon
withdraw, a second time; back to his books and his trees. In such
King's Council what can a good man profit? Turgot tries it not a
second time: Turgot has quitted France and this Earth, some years
ago; and now cares for none of these things. Singular enough:
Turgot, this same Lomenie, and the Abbe Morellet were once a trio
of young friends; fellow-scholars in the Sorbonne. Forty new
years have carried them severally thus far.
Meanwhile the Parlement sits daily at Troyes, calling cases; and
daily adjourns, no Procureur making his appearance to plead.
Troyes is as hospitable as could be looked for: nevertheless one
has comparatively a dull life. No crowds now to carry you,
shoulder-high, to the immortal gods; scarcely a Patriot or two
will drive out so far, and bid you be of firm courage. You are in
furnished lodgings, far from home and domestic comfort: little to
do, but wander over the unlovely Champagne fields; seeing the
grapes ripen; taking counsel about the thousand-times consulted:
a prey to tedium; in danger even that Paris may forget you.
Messengers come and go: pacific Lomenie is not slack in
negotiating, promising; D'Ormesson and the prudent elder Members
see no good in strife.
After a dull month, the Parlement, yielding and retaining, makes
truce, as all Parlements must. The Stamp-tax is withdrawn: the
Subvention Land-tax is also withdrawn; but, in its stead, there
is granted, what they call a 'Prorogation of the Second
Twentieth,'—itself a kind of Land-tax, but not so oppressive to
the Influential classes; which lies mainly on the Dumb class.
Moreover, secret promises exist (_on the part of the Elders_),
that finances may be raised by Loan. Of the ugly word
States-General there shall be no mention.
And so, on the 20th of September, our exiled Parlement returns:
D'Espremenil said, 'it went out covered with glory, but had come
back covered with mud (_de boue_).' Not so, Aristogiton; or if
so, thou surely art the man to clean it.
Chapter 1.3.VI.
Lomenie's Plots.
Was ever unfortunate Chief Minister so bested as Lomenie-Brienne?
The reins of the State fairly in his hand these six months; and
not the smallest motive-power (_of Finance_) to stir from the
spot with, this way or that! He flourishes his whip, but advances
not. Instead of ready-money, there is nothing but rebellious
debating and recalcitrating.
Far is the public mind from having calmed; it goes chafing and
fuming ever worse: and in the royal coffers, with such yearly
Deficit running on, there is hardly the colour of coin. Ominous
prognostics! Malesherbes, seeing an exhausted, exasperated France
grow hotter and hotter, talks of 'conflagration:' Mirabeau,
without talk, has, as we perceive, descended on Paris again,
close on the rear of the Parlement, (_Fils Adoptif, Mirabeau, iv.
l. 5._)—not to quit his native soil any more.
Over the Frontiers, behold Holland invaded by Prussia; (_October,
1787. Montgaillard, i. 374. Besenval, iii. 283._) the French
party oppressed, England and the Stadtholder triumphing: to the
sorrow of War-Secretary Montmorin and all men. But without money,
sinews of war, as of work, and of existence itself, what can a
Chief Minister do? Taxes profit little: this of the Second
Twentieth falls not due till next year; and will then, with its
'strict valuation,' produce more controversy than cash. Taxes on
the Privileged Classes cannot be got registered; are intolerable
to our supporters themselves: taxes on the Unprivileged yield
nothing,—as from a thing drained dry more cannot be drawn. Hope
is nowhere, if not in the old refuge of Loans.
To Lomenie, aided by the long head of Lamoignon, deeply pondering
this sea of troubles, the thought suggested itself: Why not have
a Successive Loan (_Emprunt Successif_), or Loan that went on
lending, year after year, as much as needful; say, till 1792? The
trouble of registering such Loan were the same: we had then
breathing time; money to work with, at least to subsist on. Edict
of a Successive Loan must be proposed. To conciliate the
Philosophes, let a liberal Edict walk in front of it, for
emancipation of Protestants; let a liberal Promise guard the rear
of it, that when our Loan ends, in that final 1792, the
States-General shall be convoked.
Such liberal Edict of Protestant Emancipation, the time having
come for it, shall cost a Lomenie as little as the
'Death-penalties to be put in execution' did. As for the liberal
Promise, of States-General, it can be fulfilled or not: the
fulfilment is five good years off; in five years much intervenes.
But the registering? Ah, truly, there is the difficulty!—However,
we have that promise of the Elders, given secretly at Troyes.
Judicious gratuities, cajoleries, underground intrigues, with old
Foulon, named 'Ame damnee, Familiar-demon, of the Parlement,' may
perhaps do the rest. At worst and lowest, the Royal Authority has
resources,—which ought it not to put forth? If it cannot realise
money, the Royal Authority is as good as dead; dead of that
surest and miserablest death, inanition. Risk and win; without
risk all is already lost! For the rest, as in enterprises of
pith, a touch of stratagem often proves furthersome, his Majesty
announces a Royal Hunt, for the 19th of November next; and all
whom it concerns are joyfully getting their gear ready.
Royal Hunt indeed; but of two-legged unfeathered game! At eleven
in the morning of that Royal-Hunt day, 19th of November 1787,
unexpected blare of trumpetting, tumult of charioteering and
cavalcading disturbs the Seat of Justice: his Majesty is come,
with Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon, and Peers and retinue, to hold
Royal Session and have Edicts registered. What a change, since
Louis XIV. entered here, in boots; and, whip in hand, ordered his
registering to be done,—with an Olympian look which none durst
gainsay; and did, without stratagem, in such unceremonious
fashion, hunt as well as register! (_Dulaure, vi. 306._) For
Louis XVI., on this day, the Registering will be enough; if
indeed he and the day suffice for it.
Meanwhile, with fit ceremonial words, the purpose of the royal
breast is signified:—Two Edicts, for Protestant Emancipation, for
Successive Loan: of both which Edicts our trusty Garde-des-Sceaux
Lamoignon will explain the purport; on both which a trusty
Parlement is requested to deliver its opinion, each member having
free privilege of speech. And so, Lamoignon too having perorated
not amiss, and wound up with that Promise of States-General,—the
Sphere-music of Parlementary eloquence begins. Explosive,
responsive, sphere answering sphere, it waxes louder and louder.
The Peers sit attentive; of diverse sentiment: unfriendly to
States-General; unfriendly to Despotism, which cannot reward
merit, and is suppressing places. But what agitates his Highness
d'Orleans? The rubicund moon-head goes wagging; darker beams the
copper visage, like unscoured copper; in the glazed eye is
disquietude; he rolls uneasy in his seat, as if he meant
something. Amid unutterable satiety, has sudden new appetite, for
new forbidden fruit, been vouchsafed him? Disgust and edacity;
laziness that cannot rest; futile ambition, revenge,
non-admiralship:—O, within that carbuncled skin what a confusion
of confusions sits bottled!
'Eight Couriers,' in course of the day, gallop from Versailles,
where Lomenie waits palpitating; and gallop back again, not with
the best news. In the outer Courts of the Palais, huge buzz of
expectation reigns; it is whispered the Chief Minister has lost
six votes overnight. And from within, resounds nothing but
forensic eloquence, pathetic and even indignant; heartrending
appeals to the royal clemency, that his Majesty would please to
summon States-General forthwith, and be the Saviour of
France:—wherein dusky-glowing D'Espremenil, but still more
Sabatier de Cabre, and Freteau, since named Commere Freteau
(_Goody Freteau_), are among the loudest. For six mortal hours it
lasts, in this manner; the infinite hubbub unslackened.
And so now, when brown dusk is falling through the windows, and
no end visible, his Majesty, on hint of Garde-des-Sceaux,
Lamoignon, opens his royal lips once more to say, in brief That
he must have his Loan-Edict registered.—Momentary deep
pause!—See! Monseigneur d'Orleans rises; with moon-visage turned
towards the royal platform, he asks, with a delicate graciosity
of manner covering unutterable things: "Whether it is a Bed of
Justice, then; or a Royal Session?" Fire flashes on him from the
throne and neighbourhood: surly answer that "it is a Session." In
that case, Monseigneur will crave leave to remark that Edicts
cannot be registered by order in a Session; and indeed to enter,
against such registry, his individual humble Protest. "Vous etes
bien le maitre (_You will do your pleasure_)", answers the King;
and thereupon, in high state, marches out, escorted by his
Court-retinue; D'Orleans himself, as in duty bound, escorting
him, but only to the gate. Which duty done, D'Orleans returns in
from the gate; redacts his Protest, in the face of an applauding
Parlement, an applauding France; and so—has cut his
Court-moorings, shall we say? And will now sail and drift, fast
enough, towards Chaos?
Thou foolish D'Orleans; Equality that art to be! Is Royalty grown
a mere wooden Scarecrow; whereon thou, pert scald-headed crow,
mayest alight at pleasure, and peck? Not yet wholly.
Next day, a Lettre-de-Cachet sends D'Orleans to bethink himself
in his Chateau of Villers-Cotterets, where, alas, is no Paris
with its joyous necessaries of life; no fascinating indispensable
Madame de Buffon,—light wife of a great Naturalist much too old
for her. Monseigneur, it is said, does nothing but walk
distractedly, at Villers-Cotterets; cursing his stars. Versailles
itself shall hear penitent wail from him, so hard is his doom. By
a second, simultaneous Lettre-de-Cachet, Goody Freteau is hurled
into the Stronghold of Ham, amid the Norman marshes; by a third,
Sabatier de Cabre into Mont St. Michel, amid the Norman
quicksands. As for the Parlement, it must, on summons, travel out
to Versailles, with its Register-Book under its arm, to have the
Protest biffe (_expunged_); not without admonition, and even
rebuke. A stroke of authority which, one might have hoped, would
quiet matters.
Unhappily, no; it is a mere taste of the whip to rearing
coursers, which makes them rear worse! When a team of Twenty-five
Millions begins rearing, what is Lomenie's whip? The Parlement
will nowise acquiesce meekly; and set to register the Protestant
Edict, and do its other work, in salutary fear of these three
Lettres-de-Cachet. Far from that, it begins questioning
Lettres-de-Cachet generally, their legality, endurability; emits
dolorous objurgation, petition on petition to have its three
Martyrs delivered; cannot, till that be complied with, so much as
think of examining the Protestant Edict, but puts it off always
'till this day week.' (_Besenval, iii. 309._)
In which objurgatory strain Paris and France joins it, or rather
has preceded it; making fearful chorus. And now also the other
Parlements, at length opening their mouths, begin to join; some
of them, as at Grenoble and at Rennes, with portentous
emphasis,—threatening, by way of reprisal, to interdict the very
Tax-gatherer. (_Weber, i. 266._) "In all former contests," as
Malesherbes remarks, "it was the Parlement that excited the
Public; but here it is the Public that excites the Parlement."
Chapter 1.3.VII.
Internecine.
What a France, through these winter months of the year 1787! The
very Oeil-de-Boeuf is doleful, uncertain; with a general feeling
among the Suppressed, that it were better to be in Turkey. The
Wolf-hounds are suppressed, the Bear-hounds, Duke de Coigny, Duke
de Polignac: in the Trianon little-heaven, her Majesty, one
evening, takes Besenval's arm; asks his candid opinion. The
intrepid Besenval,—having, as he hopes, nothing of the sycophant
in him,—plainly signifies that, with a Parlement in rebellion,
and an Oeil-de-Boeuf in suppression, the King's Crown is in
danger;—whereupon, singular to say, her Majesty, as if hurt,
changed the subject, et ne me parla plus de rien! (_Besenval,
iii. 264._)
To whom, indeed, can this poor Queen speak? In need of wise
counsel, if ever mortal was; yet beset here only by the hubbub of
chaos! Her dwelling-place is so bright to the eye, and confusion
and black care darkens it all. Sorrows of the Sovereign, sorrows
of the woman, think-coming sorrows environ her more and more.
Lamotte, the Necklace-Countess, has in these late months escaped,
perhaps been suffered to escape, from the Salpetriere. Vain was
the hope that Paris might thereby forget her; and this
ever-widening-lie, and heap of lies, subside. The Lamotte, with a
V (_for Voleuse, Thief_) branded on both shoulders, has got to
England; and will therefrom emit lie on lie; defiling the highest
queenly name: mere distracted lies; (_Memoires justificatifs de
la Comtesse de Lamotte (_London, 1788_). Vie de Jeanne de St.
Remi, Comtesse de Lamotte, &c. &c. See Diamond Necklace (_ut
supra_)._) which, in its present humour, France will greedily
believe.
For the rest, it is too clear our Successive Loan is not filling.
As indeed, in such circumstances, a Loan registered by expunging
of Protests was not the likeliest to fill. Denunciation of
Lettres-de-Cachet, of Despotism generally, abates not: the Twelve
Parlements are busy; the Twelve hundred Placarders,
Balladsingers, Pamphleteers. Paris is what, in figurative speech,
they call 'flooded with pamphlets (_regorge de brochures_);'
flooded and eddying again. Hot deluge,—from so many Patriot
ready-writers, all at the fervid or boiling point; each
ready-writer, now in the hour of eruption, going like an Iceland
Geyser! Against which what can a judicious friend Morellet do; a
Rivarol, an unruly Linguet (_well paid for it_),—spouting cold!
Now also, at length, does come discussion of the Protestant
Edict: but only for new embroilment; in pamphlet and
counter-pamphlet, increasing the madness of men. Not even
Orthodoxy, bedrid as she seemed, but will have a hand in this
confusion. She, once again in the shape of Abbe Lenfant, 'whom
Prelates drive to visit and congratulate,'—raises audible sound
from her pulpit-drum. (_Lacretelle, iii. 343. Montgaillard, &c._)
Or mark how D'Espremenil, who has his own confused way in all
things, produces at the right moment in Parlementary harangue, a
pocket Crucifix, with the apostrophe: "Will ye crucify him
afresh?" Him, O D'Espremenil, without scruple;—considering what
poor stuff, of ivory and filigree, he is made of!
To all which add only that poor Brienne has fallen sick; so hard
was the tear and wear of his sinful youth, so violent, incessant
is this agitation of his foolish old age. Baited, bayed at
through so many throats, his Grace, growing consumptive,
inflammatory (_with humeur de dartre_), lies reduced to milk
diet; in exasperation, almost in desperation; with 'repose,'
precisely the impossible recipe, prescribed as the indispensable.
(_Besenval, iii. 317._)
On the whole, what can a poor Government do, but once more recoil
ineffectual? The King's Treasury is running towards the lees; and
Paris 'eddies with a flood of pamphlets.' At all rates, let the
latter subside a little! D'Orleans gets back to Raincy, which is
nearer Paris and the fair frail Buffon; finally to Paris itself:
neither are Freteau and Sabatier banished forever. The Protestant
Edict is registered; to the joy of Boissy d'Anglas and good
Malesherbes: Successive Loan, all protests expunged or else
withdrawn, remains open,—the rather as few or none come to fill
it. States-General, for which the Parlement has clamoured, and
now the whole Nation clamours, will follow 'in five years,'—if
indeed not sooner. O Parlement of Paris, what a clamour was that!
"Messieurs," said old d'Ormesson, "you will get States-General,
and you will repent it." Like the Horse in the Fable, who, to be
avenged of his enemy, applied to the Man. The Man mounted; did
swift execution on the enemy; but, unhappily, would not dismount!
Instead of five years, let three years pass, and this clamorous
Parlement shall have both seen its enemy hurled prostrate, and
been itself ridden to foundering (_say rather, jugulated for hide
and shoes_), and lie dead in the ditch.
Under such omens, however, we have reached the spring of 1788. By
no path can the King's Government find passage for itself, but is
everywhere shamefully flung back. Beleaguered by Twelve
rebellious Parlements, which are grown to be the organs of an
angry Nation, it can advance nowhither; can accomplish nothing,
obtain nothing, not so much as money to subsist on; but must sit
there, seemingly, to be eaten up of Deficit.
The measure of the Iniquity, then, of the Falsehood which has
been gathering through long centuries, is nearly full? At least,
that of the misery is! For the hovels of the Twenty-five
Millions, the misery, permeating upwards and forwards, as its law
is, has got so far,—to the very Oeil-de-Boeuf of Versailles.
Man's hand, in this blind pain, is set against man: not only the
low against the higher, but the higher against each other;
Provincial Noblesse is bitter against Court Noblesse; Robe
against Sword; Rochet against Pen. But against the King's
Government who is not bitter? Not even Besenval, in these days.
To it all men and bodies of men are become as enemies; it is the
centre whereon infinite contentions unite and clash. What new
universal vertiginous movement is this; of Institution, social
Arrangements, individual Minds, which once worked cooperative;
now rolling and grinding in distracted collision? Inevitable: it
is the breaking-up of a World-Solecism, worn out at last, down
even to bankruptcy of money! And so this poor Versailles Court,
as the chief or central Solecism, finds all the other Solecisms
arrayed against it. Most natural! For your human Solecism, be it
Person or Combination of Persons, is ever, by law of Nature,
uneasy; if verging towards bankruptcy, it is even miserable:—and
when would the meanest Solecism consent to blame or amend itself,
while there remained another to amend?
These threatening signs do not terrify Lomenie, much less teach
him. Lomenie, though of light nature, is not without courage, of
a sort. Nay, have we not read of lightest creatures, trained
Canary-birds, that could fly cheerfully with lighted matches, and
fire cannon; fire whole powder-magazines? To sit and die of
deficit is no part of Lomenie's plan. The evil is considerable;
but can he not remove it, can he not attack it? At lowest, he can
attack the symptom of it: these rebellious Parlements he can
attack, and perhaps remove. Much is dim to Lomenie, but two
things are clear: that such Parlementary duel with Royalty is
growing perilous, nay internecine; above all, that money must be
had. Take thought, brave Lomenie; thou Garde-des-Sceaux
Lamoignon, who hast ideas! So often defeated, balked cruelly when
the golden fruit seemed within clutch, rally for one other
struggle. To tame the Parlement, to fill the King's coffers:
these are now life-and-death questions.
Parlements have been tamed, more than once. Set to perch 'on the
peaks of rocks in accessible except by litters,' a Parlement
grows reasonable. O Maupeou, thou bold man, had we left thy work
where it was!—But apart from exile, or other violent methods, is
there not one method, whereby all things are tamed, even lions?
The method of hunger! What if the Parlement's supplies were cut
off; namely its Lawsuits!
Minor Courts, for the trying of innumerable minor causes, might
be instituted: these we could call Grand Bailliages. Whereon the
Parlement, shortened of its prey, would look with yellow despair;
but the Public, fond of cheap justice, with favour and hope. Then
for Finance, for registering of Edicts, why not, from our own
Oeil-de-Boeuf Dignitaries, our Princes, Dukes, Marshals, make a
thing we could call Plenary Court; and there, so to speak, do our
registering ourselves? St. Louis had his Plenary Court, of Great
Barons; (_Montgaillard, i. 405._) most useful to him: our Great
Barons are still here (_at least the Name of them is still
here_); our necessity is greater than his.
Such is the Lomenie-Lamoignon device; welcome to the King's
Council, as a light-beam in great darkness. The device seems
feasible, it is eminently needful: be it once well executed,
great deliverance is wrought. Silent, then, and steady; now or
never!—the World shall see one other Historical Scene; and so
singular a man as Lomenie de Brienne still the Stage-manager
there.
Behold, accordingly, a Home-Secretary Breteuil 'beautifying
Paris,' in the peaceablest manner, in this hopeful spring weather
of 1788; the old hovels and hutches disappearing from our
Bridges: as if for the State too there were halcyon weather, and
nothing to do but beautify. Parlement seems to sit acknowledged
victor. Brienne says nothing of Finance; or even says, and
prints, that it is all well. How is this; such halcyon quiet;
though the Successive Loan did not fill? In a victorious
Parlement, Counsellor Goeslard de Monsabert even denounces that
'levying of the Second Twentieth on strict valuation;' and gets
decree that the valuation shall not be strict,—not on the
privileged classes. Nevertheless Brienne endures it, launches no
Lettre-de-Cachet against it. How is this?
Smiling is such vernal weather; but treacherous, sudden! For one
thing, we hear it whispered, 'the Intendants of Provinces 'have
all got order to be at their posts on a certain day.' Still more
singular, what incessant Printing is this that goes on at the
King's Chateau, under lock and key? Sentries occupy all gates and
windows; the Printers come not out; they sleep in their
workrooms; their very food is handed in to them! (_Weber, i.
276._) A victorious Parlement smells new danger. D'Espremenil has
ordered horses to Versailles; prowls round that guarded
Printing-Office; prying, snuffing, if so be the sagacity and
ingenuity of man may penetrate it.
To a shower of gold most things are penetrable. D'Espremenil
descends on the lap of a Printer's Danae, in the shape of 'five
hundred louis d'or:' the Danae's Husband smuggles a ball of clay
to her; which she delivers to the golden Counsellor of Parlement.
Kneaded within it, their stick printed proof-sheets;—by Heaven!
the royal Edict of that same self-registering Plenary Court; of
those Grand Bailliages that shall cut short our Lawsuits! It is
to be promulgated over all France on one and the same day.
This, then, is what the Intendants were bid wait for at their
posts: this is what the Court sat hatching, as its accursed
cockatrice-egg; and would not stir, though provoked, till the
brood were out! Hie with it, D'Espremenil, home to Paris; convoke
instantaneous Sessions; let the Parlement, and the Earth, and the
Heavens know it.
Chapter 1.3.VIII.
Lomenie's Death-throes.
On the morrow, which is the 3rd of May, 1788, an astonished
Parlement sits convoked; listens speechless to the speech of
D'Espremenil, unfolding the infinite misdeed. Deed of treachery;
of unhallowed darkness, such as Despotism loves! Denounce it, O
Parlement of Paris; awaken France and the Universe; roll what
thunder-barrels of forensic eloquence thou hast: with thee too it
is verily Now or never!
The Parlement is not wanting, at such juncture. In the hour of
his extreme jeopardy, the lion first incites himself by roaring,
by lashing his sides. So here the Parlement of Paris. On the
motion of D'Espremenil, a most patriotic Oath, of the One-and-all
sort, is sworn, with united throat;—an excellent new-idea, which,
in these coming years, shall not remain unimitated. Next comes
indomitable Declaration, almost of the rights of man, at least of
the rights of Parlement; Invocation to the friends of French
Freedom, in this and in subsequent time. All which, or the
essence of all which, is brought to paper; in a tone wherein
something of plaintiveness blends with, and tempers, heroic
valour. And thus, having sounded the storm-bell,—which Paris
hears, which all France will hear; and hurled such defiance in
the teeth of Lomenie and Despotism, the Parlement retires as from
a tolerable first day's work.
But how Lomenie felt to see his cockatrice-egg (_so essential to
the salvation of France_) broken in this premature manner, let
readers fancy! Indignant he clutches at his thunderbolts (_de
Cachet, of the Seal_); and launches two of them: a bolt for
D'Espremenil; a bolt for that busy Goeslard, whose service in the
Second Twentieth and 'strict valuation' is not forgotten. Such
bolts clutched promptly overnight, and launched with the early
new morning, shall strike agitated Paris if not into
requiescence, yet into wholesome astonishment.
Ministerial thunderbolts may be launched; but if they do not hit?
D'Espremenil and Goeslard, warned, both of them, as is thought,
by the singing of some friendly bird, elude the Lomenie
Tipstaves; escape disguised through skywindows, over roofs, to
their own Palais de Justice: the thunderbolts have missed. Paris
(_for the buzz flies abroad_) is struck into astonishment not
wholesome. The two martyrs of Liberty doff their disguises; don
their long gowns; behold, in the space of an hour, by aid of
ushers and swift runners, the Parlement, with its Counsellors,
Presidents, even Peers, sits anew assembled. The assembled
Parlement declares that these its two martyrs cannot be given up,
to any sublunary authority; moreover that the 'session is
permanent,' admitting of no adjournment, till pursuit of them has
been relinquished.
And so, with forensic eloquence, denunciation and protest, with
couriers going and returning, the Parlement, in this state of
continual explosion that shall cease neither night nor day, waits
the issue. Awakened Paris once more inundates those outer courts;
boils, in floods wilder than ever, through all avenues. Dissonant
hubbub there is; jargon as of Babel, in the hour when they were
first smitten (_as here_) with mutual unintelligibilty, and the
people had not yet dispersed!
Paris City goes through its diurnal epochs, of working and
slumbering; and now, for the second time, most European and
African mortals are asleep. But here, in this Whirlpool of Words,
sleep falls not; the Night spreads her coverlid of Darkness over
it in vain. Within is the sound of mere martyr invincibility;
tempered with the due tone of plaintiveness. Without is the
infinite expectant hum,—growing drowsier a little. So has it
lasted for six-and-thirty hours.
But hark, through the dead of midnight, what tramp is this? Tramp
as of armed men, foot and horse; Gardes Francaises, Gardes
Suisses: marching hither; in silent regularity; in the flare of
torchlight! There are Sappers, too, with axes and crowbars:
apparently, if the doors open not, they will be forced!—It is
Captain D'Agoust, missioned from Versailles. D'Agoust, a man of
known firmness;—who once forced Prince Conde himself, by mere
incessant looking at him, to give satisfaction and fight;
(_Weber, i. 283._) he now, with axes and torches is advancing on
the very sanctuary of Justice. Sacrilegious; yet what help? The
man is a soldier; looks merely at his orders; impassive, moves
forward like an inanimate engine.
The doors open on summons, there need no axes; door after door.
And now the innermost door opens; discloses the long-gowned
Senators of France: a hundred and sixty-seven by tale, seventeen
of them Peers; sitting there, majestic, 'in permanent session.'
Were not the men military, and of cast-iron, this sight, this
silence reechoing the clank of his own boots, might stagger him!
For the hundred and sixty-seven receive him in perfect silence;
which some liken to that of the Roman Senate overfallen by
Brennus; some to that of a nest of coiners surprised by officers
of the Police. (_Besenval, iii. 355._) Messieurs, said D'Agoust,
De par le Roi! Express order has charged D'Agoust with the sad
duty of arresting two individuals: M. Duval d'Espremenil and M.
Goeslard de Monsabert. Which respectable individuals, as he has
not the honour of knowing them, are hereby invited, in the King's
name, to surrender themselves.—Profound silence! Buzz, which
grows a murmur: "We are all D'Espremenils!" ventures a voice;
which other voices repeat. The President inquires, Whether he
will employ violence? Captain D'Agoust, honoured with his
Majesty's commission, has to execute his Majesty's order; would
so gladly do it without violence, will in any case do it; grants
an august Senate space to deliberate which method they prefer.
And thereupon D'Agoust, with grave military courtesy, has
withdrawn for the moment.
What boots it, august Senators? All avenues are closed with fixed
bayonets. Your Courier gallops to Versailles, through the dewy
Night; but also gallops back again, with tidings that the order
is authentic, that it is irrevocable. The outer courts simmer
with idle population; but D'Agoust's grenadier-ranks stand there
as immovable floodgates: there will be no revolting to deliver
you. "Messieurs!" thus spoke D'Espremenil, "when the victorious
Gauls entered Rome, which they had carried by assault, the Roman
Senators, clothed in their purple, sat there, in their curule
chairs, with a proud and tranquil countenance, awaiting slavery
or death. Such too is the lofty spectacle, which you, in this
hour, offer to the universe (_a l'univers_), after having
generously"—with much more of the like, as can still be read.
(_Toulongeon, i. App. 20._)
In vain, O D'Espremenil! Here is this cast-iron Captain D'Agoust,
with his cast-iron military air, come back. Despotism,
constraint, destruction sit waving in his plumes. D'Espremenil
must fall silent; heroically give himself up, lest worst befall.
Him Goeslard heroically imitates. With spoken and speechless
emotion, they fling themselves into the arms of their
Parlementary brethren, for a last embrace: and so amid plaudits
and plaints, from a hundred and sixty-five throats; amid wavings,
sobbings, a whole forest-sigh of Parlementary pathos,—they are
led through winding passages, to the rear-gate; where, in the
gray of the morning, two Coaches with Exempts stand waiting.
There must the victims mount; bayonets menacing behind.
D'Espremenil's stern question to the populace, 'Whether they have
courage?' is answered by silence. They mount, and roll; and
neither the rising of the May sun (_it is the 6th morning_), nor
its setting shall lighten their heart: but they fare forward
continually; D'Espremenil towards the utmost Isles of Sainte
Marguerite, or Hieres (_supposed by some, if that is any comfort,
to be Calypso's Island_); Goeslard towards the land-fortress of
Pierre-en-Cize, extant then, near the City of Lyons.
Captain D'Agoust may now therefore look forward to Majorship, to
Commandantship of the Tuilleries; (_Montgaillard, i. 404._)—and
withal vanish from History; where nevertheless he has been fated
to do a notable thing. For not only are D'Espremenil and Goeslard
safe whirling southward, but the Parlement itself has straightway
to march out: to that also his inexorable order reaches.
Gathering up their long skirts, they file out, the whole Hundred
and Sixty-five of them, through two rows of unsympathetic
grenadiers: a spectacle to gods and men. The people revolt not;
they only wonder and grumble: also, we remark, these
unsympathetic grenadiers are Gardes Francaises,—who, one day,
will sympathise! In a word, the Palais de Justice is swept clear,
the doors of it are locked; and D'Agoust returns to Versailles
with the key in his pocket,—having, as was said, merited
preferment.
As for this Parlement of Paris, now turned out to the street, we
will without reluctance leave it there. The Beds of Justice it
had to undergo, in the coming fortnight, at Versailles, in
registering, or rather refusing to register, those new-hatched
Edicts; and how it assembled in taverns and tap-rooms there, for
the purpose of Protesting, (_Weber, i. 299-303._) or hovered
disconsolate, with outspread skirts, not knowing where to
assemble; and was reduced to lodge Protest 'with a Notary;' and
in the end, to sit still (_in a state of forced 'vacation'_), and
do nothing; all this, natural now, as the burying of the dead
after battle, shall not concern us. The Parlement of Paris has as
good as performed its part; doing and misdoing, so far, but
hardly further, could it stir the world.
Lomenie has removed the evil then? Not at all: not so much as the
symptom of the evil; scarcely the twelfth part of the symptom,
and exasperated the other eleven! The Intendants of Provinces,
the Military Commandants are at their posts, on the appointed 8th
of May: but in no Parlement, if not in the single one of Douai,
can these new Edicts get registered. Not peaceable signing with
ink; but browbeating, bloodshedding, appeal to primary club-law!
Against these Bailliages, against this Plenary Court, exasperated
Themis everywhere shows face of battle; the Provincial Noblesse
are of her party, and whoever hates Lomenie and the evil time;
with her attorneys and Tipstaves, she enlists and operates down
even to the populace. At Rennes in Brittany, where the historical
Bertrand de Moleville is Intendant, it has passed from fatal
continual duelling, between the military and gentry, to
street-fighting; to stone-volleys and musket-shot: and still the
Edicts remained unregistered. The afflicted Bretons send
remonstrance to Lomenie, by a Deputation of Twelve; whom,
however, Lomenie, having heard them, shuts up in the Bastille. A
second larger deputation he meets, by his scouts, on the road,
and persuades or frightens back. But now a third largest
Deputation is indignantly sent by many roads: refused audience on
arriving, it meets to take council; invites Lafayette and all
Patriot Bretons in Paris to assist; agitates itself; becomes the
Breton Club, first germ of—the Jacobins' Society. (_A. F. de
Bertrand-Moleville, Memoires Particuliers (_Paris, 1816_), I. ch.
i. Marmontel, Memoires, iv. 27._)
So many as eight Parlements get exiled: (_Montgaillard, i. 308._)
others might need that remedy, but it is one not always easy of
appliance. At Grenoble, for instance, where a Mounier, a Barnave
have not been idle, the Parlement had due order (_by
Lettres-de-Cachet_) to depart, and exile itself: but on the
morrow, instead of coaches getting yoked, the alarm-bell bursts
forth, ominous; and peals and booms all day: crowds of
mountaineers rush down, with axes, even with firelocks,—whom
(_most ominous of all!_) the soldiery shows no eagerness to deal
with. 'Axe over head,' the poor General has to sign capitulation;
to engage that the Lettres-de-Cachet shall remain unexecuted, and
a beloved Parlement stay where it is. Besancon, Dijon, Rouen,
Bourdeaux, are not what they should be! At Pau in Bearn, where
the old Commandant had failed, the new one (_a Grammont, native
to them_) is met by a Procession of townsmen with the Cradle of
Henri Quatre, the Palladium of their Town; is conjured as he
venerates this old Tortoise-shell, in which the great Henri was
rocked, not to trample on Bearnese liberty; is informed, withal,
that his Majesty's cannon are all safe—in the keeping of his
Majesty's faithful Burghers of Pau, and do now lie pointed on the
walls there; ready for action! (_Besenval, iii. 348._)
At this rate, your Grand Bailliages are like to have a stormy
infancy. As for the Plenary Court, it has literally expired in
the birth. The very Courtiers looked shy at it; old Marshal
Broglie declined the honour of sitting therein. Assaulted by a
universal storm of mingled ridicule and execration, (_La Cour
Pleniere, heroi-tragi-comedie en trois actes et en prose; jouee
le 14 Juillet 1788, par une societe d'amateurs dans un Chateau
aux environs de Versailles; par M. l'Abbe de Vermond, Lecteur de
la Reine: A Baville (_Lamoignon's Country-house_), et se trouve a
Paris, chez la Veuve Liberte, a l'enseigne de la Revolution,
1788.—La Passion, la Mort et la Resurrection du Peuple: Imprime a
Jerusalem, &c. &c.—See Montgaillard, i. 407._) this poor Plenary
Court met once, and never any second time. Distracted country!
Contention hisses up, with forked hydra-tongues, wheresoever poor
Lomenie sets his foot. 'Let a Commandant, a Commissioner of the
King,' says Weber, 'enter one of these Parlements to have an
Edict registered, the whole Tribunal will disappear, and leave
the Commandant alone with the Clerk and First President. The
Edict registered and the Commandant gone, the whole Tribunal
hastens back, to declare such registration null. The highways are
covered with Grand Deputations of Parlements, proceeding to
Versailles, to have their registers expunged by the King's hand;
or returning home, to cover a new page with a new resolution
still more audacious.' (_Weber, i. 275._)
Such is the France of this year 1788. Not now a Golden or Paper
Age of Hope; with its horse-racings, balloon-flyings, and finer
sensibilities of the heart: ah, gone is that; its golden
effulgence paled, bedarkened in this singular manner,—brewing
towards preternatural weather! For, as in that wreck-storm of
Paul et Virginie and Saint-Pierre,—'One huge motionless cloud'
(_say, of Sorrow and Indignation_) 'girdles our whole horizon;
streams up, hairy, copper-edged, over a sky of the colour of
lead.' Motionless itself; but 'small clouds' (_as exiled
Parlements and suchlike_), 'parting from it, fly over the zenith,
with the velocity of birds:'—till at last, with one loud howl,
the whole Four Winds be dashed together, and all the world
exclaim, There is the tornado! Tout le monde s'ecria, Voila
l'ouragan!
For the rest, in such circumstances, the Successive Loan, very
naturally, remains unfilled; neither, indeed, can that impost of
the Second Twentieth, at least not on 'strict valuation,' be
levied to good purpose: 'Lenders,' says Weber, in his hysterical
vehement manner, 'are afraid of ruin; tax-gatherers of hanging.'
The very Clergy turn away their face: convoked in Extraordinary
Assembly, they afford no gratuitous gift (_don gratuit_),—if it
be not that of advice; here too instead of cash is clamour for
States-General. (_Lameth, Assemb. Const. (_Introd._) p. 87._)
O Lomenie-Brienne, with thy poor flimsy mind all bewildered, and
now 'three actual cauteries' on thy worn-out body; who art like
to die of inflamation, provocation, milk-diet, dartres vives and
maladie—(_best untranslated_); (_Montgaillard, i. 424._) and
presidest over a France with innumerable actual cauteries, which
also is dying of inflammation and the rest! Was it wise to quit
the bosky verdures of Brienne, and thy new ashlar Chateau there,
and what it held, for this? Soft were those shades and lawns;
sweet the hymns of Poetasters, the blandishments of high-rouged
Graces: (_See Memoires de Morellet._) and always this and the
other Philosophe Morellet (_nothing deeming himself or thee a
questionable Sham-Priest_) could be so happy in making happy:—and
also (_hadst thou known it_), in the Military School hard by
there sat, studying mathematics, a dusky-complexioned taciturn
Boy, under the name of: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE!—With fifty years of
effort, and one final dead-lift struggle, thou hast made an
exchange! Thou hast got thy robe of office,—as Hercules had his
Nessus'-shirt.
On the 13th of July of this 1788, there fell, on the very edge of
harvest, the most frightful hailstorm; scattering into wild waste
the Fruits of the Year; which had otherwise suffered grievously
by drought. For sixty leagues round Paris especially, the ruin
was almost total. (_Marmontel, iv. 30._) To so many other evils,
then, there is to be added, that of dearth, perhaps of famine.
Some days before this hailstorm, on the 5th of July; and still
more decisively some days after it, on the 8th of August,—Lomenie
announces that the States-General are actually to meet in the
following month of May. Till after which period, this of the
Plenary Court, and the rest, shall remain postponed. Further, as
in Lomenie there is no plan of forming or holding these most
desirable States-General, 'thinkers are invited' to furnish him
with one,—through the medium of discussion by the public press!
What could a poor Minister do? There are still ten months of
respite reserved: a sinking pilot will fling out all things, his
very biscuit-bags, lead, log, compass and quadrant, before
flinging out himself. It is on this principle, of sinking, and
the incipient delirium of despair, that we explain likewise the
almost miraculous 'invitation to thinkers.' Invitation to Chaos
to be so kind as build, out of its tumultuous drift-wood, an Ark
of Escape for him! In these cases, not invitation but command has
usually proved serviceable.—The Queen stood, that evening,
pensive, in a window, with her face turned towards the Garden.
The Chef de Gobelet had followed her with an obsequious cup of
coffee; and then retired till it were sipped. Her Majesty
beckoned Dame Campan to approach: "Grand Dieu!" murmured she,
with the cup in her hand, "what a piece of news will be made
public to-day! The King grants States-General." Then raising her
eyes to Heaven (_if Campan were not mistaken_), she added: "'Tis
a first beat of the drum, of ill-omen for France. This Noblesse
will ruin us." (_Campan, iii. 104, 111._)
During all that hatching of the Plenary Court, while Lamoignon
looked so mysterious, Besenval had kept asking him one question:
Whether they had cash? To which as Lamoignon always answered (_on
the faith of Lomenie_) that the cash was safe, judicious Besenval
rejoined that then all was safe. Nevertheless, the melancholy
fact is, that the royal coffers are almost getting literally void
of coin. Indeed, apart from all other things this 'invitation to
thinkers,' and the great change now at hand are enough to 'arrest
the circulation of capital,' and forward only that of pamphlets.
A few thousand gold louis are now all of money or money's worth
that remains in the King's Treasury. With another movement as of
desperation, Lomenie invites Necker to come and be Controller of
Finances! Necker has other work in view than controlling Finances
for Lomenie: with a dry refusal he stands taciturn; awaiting his
time.
What shall a desperate Prime Minister do? He has grasped at the
strongbox of the King's Theatre: some Lottery had been set on
foot for those sufferers by the hailstorm; in his extreme
necessity, Lomenie lays hands even on this. (_Besenval, iii.
360._) To make provision for the passing day, on any terms, will
soon be impossible.—On the 16th of August, poor Weber heard, at
Paris and Versailles, hawkers, 'with a hoarse stifled tone of
voice (_voix etouffee, sourde_)' drawling and snuffling, through
the streets, an Edict concerning Payments (_such was the soft
title Rivarol had contrived for it_): all payments at the Royal
Treasury shall be made henceforth, three-fifths in Cash, and the
remaining two-fifths—in Paper bearing interest! Poor Weber almost
swooned at the sound of these cracked voices, with their bodeful
raven-note; and will never forget the effect it had on him.
(_Weber, i. 339._)
But the effect on Paris, on the world generally? From the dens of
Stock-brokerage, from the heights of Political Economy, of
Neckerism and Philosophism; from all articulate and inarticulate
throats, rise hootings and howlings, such as ear had not yet
heard. Sedition itself may be imminent! Monseigneur d'Artois,
moved by Duchess Polignac, feels called to wait upon her Majesty;
and explain frankly what crisis matters stand in. 'The Queen
wept;' Brienne himself wept;—for it is now visible and palpable
that he must go.
Remains only that the Court, to whom his manners and garrulities
were always agreeable, shall make his fall soft. The grasping old
man has already got his Archbishopship of Toulouse exchanged for
the richer one of Sens: and now, in this hour of pity, he shall
have the Coadjutorship for his nephew (_hardly yet of due age_);
a Dameship of the Palace for his niece; a Regiment for her
husband; for himself a red Cardinal's-hat, a Coupe de Bois
(_cutting from the royal forests_), and on the whole 'from five
to six hundred thousand livres of revenue:' (_Weber, i. 341._)
finally, his Brother, the Comte de Brienne, shall still continue
War-minister. Buckled-round with such bolsters and huge
featherbeds of Promotion, let him now fall as soft as he can!
And so Lomenie departs: rich if Court-titles and Money-bonds can
enrich him; but if these cannot, perhaps the poorest of all
extant men. 'Hissed at by the people of Versailles,' he drives
forth to Jardi; southward to Brienne,—for recovery of health.
Then to Nice, to Italy; but shall return; shall glide to and fro,
tremulous, faint-twinkling, fallen on awful times: till the
Guillotine—snuff out his weak existence? Alas, worse: for it is
blown out, or choked out, foully, pitiably, on the way to the
Guillotine! In his Palace of Sens, rude Jacobin Bailiffs made him
drink with them from his own wine-cellars, feast with them from
his own larder; and on the morrow morning, the miserable old man
lies dead. This is the end of Prime Minister, Cardinal Archbishop
Lomenie de Brienne. Flimsier mortal was seldom fated to do as
weighty a mischief; to have a life as despicable-envied, an exit
as frightful. Fired, as the phrase is, with ambition: blown, like
a kindled rag, the sport of winds, not this way, not that way,
but of all ways, straight towards such a powder-mine,—which he
kindled! Let us pity the hapless Lomenie; and forgive him; and,
as soon as possible, forget him.
Chapter 1.3.IX.
Burial with Bonfire.
Besenval, during these extraordinary operations, of Payment
two-fifths in Paper, and change of Prime Minister, had been out
on a tour through his District of Command; and indeed, for the
last months, peacefully drinking the waters of Contrexeville.
Returning now, in the end of August, towards Moulins, and
'knowing nothing,' he arrives one evening at Langres; finds the
whole Town in a state of uproar (_grande rumeur_). Doubtless some
sedition; a thing too common in these days! He alights
nevertheless; inquires of a 'man tolerably dressed,' what the
matter is?—"How?" answers the man, "you have not heard the news?
The Archbishop is thrown out, and M. Necker is recalled; and all
is going to go well!" (_Besenval, iii. 366._)
Such rumeur and vociferous acclaim has risen round M. Necker,
ever from 'that day when he issued from the Queen's Apartments,'
a nominated Minister. It was on the 24th of August: 'the
galleries of the Chateau, the courts, the streets of Versailles;
in few hours, the Capital; and, as the news flew, all France,
resounded with the cry of Vive le Roi! Vive M. Necker! (_Weber,
i. 342._) In Paris indeed it unfortunately got the length of
turbulence.' Petards, rockets go off, in the Place Dauphine, more
than enough. A 'wicker Figure (_Mannequin d'osier_),' in
Archbishop's stole, made emblematically, three-fifths of it
satin, two-fifths of it paper, is promenaded, not in silence, to
the popular judgment-bar; is doomed; shriven by a mock Abbe de
Vermond; then solemnly consumed by fire, at the foot of Henri's
Statue on the Pont Neuf;—with such petarding and huzzaing that
Chevalier Dubois and his City-watch see good finally to make a
charge (_more or less ineffectual_); and there wanted not burning
of sentry-boxes, forcing of guard-houses, and also 'dead bodies
thrown into the Seine over-night,' to avoid new effervescence.
(_Histoire Parlementaire de la Revolution Francaise; ou Journal
des Assemblees Nationales depuis 1789 (_Paris, 1833 et seqq._),
i. 253. Lameth, Assemblee Constituante, i. (_Introd._) p. 89._)
Parlements therefore shall return from exile: Plenary Court,
Payment two-fifths in Paper have vanished; gone off in smoke, at
the foot of Henri's Statue. States-General (_with a Political
Millennium_) are now certain; nay, it shall be announced, in our
fond haste, for January next: and all, as the Langres man said,
is 'going to go.'
To the prophetic glance of Besenval, one other thing is too
apparent: that Friend Lamoignon cannot keep his Keepership.
Neither he nor War-minister Comte de Brienne! Already old Foulon,
with an eye to be war-minister himself, is making underground
movements. This is that same Foulon named ame damnee du
Parlement; a man grown gray in treachery, in griping, projecting,
intriguing and iniquity: who once when it was objected, to some
finance-scheme of his, "What will the people do?"—made answer, in
the fire of discussion, "The people may eat grass:" hasty words,
which fly abroad irrevocable,—and will send back tidings!
Foulon, to the relief of the world, fails on this occasion; and
will always fail. Nevertheless it steads not M. de Lamoignon. It
steads not the doomed man that he have interviews with the King;
and be 'seen to return radieux,' emitting rays. Lamoignon is the
hated of Parlements: Comte de Brienne is Brother to the Cardinal
Archbishop. The 24th of August has been; and the 14th September
is not yet, when they two, as their great Principal had done,
descend,—made to fall soft, like him.
And now, as if the last burden had been rolled from its heart,
and assurance were at length perfect, Paris bursts forth anew
into extreme jubilee. The Basoche rejoices aloud, that the foe of
Parlements is fallen; Nobility, Gentry, Commonalty have rejoiced;
and rejoice. Nay now, with new emphasis, Rascality itself,
starting suddenly from its dim depths, will arise and do it,—for
down even thither the new Political Evangel, in some rude version
or other, has penetrated. It is Monday, the 14th of September
1788: Rascality assembles anew, in great force, in the Place
Dauphine; lets off petards, fires blunderbusses, to an incredible
extent, without interval, for eighteen hours. There is again a
wicker Figure, 'Mannequin of osier:' the centre of endless
howlings. Also Necker's Portrait snatched, or purchased, from
some Printshop, is borne processionally, aloft on a perch, with
huzzas;—an example to be remembered.
But chiefly on the Pont Neuf, where the Great Henri, in bronze,
rides sublime; there do the crowds gather. All passengers must
stop, till they have bowed to the People's King, and said
audibly: Vive Henri Quatre; au diable Lamoignon! No carriage but
must stop; not even that of his Highness d'Orleans. Your
coach-doors are opened: Monsieur will please to put forth his
head and bow; or even, if refractory, to alight altogether, and
kneel: from Madame a wave of her plumes, a smile of her fair
face, there where she sits, shall suffice;—and surely a coin or
two (_to buy fusees_) were not unreasonable from the Upper
Classes, friends of Liberty? In this manner it proceeds for days;
in such rude horse-play,—not without kicks. The City-watch can do
nothing; hardly save its own skin: for the last twelve-month, as
we have sometimes seen, it has been a kind of pastime to hunt the
Watch. Besenval indeed is at hand with soldiers; but they have
orders to avoid firing, and are not prompt to stir.
On Monday morning the explosion of petards began: and now it is
near midnight of Wednesday; and the 'wicker Mannequin' is to be
buried,—apparently in the Antique fashion. Long rows of torches,
following it, move towards the Hotel Lamoignon; but 'a servant of
mine' (_Besenval's_) has run to give warning, and there are
soldiers come. Gloomy Lamoignon is not to die by conflagration,
or this night; not yet for a year, and then by gunshot (_suicidal
or accidental is unknown_). (_Histoire de la Revolution, par Deux
Amis de la Liberte, i. 50._) Foiled Rascality burns its 'Mannikin
of osier,' under his windows; 'tears up the sentry-box,' and
rolls off: to try Brienne; to try Dubois Captain of the Watch.
Now, however, all is bestirring itself; Gardes Francaises,
Invalides, Horse-patrol: the Torch Procession is met with sharp
shot, with the thrusting of bayonets, the slashing of sabres.
Even Dubois makes a charge, with that Cavalry of his, and the
cruelest charge of all: 'there are a great many killed and
wounded.' Not without clangour, complaint; subsequent criminal
trials, and official persons dying of heartbreak! (_Histoire de
la Revolution, par Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 58._) So, however,
with steel-besom, Rascality is brushed back into its dim depths,
and the streets are swept clear.
Not for a century and half had Rascality ventured to step forth
in this fashion; not for so long, showed its huge rude lineaments
in the light of day. A Wonder and new Thing: as yet gamboling
merely, in awkward Brobdingnag sport, not without quaintness;
hardly in anger: yet in its huge half-vacant laugh lurks a shade
of grimness,—which could unfold itself!
However, the thinkers invited by Lomenie are now far on with
their pamphlets: States-General, on one plan or another, will
infallibly meet; if not in January, as was once hoped, yet at
latest in May. Old Duke de Richelieu, moribund in these autumn
days, opens his eyes once more, murmuring, "What would Louis
Fourteenth" (_whom he remembers_) "have said!"—then closes them
again, forever, before the evil time.
BOOK 1.IV.
STATES-GENERAL
Chapter 1.4.I.
The Notables Again.
The universal prayer, therefore, is to be fulfilled! Always in
days of national perplexity, when wrong abounded and help was
not, this remedy of States-General was called for; by a
Malesherbes, nay by a Fenelon; (_Montgaillard, i. 461._) even
Parlements calling for it were 'escorted with blessings.' And now
behold it is vouchsafed us; States-General shall verily be!
To say, let States-General be, was easy; to say in what manner
they shall be, is not so easy. Since the year of 1614, there have
no States-General met in France, all trace of them has vanished
from the living habits of men. Their structure, powers, methods
of procedure, which were never in any measure fixed, have now
become wholly a vague possibility. Clay which the potter may
shape, this way or that:—say rather, the twenty-five millions of
potters; for so many have now, more or less, a vote in it! How to
shape the States-General? There is a problem. Each
Body-corporate, each privileged, each organised Class has secret
hopes of its own in that matter; and also secret misgivings of
its own,—for, behold, this monstrous twenty-million Class,
hitherto the dumb sheep which these others had to agree about the
manner of shearing, is now also arising with hopes! It has ceased
or is ceasing to be dumb; it speaks through Pamphlets, or at
least brays and growls behind them, in unison,—increasing
wonderfully their volume of sound.
As for the Parlement of Paris, it has at once declared for the
'old form of 1614.' Which form had this advantage, that the Tiers
Etat, Third Estate, or Commons, figured there as a show mainly:
whereby the Noblesse and Clergy had but to avoid quarrel between
themselves, and decide unobstructed what they thought best. Such
was the clearly declared opinion of the Paris Parlement. But,
being met by a storm of mere hooting and howling from all men,
such opinion was blown straightway to the winds; and the
popularity of the Parlement along with it,—never to return. The
Parlements part, we said above, was as good as played. Concerning
which, however, there is this further to be noted: the proximity
of dates. It was on the 22nd of September that the Parlement
returned from 'vacation' or 'exile in its estates;' to be
reinstalled amid boundless jubilee from all Paris. Precisely next
day it was, that this same Parlement came to its 'clearly
declared opinion:' and then on the morrow after that, you behold
it covered with outrages;' its outer court, one vast sibilation,
and the glory departed from it for evermore. (_Weber, i. 347._) A
popularity of twenty-four hours was, in those times, no uncommon
allowance.
On the other hand, how superfluous was that invitation of
Lomenie's: the invitation to thinkers! Thinkers and unthinkers,
by the million, are spontaneously at their post, doing what is in
them. Clubs labour: Societe Publicole; Breton Club; Enraged Club,
Club des Enrages. Likewise Dinner-parties in the Palais Royal;
your Mirabeaus, Talleyrands dining there, in company with
Chamforts, Morellets, with Duponts and hot Parlementeers, not
without object! For a certain Neckerean Lion's-provider, whom one
could name, assembles them there; (_Ibid. i. 360._)—or even their
own private determination to have dinner does it. And then as to
Pamphlets—in figurative language; 'it is a sheer snowing of
pamphlets; like to snow up the Government thoroughfares!' Now is
the time for Friends of Freedom; sane, and even insane.
Count, or self-styled Count, d'Aintrigues, 'the young
Languedocian gentleman,' with perhaps Chamfort the Cynic to help
him, rises into furor almost Pythic; highest, where many are
high. (_Memoire sur les Etats-Generaux. See Montgaillard, i.
457-9._) Foolish young Languedocian gentleman; who himself so
soon, 'emigrating among the foremost,' must fly indignant over
the marches, with the Contrat Social in his pocket,—towards outer
darkness, thankless intriguings, ignis-fatuus hoverings, and
death by the stiletto! Abbe Sieyes has left Chartres Cathedral,
and canonry and book-shelves there; has let his tonsure grow, and
come to Paris with a secular head, of the most irrefragable sort,
to ask three questions, and answer them: What is the Third
Estate? All.—What has it hitherto been in our form of government?
Nothing.—What does it want? To become Something.
D'Orleans,—for be sure he, on his way to Chaos, is in the thick
of this,—promulgates his Deliberations; (_Deliberations a prendre
pour les Assemblees des Bailliages._) fathered by him, written by
Laclos of the Liaisons Dangereuses. The result of which comes out
simply: 'The Third Estate is the Nation.' On the other hand,
Monseigneur d'Artois, with other Princes of the Blood, publishes,
in solemn Memorial to the King, that if such things be listened
to, Privilege, Nobility, Monarchy, Church, State and Strongbox
are in danger. (_Memoire presente au Roi, par Monseigneur Comte
d'Artois, M. le Prince de Conde, M. le Duc de Bourbon, M. le Duc
d'Enghien, et M. le Prince de Conti. (_Given in Hist. Parl. i.
256._)_) In danger truly: and yet if you do not listen, are they
out of danger? It is the voice of all France, this sound that
rises. Immeasurable, manifold; as the sound of outbreaking
waters: wise were he who knew what to do in it,—if not to fly to
the mountains, and hide himself?
How an ideal, all-seeing Versailles Government, sitting there on
such principles, in such an environment, would have determined to
demean itself at this new juncture, may even yet be a question.
Such a Government would have felt too well that its long task was
now drawing to a close; that, under the guise of these
States-General, at length inevitable, a new omnipotent Unknown of
Democracy was coming into being; in presence of which no
Versailles Government either could or should, except in a
provisory character, continue extant. To enact which provisory
character, so unspeakably important, might its whole faculties
but have sufficed; and so a peaceable, gradual, well-conducted
Abdication and Domine-dimittas have been the issue!
This for our ideal, all-seeing Versailles Government. But for the
actual irrational Versailles Government? Alas, that is a
Government existing there only for its own behoof: without right,
except possession; and now also without might. It foresees
nothing, sees nothing; has not so much as a purpose, but has only
purposes,—and the instinct whereby all that exists will struggle
to keep existing. Wholly a vortex; in which vain counsels,
hallucinations, falsehoods, intrigues, and imbecilities whirl;
like withered rubbish in the meeting of winds! The Oeil-de-Boeuf
has its irrational hopes, if also its fears. Since hitherto all
States-General have done as good as nothing, why should these do
more? The Commons, indeed, look dangerous; but on the whole is
not revolt, unknown now for five generations, an impossibility?
The Three Estates can, by management, be set against each other;
the Third will, as heretofore, join with the King; will, out of
mere spite and self-interest, be eager to tax and vex the other
two. The other two are thus delivered bound into our hands, that
we may fleece them likewise. Whereupon, money being got, and the
Three Estates all in quarrel, dismiss them, and let the future go
as it can! As good Archbishop Lomenie was wont to say: "There are
so many accidents; and it needs but one to save us."—How many to
destroy us?
Poor Necker in the midst of such an anarchy does what is possible
for him. He looks into it with obstinately hopeful face; lauds
the known rectitude of the kingly mind; listens indulgent-like to
the known perverseness of the queenly and courtly;—emits if any
proclamation or regulation, one favouring the Tiers Etat; but
settling nothing; hovering afar off rather, and advising all
things to settle themselves. The grand questions, for the
present, have got reduced to two: the Double Representation, and
the Vote by Head. Shall the Commons have a 'double
representation,' that is to say, have as many members as the
Noblesse and Clergy united? Shall the States-General, when once
assembled, vote and deliberate, in one body, or in three separate
bodies; 'vote by head, or vote by class,'—ordre as they call it?
These are the moot-points now filling all France with jargon,
logic and eleutheromania. To terminate which, Necker bethinks
him, Might not a second Convocation of the Notables be fittest?
Such second Convocation is resolved on.
On the 6th of November of this year 1788, these Notables
accordingly have reassembled; after an interval of some eighteen
months. They are Calonne's old Notables, the same Hundred and
Forty-four,—to show one's impartiality; likewise to save time.
They sit there once again, in their Seven Bureaus, in the hard
winter weather: it is the hardest winter seen since 1709;
thermometer below zero of Fahrenheit, Seine River frozen over.
(_Marmontel, Memoires (_London, 1805_), iv. 33. Hist. Parl, &c._)
Cold, scarcity and eleutheromaniac clamour: a changed world since
these Notables were 'organed out,' in May gone a year! They shall
see now whether, under their Seven Princes of the Blood, in their
Seven Bureaus, they can settle the moot-points.
To the surprise of Patriotism, these Notables, once so patriotic,
seem to incline the wrong way; towards the anti-patriotic side.
They stagger at the Double Representation, at the Vote by Head:
there is not affirmative decision; there is mere debating, and
that not with the best aspects. For, indeed, were not these
Notables themselves mostly of the Privileged Classes? They
clamoured once; now they have their misgivings; make their
dolorous representations. Let them vanish, ineffectual; and
return no more! They vanish after a month's session, on this 12th
of December, year 1788: the last terrestrial Notables, not to
reappear any other time, in the History of the World.
And so, the clamour still continuing, and the Pamphlets; and
nothing but patriotic Addresses, louder and louder, pouting in on
us from all corners of France,—Necker himself some fortnight
after, before the year is yet done, has to present his Report,
(_Rapport fait au Roi dans son Conseil, le 27 Decembre 1788._)
recommending at his own risk that same Double Representation; nay
almost enjoining it, so loud is the jargon and eleutheromania.
What dubitating, what circumambulating! These whole six noisy
months (_for it began with Brienne in July,_) has not Report
followed Report, and one Proclamation flown in the teeth of the
other? (_5th July; 8th August; 23rd September, &c. &c._)
However, that first moot-point, as we see, is now settled. As for
the second, that of voting by Head or by Order, it unfortunately
is still left hanging. It hangs there, we may say, between the
Privileged Orders and the Unprivileged; as a ready-made
battle-prize, and necessity of war, from the very first: which
battle-prize whosoever seizes it—may thenceforth bear as
battle-flag, with the best omens!
But so, at least, by Royal Edict of the 24th of January,
(_Reglement du Roi pour la Convocation des Etats-Generaux a
Versailles. (_Reprinted, wrong dated, in Histoire Parlementaire,
i. 262._)_) does it finally, to impatient expectant France,
become not only indubitable that National Deputies are to meet,
but possible (_so far and hardly farther has the royal Regulation
gone_) to begin electing them.
Chapter 1.4.II.
The Election.
Up, then, and be doing! The royal signal-word flies through
France, as through vast forests the rushing of a mighty wind. At
Parish Churches, in Townhalls, and every House of Convocation; by
Bailliages, by Seneschalsies, in whatsoever form men convene;
there, with confusion enough, are Primary Assemblies forming. To
elect your Electors; such is the form prescribed: then to draw up
your 'Writ of Plaints and Grievances (_Cahier de plaintes et
doleances_),' of which latter there is no lack.
With such virtue works this Royal January Edict; as it rolls
rapidly, in its leathern mails, along these frostbound highways,
towards all the four winds. Like some fiat, or magic
spell-word;—which such things do resemble! For always, as it
sounds out 'at the market-cross,' accompanied with trumpet-blast;
presided by Bailli, Seneschal, or other minor Functionary, with
beef-eaters; or, in country churches is droned forth after
sermon, 'au prone des messes paroissales;' and is registered,
posted and let fly over all the world,—you behold how this
multitudinous French People, so long simmering and buzzing in
eager expectancy, begins heaping and shaping itself into organic
groups. Which organic groups, again, hold smaller organic
grouplets: the inarticulate buzzing becomes articulate speaking
and acting. By Primary Assembly, and then by Secondary; by
'successive elections,' and infinite elaboration and scrutiny,
according to prescribed process—shall the genuine 'Plaints and
Grievances' be at length got to paper; shall the fit National
Representative be at length laid hold of.
How the whole People shakes itself, as if it had one life; and,
in thousand-voiced rumour, announces that it is awake, suddenly
out of long death-sleep, and will thenceforth sleep no more! The
long looked-for has come at last; wondrous news, of Victory,
Deliverance, Enfranchisement, sounds magical through every heart.
To the proud strong man it has come; whose strong hands shall no
more be gyved; to whom boundless unconquered continents lie
disclosed. The weary day-drudge has heard of it; the beggar with
his crusts moistened in tears. What! To us also has hope reached;
down even to us? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal? The
bread we extorted from the rugged glebe, and, with the toil of
our sinews, reaped and ground, and kneaded into loaves, was not
wholly for another, then; but we also shall eat of it, and be
filled? Glorious news (_answer the prudent elders_), but all-too
unlikely!—Thus, at any rate, may the lower people, who pay no
money-taxes and have no right to vote, (_Reglement du Roi in
Histoire Parlementaire, as above, i. 267-307._) assiduously crowd
round those that do; and most Halls of Assembly, within doors and
without, seem animated enough.
Paris, alone of Towns, is to have Representatives; the number of
them twenty. Paris is divided into Sixty Districts; each of which
(_assembled in some church, or the like_) is choosing two
Electors. Official deputations pass from District to District,
for all is inexperience as yet, and there is endless consulting.
The streets swarm strangely with busy crowds, pacific yet
restless and loquacious; at intervals, is seen the gleam of
military muskets; especially about the Palais, where Parlement,
once more on duty, sits querulous, almost tremulous.
Busy is the French world! In those great days, what poorest
speculative craftsman but will leave his workshop; if not to
vote, yet to assist in voting? On all highways is a rustling and
bustling. Over the wide surface of France, ever and anon, through
the spring months, as the Sower casts his corn abroad upon the
furrows, sounds of congregating and dispersing; of crowds in
deliberation, acclamation, voting by ballot and by voice,—rise
discrepant towards the ear of Heaven. To which political
phenomena add this economical one, that Trade is stagnant, and
also Bread getting dear; for before the rigorous winter there
was, as we said, a rigorous summer, with drought, and on the 13th
of July with destructive hail. What a fearful day! all cried
while that tempest fell. Alas, the next anniversary of it will be
a worse. (_Bailly, Memoires, i. 336._) Under such aspects is
France electing National Representatives.
The incidents and specialties of these Elections belong not to
Universal, but to Local or Parish History: for which reason let
not the new troubles of Grenoble or Besancon; the bloodshed on
the streets of Rennes, and consequent march thither of the Breton
'Young Men' with Manifesto by their 'Mothers, Sisters and
Sweethearts;' (_Protestation et Arrete des Jeunes Gens de la
Ville de Nantes, du 28 Janvier 1789, avant leur depart pour
Rennes. Arrete des Jeunes Gens de la Ville d'Angers, du 4 Fevrier
1789. Arrete des Meres, Soeurs, Epouses et Amantes des Jeunes
Citoyens d'Angers, du 6 Fevrier 1789. (_Reprinted in Histoire
Parlementaire, i. 290-3._)_) nor suchlike, detain us here. It is
the same sad history everywhere; with superficial variations. A
reinstated Parlement (_as at Besancon_), which stands astonished
at this Behemoth of a States-General it had itself evoked, starts
forward, with more or less audacity, to fix a thorn in its nose;
and, alas, is instantaneously struck down, and hurled quite
out,—for the new popular force can use not only arguments but
brickbats! Or else, and perhaps combined with this, it is an
order of Noblesse (_as in Brittany_), which will beforehand tie
up the Third Estate, that it harm not the old privileges. In
which act of tying up, never so skilfully set about, there is
likewise no possibility of prospering; but the Behemoth-Briareus
snaps your cords like green rushes. Tie up? Alas, Messieurs! And
then, as for your chivalry rapiers, valour and wager-of-battle,
think one moment, how can that answer? The plebeian heart too has
red life in it, which changes not to paleness at glance even of
you; and 'the six hundred Breton gentlemen assembled in arms, for
seventy-two hours, in the Cordeliers' Cloister, at Rennes,'—have
to come out again, wiser than they entered. For the Nantes Youth,
the Angers Youth, all Brittany was astir; 'mothers, sisters and
sweethearts' shrieking after them, March! The Breton Noblesse
must even let the mad world have its way. (_Hist. Parl. i. 287.
Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 105-128._)
In other Provinces, the Noblesse, with equal goodwill, finds it
better to stick to Protests, to well-redacted 'Cahiers of
grievances,' and satirical writings and speeches. Such is
partially their course in Provence; whither indeed Gabriel Honore
Riquetti Comte de Mirabeau has rushed down from Paris, to speak a
word in season. In Provence, the Privileged, backed by their Aix
Parlement, discover that such novelties, enjoined though they be
by Royal Edict, tend to National detriment; and what is still
more indisputable, 'to impair the dignity of the Noblesse.'
Whereupon Mirabeau protesting aloud, this same Noblesse, amid
huge tumult within doors and without, flatly determines to expel
him from their Assembly. No other method, not even that of
successive duels, would answer with him, the obstreperous
fierce-glaring man. Expelled he accordingly is.
'In all countries, in all times,' exclaims he departing, 'the
Aristocrats have implacably pursued every friend of the People;
and with tenfold implacability, if such a one were himself born
of the Aristocracy. It was thus that the last of the Gracchi
perished, by the hands of the Patricians. But he, being struck
with the mortal stab, flung dust towards heaven, and called on
the Avenging Deities; and from this dust there was born
Marius,—Marius not so illustrious for exterminating the Cimbri,
as for overturning in Rome the tyranny of the Nobles.' (_Fils
Adoptif, v. 256._) Casting up which new curious handful of dust
(_through the Printing-press_), to breed what it can and may,
Mirabeau stalks forth into the Third Estate.
That he now, to ingratiate himself with this Third Estate,
'opened a cloth-shop in Marseilles,' and for moments became a
furnishing tailor, or even the fable that he did so, is to us
always among the pleasant memorabilities of this era. Stranger
Clothier never wielded the ell-wand, and rent webs for men, or
fractional parts of men. The Fils Adoptif is indignant at such
disparaging fable, (_Memoires de Mirabeau, v. 307._)—which
nevertheless was widely believed in those days. (_Marat,
Ami-du-Peuple Newspaper (_in Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 103_),
&c._) But indeed, if Achilles, in the heroic ages, killed mutton,
why should not Mirabeau, in the unheroic ones, measure
broadcloth?
More authentic are his triumph-progresses through that disturbed
district, with mob jubilee, flaming torches, 'windows hired for
two louis,' and voluntary guard of a hundred men. He is Deputy
Elect, both of Aix and of Marseilles; but will prefer Aix. He has
opened his far-sounding voice, the depths of his far-sounding
soul; he can quell (_such virtue is in a spoken word_) the
pride-tumults of the rich, the hunger-tumults of the poor; and
wild multitudes move under him, as under the moon do billows of
the sea: he has become a world compeller, and ruler over men.
One other incident and specialty we note; with how different an
interest! It is of the Parlement of Paris; which starts forward,
like the others (_only with less audacity, seeing better how it
lay_), to nose-ring that Behemoth of a States-General. Worthy
Doctor Guillotin, respectable practitioner in Paris, has drawn up
his little 'Plan of a Cahier of doleances;'—as had he not, having
the wish and gift, the clearest liberty to do? He is getting the
people to sign it; whereupon the surly Parlement summons him to
give an account of himself. He goes; but with all Paris at his
heels; which floods the outer courts, and copiously signs the
Cahier even there, while the Doctor is giving account of himself
within! The Parlement cannot too soon dismiss Guillotin, with
compliments; to be borne home shoulder-high. (_Deux Amis de la
Liberte, i. 141._) This respectable Guillotin we hope to behold
once more, and perhaps only once; the Parlement not even once,
but let it be engulphed unseen by us.
Meanwhile such things, cheering as they are, tend little to cheer
the national creditor, or indeed the creditor of any kind. In the
midst of universal portentous doubt, what certainty can seem so
certain as money in the purse, and the wisdom of keeping it
there? Trading Speculation, Commerce of all kinds, has as far as
possible come to a dead pause; and the hand of the industrious
lies idle in his bosom. Frightful enough, when now the rigour of
seasons has also done its part, and to scarcity of work is added
scarcity of food! In the opening spring, there come rumours of
forestalment, there come King's Edicts, Petitions of bakers
against millers; and at length, in the month of April—troops of
ragged Lackalls, and fierce cries of starvation! These are the
thrice-famed Brigands: an actual existing quotity of persons:
who, long reflected and reverberated through so many millions of
heads, as in concave multiplying mirrors, become a whole Brigand
World; and, like a kind of Supernatural Machinery wondrously move
the Epos of the Revolution. The Brigands are here: the Brigands
are there; the Brigands are coming! Not otherwise sounded the
clang of Phoebus Apollos's silver bow, scattering pestilence and
pale terror; for this clang too was of the imagination;
preternatural; and it too walked in formless immeasurability,
having made itself like to the Night (_Greek._)!
But remark at least, for the first time, the singular empire of
Suspicion, in those lands, in those days. If poor famishing men
shall, prior to death, gather in groups and crowds, as the poor
fieldfares and plovers do in bitter weather, were it but that
they may chirp mournfully together, and misery look in the eyes
of misery; if famishing men (_what famishing fieldfares cannot
do_) should discover, once congregated, that they need not die
while food is in the land, since they are many, and with empty
wallets have right hands: in all this, what need were there of
Preternatural Machinery? To most people none; but not to French
people, in a time of Revolution. These Brigands (_as Turgot's
also were, fourteen years ago_) have all been set on; enlisted,
though without tuck of drum,—by Aristocrats, by Democrats, by
D'Orleans, D'Artois, and enemies of the public weal. Nay
Historians, to this day, will prove it by one argument: these
Brigands pretending to have no victual, nevertheless contrive to
drink, nay, have been seen drunk. (_Lacretelle, 18me Siecle, ii.
155._) An unexampled fact! But on the whole, may we not predict
that a people, with such a width of Credulity and of Incredulity
(_the proper union of which makes Suspicion, and indeed unreason
generally_), will see Shapes enough of Immortals fighting in its
battle-ranks, and never want for Epical Machinery?
Be this as it may, the Brigands are clearly got to Paris, in
considerable multitudes: (_Besenval, iii. 385, &c._) with sallow
faces, lank hair (_the true enthusiast complexion_), with sooty
rags; and also with large clubs, which they smite angrily against
the pavement! These mingle in the Election tumult; would fain
sign Guillotin's Cahier, or any Cahier or Petition whatsoever,
could they but write. Their enthusiast complexion, the smiting of
their sticks bodes little good to any one; least of all to rich
master-manufacturers of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, with whose
workmen they consort.
Chapter 1.4.III.
Grown Electric.
But now also National Deputies from all ends of France are in
Paris, with their commissions, what they call pouvoirs, or
powers, in their pockets; inquiring, consulting; looking out for
lodgings at Versailles. The States-General shall open there, if
not on the First, then surely on the Fourth of May, in grand
procession and gala. The Salle des Menus is all new-carpentered,
bedizened for them; their very costume has been fixed; a grand
controversy which there was, as to 'slouch-hats or
slouched-hats,' for the Commons Deputies, has got as good as
adjusted. Ever new strangers arrive; loungers, miscellaneous
persons, officers on furlough,—as the worthy Captain Dampmartin,
whom we hope to be acquainted with: these also, from all regions,
have repaired hither, to see what is toward. Our Paris
Committees, of the Sixty Districts, are busier than ever; it is
now too clear, the Paris Elections will be late.
On Monday, the 27th of April, Astronomer Bailly notices that the
Sieur Reveillon is not at his post. The Sieur Reveillon,
'extensive Paper Manufacturer of the Rue St. Antoine;' he,
commonly so punctual, is absent from the Electoral Committee;—and
even will never reappear there. In those 'immense Magazines of
velvet paper' has aught befallen? Alas, yes! Alas, it is no
Montgolfier rising there to-day; but Drudgery, Rascality and the
Suburb that is rising! Was the Sieur Reveillon, himself once a
journeyman, heard to say that 'a journeyman might live handsomely
on fifteen sous a-day?' Some sevenpence halfpenny: 'tis a slender
sum! Or was he only thought, and believed, to be heard saying it?
By this long chafing and friction it would appear the National
temper has got electric.
Down in those dark dens, in those dark heads and hungry hearts,
who knows in what strange figure the new Political Evangel may
have shaped itself; what miraculous 'Communion of Drudges' may be
getting formed! Enough: grim individuals, soon waxing to grim
multitudes, and other multitudes crowding to see, beset that
Paper-Warehouse; demonstrate, in loud ungrammatical language
(_addressed to the passions too_), the insufficiency of
sevenpence halfpenny a-day. The City-watch cannot dissipate them;
broils arise and bellowings; Reveillon, at his wits' end,
entreats the Populace, entreats the authorities. Besenval, now in
active command, Commandant of Paris, does, towards evening, to
Reveillon's earnest prayer, send some thirty Gardes Francaises.
These clear the street, happily without firing; and take post
there for the night in hope that it may be all over. (_Besenval,
iii. 385-8._)
Not so: on the morrow it is far worse. Saint-Antoine has arisen
anew, grimmer than ever;—reinforced by the unknown Tatterdemalion
Figures, with their enthusiast complexion and large sticks. The
City, through all streets, is flowing thitherward to see: 'two
cartloads of paving-stones, that happened to pass that way' have
been seized as a visible godsend. Another detachment of Gardes
Francaises must be sent; Besenval and the Colonel taking earnest
counsel. Then still another; they hardly, with bayonets and
menace of bullets, penetrate to the spot. What a sight! A street
choked up, with lumber, tumult and the endless press of men. A
Paper-Warehouse eviscerated by axe and fire: mad din of Revolt;
musket-volleys responded to by yells, by miscellaneous missiles;
by tiles raining from roof and window,—tiles, execrations and
slain men!
The Gardes Francaises like it not, but have to persevere. All day
it continues, slackening and rallying; the sun is sinking, and
Saint-Antoine has not yielded. The City flies hither and thither:
alas, the sound of that musket-volleying booms into the far
dining-rooms of the Chaussee d'Antin; alters the tone of the
dinner-gossip there. Captain Dampmartin leaves his wine; goes out
with a friend or two, to see the fighting. Unwashed men growl on
him, with murmurs of "A bas les Aristocrates (_Down with the
Aristocrats_);" and insult the cross of St. Louis? They elbow
him, and hustle him; but do not pick his pocket;—as indeed at
Reveillon's too there was not the slightest stealing. (_Evenemens
qui se sont passes sous mes yeux pendant la Revolution Francaise,
par A. H. Dampmartin (_Berlin, 1799_), i. 25-27._)
At fall of night, as the thing will not end, Besenval takes his
resolution: orders out the Gardes Suisses with two pieces of
artillery. The Swiss Guards shall proceed thither; summon that
rabble to depart, in the King's name. If disobeyed, they shall
load their artillery with grape-shot, visibly to the general eye;
shall again summon; if again disobeyed, fire,—and keep firing
'till the last man' be in this manner blasted off, and the street
clear. With which spirited resolution, as might have been hoped,
the business is got ended. At sight of the lit matches, of the
foreign red-coated Switzers, Saint-Antoine dissipates; hastily,
in the shades of dusk. There is an encumbered street; there are
'from four to five hundred' dead men. Unfortunate Reveillon has
found shelter in the Bastille; does therefrom, safe behind stone
bulwarks, issue, plaint, protestation, explanation, for the next
month. Bold Besenval has thanks from all the respectable Parisian
classes; but finds no special notice taken of him at
Versailles,—a thing the man of true worth is used to. (_Besenval,
iii. 389._)
But how it originated, this fierce electric sputter and
explosion? From D'Orleans! cries the Court-party: he, with his
gold, enlisted these Brigands,—surely in some surprising manner,
without sound of drum: he raked them in hither, from all corners;
to ferment and take fire; evil is his good. From the Court! cries
enlightened Patriotism: it is the cursed gold and wiles of
Aristocrats that enlisted them; set them upon ruining an innocent
Sieur Reveillon; to frighten the faint, and disgust men with the
career of Freedom.
Besenval, with reluctance, concludes that it came from 'the
English, our natural enemies.' Or, alas, might not one rather
attribute it to Diana in the shape of Hunger? To some twin
Dioscuri, OPPRESSION and REVENGE; so often seen in the battles of
men? Poor Lackalls, all betoiled, besoiled, encrusted into dim
defacement; into whom nevertheless the breath of the Almighty has
breathed a living soul! To them it is clear only that
eleutheromaniac Philosophism has yet baked no bread; that
Patrioti Committee-men will level down to their own level, and no
lower. Brigands, or whatever they might be, it was bitter earnest
with them. They bury their dead with the title of Defenseurs de
la Patrie, Martyrs of the good Cause.
Or shall we say: Insurrection has now served its Apprenticeship;
and this was its proof-stroke, and no inconclusive one? Its next
will be a master-stroke; announcing indisputable Mastership to a
whole astonished world. Let that rock-fortress, Tyranny's
stronghold, which they name Bastille, or Building, as if there
were no other building,—look to its guns!
But, in such wise, with primary and secondary Assemblies, and
Cahiers of Grievances; with motions, congregations of all kinds;
with much thunder of froth-eloquence, and at last with thunder of
platoon-musquetry,—does agitated France accomplish its Elections.
With confused winnowing and sifting, in this rather tumultuous
manner, it has now (_all except some remnants of Paris_) sifted
out the true wheat-grains of National Deputies, Twelve Hundred
and Fourteen in number; and will forthwith open its
States-General.
Chapter 1.4.IV.
The Procession.
On the first Saturday of May, it is gala at Versailles; and
Monday, fourth of the month, is to be a still greater day. The
Deputies have mostly got thither, and sought out lodgings; and
are now successively, in long well-ushered files, kissing the
hand of Majesty in the Chateau. Supreme Usher de Breze does not
give the highest satisfaction: we cannot but observe that in
ushering Noblesse or Clergy into the anointed Presence, he
liberally opens both his folding-doors; and on the other hand,
for members of the Third Estate opens only one! However, there is
room to enter; Majesty has smiles for all.
The good Louis welcomes his Honourable Members, with smiles of
hope. He has prepared for them the Hall of Menus, the largest
near him; and often surveyed the workmen as they went on. A
spacious Hall: with raised platform for Throne, Court and
Blood-royal; space for six hundred Commons Deputies in front; for
half as many Clergy on this hand, and half as many Noblesse on
that. It has lofty galleries; wherefrom dames of honour,
splendent in gaze d'or; foreign Diplomacies, and other gilt-edged
white-frilled individuals to the number of two thousand,—may sit
and look. Broad passages flow through it; and, outside the inner
wall, all round it. There are committee-rooms, guard-rooms,
robing-rooms: really a noble Hall; where upholstery, aided by the
subject fine-arts, has done its best; and crimson tasseled
cloths, and emblematic fleurs-de-lys are not wanting.
The Hall is ready: the very costume, as we said, has been
settled; and the Commons are not to wear that hated slouch-hat
(_chapeau clabaud_), but one not quite so slouched (_chapeau
rabattu_). As for their manner of working, when all dressed: for
their 'voting by head or by order' and the rest,—this, which it
were perhaps still time to settle, and in few hours will be no
longer time, remains unsettled; hangs dubious in the breast of
Twelve Hundred men.
But now finally the Sun, on Monday the 4th of May, has
risen;—unconcerned, as if it were no special day. And yet, as his
first rays could strike music from the Memnon's Statue on the
Nile, what tones were these, so thrilling, tremulous of
preparation and foreboding, which he awoke in every bosom at
Versailles! Huge Paris, in all conceivable and inconceivable
vehicles, is pouring itself forth; from each Town and Village
come subsidiary rills; Versailles is a very sea of men. But above
all, from the Church of St. Louis to the Church of Notre-Dame:
one vast suspended-billow of Life,—with spray scattered even to
the chimney-pots! For on chimney-tops too, as over the roofs, and
up thitherwards on every lamp-iron, sign-post, breakneck coign of
vantage, sits patriotic Courage; and every window bursts with
patriotic Beauty: for the Deputies are gathering at St. Louis
Church; to march in procession to Notre-Dame, and hear sermon.
Yes, friends, ye may sit and look: boldly or in thought, all
France, and all Europe, may sit and look; for it is a day like
few others. Oh, one might weep like Xerxes:—So many serried rows
sit perched there; like winged creatures, alighted out of Heaven:
all these, and so many more that follow them, shall have wholly
fled aloft again, vanishing into the blue Deep; and the memory of
this day still be fresh. It is the baptism-day of Democracy; sick
Time has given it birth, the numbered months being run. The
extreme-unction day of Feudalism! A superannuated System of
Society, decrepit with toils (_for has it not done much; produced
you, and what ye have and know!_)—and with thefts and brawls,
named glorious-victories; and with profligacies, sensualities,
and on the whole with dotage and senility,—is now to die: and so,
with death-throes and birth-throes, a new one is to be born. What
a work, O Earth and Heavens, what a work! Battles and bloodshed,
September Massacres, Bridges of Lodi, retreats of Moscow,
Waterloos, Peterloos, Tenpound Franchises, Tarbarrels and
Guillotines;—and from this present date, if one might prophesy,
some two centuries of it still to fight! Two centuries; hardly
less; before Democracy go through its due, most baleful, stages
of Quackocracy; and a pestilential World be burnt up, and have
begun to grow green and young again.
Rejoice nevertheless, ye Versailles multitudes; to you, from whom
all this is hid, and glorious end of it is visible. This day,
sentence of death is pronounced on Shams; judgment of
resuscitation, were it but far off, is pronounced on Realities.
This day it is declared aloud, as with a Doom-trumpet, that a Lie
is unbelievable. Believe that, stand by that, if more there be
not; and let what thing or things soever will follow it follow.
'Ye can no other; God be your help!' So spake a greater than any
of you; opening his Chapter of World-History.
Behold, however! The doors of St. Louis Church flung wide; and
the Procession of Processions advancing towards Notre-Dame!
Shouts rend the air; one shout, at which Grecian birds might drop
dead. It is indeed a stately, solemn sight. The Elected of
France, and then the Court of France; they are marshalled and
march there, all in prescribed place and costume. Our Commons 'in
plain black mantle and white cravat;' Noblesse, in gold-worked,
bright-dyed cloaks of velvet, resplendent, rustling with laces,
waving with plumes; the Clergy in rochet, alb, or other best
pontificalibus: lastly comes the King himself, and King's
Household, also in their brightest blaze of pomp,—their brightest
and final one. Some Fourteen Hundred Men blown together from all
winds, on the deepest errand.
Yes, in that silent marching mass there lies Futurity enough. No
symbolic Ark, like the old Hebrews, do these men bear: yet with
them too is a Covenant; they too preside at a new Era in the
History of Men. The whole Future is there, and Destiny
dim-brooding over it; in the hearts and unshaped thoughts of
these men, it lies illegible, inevitable. Singular to think: they
have it in them; yet not they, not mortal, only the Eye above can
read it,—as it shall unfold itself, in fire and thunder, of
siege, and field-artillery; in the rustling of battle-banners,
the tramp of hosts, in the glow of burning cities, the shriek of
strangled nations! Such things lie hidden, safe-wrapt in this
Fourth day of May;—say rather, had lain in some other unknown
day, of which this latter is the public fruit and outcome. As
indeed what wonders lie in every Day,—had we the sight, as
happily we have not, to decipher it: for is not every meanest Day
'the conflux of two Eternities!'
Meanwhile, suppose we too, good Reader, should, as now without
miracle Muse Clio enables us—take our station also on some coign
of vantage; and glance momentarily over this Procession, and this
Life-sea; with far other eyes than the rest do, namely with
prophetic? We can mount, and stand there, without fear of
falling.
As for the Life-sea, or onlooking unnumbered Multitude, it is
unfortunately all-too dim. Yet as we gaze fixedly, do not
nameless Figures not a few, which shall not always be nameless,
disclose themselves; visible or presumable there! Young Baroness
de Stael—she evidently looks from a window; among older
honourable women. (_Madame de Stael, Considerations sur la
Revolution Francaise (_London, 1818_), i. 114-191._) Her father
is Minister, and one of the gala personages; to his own eyes the
chief one. Young spiritual Amazon, thy rest is not there; nor thy
loved Father's: 'as Malebranche saw all things in God, so M.
Necker sees all things in Necker,'—a theorem that will not hold.
But where is the brown-locked, light-behaved, fire-hearted
Demoiselle Theroigne? Brown eloquent Beauty; who, with thy winged
words and glances, shalt thrill rough bosoms, whole steel
battalions, and persuade an Austrian Kaiser,—pike and helm lie
provided for thee in due season; and, alas, also strait-waistcoat
and long lodging in the Salpetriere! Better hadst thou staid in
native Luxemburg, and been the mother of some brave man's
children: but it was not thy task, it was not thy lot.
Of the rougher sex how, without tongue, or hundred tongues, of
iron, enumerate the notabilities! Has not Marquis Valadi hastily
quitted his quaker broadbrim; his Pythagorean Greek in Wapping,
and the city of Glasgow? (_Founders of the French Republic
(_London, 1798_), para Valadi._) De Morande from his Courrier de
l'Europe; Linguet from his Annales, they looked eager through the
London fog, and became Ex-Editors,—that they might feed the
guillotine, and have their due. Does Louvet (_of Faublas_) stand
a-tiptoe? And Brissot, hight De Warville, friend of the Blacks?
He, with Marquis Condorcet, and Claviere the Genevese 'have
created the Moniteur Newspaper,' or are about creating it. Able
Editors must give account of such a day.
Or seest thou with any distinctness, low down probably, not in
places of honour, a Stanislas Maillard, riding-tipstaff
(_huissier a cheval_) of the Chatelet; one of the shiftiest of
men? A Captain Hulin of Geneva, Captain Elie of the Queen's
Regiment; both with an air of half-pay? Jourdan, with
tile-coloured whiskers, not yet with tile-beard; an unjust dealer
in mules? He shall be, in a few months, Jourdan the Headsman, and
have other work.
Surely also, in some place not of honour, stands or sprawls up
querulous, that he too, though short, may see,—one squalidest
bleared mortal, redolent of soot and horse-drugs: Jean Paul Marat
of Neuchatel! O Marat, Renovator of Human Science, Lecturer on
Optics; O thou remarkablest Horseleech, once in D'Artois'
Stables,—as thy bleared soul looks forth, through thy bleared,
dull-acrid, wo-stricken face, what sees it in all this? Any
faintest light of hope; like dayspring after Nova-Zembla night?
Or is it but blue sulphur-light, and spectres; woe, suspicion,
revenge without end?
Of Draper Lecointre, how he shut his cloth-shop hard by, and
stepped forth, one need hardly speak. Nor of Santerre, the
sonorous Brewer from the Faubourg St. Antoine. Two other Figures,
and only two, we signalise there. The huge, brawny, Figure;
through whose black brows, and rude flattened face (_figure
ecrasee_), there looks a waste energy as of Hercules not yet
furibund,—he is an esurient, unprovided Advocate; Danton by name:
him mark. Then that other, his slight-built comrade and
craft-brother; he with the long curling locks; with the face of
dingy blackguardism, wondrously irradiated with genius, as if a
naphtha-lamp burnt within it: that Figure is Camille Desmoulins.
A fellow of infinite shrewdness, wit, nay humour; one of the
sprightliest clearest souls in all these millions. Thou poor
Camille, say of thee what they may, it were but falsehood to
pretend one did not almost love thee, thou headlong
lightly-sparkling man! But the brawny, not yet furibund Figure,
we say, is Jacques Danton; a name that shall be 'tolerably known
in the Revolution.' He is President of the electoral Cordeliers
District at Paris, or about to be it; and shall open his lungs of
brass.
We dwell no longer on the mixed shouting Multitude: for now,
behold, the Commons Deputies are at hand!
Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white cravat,
that have come up to regenerate France, might one guess would
become their king? For a king or leader they, as all bodies of
men, must have: be their work what it may, there is one man there
who, by character, faculty, position, is fittest of all to do it;
that man, as future not yet elected king, walks there among the
rest. He with the thick black locks, will it be? With the hure,
as himself calls it, or black boar's-head, fit to be 'shaken' as
a senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows, and
rough-hewn, seamed, carbuncled face, there look natural ugliness,
small-pox, incontinence, bankruptcy,—and burning fire of genius;
like comet-fire glaring fuliginous through murkiest confusions?
It is Gabriel Honore Riquetti de Mirabeau, the world-compeller;
man-ruling Deputy of Aix! According to the Baroness de Stael, he
steps proudly along, though looked at askance here, and shakes
his black chevelure, or lion's-mane; as if prophetic of great
deeds.
Yes, Reader, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch; as
Voltaire was of the last. He is French in his aspirations,
acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French
than any other man;—and intrinsically such a mass of manhood too.
Mark him well. The National Assembly were all different without
that one; nay, he might say with the old Despot: "The National
Assembly? I am that."
Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood: for the Riquettis,
or Arighettis, had to fly from Florence and the Guelfs, long
centuries ago, and settled in Provence; where from generation to
generation they have ever approved themselves a peculiar kindred:
irascible, indomitable, sharp-cutting, true, like the steel they
wore; of an intensity and activity that sometimes verged towards
madness, yet did not reach it. One ancient Riquetti, in mad
fulfilment of a mad vow, chains two Mountains together; and the
chain, with its 'iron star of five rays,' is still to be seen.
May not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and set it
drifting,—which also shall be seen?
Destiny has work for that swart burly-headed Mirabeau; Destiny
has watched over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his
Grandfather, stout Col. d'Argent (_Silver-Stock, so they named
him_), shattered and slashed by seven-and-twenty wounds in one
fell day lie sunk together on the Bridge at Casano; while Prince
Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped over him,—only the
flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head;
and Vendome, dropping his spyglass, moaned out, 'Mirabeau is
dead, then!' Nevertheless he was not dead: he awoke to breathe,
and miraculous surgery;—for Gabriel was yet to be. With his
silver stock he kept his scarred head erect, through long years;
and wedded; and produced tough Marquis Victor, the Friend of Men.
Whereby at last in the appointed year 1749, this long-expected
rough-hewn Gabriel Honore did likewise see the light: roughest
lion's-whelp ever littered of that rough breed. How the old lion
(_for our old Marquis too was lion-like, most unconquerable,
kingly-genial, most perverse_) gazed wonderingly on his
offspring; and determined to train him as no lion had yet been!
It is in vain, O Marquis! This cub, though thou slay him and flay
him, will not learn to draw in dogcart of Political Economy, and
be a Friend of Men; he will not be Thou, must and will be
Himself, another than Thou. Divorce lawsuits, 'whole family save
one in prison, and three-score Lettres-de-Cachet' for thy own
sole use, do but astonish the world.
Our Luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the
Isle of Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the Castle
of If, and heard the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in
the Fortress of Joux; and forty-two months, with hardly clothing
to his back, in the Dungeon of Vincennes;—all by
Lettre-de-Cachet, from his lion father. He has been in Pontarlier
Jails (_self-constituted prisoner_); was noticed fording
estuaries of the sea (_at low water_), in flight from the face of
men. He has pleaded before Aix Parlements (_to get back his
wife_); the public gathering on roofs, to see since they could
not hear: "the clatter-teeth (_claque-dents_)!" snarles singular
old Mirabeau; discerning in such admired forensic eloquence
nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant,
sonorous, of the drum species.
But as for Gabriel Honore, in these strange wayfarings, what has
he not seen and tried! From drill-sergeants, to prime-ministers,
to foreign and domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has
seen. All manner of men he has gained; for at bottom it is a
social, loving heart, that wild unconquerable one:—more
especially all manner of women. From the Archer's Daughter at
Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monnier, whom he could
not but 'steal,' and be beheaded for—in effigy! For indeed hardly
since the Arabian Prophet lay dead to Ali's admiration, was there
seen such a Love-hero, with the strength of thirty men. In War,
again, he has helped to conquer Corsica; fought duels, irregular
brawls; horsewhipped calumnious barons. In Literature, he has
written on Despotism, on Lettres-de-Cachet; Erotics
Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, Profanities; Books on the
Prussian Monarchy, on Cagliostro, on Calonne, on the Water
Companies of Paris:—each book comparable, we will say, to a
bituminous alarum-fire; huge, smoky, sudden! The firepan, the
kindling, the bitumen were his own; but the lumber, of rags, old
wood and nameless combustible rubbish (_for all is fuel to him_),
was gathered from huckster, and ass-panniers, of every
description under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have
been heard to exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is mine!
Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for
borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his;
the man himself he can make his. "All reflex and echo (_tout de
reflet et de reverbere_)!" snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but
will not. Crabbed old Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his
aggregative nature; and will now be the quality of all for him.
In that forty-years 'struggle against despotism,' he has gained
the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not lost the glorious
natural gift of fellowship, of being helped. Rare union! This man
can live self-sufficing—yet lives also in the life of other men;
can make men love him, work with him: a born king of men!
But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he has
"made away with (_hume, swallowed_) all Formulas;"—a fact which,
if we meditate it, will in these days mean much. This is no man
of system, then; he is only a man of instincts and insights. A
man nevertheless who will glare fiercely on any object; and see
through it, and conquer it: for he has intellect, he has will,
force beyond other men. A man not with logic-spectacles; but with
an eye! Unhappily without Decalogue, moral Code or Theorem of any
fixed sort; yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and
Sincerity there: a Reality, not an Artificiality, not a Sham! And
so he, having struggled 'forty years against despotism,' and
'made away with all formulas,' shall now become the spokesman of
a Nation bent to do the same. For is it not precisely the
struggle of France also to cast off despotism; to make away with
her old formulas,—having found them naught, worn out, far from
the reality? She will make away with such formulas;—and even go
bare, if need be, till she have found new ones.
Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular
Riquetti Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks
under the slouch-hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous
mass, which could not be choked and smothered, but would fill all
France with smoke. And now it has got air; it will burn its whole
substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too, and fill all France
with flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that smouldering, with
foul fire-damp and vapour enough, then victory over that;—and
like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high; and, for
twenty-three resplendent months, pours out, in flame and molten
fire-torrents, all that is in him, the Pharos and Wonder-sign of
an amazed Europe;—and then lies hollow, cold forever! Pass on,
thou questionable Gabriel Honore, the greatest of them all: in
the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation, there is none
like and none second to thee.
But now if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six Hundred may
be the meanest? Shall we say, that anxious, slight,
ineffectual-looking man, under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes
(_were the glasses off_) troubled, careful; with upturned face,
snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time; complexion of a
multiplex atrabiliar colour, the final shade of which may be the
pale sea-green. (_See De Stael, Considerations (_ii. 142_);
Barbaroux, Memoires, &c._) That greenish-coloured (_verdatre_)
individual is an Advocate of Arras; his name is Maximilien
Robespierre. The son of an Advocate; his father founded
mason-lodges under Charles Edward, the English Prince or
Pretender. Maximilien the first-born was thriftily educated; he
had brisk Camille Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College of
Louis le Grand, at Paris. But he begged our famed
Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the patron, to let him depart thence,
and resign in favour of a younger brother. The strict-minded Max
departed; home to paternal Arras; and even had a Law-case there
and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, 'in favour of the first Franklin
thunder-rod.' With a strict painful mind, an understanding small
but clear and ready, he grew in favour with official persons, who
could foresee in him an excellent man of business, happily quite
free from genius. The Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints
him Judge of his diocese; and he faithfully does justice to the
people: till behold, one day, a culprit comes whose crime merits
hanging; and the strict-minded Max must abdicate, for his
conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die.
A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolutions?
Whose small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as small ale,
could by no chance ferment into virulent alegar,—the mother of
ever new alegar; till all France were grown acetous virulent? We
shall see.
Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so many grand
and mean roll on, towards their several destinies, in that
Procession! There is Cazales, the learned young soldier; who
shall become the eloquent orator of Royalism, and earn the shadow
of a name. Experienced Mounier, experienced Malouet; whose
Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things shall
soon leave stranded. A Petion has left his gown and briefs at
Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten his
violin, being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he is
still young: convictions, beliefs, placid-unalterable are in that
man; not hindmost of them, belief in himself. A
Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.-Etienne, a slender young eloquent
and vehement Barnave, will help to regenerate France. There are
so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not suffer a
man to marry: but how many men here under thirty; coming to
produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world of
such! The old to heal up rents; the young to remove
rubbish:—which latter, is it not, indeed, the task here?
Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou
noticest the Deputies from Nantes? To us mere clothes-screens,
with slouch-hat and cloak, but bearing in their pocket a Cahier
of doleances with this singular clause, and more such in it:
'That the master wigmakers of Nantes be not troubled with new
gild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two being
more than sufficient!' (_Histoire Parlementaire, i. 335._) The
Rennes people have elected Farmer Gerard, 'a man of natural sense
and rectitude, without any learning.' He walks there, with solid
step; unique, 'in his rustic farmer-clothes;' which he will wear
always; careless of short-cloaks and costumes. The name Gerard,
or 'Pere Gerard, Father Gerard,' as they please to call him, will
fly far; borne about in endless banter; in Royalist satires, in
Republican didactic Almanacks. (_Actes des Apotres (_by Peltier
and others_); Almanach du Pere Gerard (_by Collot d'Herbois_) &c.
&c._) As for the man Gerard, being asked once, what he did, after
trial of it, candidly think of this Parlementary work,—"I think,"
answered he, "that there are a good many scoundrels among us." so
walks Father Gerard; solid in his thick shoes, whithersoever
bound.
And worthy _Doctor Guillotin_, whom we hoped to behold one other
time? If not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with
the eye of prophecy: for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a
little late. Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner: doomed
by a satiric destiny to the strangest immortal glory that ever
kept obscure mortal from his resting-place, the bosom of
oblivion! Guillotin can improve the ventilation of the Hall; in
all cases of medical police and _hygiène_ be a present aid: but,
greater far, he can produce his 'Report on the Penal Code;' and
reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which shall
become famous and world-famous. This is the product of
Guillotin's endeavours, gained not without meditation and
reading; which product popular gratitude or levity christens by a
feminine derivative name, as if it were his daughter: _La
Guillotine_! "With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk off your head
(_vous fais sauter la tête_) in a twinkling, and you have no
pain;"—whereat they all laugh. (_Moniteur Newspaper, of December
1st, 1789 (_in Histoire Parlementaire_)._) Unfortunate Doctor!
For two-and-twenty years he, unguillotined, shall hear nothing
but guillotine, see nothing but guillotine; then dying, shall
through long centuries wander, as it were, a disconsolate ghost,
on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to outlive
Caesar's.
See Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honoured Historian of
Astronomy Ancient and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely
beautiful Philosophising, with its soft moonshiny clearness and
thinness, ends in foul thick confusion—of Presidency, Mayorship,
diplomatic Officiality, rabid Triviality, and the throat of
everlasting Darkness! Far was it to descend from the heavenly
Galaxy to the Drapeau Rouge: beside that fatal dung-heap, on that
last hell-day, thou must 'tremble,' though only with cold, 'de
froid.' Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not so
miserable; but to be weaker than our task. Wo the day when they
mounted thee, a peaceable pedestrian, on that wild Hippogriff of
a Democracy; which, spurning the firm earth, nay lashing at the
very stars, no yet known Astolpho could have ridden!
In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of
Letters; three hundred and seventy-four Lawyers; (_Bouille,
Memoires sur la Revolution Francaise (_London, 1797_), i. 68._)
and at least one Clergyman: the Abbe Sieyes. Him also Paris
sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light thin man; cold,
but elastic, wiry; instinct with the pride of Logic; passionless,
or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that can
be called a passion, which, in its independent concentrated
greatness, seems to have soared into transcendentalism; and to
sit there with a kind of godlike indifference, and look down on
passion! He is the man, and wisdom shall die with him. This is
the Sieyes who shall be System-builder, Constitution-builder
General; and build Constitutions (_as many as wanted_)
skyhigh,—which shall all unfortunately fall before he get the
scaffolding away. "La Politique," said he to Dumont, "Polity is a
science I think I have completed (_achevee_)." (_Dumont,
Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 64._) What things, O Sieyes, with thy
clear assiduous eyes, art thou to see! But were it not curious to
know how Sieyes, now in these days (_for he is said to be still
alive_) (_A.D. 1834._) looks out on all that Constitution
masonry, through the rheumy soberness of extreme age? Might we
hope, still with the old irrefragable transcendentalism? The
victorious cause pleased the gods, the vanquished one pleased
Sieyes (_victa Catoni_).
Thus, however, amid skyrending vivats, and blessings from every
heart, has the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by.
Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning both of
whom it might be asked, What they specially have come for?
Specially, little as they dream of it, to answer this question,
put in a voice of thunder: What are you doing in God's fair Earth
and Task-garden; where whosoever is not working is begging or
stealing? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they can only
answer: Collecting tithes, Preserving game!—Remark, meanwhile,
how D'Orleans affects to step before his own Order, and mingle
with the Commons. For him are vivats: few for the rest, though
all wave in plumed 'hats of a feudal cut,' and have sword on
thigh; though among them is D'Antraigues, the young Languedocian
gentleman,—and indeed many a Peer more or less noteworthy.
There are Liancourt, and La Rochefoucault; the liberal
Anglomaniac Dukes. There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of
liberal Lameths. Above all, there is a Lafayette; whose name
shall be Cromwell-Grandison, and fill the world. Many a 'formula'
has this Lafayette too made away with; yet not all formulas. He
sticks by the Washington-formula; and by that he will stick;—and
hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight
war-ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and water,
is found still hanging. Happy for him; be it glorious or not!
Alone of all Frenchmen he has a theory of the world, and right
mind to conform thereto; he can become a hero and perfect
character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note further our old
Parlementary friend, Crispin-Catiline d'Espremenil. He is
returned from the Mediterranean Islands, a redhot royalist,
repentant to the finger-ends;—unsettled-looking; whose light,
dusky-glowing at best, now flickers foul in the socket; whom the
National Assembly will by and by, to save time, 'regard as in a
state of distraction.' Note lastly that globular Younger
Mirabeau; indignant that his elder Brother is among the Commons:
it is Viscomte Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau Tonneau (_Barrel
Mirabeau_), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of
strong liquor he contains.
There then walks our French Noblesse. All in the old pomp of
chivalry: and yet, alas, how changed from the old position;
drifted far down from their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs
got into the Equatorial sea, and fast thawing there! Once these
Chivalry Duces (_Dukes, as they are still named_) did actually
lead the world,—were it only towards battle-spoil, where lay the
world's best wages then: moreover, being the ablest Leaders
going, they had their lion's share, those Duces; which none could
grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved Ploughshares,
Steam-Engines and Bills of Exchange have been invented; and, for
battle-brawling itself, men hire Drill-Sergeants at
eighteen-pence a-day,—what mean these goldmantled Chivalry
Figures, walking there 'in black-velvet cloaks,' in high-plumed
'hats of a feudal cut'? Reeds shaken in the wind!
The Clergy have got up; with Cahiers for abolishing pluralities,
enforcing residence of bishops, better payment of tithes. (_Hist.
Parl. i. 322-27._) The Dignitaries, we can observe, walk stately,
apart from the numerous Undignified,—who indeed are properly
little other than Commons disguised in Curate-frocks. Here,
however, though by strange ways, shall the Precept be fulfilled,
and they that are greatest (_much to their astonishment_) become
least. For one example, out of many, mark that plausible
Gregoire: one day Cure Gregoire shall be a Bishop, when the now
stately are wandering distracted, as Bishops in partibus. With
other thought, mark also the Abbe Maury: his broad bold face;
mouth accurately primmed; full eyes, that ray out intelligence,
falsehood,—the sort of sophistry which is astonished you should
find it sophistical. Skilfulest vamper-up of old rotten leather,
to make it look like new; always a rising man; he used to tell
Mercier, "You will see; I shall be in the Academy before you."
(_Mercier, Nouveau Paris._) Likely indeed, thou skilfullest
Maury; nay thou shalt have a Cardinal's Hat, and plush and glory;
but alas, also, in the longrun—mere oblivion, like the rest of
us; and six feet of earth! What boots it, vamping rotten leather
on these terms? Glorious in comparison is the livelihood thy good
old Father earns, by making shoes,—one may hope, in a sufficient
manner. Maury does not want for audacity. He shall wear pistols,
by and by; and at death-cries of "The Lamp-iron;" answer coolly,
"Friends, will you see better there?"
But yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next Bishop
Talleyrand-Perigord, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grimness
lies in that irreverent Reverence of Autun. He will do and suffer
strange things; and will become surely one of the strangest
things ever seen, or like to be seen. A man living in falsehood,
and on falsehood; yet not what you can call a false man: there is
the specialty! It will be an enigma for future ages, one may
hope: hitherto such a product of Nature and Art was possible only
for this age of ours,—Age of Paper, and of the Burning of Paper.
Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis Lafayette as the topmost
of their two kinds; and say once more, looking at what they did
and what they were, O Tempus ferax rerum!
On the whole, however, has not this unfortunate Clergy also
drifted in the Time-stream, far from its native latitude? An
anomalous mass of men; of whom the whole world has already a dim
understanding that it can understand nothing. They were once a
Priesthood, interpreters of Wisdom, revealers of the Holy that is
in Man: a true Clerus (_or Inheritance of God on Earth_): but
now?—They pass silently, with such Cahiers as they have been able
to redact; and none cries, God bless them.
King Louis with his Court brings up the rear: he cheerful, in
this day of hope, is saluted with plaudits; still more Necker his
Minister. Not so the Queen; on whom hope shines not steadily any
more. Ill-fated Queen! Her hair is already gray with many cares
and crosses; her first-born son is dying in these weeks: black
falsehood has ineffaceably soiled her name; ineffaceably while
this generation lasts. Instead of Vive la Reine, voices insult
her with Vive d'Orleans. Of her queenly beauty little remains
except its stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty, rigid,
silently enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no
part, she resigns herself to a day she hoped never to have seen.
Poor Marie Antoinette; with thy quick noble instincts; vehement
glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow for the work thou hast to
do! O there are tears in store for thee; bitterest wailings, soft
womanly meltings, though thou hast the heart of an imperial
Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one, shut thy eyes on the
future!—
And so, in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France.
Some towards honour and quick fire-consummation; most towards
dishonour; not a few towards massacre, confusion, emigration,
desperation: all towards Eternity!—So many heterogeneities cast
together into the fermenting-vat; there, with incalculable
action, counteraction, elective affinities, explosive
developments, to work out healing for a sick moribund System of
Society! Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well,
that ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So
thousandfold complex a Society, ready to burst-up from its
infinite depths; and these men, its rulers and healers, without
life-rule for themselves,—other life-rule than a Gospel according
to Jean Jacques! To the wisest of them, what we must call the
wisest, man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without
Duty round him; except it be 'to make the Constitution.' He is
without Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in
the world.
What further or better belief can be said to exist in these
Twelve Hundred? Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in
heraldic scutcheons; in the divine right of Kings, in the divine
right of Game-destroyers. Belief, or what is still worse, canting
half-belief; or worst of all, mere Macchiavellic
pretence-of-belief,—in consecrated dough-wafers, and the godhood
of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless in that immeasurable
Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to
become less confused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one
salient point of a New Life discernible: the deep fixed
Determination to have done with Shams. A determination, which,
consciously or unconsciously, is fixed; which waxes ever more
fixed, into very madness and fixed-idea; which in such embodiment
as lies provided there, shall now unfold itself rapidly:
monstrous, stupendous, unspeakable; new for long thousands of
years!—How has the Heaven's light, oftentimes in this Earth, to
clothe itself in thunder and electric murkiness; and descend as
molten lightning, blasting, if purifying! Nay is it not rather
the very murkiness, and atmospheric suffocation, that brings the
lightning and the light? The new Evangel, as the old had been,
was it to be born in the Destruction of a World?
But how the Deputies assisted at High Mass, and heard sermon, and
applauded the preacher, church as it was, when he preached
politics; how, next day, with sustained pomp, they are, for the
first time, installed in their Salles des Menus (_Hall no longer
of Amusements_), and become a States-General,—readers can fancy
for themselves. The King from his estrade, gorgeous as Solomon in
all his glory, runs his eye over that majestic Hall; many-plumed,
many-glancing; bright-tinted as rainbow, in the galleries and
near side spaces, where Beauty sits raining bright influence.
Satisfaction, as of one that after long voyaging had got to port,
plays over his broad simple face: the innocent King! He rises and
speaks, with sonorous tone, a conceivable speech. With which,
still more with the succeeding one-hour and two-hour speeches of
Garde-des-Sceaux and M. Necker, full of nothing but patriotism,
hope, faith, and deficiency of the revenue,—no reader of these
pages shall be tried.
We remark only that, as his Majesty, on finishing the speech, put
on his plumed hat, and the Noblesse according to custom imitated
him, our Tiers-Etat Deputies did mostly, not without a shade of
fierceness, in like manner clap-on, and even crush on their
slouched hats; and stand there awaiting the issue. (_Histoire
Parlementaire (_i. 356_). Mercier, Nouveau Paris, &c._) Thick
buzz among them, between majority and minority of Couvrezvous,
Decrouvrez-vous (_Hats off, Hats on_)! To which his Majesty puts
end, by taking off his own royal hat again.
The session terminates without further accident or omen than
this; with which, significantly enough, France has opened her
States-General.
BOOK 1.V.
THE THIRD ESTATE
Chapter 1.5.I.
Inertia.
That exasperated France, in this same National Assembly of hers,
has got something, nay something great, momentous, indispensable,
cannot be doubted; yet still the question were: Specially what? A
question hard to solve, even for calm onlookers at this distance;
wholly insoluble to actors in the middle of it. The
States-General, created and conflated by the passionate effort of
the whole nation, is there as a thing high and lifted up. Hope,
jubilating, cries aloud that it will prove a miraculous Brazen
Serpent in the Wilderness; whereon whosoever looks, with faith
and obedience, shall be healed of all woes and serpent-bites.
We may answer, it will at least prove a symbolic Banner; round
which the exasperating complaining Twenty-Five Millions,
otherwise isolated and without power, may rally, and work—what it
is in them to work. If battle must be the work, as one cannot
help expecting, then shall it be a battle-banner (_say, an
Italian Gonfalon, in its old Republican Carroccio_); and shall
tower up, car-borne, shining in the wind: and with iron tongue
peal forth many a signal. A thing of prime necessity; which
whether in the van or in the centre, whether leading or led and
driven, must do the fighting multitude incalculable services. For
a season, while it floats in the very front, nay as it were
stands solitary there, waiting whether force will gather round
it, this same National Carroccio, and the signal-peals it rings,
are a main object with us.
The omen of the 'slouch-hats clapt on' shows the Commons Deputies
to have made up their minds on one thing: that neither Noblesse
nor Clergy shall have precedence of them; hardly even Majesty
itself. To such length has the Contrat Social, and force of
public opinion, carried us. For what is Majesty but the Delegate
of the Nation; delegated, and bargained with (_even rather
tightly_),—in some very singular posture of affairs, which Jean
Jacques has not fixed the date of?
Coming therefore into their Hall, on the morrow, an inorganic
mass of Six Hundred individuals, these Commons Deputies perceive,
without terror, that they have it all to themselves. Their Hall
is also the Grand or general Hall for all the Three Orders. But
the Noblesse and Clergy, it would seem, have retired to their two
separate Apartments, or Halls; and are there 'verifying their
powers,' not in a conjoint but in a separate capacity. They are
to constitute two separate, perhaps separately-voting Orders,
then? It is as if both Noblesse and Clergy had silently taken for
granted that they already were such! Two Orders against one; and
so the Third Order to be left in a perpetual minority?
Much may remain unfixed; but the negative of that is a thing
fixed: in the Slouch-hatted heads, in the French Nation's head.
Double representation, and all else hitherto gained, were
otherwise futile, null. Doubtless, the 'powers must be
verified;'—doubtless, the Commission, the electoral Documents of
your Deputy must be inspected by his brother Deputies, and found
valid: it is the preliminary of all. Neither is this question, of
doing it separately or doing it conjointly, a vital one: but if
it lead to such? It must be resisted; wise was that maxim, Resist
the beginnings! Nay were resistance unadvisable, even dangerous,
yet surely pause is very natural: pause, with Twenty-five
Millions behind you, may become resistance enough.—The inorganic
mass of Commons Deputies will restrict itself to a 'system of
inertia,' and for the present remain inorganic.
Such method, recommendable alike to sagacity and to timidity, do
the Commons Deputies adopt; and, not without adroitness, and with
ever more tenacity, they persist in it, day after day, week after
week. For six weeks their history is of the kind named barren;
which indeed, as Philosophy knows, is often the fruitfulest of
all. These were their still creation-days; wherein they sat
incubating! In fact, what they did was to do nothing, in a
judicious manner. Daily the inorganic body reassembles; regrets
that they cannot get organisation, 'verification of powers in
common, and begin regenerating France. Headlong motions may be
made, but let such be repressed; inertia alone is at once
unpunishable and unconquerable.
Cunning must be met by cunning; proud pretension by inertia, by a
low tone of patriotic sorrow; low, but incurable, unalterable.
Wise as serpents; harmless as doves: what a spectacle for France!
Six Hundred inorganic individuals, essential for its regeneration
and salvation, sit there, on their elliptic benches, longing
passionately towards life; in painful durance; like souls waiting
to be born. Speeches are spoken; eloquent; audible within doors
and without. Mind agitates itself against mind; the Nation looks
on with ever deeper interest. Thus do the Commons Deputies sit
incubating.
There are private conclaves, supper-parties, consultations;
Breton Club, Club of Viroflay; germs of many Clubs. Wholly an
element of confused noise, dimness, angry heat;—wherein, however,
the Eros-egg, kept at the fit temperature, may hover safe,
unbroken till it be hatched. In your Mouniers, Malouets,
Lechapeliers in science sufficient for that; fervour in your
Barnaves, Rabauts. At times shall come an inspiration from royal
Mirabeau: he is nowise yet recognised as royal; nay he was
'groaned at,' when his name was first mentioned: but he is
struggling towards recognition.
In the course of the week, the Commons having called their Eldest
to the chair, and furnished him with young stronger-lunged
assistants,—can speak articulately; and, in audible lamentable
words, declare, as we said, that they are an inorganic body,
longing to become organic. Letters arrive; but an inorganic body
cannot open letters; they lie on the table unopened. The Eldest
may at most procure for himself some kind of List or Muster-roll,
to take the votes by, and wait what will betide. Noblesse and
Clergy are all elsewhere: however, an eager public crowds all
galleries and vacancies; which is some comfort. With effort, it
is determined, not that a Deputation shall be sent,—for how can
an inorganic body send deputations?—but that certain individual
Commons Members shall, in an accidental way, stroll into the
Clergy Chamber, and then into the Noblesse one; and mention
there, as a thing they have happened to observe, that the Commons
seem to be sitting waiting for them, in order to verify their
powers. That is the wiser method!
The Clergy, among whom are such a multitude of Undignified, of
mere Commons in Curates' frocks, depute instant respectful answer
that they are, and will now more than ever be, in deepest study
as to that very matter. Contrariwise the Noblesse, in cavalier
attitude, reply, after four days, that they, for their part, are
all verified and constituted; which, they had trusted, the
Commons also were; such separate verification being clearly the
proper constitutional wisdom-of-ancestors method;—as they the
Noblesse will have much pleasure in demonstrating by a Commission
of their number, if the Commons will meet them, Commission
against Commission! Directly in the rear of which comes a
deputation of Clergy, reiterating, in their insidious
conciliatory way, the same proposal. Here, then, is a complexity:
what will wise Commons say to this?
Warily, inertly, the wise Commons, considering that they are, if
not a French Third Estate, at least an Aggregate of individuals
pretending to some title of that kind, determine, after talking
on it five days, to name such a Commission,—though, as it were,
with proviso not to be convinced: a sixth day is taken up in
naming it; a seventh and an eighth day in getting the forms of
meeting, place, hour and the like, settled: so that it is not
till the evening of the 23rd of May that Noblesse Commission
first meets Commons Commission, Clergy acting as Conciliators;
and begins the impossible task of convincing it. One other
meeting, on the 25th, will suffice: the Commons are
inconvincible, the Noblesse and Clergy irrefragably convincing;
the Commissions retire; each Order persisting in its first
pretensions. (_Reported Debates, 6th May to 1st June, 1789 in
Histoire Parlementaire, i. 379-422._)
Thus have three weeks passed. For three weeks, the Third-Estate
Carroccio, with far-seen Gonfalon, has stood stockstill, flouting
the wind; waiting what force would gather round it.
Fancy can conceive the feeling of the Court; and how counsel met
counsel, the loud-sounding inanity whirled in that distracted
vortex, where wisdom could not dwell. Your cunningly devised
Taxing-Machine has been got together; set up with incredible
labour; and stands there, its three pieces in contact; its two
fly-wheels of Noblesse and Clergy, its huge working-wheel of
Tiers-Etat. The two fly-wheels whirl in the softest manner; but,
prodigious to look upon, the huge working-wheel hangs motionless,
refuses to stir! The cunningest engineers are at fault. How will
it work, when it does begin? Fearfully, my Friends; and to many
purposes; but to gather taxes, or grind court-meal, one may
apprehend, never. Could we but have continued gathering taxes by
hand! Messeigneurs d'Artois, Conti, Conde (_named Court
Triumvirate_), they of the anti-democratic Memoire au Roi, has
not their foreboding proved true? They may wave reproachfully
their high heads; they may beat their poor brains; but the
cunningest engineers can do nothing. Necker himself, were he even
listened to, begins to look blue. The only thing one sees
advisable is to bring up soldiers. New regiments, two, and a
battalion of a third, have already reached Paris; others shall
get in march. Good were it, in all circumstances, to have troops
within reach; good that the command were in sure hands. Let
Broglie be appointed; old Marshal Duke de Broglie; veteran
disciplinarian, of a firm drill-sergeant morality, such as may be
depended on.
For, alas, neither are the Clergy, or the very Noblesse what they
should be; and might be, when so menaced from without: entire,
undivided within. The Noblesse, indeed, have their Catiline or
Crispin D'Espremenil, dusky-glowing, all in renegade heat; their
boisterous Barrel-Mirabeau; but also they have their Lafayettes,
Liancourts, Lameths; above all, their D'Orleans, now cut forever
from his Court-moorings, and musing drowsily of high and highest
sea-prizes (_for is not he too a son of Henri Quatre, and partial
potential Heir-Apparent?_)—on his voyage towards Chaos. From the
Clergy again, so numerous are the Cures, actual deserters have
run over: two small parties; in the second party Cure Gregoire.
Nay there is talk of a whole Hundred and Forty-nine of them about
to desert in mass, and only restrained by an Archbishop of Paris.
It seems a losing game.
But judge if France, if Paris sat idle, all this while! Addresses
from far and near flow in: for our Commons have now grown organic
enough to open letters. Or indeed to cavil at them! Thus poor
Marquis de Breze, Supreme Usher, Master of Ceremonies, or
whatever his title was, writing about this time on some
ceremonial matter, sees no harm in winding up with a 'Monsieur,
yours with sincere attachment.'—"To whom does it address itself,
this sincere attachment?" inquires Mirabeau. "To the Dean of the
Tiers-Etat."—"There is no man in France entitled to write that,"
rejoins he; whereat the Galleries and the World will not be kept
from applauding. (_Moniteur (_in Histoire Parlementaire, i.
405_)._) Poor De Breze! These Commons have a still older grudge
at him; nor has he yet done with them.
In another way, Mirabeau has had to protest against the quick
suppression of his Newspaper, Journal of the States-General;—and
to continue it under a new name. In which act of valour, the
Paris Electors, still busy redacting their Cahier, could not but
support him, by Address to his Majesty: they claim utmost
'provisory freedom of the press;' they have spoken even about
demolishing the Bastille, and erecting a Bronze Patriot King on
the site!—These are the rich Burghers: but now consider how it
went, for example, with such loose miscellany, now all grown
eleutheromaniac, of Loungers, Prowlers, social Nondescripts (_and
the distilled Rascality of our Planet_), as whirls forever in the
Palais Royal;—or what low infinite groan, first changing into a
growl, comes from Saint-Antoine, and the Twenty-five Millions in
danger of starvation!
There is the indisputablest scarcity of corn;—be it
Aristocrat-plot, D'Orleans-plot, of this year; or drought and
hail of last year: in city and province, the poor man looks
desolately towards a nameless lot. And this States-General, that
could make us an age of gold, is forced to stand motionless;
cannot get its powers verified! All industry necessarily
languishes, if it be not that of making motions.
In the Palais Royal there has been erected, apparently by
subscription, a kind of Wooden Tent (_en planches de bois_);
(_Histoire Parlementaire, i. 429._)—most convenient; where select
Patriotism can now redact resolutions, deliver harangues, with
comfort, let the weather but as it will. Lively is that
Satan-at-Home! On his table, on his chair, in every cafe, stands
a patriotic orator; a crowd round him within; a crowd listening
from without, open-mouthed, through open door and window; with
'thunders of applause for every sentiment of more than common
hardiness.' In Monsieur Dessein's Pamphlet-shop, close by, you
cannot without strong elbowing get to the counter: every hour
produces its pamphlet, or litter of pamphlets; 'there were
thirteen to-day, sixteen yesterday, nine-two last week.' (_Arthur
Young, Travels, i. 104._) Think of Tyranny and Scarcity;
Fervid-eloquence, Rumour, Pamphleteering; Societe Publicole,
Breton Club, Enraged Club;—and whether every tap-room,
coffee-room, social reunion, accidental street-group, over wide
France, was not an Enraged Club!
To all which the Commons Deputies can only listen with a sublime
inertia of sorrow; reduced to busy themselves 'with their
internal police.' Surer position no Deputies ever occupied; if
they keep it with skill. Let not the temperature rise too high;
break not the Eros-egg till it be hatched, till it break itself!
An eager public crowds all Galleries and vacancies! 'cannot be
restrained from applauding.' The two Privileged Orders, the
Noblesse all verified and constituted, may look on with what face
they will; not without a secret tremor of heart. The Clergy,
always acting the part of conciliators, make a clutch at the
Galleries, and the popularity there; and miss it. Deputation of
them arrives, with dolorous message about the 'dearth of grains,'
and the necessity there is of casting aside vain formalities, and
deliberating on this. An insidious proposal; which, however, the
Commons (_moved thereto by seagreen Robespierre_) dexterously
accept as a sort of hint, or even pledge, that the Clergy will
forthwith come over to them, constitute the States-General, and
so cheapen grains! (_Bailly, Memoires, i. 114._)—Finally, on the
27th day of May, Mirabeau, judging the time now nearly come,
proposes that 'the inertia cease;' that, leaving the Noblesse to
their own stiff ways, the Clergy be summoned, 'in the name of the
God of Peace,' to join the Commons, and begin. (_Histoire
Parlementaire, i. 413._) To which summons if they turn a deaf
ear,—we shall see! Are not one Hundred and Forty-nine of them
ready to desert?
O Triumvirate of Princes, new Garde-des-Sceaux Barentin, thou
Home-Secretary Breteuil, Duchess Polignac, and Queen eager to
listen,—what is now to be done? This Third Estate will get in
motion, with the force of all France in it; Clergy-machinery with
Noblesse-machinery, which were to serve as beautiful
counter-balances and drags, will be shamefully dragged after
it,—and take fire along with it. What is to be done? The
Oeil-de-Boeuf waxes more confused than ever. Whisper and
counter-whisper; a very tempest of whispers! Leading men from all
the Three Orders are nightly spirited thither; conjurors many of
them; but can they conjure this? Necker himself were now welcome,
could he interfere to purpose.
Let Necker interfere, then; and in the King's name! Happily that
incendiary 'God-of-Peace' message is not yet answered. The Three
Orders shall again have conferences; under this Patriot Minister
of theirs, somewhat may be healed, clouted up;—we meanwhile
getting forward Swiss Regiments, and a 'hundred pieces of
field-artillery.' This is what the Oeil-de-Boeuf, for its part,
resolves on.
But as for Necker—Alas, poor Necker, thy obstinate Third Estate
has one first-last word, verification in common, as the pledge of
voting and deliberating in common! Half-way proposals, from such
a tried friend, they answer with a stare. The tardy conferences
speedily break up; the Third Estate, now ready and resolute, the
whole world backing it, returns to its Hall of the Three Orders;
and Necker to the Oeil-de-Boeuf, with the character of a
disconjured conjuror there—fit only for dismissal. (_Debates, 1st
to 17th June 1789 (_in Histoire Parlementaire, i. 422-478_)._)
And so the Commons Deputies are at last on their own strength
getting under way? Instead of Chairman, or Dean, they have now
got a President: Astronomer Bailly. Under way, with a vengeance!
With endless vociferous and temperate eloquence, borne on
Newspaper wings to all lands, they have now, on this 17th day of
June, determined that their name is not Third Estate,
but—National Assembly! They, then, are the Nation? Triumvirate of
Princes, Queen, refractory Noblesse and Clergy, what, then, are
you? A most deep question;—scarcely answerable in living
political dialects.
All regardless of which, our new National Assembly proceeds to
appoint a 'committee of subsistences;' dear to France, though it
can find little or no grain. Next, as if our National Assembly
stood quite firm on its legs,—to appoint 'four other standing
committees;' then to settle the security of the National Debt;
then that of the Annual Taxation: all within eight-and-forty
hours. At such rate of velocity it is going: the conjurors of the
Oeil-de-Boeuf may well ask themselves, Whither?
Chapter 1.5.II.
Mercury de Breze.
Now surely were the time for a 'god from the machine;' there is a
nodus worthy of one. The only question is, Which god? Shall it be
Mars de Broglie, with his hundred pieces of cannon?—Not yet,
answers prudence; so soft, irresolute is King Louis. Let it be
Messenger Mercury, our Supreme Usher de Breze.
On the morrow, which is the 20th of June, these Hundred and
Forty-nine false Curates, no longer restrainable by his Grace of
Paris, will desert in a body: let De Breze intervene, and
produce—closed doors! Not only shall there be Royal Session, in
that Salle des Menus; but no meeting, nor working (_except by
carpenters_), till then. Your Third Estate, self-styled 'National
Assembly,' shall suddenly see itself extruded from its Hall, by
carpenters, in this dexterous way; and reduced to do nothing, not
even to meet, or articulately lament,—till Majesty, with Seance
Royale and new miracles, be ready! In this manner shall De Breze,
as Mercury ex machina, intervene; and, if the Oeil-de-Boeuf
mistake not, work deliverance from the nodus.
Of poor De Breze we can remark that he has yet prospered in none
of his dealings with these Commons. Five weeks ago, when they
kissed the hand of Majesty, the mode he took got nothing but
censure; and then his 'sincere attachment,' how was it scornfully
whiffed aside! Before supper, this night, he writes to President
Bailly, a new Letter, to be delivered shortly after dawn
tomorrow, in the King's name. Which Letter, however, Bailly in
the pride of office, will merely crush together into his pocket,
like a bill he does not mean to pay.
Accordingly on Saturday morning the 20th of June, shrill-sounding
heralds proclaim through the streets of Versailles, that there is
to be a Seance Royale next Monday; and no meeting of the
States-General till then. And yet, we observe, President Bailly
in sound of this, and with De Breze's Letter in his pocket, is
proceeding, with National Assembly at his heels, to the
accustomed Salles des Menus; as if De Breze and heralds were mere
wind. It is shut, this Salle; occupied by Gardes Francaises.
"Where is your Captain?" The Captain shows his royal order:
workmen, he is grieved to say, are all busy setting up the
platform for his Majesty's Seance; most unfortunately, no
admission; admission, at furthest, for President and Secretaries
to bring away papers, which the joiners might destroy!—President
Bailly enters with Secretaries; and returns bearing papers: alas,
within doors, instead of patriotic eloquence, there is now no
noise but hammering, sawing, and operative screeching and
rumbling! A profanation without parallel.
The Deputies stand grouped on the Paris Road, on this umbrageous
Avenue de Versailles; complaining aloud of the indignity done
them. Courtiers, it is supposed, look from their windows, and
giggle. The morning is none of the comfortablest: raw; it is even
drizzling a little. (_Bailly, Memoires, i. 185-206._) But all
travellers pause; patriot gallery-men, miscellaneous spectators
increase the groups. Wild counsels alternate. Some desperate
Deputies propose to go and hold session on the great outer
Staircase at Marly, under the King's windows; for his Majesty, it
seems, has driven over thither. Others talk of making the Chateau
Forecourt, what they call Place d'Armes, a Runnymede and new
Champ de Mai of free Frenchmen: nay of awakening, to sounds of
indignant Patriotism, the echoes of the Oeil-de-boeuf
itself.—Notice is given that President Bailly, aided by judicious
Guillotin and others, has found place in the Tennis-Court of the
Rue St. Francois. Thither, in long-drawn files, hoarse-jingling,
like cranes on wing, the Commons Deputies angrily wend.
Strange sight was this in the Rue St. Francois, Vieux Versailles!
A naked Tennis-Court, as the pictures of that time still give it:
four walls; naked, except aloft some poor wooden penthouse, or
roofed spectators'-gallery, hanging round them:—on the floor not
now an idle teeheeing, a snapping of balls and rackets; but the
bellowing din of an indignant National Representation,
scandalously exiled hither! However, a cloud of witnesses looks
down on them, from wooden penthouse, from wall-top, from
adjoining roof and chimney; rolls towards them from all quarters,
with passionate spoken blessings. Some table can be procured to
write on; some chair, if not to sit on, then to stand on. The
Secretaries undo their tapes; Bailly has constituted the
Assembly.
Experienced Mounier, not wholly new to such things, in
Parlementary revolts, which he has seen or heard of, thinks that
it were well, in these lamentable threatening circumstances, to
unite themselves by an Oath.—Universal acclamation, as from
smouldering bosoms getting vent! The Oath is redacted; pronounced
aloud by President Bailly,—and indeed in such a sonorous tone,
that the cloud of witnesses, even outdoors, hear it, and bellow
response to it. Six hundred right-hands rise with President
Bailly's, to take God above to witness that they will not
separate for man below, but will meet in all places, under all
circumstances, wheresoever two or three can get together, till
they have made the Constitution. Made the Constitution, Friends!
That is a long task. Six hundred hands, meanwhile, will sign as
they have sworn: six hundred save one; one Loyalist Abdiel, still
visible by this sole light-point, and nameable, poor 'M. Martin
d'Auch, from Castelnaudary, in Languedoc.' Him they permit to
sign or signify refusal; they even save him from the cloud of
witnesses, by declaring 'his head deranged.' At four o'clock, the
signatures are all appended; new meeting is fixed for Monday
morning, earlier than the hour of the Royal Session; that our
Hundred and Forty-nine Clerical deserters be not balked: we shall
meet 'at the Recollets Church or elsewhere,' in hope that our
Hundred and Forty-nine will join us;—and now it is time to go to
dinner.
This, then, is the Session of the Tennis-Court, famed Seance du
Jeu de Paume; the fame of which has gone forth to all lands. This
is Mercurius de Breze's appearance as Deus ex machina; this is
the fruit it brings! The giggle of Courtiers in the Versailles
Avenue has already died into gaunt silence. Did the distracted
Court, with Gardes-des-Sceaux Barentin, Triumvirate and Company,
imagine that they could scatter six hundred National Deputies,
big with a National Constitution, like as much barndoor poultry,
big with next to nothing,—by the white or black rod of a Supreme
Usher? Barndoor poultry fly cackling: but National Deputies turn
round, lion-faced; and, with uplifted right-hand, swear an Oath
that makes the four corners of France tremble.
President Bailly has covered himself with honour; which shall
become rewards. The National Assembly is now doubly and trebly
the Nation's Assembly; not militant, martyred only, but
triumphant; insulted, and which could not be insulted. Paris
disembogues itself once more, to witness, 'with grim looks,' the
Seance Royale: (_See Arthur Young (_Travels, i. 115-118_); A.
Lameth, &c._) which, by a new felicity, is postponed till
Tuesday. The Hundred and Forty-nine, and even with Bishops among
them, all in processional mass, have had free leisure to march
off, and solemnly join the Commons sitting waiting in their
Church. The Commons welcomed them with shouts, with embracings,
nay with tears; (_Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, c. 4._) for it
is growing a life-and-death matter now.
As for the Seance itself, the Carpenters seem to have
accomplished their platform; but all else remains unaccomplished.
Futile, we may say fatal, was the whole matter. King Louis
enters, through seas of people, all grim-silent, angry with many
things,—for it is a bitter rain too. Enters, to a Third Estate,
likewise grim-silent; which has been wetted waiting under mean
porches, at back-doors, while Court and Privileged were entering
by the front. King and Garde-des-Sceaux (_there is no Necker
visible_) make known, not without longwindedness, the
determinations of the royal breast. The Three Orders shall vote
separately. On the other hand, France may look for considerable
constitutional blessings; as specified in these Five-and-thirty
Articles, (_Histoire Parlementaire, i. 13._) which
Garde-des-Sceaux is waxing hoarse with reading. Which
Five-and-Thirty Articles, adds his Majesty again rising, if the
Three Orders most unfortunately cannot agree together to effect
them, I myself will effect: "seul je ferai le bien de mes
peuples,"—which being interpreted may signify, You, contentious
Deputies of the States-General, have probably not long to be
here! But, in fine, all shall now withdraw for this day; and meet
again, each Order in its separate place, to-morrow morning, for
despatch of business. This is the determination of the royal
breast: pithy and clear. And herewith King, retinue, Noblesse,
majority of Clergy file out, as if the whole matter were
satisfactorily completed.
These file out; through grim-silent seas of people. Only the
Commons Deputies file not out; but stand there in gloomy silence,
uncertain what they shall do. One man of them is certain; one man
of them discerns and dares! It is now that King Mirabeau starts
to the Tribune, and lifts up his lion-voice. Verily a word in
season; for, in such scenes, the moment is the mother of ages!
Had not Gabriel Honore been there,—one can well fancy, how the
Commons Deputies, affrighted at the perils which now yawned dim
all round them, and waxing ever paler in each other's paleness,
might very naturally, one after one, have glided off; and the
whole course of European History have been different!
But he is there. List to the brool of that royal forest-voice;
sorrowful, low; fast swelling to a roar! Eyes kindle at the
glance of his eye:—National Deputies were missioned by a Nation;
they have sworn an Oath; they—but lo! while the lion's voice
roars loudest, what Apparition is this? Apparition of Mercurius
de Breze, muttering somewhat!—"Speak out," cry
several.—"Messieurs," shrills De Breze, repeating himself, "You
have heard the King's orders!"—Mirabeau glares on him with
fire-flashing face; shakes the black lion's mane: "Yes, Monsieur,
we have heard what the King was advised to say: and you who
cannot be the interpreter of his orders to the States-General;
you, who have neither place nor right of speech here; you are not
the man to remind us of it. Go, Monsieur, tell these who sent you
that we are here by the will of the People, and that nothing
shall send us hence but the force of bayonets!" (_Moniteur
(_Hist. Parl. ii. 22._)._) And poor De Breze shivers forth from
the National Assembly;—and also (_if it be not in one faintest
glimmer, months later_) finally from the page of History!—
Hapless De Breze; doomed to survive long ages, in men's memory,
in this faint way, with tremulent white rod! He was true to
Etiquette, which was his Faith here below; a martyr to respect of
persons. Short woollen cloaks could not kiss Majesty's hand as
long velvet ones did. Nay lately, when the poor little Dauphin
lay dead, and some ceremonial Visitation came, was he not
punctual to announce it even to the Dauphin's dead body:
"Monseigneur, a Deputation of the States-General!"
(_Montgaillard, ii. 38._) Sunt lachrymae rerum.
But what does the Oeil-de-Boeuf, now when De Breze shivers back
thither? Despatch that same force of bayonets? Not so: the seas
of people still hang multitudinous, intent on what is passing;
nay rush and roll, loud-billowing, into the Courts of the Chateau
itself; for a report has risen that Necker is to be dismissed.
Worst of all, the Gardes Francaises seem indisposed to act: 'two
Companies of them do not fire when ordered!' (_Histoire
Parlementaire, ii. 26._) Necker, for not being at the Seance,
shall be shouted for, carried home in triumph; and must not be
dismissed. His Grace of Paris, on the other hand, has to fly with
broken coach-panels, and owe his life to furious driving. The
Gardes-du-Corps (_Body-Guards_), which you were drawing out, had
better be drawn in again. (_Bailly, i. 217._) There is no sending
of bayonets to be thought of.
Instead of soldiers, the Oeil-de-Boeuf sends—carpenters, to take
down the platform. Ineffectual shift! In few instants, the very
carpenters cease wrenching and knocking at their platform; stand
on it, hammer in hand, and listen open-mouthed. (_Histoire
Parlementaire, ii. 23._) The Third Estate is decreeing that it
is, was, and will be, nothing but a National Assembly; and now,
moreover, an inviolable one, all members of it inviolable:
'infamous, traitorous, towards the Nation, and guilty of capital
crime, is any person, body-corporate, tribunal, court or
commission that now or henceforth, during the present session or
after it, shall dare to pursue, interrogate, arrest, or cause to
be arrested, detain or cause to be detained, any,' &c. &c. 'on
whose part soever the same be commanded.' (_Montgaillard, ii.
47._) Which done, one can wind up with this comfortable
reflection from Abbe Sieyes: "Messieurs, you are today what you
were yesterday."
Courtiers may shriek; but it is, and remains, even so. Their
well-charged explosion has exploded through the touch-hole;
covering themselves with scorches, confusion, and unseemly soot!
Poor Triumvirate, poor Queen; and above all, poor Queen's
Husband, who means well, had he any fixed meaning! Folly is that
wisdom which is wise only behindhand. Few months ago these
Thirty-five Concessions had filled France with a rejoicing, which
might have lasted for several years. Now it is unavailing, the
very mention of it slighted; Majesty's express orders set at
nought.
All France is in a roar; a sea of persons, estimated at 'ten
thousand,' whirls 'all this day in the Palais Royal.' (_Arthur
Young, i. 119._) The remaining Clergy, and likewise some
Forty-eight Noblesse, D'Orleans among them, have now forthwith
gone over to the victorious Commons; by whom, as is natural, they
are received 'with acclamation.'
The Third Estate triumphs; Versailles Town shouting round it; ten
thousand whirling all day in the Palais Royal; and all France
standing a-tiptoe, not unlike whirling! Let the Oeil-de-Boeuf
look to it. As for King Louis, he will swallow his injuries; will
temporise, keep silence; will at all costs have present peace. It
was Tuesday the 23d of June, when he spoke that peremptory royal
mandate; and the week is not done till he has written to the
remaining obstinate Noblesse, that they also must oblige him, and
give in. D'Espremenil rages his last; Barrel Mirabeau 'breaks his
sword,' making a vow,—which he might as well have kept. The
'Triple Family' is now therefore complete; the third erring
brother, the Noblesse, having joined it;—erring but pardonable;
soothed, so far as possible, by sweet eloquence from President
Bailly.
So triumphs the Third Estate; and States-General are become
National Assembly; and all France may sing Te Deum. By wise
inertia, and wise cessation of inertia, great victory has been
gained. It is the last night of June: all night you meet nothing
on the streets of Versailles but 'men running with torches' with
shouts of jubilation. From the 2nd of May when they kissed the
hand of Majesty, to this 30th of June when men run with torches,
we count seven weeks complete. For seven weeks the National
Carroccio has stood far-seen, ringing many a signal; and, so much
having now gathered round it, may hope to stand.
Chapter 1.5.III.
Broglie the War-God.
The Court feels indignant that it is conquered; but what then?
Another time it will do better. Mercury descended in vain; now
has the time come for Mars.—The gods of the Oeil-de-Boeuf have
withdrawn into the darkness of their cloudy Ida; and sit there,
shaping and forging what may be needful, be it 'billets of a new
National Bank,' munitions of war, or things forever inscrutable
to men.
Accordingly, what means this 'apparatus of troops'? The National
Assembly can get no furtherance for its Committee of
Subsistences; can hear only that, at Paris, the Bakers' shops are
besieged; that, in the Provinces, people are living on
'meal-husks and boiled grass.' But on all highways there hover
dust-clouds, with the march of regiments, with the trailing of
cannon: foreign Pandours, of fierce aspect; Salis-Samade,
Esterhazy, Royal-Allemand; so many of them foreign, to the number
of thirty thousand,—which fear can magnify to fifty: all wending
towards Paris and Versailles! Already, on the heights of
Montmartre, is a digging and delving; too like a scarping and
trenching. The effluence of Paris is arrested Versailles-ward by
a barrier of cannon at Sevres Bridge. From the Queen's Mews,
cannon stand pointed on the National Assembly Hall itself. The
National Assembly has its very slumbers broken by the tramp of
soldiery, swarming and defiling, endless, or seemingly endless,
all round those spaces, at dead of night, 'without drum-music,
without audible word of command.' (_A. Lameth, Assemblee
Constituante, i. 41._) What means it?
Shall eight, or even shall twelve Deputies, our Mirabeaus,
Barnaves at the head of them, be whirled suddenly to the Castle
of Ham; the rest ignominiously dispersed to the winds? No
National Assembly can make the Constitution with cannon levelled
on it from the Queen's Mews! What means this reticence of the
Oeil-de-Boeuf, broken only by nods and shrugs? In the mystery of
that cloudy Ida, what is it that they forge and shape?—Such
questions must distracted Patriotism keep asking, and receive no
answer but an echo.
Enough of themselves! But now, above all, while the hungry
food-year, which runs from August to August, is getting older;
becoming more and more a famine-year? With 'meal-husks and boiled
grass,' Brigands may actually collect; and, in crowds, at farm
and mansion, howl angrily, Food! Food! It is in vain to send
soldiers against them: at sight of soldiers they disperse, they
vanish as under ground; then directly reassemble elsewhere for
new tumult and plunder. Frightful enough to look upon; but what
to hear of, reverberated through Twenty-five Millions of
suspicious minds! Brigands and Broglie, open Conflagration,
preternatural Rumour are driving mad most hearts in France. What
will the issue of these things be?
At Marseilles, many weeks ago, the Townsmen have taken arms; for
'suppressing of Brigands,' and other purposes: the military
commandant may make of it what he will. Elsewhere, everywhere,
could not the like be done? Dubious, on the distracted Patriot
imagination, wavers, as a last deliverance, some foreshadow of a
National Guard. But conceive, above all, the Wooden Tent in the
Palais Royal! A universal hubbub there, as of dissolving worlds:
their loudest bellows the mad, mad-making voice of Rumour; their
sharpest gazes Suspicion into the pale dim World-Whirlpool;
discerning shapes and phantasms; imminent bloodthirsty Regiments
camped on the Champ-de-Mars; dispersed National Assembly; redhot
cannon-balls (_to burn Paris_);—the mad War-god and Bellona's
sounding thongs. To the calmest man it is becoming too plain that
battle is inevitable.
Inevitable, silently nod Messeigneurs and Broglie: Inevitable and
brief! Your National Assembly, stopped short in its
Constitutional labours, may fatigue the royal ear with addresses
and remonstrances: those cannon of ours stand duly levelled;
those troops are here. The King's Declaration, with its
Thirty-five too generous Articles, was spoken, was not listened
to; but remains yet unrevoked: he himself shall effect it, seul
il fera!
As for Broglie, he has his headquarters at Versailles, all as in
a seat of war: clerks writing; significant staff-officers,
inclined to taciturnity; plumed aides-de-camp, scouts, orderlies
flying or hovering. He himself looks forth, important,
impenetrable; listens to Besenval Commandant of Paris, and his
warning and earnest counsels (_for he has come out repeatedly on
purpose_), with a silent smile. (_Besenval, iii. 398._) The
Parisians resist? scornfully cry Messeigneurs. As a meal-mob may!
They have sat quiet, these five generations, submitting to all.
Their Mercier declared, in these very years, that a Parisian
revolt was henceforth 'impossible.' (_Mercier, Tableau de Paris,
vi. 22._) Stand by the royal Declaration, of the Twenty-third of
June. The Nobles of France, valorous, chivalrous as of old, will
rally round us with one heart;—and as for this which you call
Third Estate, and which we call canaille of unwashed
Sansculottes, of Patelins, Scribblers, factious Spouters,—brave
Broglie, 'with a whiff of grapeshot (_salve de canons_), if need
be, will give quick account of it. Thus reason they: on their
cloudy Ida; hidden from men,—men also hidden from them.
Good is grapeshot, Messeigneurs, on one condition: that the
shooter also were made of metal! But unfortunately he is made of
flesh; under his buffs and bandoleers your hired shooter has
instincts, feelings, even a kind of thought. It is his kindred,
bone of his bone, this same canaille that shall be whiffed; he
has brothers in it, a father and mother,—living on meal-husks and
boiled grass. His very doxy, not yet 'dead i' the spital,' drives
him into military heterodoxy; declares that if he shed Patriot
blood, he shall be accursed among men. The soldier, who has seen
his pay stolen by rapacious Foulons, his blood wasted by
Soubises, Pompadours, and the gates of promotion shut inexorably
on him if he were not born noble,—is himself not without griefs
against you. Your cause is not the soldier's cause; but, as would
seem, your own only, and no other god's nor man's.
For example, the world may have heard how, at Bethune lately,
when there rose some 'riot about grains,' of which sort there are
so many, and the soldiers stood drawn out, and the word 'Fire!
was given,—not a trigger stirred; only the butts of all muskets
rattled angrily against the ground; and the soldiers stood
glooming, with a mixed expression of countenance;—till clutched
'each under the arm of a patriot householder,' they were all
hurried off, in this manner, to be treated and caressed, and have
their pay increased by subscription! (_Histoire Parlementaire._)
Neither have the Gardes Francaises, the best regiment of the
line, shown any promptitude for street-firing lately. They
returned grumbling from Reveillon's; and have not burnt a single
cartridge since; nay, as we saw, not even when bid. A dangerous
humour dwells in these Gardes. Notable men too, in their way!
Valadi the Pythagorean was, at one time, an officer of theirs.
Nay, in the ranks, under the three-cornered felt and cockade,
what hard heads may there not be, and reflections going
on,—unknown to the public! One head of the hardest we do now
discern there: on the shoulders of a certain Sergeant Hoche.
Lazare Hoche, that is the name of him; he used to be about the
Versailles Royal Stables, nephew of a poor herbwoman; a handy
lad; exceedingly addicted to reading. He is now Sergeant Hoche,
and can rise no farther: he lays out his pay in rushlights, and
cheap editions of books. (_Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans,
Londres (_Paris_), 1800, ii. 198._)
On the whole, the best seems to be: Consign these Gardes
Francaises to their Barracks. So Besenval thinks, and orders.
Consigned to their barracks, the Gardes Francaises do but form a
'Secret Association,' an Engagement not to act against the
National Assembly. Debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean; debauched
by money and women! cry Besenval and innumerable others.
Debauched by what you will, or in need of no debauching, behold
them, long files of them, their consignment broken, arrive,
headed by their Sergeants, on the 26th day of June, at the Palais
Royal! Welcomed with vivats, with presents, and a pledge of
patriot liquor; embracing and embraced; declaring in words that
the cause of France is their cause! Next day and the following
days the like. What is singular too, except this patriot humour,
and breaking of their consignment, they behave otherwise with
'the most rigorous accuracy.' (_Besenval, iii. 394-6._)
They are growing questionable, these Gardes! Eleven ring-leaders
of them are put in the Abbaye Prison. It boots not in the least.
The imprisoned Eleven have only, 'by the hand of an individual,'
to drop, towards nightfall, a line in the Cafe de Foy; where
Patriotism harangues loudest on its table. 'Two hundred young
persons, soon waxing to four thousand,' with fit crowbars, roll
towards the Abbaye; smite asunder the needful doors; and bear out
their Eleven, with other military victims:—to supper in the
Palais Royal Garden; to board, and lodging 'in campbeds, in the
Theatre des Varietes;' other national Prytaneum as yet not being
in readiness. Most deliberate! Nay so punctual were these young
persons, that finding one military victim to have been imprisoned
for real civil crime, they returned him to his cell, with
protest.
Why new military force was not called out? New military force was
called out. New military force did arrive, full gallop, with
drawn sabre: but the people gently 'laid hold of their bridles;'
the dragoons sheathed their swords; lifted their caps by way of
salute, and sat like mere statues of dragoons,—except indeed that
a drop of liquor being brought them, they 'drank to the King and
Nation with the greatest cordiality.' (_Histoire Parlementaire,
ii. 32._)
And now, ask in return, why Messeigneurs and Broglie the great
god of war, on seeing these things, did not pause, and take some
other course, any other course? Unhappily, as we said, they could
see nothing. Pride, which goes before a fall; wrath, if not
reasonable, yet pardonable, most natural, had hardened their
hearts and heated their heads; so, with imbecility and violence
(_ill-matched pair_), they rush to seek their hour. All Regiments
are not Gardes Francaises, or debauched by Valadi the
Pythagorean: let fresh undebauched Regiments come up; let
Royal-Allemand, Salais-Samade, Swiss Chateau-Vieux come up,—which
can fight, but can hardly speak except in German gutturals; let
soldiers march, and highways thunder with artillery-waggons:
Majesty has a new Royal Session to hold,—and miracles to work
there! The whiff of grapeshot can, if needful, become a blast and
tempest.
In which circumstances, before the redhot balls begin raining,
may not the Hundred-and-twenty Paris Electors, though their
Cahier is long since finished, see good to meet again daily, as
an 'Electoral Club'? They meet first 'in a Tavern;'—where 'the
largest wedding-party' cheerfully give place to them. (_Dusaulx,
Prise de la Bastille (_Collection des Memoires, par Berville et
Barriere, Paris, 1821_), p. 269._) But latterly they meet in the
Hotel-de-Ville, in the Townhall itself. Flesselles, Provost of
Merchants, with his Four Echevins (_Scabins, Assessors_), could
not prevent it; such was the force of public opinion. He, with
his Echevins, and the Six-and-Twenty Town-Councillors, all
appointed from Above, may well sit silent there, in their long
gowns; and consider, with awed eye, what prelude this is of
convulsion coming from Below, and how themselves shall fare in
that!
Chapter 1.5.IV.
To Arms!
So hangs it, dubious, fateful, in the sultry days of July. It is
the passionate printed advice of M. Marat, to abstain, of all
things, from violence. (_Avis au Peuple, ou les Ministres
devoiles, 1st July, 1789 in Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 37._)
Nevertheless the hungry poor are already burning Town Barriers,
where Tribute on eatables is levied; getting clamorous for food.
The twelfth July morning is Sunday; the streets are all placarded
with an enormous-sized De par le Roi, 'inviting peaceable
citizens to remain within doors,' to feel no alarm, to gather in
no crowd. Why so? What mean these 'placards of enormous size'?
Above all, what means this clatter of military; dragoons,
hussars, rattling in from all points of the compass towards the
Place Louis Quinze; with a staid gravity of face, though saluted
with mere nicknames, hootings and even missiles? (_Besenval, iii.
411._) Besenval is with them. Swiss Guards of his are already in
the Champs Elysees, with four pieces of artillery.
Have the destroyers descended on us, then? From the Bridge of
Sevres to utmost Vincennes, from Saint-Denis to the
Champ-de-Mars, we are begirt! Alarm, of the vague unknown, is in
every heart. The Palais Royal has become a place of awestruck
interjections, silent shakings of the head: one can fancy with
what dolorous sound the noon-tide cannon (_which the Sun fires at
the crossing of his meridian_) went off there; bodeful, like an
inarticulate voice of doom. (_Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 81._)
Are these troops verily come out 'against Brigands'? Where are
the Brigands? What mystery is in the wind?—Hark! a human voice
reporting articulately the Job's-news: Necker, People's Minister,
Saviour of France, is dismissed. Impossible; incredible!
Treasonous to the public peace! Such a voice ought to be choked
in the water-works; (_Ibid._)—had not the news-bringer quickly
fled. Nevertheless, friends, make of it what you will, the news
is true. Necker is gone. Necker hies northward incessantly, in
obedient secrecy, since yesternight. We have a new Ministry:
Broglie the War-god; Aristocrat Breteuil; Foulon who said the
people might eat grass!
Rumour, therefore, shall arise; in the Palais Royal, and in broad
France. Paleness sits on every face; confused tremor and
fremescence; waxing into thunder-peals, of Fury stirred on by
Fear.
But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Cafe de Foy, rushing out,
sibylline in face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He
springs to a table: the Police satellites are eyeing him; alive
they shall not take him, not they alive him alive. This time he
speaks without stammering:—Friends, shall we die like hunted
hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold; bleating for mercy,
where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife? The hour is come;
the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try
conclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or
Deliverance forever. Let such hour be well-come! Us, meseems, one
cry only befits: To Arms! Let universal Paris, universal France,
as with the throat of the whirlwind, sound only: To arms!—"To
arms!" yell responsive the innumerable voices: like one great
voice, as of a Demon yelling from the air: for all faces wax
fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In such, or fitter
words, (_Ibid._) does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in this
great moment.—Friends, continues Camille, some rallying sign!
Cockades; green ones;—the colour of hope!—As with the flight of
locusts, these green tree leaves; green ribands from the
neighbouring shops; all green things are snatched, and made
cockades of. Camille descends from his table, 'stifled with
embraces, wetted with tears;' has a bit of green riband handed
him; sticks it in his hat. And now to Curtius' Image-shop there;
to the Boulevards; to the four winds; and rest not till France be
on fire! (_Vieux Cordelier, par Camille Desmoulins, No. 5
(_reprinted in Collection des Memoires, par Baudouin Freres,
Paris, 1825_), p. 81._)
France, so long shaken and wind-parched, is probably at the right
inflammable point.—As for poor Curtius, who, one grieves to
think, might be but imperfectly paid,—he cannot make two words
about his Images. The Wax-bust of Necker, the Wax-bust of
D'Orleans, helpers of France: these, covered with crape, as in
funeral procession, or after the manner of suppliants appealing
to Heaven, to Earth, and Tartarus itself, a mixed multitude bears
off. For a sign! As indeed man, with his singular imaginative
faculties, can do little or nothing without signs: thus Turks
look to their Prophet's banner; also Osier Mannikins have been
burnt, and Necker's Portrait has erewhile figured, aloft on its
perch.
In this manner march they, a mixed, continually increasing
multitude; armed with axes, staves and miscellanea; grim,
many-sounding, through the streets. Be all Theatres shut; let all
dancing, on planked floor, or on the natural greensward, cease!
Instead of a Christian Sabbath, and feast of guinguette
tabernacles, it shall be a Sorcerer's Sabbath; and Paris, gone
rabid, dance,—with the Fiend for piper!
However, Besenval, with horse and foot, is in the Place Louis
Quinze. Mortals promenading homewards, in the fall of the day,
saunter by, from Chaillot or Passy, from flirtation and a little
thin wine; with sadder step than usual. Will the Bust-Procession
pass that way! Behold it; behold also Prince Lambesc dash forth
on it, with his Royal-Allemands! Shots fall, and sabre-strokes;
Busts are hewn asunder; and, alas, also heads of men. A sabred
Procession has nothing for it but to explode, along what streets,
alleys, Tuileries Avenues it finds; and disappear. One unarmed
man lies hewed down; a Garde Francaise by his uniform: bear him
(_or bear even the report of him_) dead and gory to his
Barracks;—where he has comrades still alive!
But why not now, victorious Lambesc, charge through that
Tuileries Garden itself, where the fugitives are vanishing? Not
show the Sunday promenaders too, how steel glitters, besprent
with blood; that it be told of, and men's ears tingle?—Tingle,
alas, they did; but the wrong way. Victorious Lambesc, in this
his second or Tuileries charge, succeeds but in overturning
(_call it not slashing, for he struck with the flat of his
sword_) one man, a poor old schoolmaster, most pacifically
tottering there; and is driven out, by barricade of chairs, by
flights of 'bottles and glasses,' by execrations in bass voice
and treble. Most delicate is the mob-queller's vocation; wherein
Too-much may be as bad as Not-enough. For each of these bass
voices, and more each treble voice, borne to all points of the
City, rings now nothing but distracted indignation; will ring all
another. The cry, To arms! roars tenfold; steeples with their
metal storm-voice boom out, as the sun sinks; armorer's shops are
broken open, plundered; the streets are a living foam-sea, chafed
by all the winds.
Such issue came of Lambesc's charge on the Tuileries Garden: no
striking of salutary terror into Chaillot promenaders; a striking
into broad wakefulness of Frenzy and the three Furies,—which
otherwise were not asleep! For they lie always, those
subterranean Eumenides (_fabulous and yet so true_), in the
dullest existence of man;—and can dance, brandishing their dusky
torches, shaking their serpent-hair. Lambesc with Royal-Allemand
may ride to his barracks, with curses for his marching-music;
then ride back again, like one troubled in mind: vengeful Gardes
Francaises, sacreing, with knit brows, start out on him, from
their barracks in the Chaussee d'Antin; pour a volley into him
(_killing and wounding_); which he must not answer, but ride on.
(_Weber, ii. 75-91._)
Counsel dwells not under the plumed hat. If the Eumenides awaken,
and Broglie has given no orders, what can a Besenval do? When the
Gardes Francaises, with Palais-Royal volunteers, roll down,
greedy of more vengeance, to the Place Louis Quinze itself, they
find neither Besenval, Lambesc, Royal-Allemand, nor any soldier
now there. Gone is military order. On the far Eastern Boulevard,
of Saint-Antoine, the Chasseurs Normandie arrive, dusty, thirsty,
after a hard day's ride; but can find no billet-master, see no
course in this City of confusions; cannot get to Besenval, cannot
so much as discover where he is: Normandie must even bivouac
there, in its dust and thirst,—unless some patriot will treat it
to a cup of liquor, with advices.
Raging multitudes surround the Hotel-de-Ville, crying: Arms!
Orders! The Six-and-twenty Town-Councillors, with their long
gowns, have ducked under (_into the raging chaos_);—shall never
emerge more. Besenval is painfully wriggling himself out, to the
Champ-de-Mars; he must sit there 'in the cruelest uncertainty:'
courier after courier may dash off for Versailles; but will bring
back no answer, can hardly bring himself back. For the roads are
all blocked with batteries and pickets, with floods of carriages
arrested for examination: such was Broglie's one sole order; the
Oeil-de-Boeuf, hearing in the distance such mad din, which
sounded almost like invasion, will before all things keep its own
head whole. A new Ministry, with, as it were, but one foot in the
stirrup, cannot take leaps. Mad Paris is abandoned altogether to
itself.
What a Paris, when the darkness fell! A European metropolitan
City hurled suddenly forth from its old combinations and
arrangements; to crash tumultuously together, seeking new. Use
and wont will now no longer direct any man; each man, with what
of originality he has, must begin thinking; or following those
that think. Seven hundred thousand individuals, on the sudden,
find all their old paths, old ways of acting and deciding, vanish
from under their feet. And so there go they, with clangour and
terror, they know not as yet whether running, swimming or
flying,—headlong into the New Era. With clangour and terror: from
above, Broglie the war-god impends, preternatural, with his
redhot cannon-balls; and from below, a preternatural
Brigand-world menaces with dirk and firebrand: madness rules the
hour.
Happily, in place of the submerged Twenty-six, the Electoral Club
is gathering; has declared itself a 'Provisional Municipality.'
On the morrow it will get Provost Flesselles, with an Echevin or
two, to give help in many things. For the present it decrees one
most essential thing: that forthwith a 'Parisian Militia' shall
be enrolled. Depart, ye heads of Districts, to labour in this
great work; while we here, in Permanent Committee, sit alert. Let
fencible men, each party in its own range of streets, keep watch
and ward, all night. Let Paris court a little fever-sleep;
confused by such fever-dreams, of 'violent motions at the Palais
Royal;'—or from time to time start awake, and look out,
palpitating, in its nightcap, at the clash of discordant
mutually-unintelligible Patrols; on the gleam of distant
Barriers, going up all-too ruddy towards the vault of Night.
(_Deux Amis, i. 267-306._)
Chapter 1.5.V.
Give us Arms.
On Monday the huge City has awoke, not to its week-day industry:
to what a different one! The working man has become a fighting
man; has one want only: that of arms. The industry of all crafts
has paused;—except it be the smith's, fiercely hammering pikes;
and, in a faint degree, the kitchener's, cooking off-hand
victuals; for bouche va toujours. Women too are sewing
cockades;—not now of green, which being D'Artois colour, the
Hotel-de-Ville has had to interfere in it; but of red and blue,
our old Paris colours: these, once based on a ground of
constitutional white, are the famed TRICOLOR,—which (_if Prophecy
err not_) 'will go round the world.'
All shops, unless it be the Bakers' and Vintners', are shut:
Paris is in the streets;—rushing, foaming like some Venice
wine-glass into which you had dropped poison. The tocsin, by
order, is pealing madly from all steeples. Arms, ye Elector
Municipals; thou Flesselles with thy Echevins, give us arms!
Flesselles gives what he can: fallacious, perhaps insidious
promises of arms from Charleville; order to seek arms here, order
to seek them there. The new Municipals give what they can; some
three hundred and sixty indifferent firelocks, the equipment of
the City-Watch: 'a man in wooden shoes, and without coat,
directly clutches one of them, and mounts guard.' Also as hinted,
an order to all Smiths to make pikes with their whole soul.
Heads of Districts are in fervent consultation; subordinate
Patriotism roams distracted, ravenous for arms. Hitherto at the
Hotel-de-Ville was only such modicum of indifferent firelocks as
we have seen. At the so-called Arsenal, there lies nothing but
rust, rubbish and saltpetre,—overlooked too by the guns of the
Bastille. His Majesty's Repository, what they call Garde-Meuble,
is forced and ransacked: tapestries enough, and gauderies; but of
serviceable fighting-gear small stock! Two silver-mounted cannons
there are; an ancient gift from his Majesty of Siam to Louis
Fourteenth: gilt sword of the Good Henri; antique Chivalry arms
and armour. These, and such as these, a necessitous Patriotism
snatches greedily, for want of better. The Siamese cannons go
trundling, on an errand they were not meant for. Among the
indifferent firelocks are seen tourney-lances; the princely helm
and hauberk glittering amid ill-hatted heads,—as in a time when
all times and their possessions are suddenly sent jumbling!
At the Maison de Saint-Lazare, Lazar-House once, now a
Correction-House with Priests, there was no trace of arms; but,
on the other hand, corn, plainly to a culpable extent. Out with
it, to market; in this scarcity of grains!—Heavens, will
'fifty-two carts,' in long row, hardly carry it to the Halle aux
Bleds? Well, truly, ye reverend Fathers, was your pantry filled;
fat are your larders; over-generous your wine-bins, ye plotting
exasperators of the Poor; traitorous forestallers of bread!
Vain is protesting, entreaty on bare knees: the House of
Saint-Lazarus has that in it which comes not out by protesting.
Behold, how, from every window, it vomits: mere torrents of
furniture, of bellowing and hurlyburly;—the cellars also leaking
wine. Till, as was natural, smoke rose,—kindled, some say, by the
desperate Saint-Lazaristes themselves, desperate of other
riddance; and the Establishment vanished from this world in
flame. Remark nevertheless that 'a thief' (_set on or not by
Aristocrats_), being detected there, is 'instantly hanged.'
Look also at the Chatelet Prison. The Debtors' Prison of La Force
is broken from without; and they that sat in bondage to
Aristocrats go free: hearing of which the Felons at the Chatelet
do likewise 'dig up their pavements,' and stand on the offensive;
with the best prospects,—had not Patriotism, passing that way,
'fired a volley' into the Felon world; and crushed it down again
under hatches. Patriotism consorts not with thieving and felony:
surely also Punishment, this day, hitches (_if she still hitch_)
after Crime, with frightful shoes-of-swiftness! 'Some score or
two' of wretched persons, found prostrate with drink in the
cellars of that Saint-Lazare, are indignantly haled to prison;
the Jailor has no room; whereupon, other place of security not
suggesting itself, it is written, 'on les pendit, they hanged
them.' (_Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 96._) Brief is the word; not
without significance, be it true or untrue!
In such circumstances, the Aristocrat, the unpatriotic rich man
is packing-up for departure. But he shall not get departed. A
wooden-shod force has seized all Barriers, burnt or not: all that
enters, all that seeks to issue, is stopped there, and dragged to
the Hotel-de-Ville: coaches, tumbrils, plate, furniture, 'many
meal-sacks,' in time even 'flocks and herds' encumber the Place
de Greve. (_Dusaulx, Prise de la Bastille, p. 20._)
And so it roars, and rages, and brays; drums beating, steeples
pealing; criers rushing with hand-bells: "Oyez, oyez. All men to
their Districts to be enrolled!" The Districts have met in
gardens, open squares; are getting marshalled into volunteer
troops. No redhot ball has yet fallen from Besenval's Camp; on
the contrary, Deserters with their arms are continually dropping
in: nay now, joy of joys, at two in the afternoon, the Gardes
Francaises, being ordered to Saint-Denis, and flatly declining,
have come over in a body! It is a fact worth many. Three thousand
six hundred of the best fighting men, with complete accoutrement;
with cannoneers even, and cannon! Their officers are left
standing alone; could not so much as succeed in 'spiking the
guns.' The very Swiss, it may now be hoped, Chateau-Vieux and the
others, will have doubts about fighting.
Our Parisian Militia,—which some think it were better to name
National Guard,—is prospering as heart could wish. It promised to
be forty-eight thousand; but will in few hours double and
quadruple that number: invincible, if we had only arms!
But see, the promised Charleville Boxes, marked Artillerie! Here,
then, are arms enough?—Conceive the blank face of Patriotism,
when it found them filled with rags, foul linen, candle-ends, and
bits of wood! Provost of the Merchants, how is this? Neither at
the Chartreux Convent, whither we were sent with signed order, is
there or ever was there any weapon of war. Nay here, in this
Seine Boat, safe under tarpaulings (_had not the nose of
Patriotism been of the finest_), are 'five thousand-weight of
gunpowder;' not coming in, but surreptitiously going out! What
meanest thou, Flesselles? 'Tis a ticklish game, that of 'amusing'
us. Cat plays with captive mouse: but mouse with enraged cat,
with enraged National Tiger?
Meanwhile, the faster, O ye black-aproned Smiths, smite; with
strong arm and willing heart. This man and that, all stroke from
head to heel, shall thunder alternating, and ply the great
forge-hammer, till stithy reel and ring again; while ever and
anon, overhead, booms the alarm-cannon,—for the City has now got
gunpowder. Pikes are fabricated; fifty thousand of them, in
six-and-thirty hours: judge whether the Black-aproned have been
idle. Dig trenches, unpave the streets, ye others, assiduous, man
and maid; cram the earth in barrel-barricades, at each of them a
volunteer sentry; pile the whinstones in window-sills and upper
rooms. Have scalding pitch, at least boiling water ready, ye weak
old women, to pour it and dash it on Royal-Allemand, with your
old skinny arms: your shrill curses along with it will not be
wanting!—Patrols of the newborn National Guard, bearing torches,
scour the streets, all that night; which otherwise are vacant,
yet illuminated in every window by order. Strange-looking; like
some naphtha-lighted City of the Dead, with here and there a
flight of perturbed Ghosts.
O poor mortals, how ye make this Earth bitter for each other;
this fearful and wonderful Life fearful and horrible; and Satan
has his place in all hearts! Such agonies and ragings and
wailings ye have, and have had, in all times:—to be buried all,
in so deep silence; and the salt sea is not swoln with your
tears.
Great meanwhile is the moment, when tidings of Freedom reach us;
when the long-enthralled soul, from amid its chains and squalid
stagnancy, arises, were it still only in blindness and
bewilderment, and swears by Him that made it, that it will be
free! Free? Understand that well, it is the deep commandment,
dimmer or clearer, of our whole being, to be free. Freedom is the
one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's
struggles, toilings and sufferings, in this Earth. Yes, supreme
is such a moment (_if thou have known it_): first vision as of a
flame-girt Sinai, in this our waste Pilgrimage,—which thenceforth
wants not its pillar of cloud by day, and pillar of fire by
night! Something it is even,—nay, something considerable, when
the chains have grown corrosive, poisonous, to be free 'from
oppression by our fellow-man.' Forward, ye maddened sons of
France; be it towards this destiny or towards that! Around you is
but starvation, falsehood, corruption and the clam of death.
Where ye are is no abiding.
Imagination may, imperfectly, figure how Commandant Besenval, in
the Champ-de-Mars, has worn out these sorrowful hours
Insurrection all round; his men melting away! From Versailles, to
the most pressing messages, comes no answer; or once only some
vague word of answer which is worse than none. A Council of
Officers can decide merely that there is no decision: Colonels
inform him, 'weeping,' that they do not think their men will
fight. Cruel uncertainty is here: war-god Broglie sits yonder,
inaccessible in his Olympus; does not descend terror-clad, does
not produce his whiff of grapeshot; sends no orders.
Truly, in the Chateau of Versailles all seems mystery: in the
Town of Versailles, were we there, all is rumour, alarm and
indignation. An august National Assembly sits, to appearance,
menaced with death; endeavouring to defy death. It has resolved
'that Necker carries with him the regrets of the Nation.' It has
sent solemn Deputation over to the Chateau, with entreaty to have
these troops withdrawn. In vain: his Majesty, with a singular
composure, invites us to be busy rather with our own duty, making
the Constitution! Foreign Pandours, and suchlike, go pricking and
prancing, with a swashbuckler air; with an eye too probably to
the Salle des Menus,—were it not for the 'grim-looking
countenances' that crowd all avenues there. (_See Lameth;
Ferrieres, &c._) Be firm, ye National Senators; the cynosure of a
firm, grim-looking people!
The august National Senators determine that there shall, at
least, be Permanent Session till this thing end. Wherein,
however, consider that worthy Lafranc de Pompignan, our new
President, whom we have named Bailly's successor, is an old man,
wearied with many things. He is the Brother of that Pompignan who
meditated lamentably on the Book of Lamentations:
Saves-voux pourquoi Jeremie
Se lamentait toute sa vie?
C'est qu'il prevoyait
Que Pompignan le traduirait!
Poor Bishop Pompignan withdraws; having got Lafayette for helper
or substitute: this latter, as nocturnal Vice-President, with a
thin house in disconsolate humour, sits sleepless, with lights
unsnuffed;—waiting what the hours will bring.
So at Versailles. But at Paris, agitated Besenval, before
retiring for the night, has stept over to old M. de Sombreuil, of
the Hotel des Invalides hard by. M. de Sombreuil has, what is a
great secret, some eight-and-twenty thousand stand of muskets
deposited in his cellars there; but no trust in the temper of his
Invalides. This day, for example, he sent twenty of the fellows
down to unscrew those muskets; lest Sedition might snatch at
them; but scarcely, in six hours, had the twenty unscrewed twenty
gun-locks, or dogsheads (_chiens_) of locks,—each Invalide his
dogshead! If ordered to fire, they would, he imagines, turn their
cannon against himself.
Unfortunate old military gentlemen, it is your hour, not of
glory! Old Marquis de Launay too, of the Bastille, has pulled up
his drawbridges long since, 'and retired into his interior;' with
sentries walking on his battlements, under the midnight sky,
aloft over the glare of illuminated Paris;—whom a National
Patrol, passing that way, takes the liberty of firing at; 'seven
shots towards twelve at night,' which do not take effect. (_Deux
Amis de la Liberte, i. 312._) This was the 13th day of July,
1789; a worse day, many said, than the last 13th was, when only
hail fell out of Heaven, not madness rose out of Tophet, ruining
worse than crops!
In these same days, as Chronology will teach us, hot old Marquis
Mirabeau lies stricken down, at Argenteuil,—not within sound of
these alarm-guns; for he properly is not there, and only the body
of him now lies, deaf and cold forever. It was on Saturday night
that he, drawing his last life-breaths, gave up the ghost
there;—leaving a world, which would never go to his mind, now
broken out, seemingly, into deliration and the culbute generale.
What is it to him, departing elsewhither, on his long journey?
The old Chateau Mirabeau stands silent, far off, on its scarped
rock, in that 'gorge of two windy valleys;' the pale-fading
spectre now of a Chateau: this huge World-riot, and France, and
the World itself, fades also, like a shadow on the great still
mirror-sea; and all shall be as God wills.
Young Mirabeau, sad of heart, for he loved this crabbed brave old
Father, sad of heart, and occupied with sad cares,—is withdrawn
from Public History. The great crisis transacts itself without
him. (_Fils Adoptif, Mirabeau, vi. l. 1._)
Chapter 1.5.VI.
Storm and Victory.
But, to the living and the struggling, a new, Fourteenth morning
dawns. Under all roofs of this distracted City, is the nodus of a
drama, not untragical, crowding towards solution. The bustlings
and preparings, the tremors and menaces; the tears that fell from
old eyes! This day, my sons, ye shall quit you like men. By the
memory of your fathers' wrongs, by the hope of your children's
rights! Tyranny impends in red wrath: help for you is none if not
in your own right hands. This day ye must do or die.
From earliest light, a sleepless Permanent Committee has heard
the old cry, now waxing almost frantic, mutinous: Arms! Arms!
Provost Flesselles, or what traitors there are among you, may
think of those Charleville Boxes. A hundred-and-fifty thousand of
us; and but the third man furnished with so much as a pike! Arms
are the one thing needful: with arms we are an unconquerable
man-defying National Guard; without arms, a rabble to be whiffed
with grapeshot.
Happily the word has arisen, for no secret can be kept,—that
there lie muskets at the Hotel des Invalides. Thither will we:
King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, and whatsoever of authority a
Permanent Committee can lend, shall go with us. Besenval's Camp
is there; perhaps he will not fire on us; if he kill us we shall
but die.
Alas, poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in that manner,
has not the smallest humour to fire! At five o'clock this
morning, as he lay dreaming, oblivious in the Ecole Militaire, a
'figure' stood suddenly at his bedside: 'with face rather
handsome; eyes inflamed, speech rapid and curt, air audacious:'
such a figure drew Priam's curtains! The message and monition of
the figure was, that resistance would be hopeless; that if blood
flowed, wo to him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure; and
vanished. 'Withal there was a kind of eloquence that struck one.'
Besenval admits that he should have arrested him, but did not.
(_Besenval, iii. 414._) Who this figure, with inflamed eyes, with
speech rapid and curt, might be? Besenval knows but mentions not.
Camille Desmoulins? Pythagorean Marquis Valadi, inflamed with
'violent motions all night at the Palais Royal?' Fame names him,
'Young M. Meillar'; (_Tableaux de la Revolution, Prise de la
Bastille (_a folio Collection of Pictures and Portraits, with
letter-press, not always uninstructive,—part of it said to be by
Chamfort_)._) Then shuts her lips about him for ever.
In any case, behold about nine in the morning, our National
Volunteers rolling in long wide flood, south-westward to the
Hotel des Invalides; in search of the one thing needful. King's
procureur M. Ethys de Corny and officials are there; the Cure of
Saint-Etienne du Mont marches unpacific, at the head of his
militant Parish; the Clerks of the Bazoche in red coats we see
marching, now Volunteers of the Bazoche; the Volunteers of the
Palais Royal:—National Volunteers, numerable by tens of
thousands; of one heart and mind. The King's muskets are the
Nation's; think, old M. de Sombreuil, how, in this extremity,
thou wilt refuse them! Old M. de Sombreuil would fain hold
parley, send Couriers; but it skills not: the walls are scaled,
no Invalide firing a shot; the gates must be flung open.
Patriotism rushes in, tumultuous, from grundsel up to ridge-tile,
through all rooms and passages; rummaging distractedly for arms.
What cellar, or what cranny can escape it? The arms are found;
all safe there; lying packed in straw,—apparently with a view to
being burnt! More ravenous than famishing lions over dead prey,
the multitude, with clangour and vociferation, pounces on them;
struggling, dashing, clutching:—to the jamming-up, to the
pressure, fracture and probable extinction, of the weaker
Patriot. (_Deux Amis, i. 302._) And so, with such protracted
crash of deafening, most discordant Orchestra-music, the Scene is
changed: and eight-and-twenty thousand sufficient firelocks are
on the shoulders of so many National Guards, lifted thereby out
of darkness into fiery light.
Let Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets, as they flash
by! Gardes Francaises, it is said, have cannon levelled on him;
ready to open, if need were, from the other side of the River.
(_Besenval, iii. 416._) Motionless sits he; 'astonished,' one may
flatter oneself, 'at the proud bearing (_fiere contenance_) of
the Parisians.'—And now, to the Bastille, ye intrepid Parisians!
There grapeshot still threatens; thither all men's thoughts and
steps are now tending.
Old de Launay, as we hinted, withdrew 'into his interior' soon
after midnight of Sunday. He remains there ever since, hampered,
as all military gentlemen now are, in the saddest conflict of
uncertainties. The Hotel-de-Ville 'invites' him to admit National
Soldiers, which is a soft name for surrendering. On the other
hand, His Majesty's orders were precise. His garrison is but
eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced by thirty-two young Swiss;
his walls indeed are nine feet thick, he has cannon and powder;
but, alas, only one day's provision of victuals. The city too is
French, the poor garrison mostly French. Rigorous old de Launay,
think what thou wilt do!
All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere: To the
Bastille! Repeated 'deputations of citizens' have been here,
passionate for arms; whom de Launay has got dismissed by soft
speeches through portholes. Towards noon, Elector Thuriot de la
Rosiere gains admittance; finds de Launay indisposed for
surrender; nay disposed for blowing up the place rather. Thuriot
mounts with him to the battlements: heaps of paving-stones, old
iron and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly levelled; in every
embrasure a cannon,—only drawn back a little! But outwards
behold, O Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through
every street; tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating the
generale: the Suburb Saint-Antoine rolling hitherward wholly, as
one man! Such vision (_spectral yet real_) thou, O Thuriot, as
from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this moment: prophetic of
what other Phantasmagories, and loud-gibbering Spectral
Realities, which, thou yet beholdest not, but shalt! "Que voulez
vous?" said de Launay, turning pale at the sight, with an air of
reproach, almost of menace. "Monsieur," said Thuriot, rising into
the moral-sublime, "What mean you? Consider if I could not
precipitate both of us from this height,"—say only a hundred
feet, exclusive of the walled ditch! Whereupon de Launay fell
silent. Thuriot shews himself from some pinnacle, to comfort the
multitude becoming suspicious, fremescent: then descends; departs
with protest; with warning addressed also to the Invalides,—on
whom, however, it produces but a mixed indistinct impression. The
old heads are none of the clearest; besides, it is said, de
Launay has been profuse of beverages (_prodigua des buissons_).
They think, they will not fire,—if not fired on, if they can help
it; but must, on the whole, be ruled considerably by
circumstances.
Wo to thee, de Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking
some one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches will
not serve; hard grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between
the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men;
their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps
into crackle of stray musketry,—which latter, on walls nine feet
thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has been lowered
for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (_it is the third, and
noisiest of all_) penetrates that way into the Outer Court: soft
speeches producing no clearance of these, de Launay gives fire;
pulls up his Drawbridge. A slight sputter;—which has kindled the
too combustible chaos; made it a roaring fire-chaos! Bursts forth
insurrection, at sight of its own blood (_for there were deaths
by that sputter of fire_), into endless rolling explosion of
musketry, distraction, execration;—and overhead, from the
Fortress, let one great gun, with its grape-shot, go booming, to
shew what we could do. The Bastille is besieged!
On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in their bodies! Roar
with all your throats, of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of
Liberty; stir spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in
you, soul, body or spirit; for it is the hour! Smite, thou Louis
Tournay, cartwright of the Marais, old-soldier of the Regiment
Dauphine; smite at that Outer Drawbridge chain, though the fiery
hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did thy axe
strike such a stroke. Down with it, man; down with it to Orcus:
let the whole accursed Edifice sink thither, and Tyranny be
swallowed up for ever! Mounted, some say on the roof of the
guard-room, some 'on bayonets stuck into joints of the wall,'
Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin Bonnemere (_also an old
soldier_) seconding him: the chain yields, breaks; the huge
Drawbridge slams down, thundering (_avec fracas_). Glorious: and
yet, alas, it is still but the outworks. The Eight grim Towers,
with their Invalides' musketry, their paving stones and
cannon-mouths, still soar aloft intact;—Ditch yawning impassable,
stone-faced; the inner Drawbridge with its back towards us: the
Bastille is still to take!
To describe this Siege of the Bastille (_thought to be one of the
most important in history_) perhaps transcends the talent of
mortals. Could one but, after infinite reading, get to understand
so much as the plan of the building! But there is open Esplanade,
at the end of the Rue Saint-Antoine; there are such Forecourts,
Cour Avance, Cour de l'Orme, arched Gateway (_where Louis Tournay
now fights_); then new drawbridges, dormant-bridges,
rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic Mass,
high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four
hundred and twenty;—beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we
said, by mere Chaos come again! Ordnance of all calibres; throats
of all capacities; men of all plans, every man his own engineer:
seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes was there seen so
anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a suit of
regimentals; no one would heed him in coloured clothes: half-pay
Hulin is haranguing Gardes Francaises in the Place de Greve.
Frantic Patriots pick up the grape-shots; bear them, still hot
(_or seemingly so_), to the Hotel-de-Ville:—Paris, you perceive,
is to be burnt! Flesselles is 'pale to the very lips' for the
roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris wholly has got to the
acme of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic madness. At every
street-barricade, there whirls simmering, a minor
whirlpool,—strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is
coming; and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that
grand Fire-Mahlstrom which is lashing round the Bastille.
And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant has
become an impromptu cannoneer. See Georget, of the Marine
Service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of Siam's cannon.
Singular (_if we were not used to the like_): Georget lay, last
night, taking his ease at his inn; the King of Siam's cannon also
lay, knowing nothing of him, for a hundred years. Yet now, at the
right instant, they have got together, and discourse eloquent
music. For, hearing what was toward, Georget sprang from the
Brest Diligence, and ran. Gardes Francaises also will be here,
with real artillery: were not the walls so thick!—Upwards from
the Esplanade, horizontally from all neighbouring roofs and
windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry,—without
effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their
ease from behind stone; hardly through portholes, shew the tip of
a nose. We fall, shot; and make no impression!
Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-rooms
are burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted 'Peruke-maker with
two fiery torches' is for burning 'the saltpetres of the
Arsenal;'—had not a woman run screaming; had not a Patriot, with
some tincture of Natural Philosophy, instantly struck the wind
out of him (_butt of musket on pit of stomach_), overturned
barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful
lady, seized escaping in these Outer Courts, and thought falsely
to be de Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in de Launay's sight;
she lies swooned on a paillasse: but again a Patriot, it is brave
Aubin Bonnemere the old soldier, dashes in, and rescues her.
Straw is burnt; three cartloads of it, hauled thither, go up in
white smoke: almost to the choking of Patriotism itself; so that
Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one cart; and Reole the
'gigantic haberdasher' another. Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as
of Babel; noise as of the Crack of Doom!
Blood flows, the aliment of new madness. The wounded are carried
into houses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their last
mandate not to yield till the accursed Stronghold fall. And yet,
alas, how fall? The walls are so thick! Deputations, three in
number, arrive from the Hotel-de-Ville; Abbe Fouchet (_who was of
one_) can say, with what almost superhuman courage of
benevolence. (_Fauchet's Narrative (_Deux Amis, i. 324._)._)
These wave their Town-flag in the arched Gateway; and stand,
rolling their drum; but to no purpose. In such Crack of Doom, de
Launay cannot hear them, dare not believe them: they return, with
justified rage, the whew of lead still singing in their ears.
What to do? The Firemen are here, squirting with their fire-pumps
on the Invalides' cannon, to wet the touchholes; they
unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce only clouds of
spray. Individuals of classical knowledge propose catapults.
Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine,
advises rather that the place be fired, by a 'mixture of
phosphorous and oil-of-turpentine spouted up through forcing
pumps:' O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready? Every
man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates not; even
women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (_with her
sweetheart_), and one Turk. (_Deux Amis (_i. 319_); Dusaulx,
&c._) Gardes Francaises have come: real cannon, real cannoneers.
Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie, half-pay Hulin rage in the
midst of thousands.
How the great Bastille Clock ticks (_inaudible_) in its Inner
Court there, at its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special,
for it or the world, were passing! It tolled One when the firing
began; and is now pointing towards Five, and still the firing
slakes not.—Far down, in their vaults, the seven Prisoners hear
muffled din as of earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely.
Wo to thee, de Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides! Broglie
is distant, and his ears heavy: Besenval hears, but can send no
help. One poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoitring,
cautiously along the Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf. "We are come
to join you," said the Captain; for the crowd seems shoreless. A
large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect,
shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense in
him; and croaks: "Alight then, and give up your arms!" the
Hussar-Captain is too happy to be escorted to the Barriers, and
dismissed on parole. Who the squat individual was? Men answer, it
is M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific Avis au Peuple!
Great truly, O thou remarkable Dogleech, is this thy day of
emergence and new birth: and yet this same day come four
years—!—But let the curtains of the future hang.
What shall de Launay do? One thing only de Launay could have
done: what he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the
first, with lighted taper, within arm's length of the
Powder-Magazine; motionless, like old Roman Senator, or bronze
Lamp-holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all men, by a slight
motion of his eye, what his resolution was:—Harmless he sat
there, while unharmed; but the King's Fortress, meanwhile, could,
might, would, or should, in nowise, be surrendered, save to the
King's Messenger: one old man's life worthless, so it be lost
with honour; but think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when
a whole Bastille springs skyward!—In such statuesque,
taper-holding attitude, one fancies de Launay might have left
Thuriot, the red Clerks of the Bazoche, Cure of Saint-Stephen and
all the tagrag-and-bobtail of the world, to work their will.
And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how
each man's heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of
all men; hast thou noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many
men? How their shriek of indignation palsies the strong soul;
their howl of contumely withers with unfelt pangs? The Ritter
Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the noblest passage, in
one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the Populace he had
heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser: Bread! Bread! Great is
the combined voice of men; the utterance of their instincts,
which are truer than their thoughts: it is the greatest a man
encounters, among the sounds and shadows, which make up this
World of Time. He who can resist that, has his footing some where
beyond Time. De Launay could not do it. Distracted, he hovers
between the two; hopes in the middle of despair; surrenders not
his Fortress; declares that he will blow it up, seizes torches to
blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old de Launay, it is
the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee! Jail, Jailoring and
Jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must finish.
For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared: call it the
World-Chimaera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under
their battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets: they have
made a white flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or seeming
to beat, for one can hear nothing. The very Swiss at the
Portcullis look weary of firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge:
a porthole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would
speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his plank,
swinging over the abyss of that stone-Ditch; plank resting on
parapet, balanced by weight of Patriots,—he hovers perilous: such
a Dove towards such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher: one man
already fell; and lies smashed, far down there, against the
masonry! Usher Maillard falls not: deftly, unerring he walks,
with outspread palm. The Swiss holds a paper through his
porthole; the shifty Usher snatches it, and returns. Terms of
surrender: Pardon, immunity to all! Are they accepted?—"Foi
d'officier, On the word of an officer," answers half-pay
Hulin,—or half-pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, "they are!"
Sinks the drawbridge,—Usher Maillard bolting it when down;
rushes-in the living deluge: the Bastille is fallen! Victoire! La
Bastille est prise! (_Histoire de la Revolution, par Deux Amis de
la Liberte, i. 267-306; Besenval, iii. 410-434; Dusaulx, Prise de
la Bastille, 291-301. Bailly, Memoires (_Collection de Berville
et Barriere_), i. 322 et seqq._)
Chapter 1.5.VII.
Not a Revolt.
Why dwell on what follows? Hulin's foi d'officer should have been
kept, but could not. The Swiss stand drawn up; disguised in white
canvas smocks; the Invalides without disguise; their arms all
piled against the wall. The first rush of victors, in ecstacy
that the death-peril is passed, 'leaps joyfully on their necks;'
but new victors rush, and ever new, also in ecstacy not wholly of
joy. As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging headlong; had
not the Gardes Francaises, in their cool military way, 'wheeled
round with arms levelled,' it would have plunged suicidally, by
the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.
And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing
uncontrollable, firing from windows—on itself: in hot frenzy of
triumph, of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor Invalides
will fare ill; one Swiss, running off in his white smock, is
driven back, with a death-thrust. Let all prisoners be marched to
the Townhall, to be judged!—Alas, already one poor Invalide has
his right hand slashed off him; his maimed body dragged to the
Place de Greve, and hanged there. This same right hand, it is
said, turned back de Launay from the Powder-Magazine, and saved
Paris.
De Launay, 'discovered in gray frock with poppy-coloured riband,'
is for killing himself with the sword of his cane. He shall to
the Hotel-de-Ville; Hulin Maillard and others escorting him; Elie
marching foremost 'with the capitulation-paper on his sword's
point.' Through roarings and cursings; through hustlings,
clutchings, and at last through strokes! Your escort is hustled
aside, felled down; Hulin sinks exhausted on a heap of stones.
Miserable de Launay! He shall never enter the Hotel de Ville:
only his 'bloody hair-queue, held up in a bloody hand;' that
shall enter, for a sign. The bleeding trunk lies on the steps
there; the head is off through the streets; ghastly, aloft on a
pike.
Rigorous de Launay has died; crying out, "O friends, kill me
fast!" Merciful de Losme must die; though Gratitude embraces him,
in this fearful hour, and will die for him; it avails not.
Brothers, your wrath is cruel! Your Place de Greve is become a
Throat of the Tiger; full of mere fierce bellowings, and thirst
of blood. One other officer is massacred; one other Invalide is
hanged on the Lamp-iron: with difficulty, with generous
perseverance, the Gardes Francaises will save the rest. Provost
Flesselles stricken long since with the paleness of death, must
descend from his seat, 'to be judged at the Palais Royal:'—alas,
to be shot dead, by an unknown hand, at the turning of the first
street!—
O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on
reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in
cottages; on ships far out in the silent main; on Balls at the
Orangerie of Versailles, where high-rouged Dames of the Palace
are even now dancing with double-jacketted Hussar-Officers;—and
also on this roaring Hell porch of a Hotel-de-Ville! Babel Tower,
with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the
conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of
distracted steel bristles, endless, in front of an Electoral
Committee; points itself, in horrid radii, against this and the
other accused breast. It was the Titans warring with Olympus; and
they scarcely crediting it, have conquered: prodigy of prodigies;
delirious,—as it could not but be. Denunciation, vengeance; blaze
of triumph on a dark ground of terror: all outward, all inward
things fallen into one general wreck of madness!
Electoral Committee? Had it a thousand throats of brass, it would
not suffice. Abbe Lefevre, in the Vaults down below, is black as
Vulcan, distributing that 'five thousand weight of Powder;' with
what perils, these eight-and-forty hours! Last night, a Patriot,
in liquor, insisted on sitting to smoke on the edge of one of the
Powder-barrels; there smoked he, independent of the world,—till
the Abbe 'purchased his pipe for three francs,' and pitched it
far.
Elie, in the grand Hall, Electoral Committee looking on, sits
'with drawn sword bent in three places;' with battered helm, for
he was of the Queen's Regiment, Cavalry; with torn regimentals,
face singed and soiled; comparable, some think, to 'an antique
warrior;'—judging the people; forming a list of Bastille Heroes.
O Friends, stain not with blood the greenest laurels ever gained
in this world: such is the burden of Elie's song; could it but be
listened to. Courage, Elie! Courage, ye Municipal Electors! A
declining sun; the need of victuals, and of telling news, will
bring assuagement, dispersion: all earthly things must end.
Along the streets of Paris circulate Seven Bastille Prisoners,
borne shoulder-high: seven Heads on pikes; the Keys of the
Bastille; and much else. See also the Garde Francaises, in their
steadfast military way, marching home to their barracks, with the
Invalides and Swiss kindly enclosed in hollow square. It is one
year and two months since these same men stood unparticipating,
with Brennus d'Agoust at the Palais de Justice, when Fate
overtook d'Espremenil; and now they have participated; and will
participate. Not Gardes Francaises henceforth, but Centre
Grenadiers of the National Guard: men of iron discipline and
humour,—not without a kind of thought in them!
Likewise ashlar stones of the Bastille continue thundering
through the dusk; its paper-archives shall fly white. Old secrets
come to view; and long-buried Despair finds voice. Read this
portion of an old Letter: (_Dated, a la Bastille, 7 Octobre,
1752; signed Queret-Demery. Bastille Devoilee, in Linguet,
Memoires sur la Bastille (_Paris, 1821_), p. 199._) 'If for my
consolation Monseigneur would grant me for the sake of God and
the Most Blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife;
were it only her name on card to shew that she is alive! It were
the greatest consolation I could receive; and I should for ever
bless the greatness of Monseigneur.' Poor Prisoner, who namest
thyself Queret Demery, and hast no other history,—she is dead,
that dear wife of thine, and thou art dead! 'Tis fifty years
since thy breaking heart put this question; to be heard now
first, and long heard, in the hearts of men.
But so does the July twilight thicken; so must Paris, as sick
children, and all distracted creatures do, brawl itself finally
into a kind of sleep. Municipal Electors, astonished to find
their heads still uppermost, are home: only Moreau de Saint-Mery
of tropical birth and heart, of coolest judgment; he, with two
others, shall sit permanent at the Townhall. Paris sleeps; gleams
upward the illuminated City: patrols go clashing, without common
watchword; there go rumours; alarms of war, to the extent of
'fifteen thousand men marching through the Suburb
Saint-Antoine,'—who never got it marched through. Of the day's
distraction judge by this of the night: Moreau de Saint-Mery,
'before rising from his seat, gave upwards of three thousand
orders.' (_Dusaulx._) What a head; comparable to Friar Bacon's
Brass Head! Within it lies all Paris. Prompt must the answer be,
right or wrong; in Paris is no other Authority extant. Seriously,
a most cool clear head;—for which also thou O brave Saint-Mery,
in many capacities, from august Senator to Merchant's-Clerk,
Book-dealer, Vice-King; in many places, from Virginia to
Sardinia, shalt, ever as a brave man, find employment.
(_Biographie Universelle, para Moreau Saint-Mery (_by
Fournier-Pescay_)._)
Besenval has decamped, under cloud of dusk, 'amid a great
affluence of people,' who did not harm him; he marches, with
faint-growing tread, down the left bank of the Seine, all
night,—towards infinite space. Resummoned shall Besenval himself
be; for trial, for difficult acquittal. His King's-troops, his
Royal Allemand, are gone hence for ever.
The Versailles Ball and lemonade is done; the Orangery is silent
except for nightbirds. Over in the Salle des Menus,
Vice-president Lafayette, with unsnuffed lights, 'with some
hundred of members, stretched on tables round him,' sits erect;
outwatching the Bear. This day, a second solemn Deputation went
to his Majesty; a second, and then a third: with no effect. What
will the end of these things be?
In the Court, all is mystery, not without whisperings of terror;
though ye dream of lemonade and epaulettes, ye foolish women! His
Majesty, kept in happy ignorance, perhaps dreams of
double-barrels and the Woods of Meudon. Late at night, the Duke
de Liancourt, having official right of entrance, gains access to
the Royal Apartments; unfolds, with earnest clearness, in his
constitutional way, the Job's-news. "Mais," said poor Louis,
"c'est une revolte, Why, that is a revolt!"—"Sire," answered
Liancourt, "It is not a revolt, it is a revolution."
Chapter 1.5.VIII.
Conquering your King.
On the morrow a fourth Deputation to the Chateau is on foot: of a
more solemn, not to say awful character, for, besides 'orgies in
the Orangery,' it seems, 'the grain convoys are all stopped;' nor
has Mirabeau's thunder been silent. Such Deputation is on the
point of setting out—when lo, his Majesty himself attended only
by his two Brothers, step in; quite in the paternal manner;
announces that the troops, and all causes of offence, are gone,
and henceforth there shall be nothing but trust, reconcilement,
good-will; whereof he 'permits and even requests,' a National
Assembly to assure Paris in his name! Acclamation, as of men
suddenly delivered from death, gives answer. The whole Assembly
spontaneously rises to escort his Majesty back; 'interlacing
their arms to keep off the excessive pressure from him;' for all
Versailles is crowding and shouting. The Chateau Musicians, with
a felicitous promptitude, strike up the Sein de sa Famille
(_Bosom of one's Family_): the Queen appears at the balcony with
her little boy and girl, 'kissing them several times;' infinite
Vivats spread far and wide;—and suddenly there has come, as it
were, a new Heaven-on-Earth.
Eighty-eight august Senators, Bailly, Lafayette, and our
repentant Archbishop among them, take coach for Paris, with the
great intelligence; benedictions without end on their heads. From
the Place Louis Quinze, where they alight, all the way to the
Hotel-de-Ville, it is one sea of Tricolor cockades, of clear
National muskets; one tempest of huzzaings, hand-clappings, aided
by 'occasional rollings' of drum-music. Harangues of due fervour
are delivered; especially by Lally Tollendal, pious son of the
ill-fated murdered Lally; on whose head, in consequence, a civic
crown (_of oak or parsley_) is forced,—which he forcibly
transfers to Bailly's.
But surely, for one thing, the National Guard must have a
General! Moreau de Saint-Mery, he of the 'three thousand orders,'
casts one of his significant glances on the Bust of Lafayette,
which has stood there ever since the American War of Liberty.
Whereupon, by acclamation, Lafayette is nominated. Again, in room
of the slain traitor or quasi-traitor Flesselles, President
Bailly shall be—Provost of the Merchants? No: Mayor of Paris! So
be it. Maire de Paris! Mayor Bailly, General Lafayette; vive
Bailly, vive Lafayette—the universal out-of-doors multitude rends
the welkin in confirmation.—And now, finally, let us to
Notre-Dame for a Te Deum.
Towards Notre-Dame Cathedral, in glad procession, these
Regenerators of the Country walk, through a jubilant people; in
fraternal manner; Abbe Lefevre, still black with his gunpowder
services, walking arm in arm with the white-stoled Archbishop.
Poor Bailly comes upon the Foundling Children, sent to kneel to
him; and 'weeps.' Te Deum, our Archbishop officiating, is not
only sung, but shot—with blank cartridges. Our joy is boundless
as our wo threatened to be. Paris, by her own pike and musket,
and the valour of her own heart, has conquered the very
wargods,—to the satisfaction now of Majesty itself. A courier is,
this night, getting under way for Necker: the People's Minister,
invited back by King, by National Assembly, and Nation, shall
traverse France amid shoutings, and the sound of trumpet and
timbrel.
Seeing which course of things, Messeigneurs of the Court
Triumvirate, Messieurs of the dead-born Broglie-Ministry, and
others such, consider that their part also is clear: to mount and
ride. Off, ye too-loyal Broglies, Polignacs, and Princes of the
Blood; off while it is yet time! Did not the Palais-Royal in its
late nocturnal 'violent motions,' set a specific price (_place of
payment not mentioned_) on each of your heads?—With precautions,
with the aid of pieces of cannon and regiments that can be
depended on, Messeigneurs, between the 16th night and the 17th
morning, get to their several roads. Not without risk! Prince
Conde has (_or seems to have_) 'men galloping at full speed;'
with a view, it is thought, to fling him into the river Oise, at
Pont-Sainte-Mayence. (_Weber, ii. 126._) The Polignacs travel
disguised; friends, not servants, on their coach-box. Broglie has
his own difficulties at Versailles, runs his own risks at Metz
and Verdun; does nevertheless get safe to Luxemburg, and there
rests.
This is what they call the First Emigration; determined on, as
appears, in full Court-conclave; his Majesty assisting; prompt
he, for his share of it, to follow any counsel whatsoever. 'Three
Sons of France, and four Princes of the blood of Saint Louis,'
says Weber, 'could not more effectually humble the Burghers of
Paris 'than by appearing to withdraw in fear of their life.'
Alas, the Burghers of Paris bear it with unexpected Stoicism! The
Man d'Artois indeed is gone; but has he carried, for example, the
Land D'Artois with him? Not even Bagatelle the Country-house
(_which shall be useful as a Tavern_); hardly the four-valet
Breeches, leaving the Breeches-maker!—As for old Foulon, one
learns that he is dead; at least a 'sumptuous funeral' is going
on; the undertakers honouring him, if no other will. Intendant
Berthier, his son-in-law, is still living; lurking: he joined
Besenval, on that Eumenides' Sunday; appearing to treat it with
levity; and is now fled no man knows whither.
The Emigration is not gone many miles, Prince Conde hardly across
the Oise, when his Majesty, according to arrangement, for the
Emigration also thought it might do good,—undertakes a rather
daring enterprise: that of visiting Paris in person. With a
Hundred Members of Assembly; with small or no military escort,
which indeed he dismissed at the Bridge of Sevres, poor Louis
sets out; leaving a desolate Palace; a Queen weeping, the
Present, the Past, and the Future all so unfriendly for her.
At the Barrier of Passy, Mayor Bailly, in grand gala, presents
him with the keys; harangues him, in Academic style; mentions
that it is a great day; that in Henri Quatre's case, the King had
to make conquest of his People, but in this happier case, the
People makes conquest of its King (_a conquis son Roi_). The
King, so happily conquered, drives forward, slowly, through a
steel people, all silent, or shouting only Vive la Nation; is
harangued at the Townhall, by Moreau of the three-thousand
orders, by King's Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, by Lally
Tollendal, and others; knows not what to think of it, or say of
it; learns that he is 'Restorer of French Liberty,'—as a Statue
of him, to be raised on the site of the Bastille, shall testify
to all men. Finally, he is shewn at the Balcony, with a Tricolor
cockade in his hat; is greeted now, with vehement acclamation,
from Square and Street, from all windows and roofs:—and so drives
home again amid glad mingled and, as it were, intermarried
shouts, of Vive le Roi and Vive la Nation; wearied but safe.
It was Sunday when the red-hot balls hung over us, in mid air: it
is now but Friday, and 'the Revolution is sanctioned.' An August
National Assembly shall make the Constitution; and neither
foreign Pandour, domestic Triumvirate, with levelled Cannon,
Guy-Faux powder-plots (_for that too was spoken of_); nor any
tyrannic Power on the Earth, or under the Earth, shall say to it,
What dost thou?—So jubilates the people; sure now of a
Constitution. Cracked Marquis Saint-Huruge is heard under the
windows of the Chateau; murmuring sheer speculative-treason.
(_Campan, ii. 46-64._)
Chapter 1.5.IX.
The Lanterne.
The Fall of the Bastille may be said to have shaken all France to
the deepest foundations of its existence. The rumour of these
wonders flies every where: with the natural speed of Rumour; with
an effect thought to be preternatural, produced by plots. Did
d'Orleans or Laclos, nay did Mirabeau (_not overburdened with
money at this time_) send riding Couriers out from Paris; to
gallop 'on all radii,' or highways, towards all points of France?
It is a miracle, which no penetrating man will call in question.
(_Toulongeon, (_i. 95_); Weber, &c. &c._)
Already in most Towns, Electoral Committees were met; to regret
Necker, in harangue and resolution. In many a Town, as Rennes,
Caen, Lyons, an ebullient people was already regretting him in
brickbats and musketry. But now, at every Town's-end in France,
there do arrive, in these days of terror,—'men,' as men will
arrive; nay, 'men on horseback,' since Rumour oftenest travels
riding. These men declare, with alarmed countenance, The BRIGANDS
to be coming, to be just at hand; and do then—ride on, about
their further business, be what it might! Whereupon the whole
population of such Town, defensively flies to arms. Petition is
soon thereafter forwarded to National Assembly; in such peril and
terror of peril, leave to organise yourself cannot be withheld:
the armed population becomes everywhere an enrolled National
Guard. Thus rides Rumour, careering along all radii, from Paris
outwards, to such purpose: in few days, some say in not many
hours, all France to the utmost borders bristles with bayonets.
Singular, but undeniable,—miraculous or not!—But thus may any
chemical liquid; though cooled to the freezing-point, or far
lower, still continue liquid; and then, on the slightest stroke
or shake, it at once rushes wholly into ice. Thus has France, for
long months and even years, been chemically dealt with; brought
below zero; and now, shaken by the Fall of a Bastille, it
instantaneously congeals: into one crystallised mass, of
sharp-cutting steel! Guai a chi la tocca; 'Ware who touches it!
In Paris, an Electoral Committee, with a new Mayor and General,
is urgent with belligerent workmen to resume their handicrafts.
Strong Dames of the Market (_Dames de la Halle_) deliver
congratulatory harangues; present 'bouquets to the Shrine of
Sainte Genevieve.' Unenrolled men deposit their arms,—not so
readily as could be wished; and receive 'nine francs.' With Te
Deums, Royal Visits, and sanctioned Revolution, there is halcyon
weather; weather even of preternatural brightness; the hurricane
being overblown.
Nevertheless, as is natural, the waves still run high, hollow
rocks retaining their murmur. We are but at the 22nd of the
month, hardly above a week since the Bastille fell, when it
suddenly appears that old Foulon is alive; nay, that he is here,
in early morning, in the streets of Paris; the extortioner, the
plotter, who would make the people eat grass, and was a liar from
the beginning!—It is even so. The deceptive 'sumptuous funeral'
(_of some domestic that died_); the hiding-place at Vitry towards
Fontainbleau, have not availed that wretched old man. Some living
domestic or dependant, for none loves Foulon, has betrayed him to
the Village. Merciless boors of Vitry unearth him; pounce on him,
like hell-hounds: Westward, old Infamy; to Paris, to be judged at
the Hotel-de-Ville! His old head, which seventy-four years have
bleached, is bare; they have tied an emblematic bundle of grass
on his back; a garland of nettles and thistles is round his neck:
in this manner; led with ropes; goaded on with curses and
menaces, must he, with his old limbs, sprawl forward; the
pitiablest, most unpitied of all old men.
Sooty Saint-Antoine, and every street, mustering its crowds as he
passes,—the Place de Greve, the Hall of the Hotel-de-Ville will
scarcely hold his escort and him. Foulon must not only be judged
righteously; but judged there where he stands, without any delay.
Appoint seven judges, ye Municipals, or seventy-and-seven; name
them yourselves, or we will name them: but judge him! (_Histoire
Parlementaire, ii. 146-9._) Electoral rhetoric, eloquence of
Mayor Bailly, is wasted explaining the beauty of the Law's delay.
Delay, and still delay! Behold, O Mayor of the People, the
morning has worn itself into noon; and he is still
unjudged!—Lafayette, pressingly sent for, arrives; gives voice:
This Foulon, a known man, is guilty almost beyond doubt; but may
he not have accomplices? Ought not the truth to be cunningly
pumped out of him,—in the Abbaye Prison? It is a new light!
Sansculottism claps hands;—at which hand-clapping, Foulon (_in
his fainness, as his Destiny would have it_) also claps. "See!
they understand one another!" cries dark Sansculottism, blazing
into fury of suspicion.—"Friends," said 'a person in good
clothes,' stepping forward, "what is the use of judging this man?
Has he not been judged these thirty years?" With wild yells,
Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands: he is whirled
across the Place de Greve, to the 'Lanterne,' Lamp-iron which
there is at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie; pleading
bitterly for life,—to the deaf winds. Only with the third rope
(_for two ropes broke, and the quavering voice still pleaded_),
can he be so much as got hanged! His Body is dragged through the
streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the mouth filled with
grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating people.
(_Deux Amis de la Liberte, ii. 60-6._)
Surely if Revenge is a 'kind of Justice,' it is a 'wild' kind! O
mad Sansculottism hast thou risen, in thy mad darkness, in thy
soot and rags; unexpectedly, like an Enceladus, living-buried,
from under his Trinacria? They that would make grass be eaten do
now eat grass, in this manner? After long dumb-groaning
generations, has the turn suddenly become thine?—To such abysmal
overturns, and frightful instantaneous inversions of the
centre-of-gravity, are human Solecisms all liable, if they but
knew it; the more liable, the falser (_and topheavier_) they
are!—
To add to the horror of Mayor Bailly and his Municipals, word
comes that Berthier has also been arrested; that he is on his way
hither from Compiegne. Berthier, Intendant (_say, Tax-levier_) of
Paris; sycophant and tyrant; forestaller of Corn; contriver of
Camps against the people;—accused of many things: is he not
Foulon's son-in-law; and, in that one point, guilty of all? In
these hours too, when Sansculottism has its blood up! The
shuddering Municipals send one of their number to escort him,
with mounted National Guards.
At the fall of day, the wretched Berthier, still wearing a face
of courage, arrives at the Barrier; in an open carriage; with the
Municipal beside him; five hundred horsemen with drawn sabres;
unarmed footmen enough, not without noise! Placards go brandished
round him; bearing legibly his indictment, as Sansculottism, with
unlegal brevity, 'in huge letters,' draws it up. (_'Il a vole le
Roi et la France (_He robbed the King and France_).' 'He devoured
the substance of the People.' 'He was the slave of the rich, and
the tyrant of the poor.' 'He drank the blood of the widow and
orphan.' 'He betrayed his country.' See Deux Amis, ii. 67-73._)
Paris is come forth to meet him: with hand-clappings, with
windows flung up; with dances, triumph-songs, as of the Furies!
Lastly the Head of Foulon: this also meets him on a pike. Well
might his 'look become glazed,' and sense fail him, at such
sight!—Nevertheless, be the man's conscience what it may, his
nerves are of iron. At the Hotel-de-Ville, he will answer
nothing. He says, he obeyed superior order; they have his papers;
they may judge and determine: as for himself, not having closed
an eye these two nights, he demands, before all things, to have
sleep. Leaden sleep, thou miserable Berthier! Guards rise with
him, in motion towards the Abbaye. At the very door of the
Hotel-de-Ville, they are clutched; flung asunder, as by a vortex
of mad arms; Berthier whirls towards the Lanterne. He snatches a
musket; fells and strikes, defending himself like a mad lion; is
borne down, trampled, hanged, mangled: his Head too, and even his
Heart, flies over the City on a pike.
Horrible, in Lands that had known equal justice! Not so unnatural
in Lands that had never known it. Le sang qui coule est-il donc
si pure? asks Barnave; intimating that the Gallows, though by
irregular methods, has its own.—Thou thyself, O Reader, when thou
turnest that corner of the Rue de la Vannerie, and discernest
still that same grim Bracket of old Iron, wilt not want for
reflections. 'Over a grocer's shop,' or otherwise; with 'a bust
of Louis XIV. in the niche under it,' or now no longer in the
niche,—it still sticks there: still holding out an ineffectual
light, of fish-oil; and has seen worlds wrecked, and says
nothing.
But to the eye of enlightened Patriotism, what a thunder-cloud
was this; suddenly shaping itself in the radiance of the halcyon
weather! Cloud of Erebus blackness: betokening latent electricity
without limit. Mayor Bailly, General Lafayette throw up their
commissions, in an indignant manner;—need to be flattered back
again. The cloud disappears, as thunder-clouds do. The halcyon
weather returns, though of a grayer complexion; of a character
more and more evidently not supernatural.
Thus, in any case, with what rubs soever, shall the Bastille be
abolished from our Earth; and with it, Feudalism, Despotism; and,
one hopes, Scoundrelism generally, and all hard usage of man by
his brother man. Alas, the Scoundrelism and hard usage are not so
easy of abolition! But as for the Bastille, it sinks day after
day, and month after month; its ashlars and boulders tumbling
down continually, by express order of our Municipals. Crowds of
the curious roam through its caverns; gaze on the skeletons found
walled up, on the oubliettes, iron cages, monstrous stone-blocks
with padlock chains. One day we discern Mirabeau there; along
with the Genevese Dumont. (_Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p.
305._) Workers and onlookers make reverent way for him; fling
verses, flowers on his path, Bastille-papers and curiosities into
his carriage, with vivats.
Able Editors compile Books from the Bastille Archives; from what
of them remain unburnt. The Key of that Robber-Den shall cross
the Atlantic; shall lie on Washington's hall-table. The great
Clock ticks now in a private patriotic Clockmaker's apartment; no
longer measuring hours of mere heaviness. Vanished is the
Bastille, what we call vanished: the body, or sandstones, of it
hanging, in benign metamorphosis, for centuries to come, over the
Seine waters, as Pont Louis Seize; (_Dulaure: Histoire de Paris,
viii. 434._) the soul of it living, perhaps still longer, in the
memories of men.
So far, ye august Senators, with your Tennis-Court Oaths, your
inertia and impetus, your sagacity and pertinacity, have ye
brought us. "And yet think, Messieurs," as the Petitioner justly
urged, "you who were our saviours, did yourselves need
saviours,"—the brave Bastillers, namely; workmen of Paris; many
of them in straightened pecuniary circumstances! (_Moniteur:
Seance du Samedi 18 Juillet 1789 in Histoire Parlementaire, ii.
137._) Subscriptions are opened; Lists are formed, more accurate
than Elie's; harangues are delivered. A Body of Bastille Heroes,
tolerably complete, did get together;—comparable to the
Argonauts; hoping to endure like them. But in little more than a
year, the whirlpool of things threw them asunder again, and they
sank. So many highest superlatives achieved by man are followed
by new higher; and dwindle into comparatives and positives! The
Siege of the Bastille, weighed with which, in the Historical
balance, most other sieges, including that of Troy Town, are
gossamer, cost, as we find, in killed and mortally wounded, on
the part of the Besiegers, some Eighty-three persons: on the part
of the Besieged, after all that straw-burning, fire-pumping, and
deluge of musketry, One poor solitary invalid, shot stone-dead
(_roide-mort_) on the battlements; (_Dusaulx: Prise de la
Bastille, p. 447, &c._) The Bastille Fortress, like the City of
Jericho, was overturned by miraculous sound.
BOOK VI.
CONSOLIDATION
Chapter 1.6.I.
Make the Constitution.
Here perhaps is the place to fix, a little more precisely, what
these two words, French Revolution, shall mean; for, strictly
considered, they may have as many meanings as there are speakers
of them. All things are in revolution; in change from moment to
moment, which becomes sensible from epoch to epoch: in this
Time-World of ours there is properly nothing else but revolution
and mutation, and even nothing else conceivable. Revolution, you
answer, means speedier change. Whereupon one has still to ask:
How speedy? At what degree of speed; in what particular points of
this variable course, which varies in velocity, but can never
stop till Time itself stops, does revolution begin and end; cease
to be ordinary mutation, and again become such? It is a thing
that will depend on definition more or less arbitrary.
For ourselves we answer that French Revolution means here the
open violent Rebellion, and Victory, of disimprisoned Anarchy
against corrupt worn-out Authority: how Anarchy breaks prison;
bursts up from the infinite Deep, and rages uncontrollable,
immeasurable, enveloping a world; in phasis after phasis of
fever-frenzy;—'till the frenzy burning itself out, and what
elements of new Order it held (_since all Force holds such_)
developing themselves, the Uncontrollable be got, if not
reimprisoned, yet harnessed, and its mad forces made to work
towards their object as sane regulated ones. For as Hierarchies
and Dynasties of all kinds, Theocracies, Aristocracies,
Autocracies, Strumpetocracies, have ruled over the world; so it
was appointed, in the decrees of Providence, that this same
Victorious Anarchy, Jacobinism, Sansculottism, French Revolution,
Horrors of French Revolution, or what else mortals name it,
should have its turn. The 'destructive wrath' of Sansculottism:
this is what we speak, having unhappily no voice for singing.
Surely a great Phenomenon: nay it is a transcendental one,
overstepping all rules and experience; the crowning Phenomenon of
our Modern Time. For here again, most unexpectedly, comes antique
Fanaticism in new and newest vesture; miraculous, as all
Fanaticism is. Call it the Fanaticism of 'making away with
formulas, de humer les formulas.' The world of formulas, the
formed regulated world, which all habitable world is,—must needs
hate such Fanaticism like death; and be at deadly variance with
it. The world of formulas must conquer it; or failing that, must
die execrating it, anathematising it;—can nevertheless in nowise
prevent its being and its having been. The Anathemas are there,
and the miraculous Thing is there.
Whence it cometh? Whither it goeth? These are questions! When the
age of Miracles lay faded into the distance as an incredible
tradition, and even the age of Conventionalities was now old; and
Man's Existence had for long generations rested on mere formulas
which were grown hollow by course of time; and it seemed as if no
Reality any longer existed but only Phantasms of realities, and
God's Universe were the work of the Tailor and Upholsterer
mainly, and men were buckram masks that went about becking and
grimacing there,—on a sudden, the Earth yawns asunder, and amid
Tartarean smoke, and glare of fierce brightness, rises
SANSCULOTTISM, many-headed, fire-breathing, and asks: What think
ye of me? Well may the buckram masks start together,
terror-struck; 'into expressive well-concerted groups!' It is
indeed, Friends, a most singular, most fatal thing. Let whosoever
is but buckram and a phantasm look to it: ill verily may it fare
with him; here methinks he cannot much longer be. Wo also to many
a one who is not wholly buckram, but partially real and human!
The age of Miracles has come back! 'Behold the World-Phoenix, in
fire-consummation and fire-creation; wide are her fanning wings;
loud is her death-melody, of battle-thunders and falling towns;
skyward lashes the funeral flame, enveloping all things: it is
the Death-Birth of a World!'
Whereby, however, as we often say, shall one unspeakable blessing
seem attainable. This, namely: that Man and his Life rest no more
on hollowness and a Lie, but on solidity and some kind of Truth.
Welcome, the beggarliest truth, so it be one, in exchange for the
royallest sham! Truth of any kind breeds ever new and better
truth; thus hard granite rock will crumble down into soil, under
the blessed skyey influences; and cover itself with verdure, with
fruitage and umbrage. But as for Falsehood, which in like
contrary manner, grows ever falser,—what can it, or what should
it do but decease, being ripe; decompose itself, gently or even
violently, and return to the Father of it,—too probably in flames
of fire?
Sansculottism will burn much; but what is incombustible it will
not burn. Fear not Sansculottism; recognise it for what it is,
the portentous, inevitable end of much, the miraculous beginning
of much. One other thing thou mayest understand of it: that it
too came from God; for has it not been? From of old, as it is
written, are His goings forth; in the great Deep of things;
fearful and wonderful now as in the beginning: in the whirlwind
also He speaks! and the wrath of men is made to praise Him.—But
to gauge and measure this immeasurable Thing, and what is called
account for it, and reduce it to a dead logic-formula, attempt
not! Much less shalt thou shriek thyself hoarse, cursing it; for
that, to all needful lengths, has been already done. As an
actually existing Son of Time, look, with unspeakable manifold
interest, oftenest in silence, at what the Time did bring:
therewith edify, instruct, nourish thyself, or were it but to
amuse and gratify thyself, as it is given thee.
Another question which at every new turn will rise on us,
requiring ever new reply is this: Where the French Revolution
specially is? In the King's Palace, in his Majesty's or her
Majesty's managements, and maltreatments, cabals, imbecilities
and woes, answer some few:—whom we do not answer. In the National
Assembly, answer a large mixed multitude: who accordingly seat
themselves in the Reporter's Chair; and therefrom noting what
Proclamations, Acts, Reports, passages of logic-fence, bursts of
parliamentary eloquence seem notable within doors, and what
tumults and rumours of tumult become audible from
without,—produce volume on volume; and, naming it History of the
French Revolution, contentedly publish the same. To do the like,
to almost any extent, with so many Filed Newspapers, Choix des
Rapports, Histoires Parlementaires as there are, amounting to
many horseloads, were easy for us. Easy but unprofitable. The
National Assembly, named now Constituent Assembly, goes its
course; making the Constitution; but the French Revolution also
goes its course.
In general, may we not say that the French Revolution lies in the
heart and head of every violent-speaking, of every
violent-thinking French Man? How the Twenty-five Millions of
such, in their perplexed combination, acting and counter-acting
may give birth to events; which event successively is the
cardinal one; and from what point of vision it may best be
surveyed: this is a problem. Which problem the best insight,
seeking light from all possible sources, shifting its point of
vision whithersoever vision or glimpse of vision can be had, may
employ itself in solving; and be well content to solve in some
tolerably approximate way.
As to the National Assembly, in so far as it still towers eminent
over France, after the manner of a car-borne Carroccio, though
now no longer in the van; and rings signals for retreat or for
advance,—it is and continues a reality among other realities. But
in so far as it sits making the Constitution, on the other hand,
it is a fatuity and chimera mainly. Alas, in the never so heroic
building of Montesquieu-Mably card-castles, though shouted over
by the world, what interest is there? Occupied in that way, an
august National Assembly becomes for us little other than a
Sanhedrim of pedants, not of the gerund-grinding, yet of no
fruitfuller sort; and its loud debatings and recriminations about
Rights of Man, Right of Peace and War, Veto suspensif, Veto
absolu, what are they but so many Pedant's-curses, 'May God
confound you for your Theory of Irregular Verbs!'
A Constitution can be built, Constitutions enough a la Sieyes:
but the frightful difficulty is that of getting men to come and
live in them! Could Sieyes have drawn thunder and lightning out
of Heaven to sanction his Constitution, it had been well: but
without any thunder? Nay, strictly considered, is it not still
true that without some such celestial sanction, given visibly in
thunder or invisibly otherwise, no Constitution can in the long
run be worth much more than the waste-paper it is written on? The
Constitution, the set of Laws, or prescribed Habits of Acting,
that men will live under, is the one which images their
Convictions,—their Faith as to this wondrous Universe, and what
rights, duties, capabilities they have there; which stands
sanctioned therefore, by Necessity itself, if not by a seen
Deity, then by an unseen one. Other laws, whereof there are
always enough ready-made, are usurpations; which men do not obey,
but rebel against, and abolish, by their earliest convenience.
The question of questions accordingly were, Who is it that
especially for rebellers and abolishers, can make a Constitution?
He that can image forth the general Belief when there is one;
that can impart one when, as here, there is none. A most rare
man; ever as of old a god-missioned man! Here, however, in defect
of such transcendent supreme man, Time with its infinite
succession of merely superior men, each yielding his little
contribution, does much. Force likewise (_for, as Antiquarian
Philosophers teach, the royal Sceptre was from the first
something of a Hammer, to crack such heads as could not be
convinced_) will all along find somewhat to do. And thus in
perpetual abolition and reparation, rending and mending, with
struggle and strife, with present evil and the hope and effort
towards future good, must the Constitution, as all human things
do, build itself forward; or unbuild itself, and sink, as it can
and may. O Sieyes, and ye other Committeemen, and Twelve Hundred
miscellaneous individuals from all parts of France! What is the
Belief of France, and yours, if ye knew it? Properly that there
shall be no Belief; that all formulas be swallowed. The
Constitution which will suit that? Alas, too clearly, a
No-Constitution, an Anarchy;—which also, in due season, shall be
vouchsafed you.
But, after all, what can an unfortunate National Assembly do?
Consider only this, that there are Twelve Hundred miscellaneous
individuals; not a unit of whom but has his own
thinking-apparatus, his own speaking-apparatus! In every unit of
them is some belief and wish, different for each, both that
France should be regenerated, and also that he individually
should do it. Twelve Hundred separate Forces, yoked
miscellaneously to any object, miscellaneously to all sides of
it; and bid pull for life!
Or is it the nature of National Assemblies generally to do, with
endless labour and clangour, Nothing? Are Representative
Governments mostly at bottom Tyrannies too! Shall we say, the
Tyrants, the ambitious contentious Persons, from all corners of
the country do, in this manner, get gathered into one place; and
there, with motion and counter-motion, with jargon and hubbub,
cancel one another, like the fabulous Kilkenny Cats; and produce,
for net-result, zero;—the country meanwhile governing or guiding
itself, by such wisdom, recognised or for most part unrecognised,
as may exist in individual heads here and there?—Nay, even that
were a great improvement: for, of old, with their Guelf Factions
and Ghibelline Factions, with their Red Roses and White Roses,
they were wont to cancel the whole country as well. Besides they
do it now in a much narrower cockpit; within the four walls of
their Assembly House, and here and there an outpost of Hustings
and Barrel-heads; do it with tongues too, not with swords:—all
which improvements, in the art of producing zero, are they not
great? Nay, best of all, some happy Continents (_as the Western
one, with its Savannahs, where whosoever has four willing limbs
finds food under his feet, and an infinite sky over his head_)
can do without governing.—What Sphinx-questions; which the
distracted world, in these very generations, must answer or die!
Chapter 1.6.II.
The Constituent Assembly.
One thing an elected Assembly of Twelve Hundred is fit for:
Destroying. Which indeed is but a more decided exercise of its
natural talent for Doing Nothing. Do nothing, only keep
agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves.
So and not otherwise proved it with an august National Assembly.
It took the name, Constituent, as if its mission and function had
been to construct or build; which also, with its whole soul, it
endeavoured to do: yet, in the fates, in the nature of things,
there lay for it precisely of all functions the most opposite to
that. Singular, what Gospels men will believe; even Gospels
according to Jean Jacques! It was the fixed Faith of these
National Deputies, as of all thinking Frenchmen, that the
Constitution could be made; that they, there and then, were
called to make it. How, with the toughness of Old Hebrews or
Ishmaelite Moslem, did the otherwise light unbelieving People
persist in this their Credo quia impossibile; and front the armed
world with it; and grow fanatic, and even heroic, and do exploits
by it! The Constituent Assembly's Constitution, and several
others, will, being printed and not manuscript, survive to future
generations, as an instructive well-nigh incredible document of
the Time: the most significant Picture of the then existing
France; or at lowest, Picture of these men's Picture of it.
But in truth and seriousness, what could the National Assembly
have done? The thing to be done was, actually as they said, to
regenerate France; to abolish the old France, and make a new one;
quietly or forcibly, by concession or by violence, this, by the
Law of Nature, has become inevitable. With what degree of
violence, depends on the wisdom of those that preside over it.
With perfect wisdom on the part of the National Assembly, it had
all been otherwise; but whether, in any wise, it could have been
pacific, nay other than bloody and convulsive, may still be a
question.
Grant, meanwhile, that this Constituent Assembly does to the last
continue to be something. With a sigh, it sees itself incessantly
forced away from its infinite divine task, of perfecting 'the
Theory of Irregular Verbs,'—to finite terrestrial tasks, which
latter have still a significance for us. It is the cynosure of
revolutionary France, this National Assembly. All work of
Government has fallen into its hands, or under its control; all
men look to it for guidance. In the middle of that huge Revolt of
Twenty-five millions, it hovers always aloft as Carroccio or
Battle-Standard, impelling and impelled, in the most confused
way; if it cannot give much guidance, it will still seem to give
some. It emits pacificatory Proclamations, not a few; with more
or with less result. It authorises the enrolment of National
Guards,—lest Brigands come to devour us, and reap the unripe
crops. It sends missions to quell 'effervescences;' to deliver
men from the Lanterne. It can listen to congratulatory Addresses,
which arrive daily by the sackful; mostly in King Cambyses' vein:
also to Petitions and complaints from all mortals; so that every
mortal's complaint, if it cannot get redressed, may at least hear
itself complain. For the rest, an august National Assembly can
produce Parliamentary Eloquence; and appoint Committees.
Committees of the Constitution, of Reports, of Researches; and of
much else: which again yield mountains of Printed Paper; the
theme of new Parliamentary Eloquence, in bursts, or in plenteous
smooth-flowing floods. And so, from the waste vortex whereon all
things go whirling and grinding, Organic Laws, or the similitude
of such, slowly emerge.
With endless debating, we get the Rights of Man written down and
promulgated: true paper basis of all paper Constitutions.
Neglecting, cry the opponents, to declare the Duties of Man!
Forgetting, answer we, to ascertain the Mights of Man;—one of the
fatalest omissions!—Nay, sometimes, as on the Fourth of August,
our National Assembly, fired suddenly by an almost preternatural
enthusiasm, will get through whole masses of work in one night. A
memorable night, this Fourth of August: Dignitaries temporal and
spiritual; Peers, Archbishops, Parlement-Presidents, each
outdoing the other in patriotic devotedness, come successively to
throw their (_untenable_) possessions on the 'altar of the
fatherland.' With louder and louder vivats, for indeed it is
'after dinner' too,—they abolish Tithes, Seignorial Dues,
Gabelle, excessive Preservation of Game; nay Privilege, Immunity,
Feudalism root and branch; then appoint a Te Deum for it; and so,
finally, disperse about three in the morning, striking the stars
with their sublime heads. Such night, unforeseen but for ever
memorable, was this of the Fourth of August 1789. Miraculous, or
semi-miraculous, some seem to think it. A new Night of Pentecost,
shall we say, shaped according to the new Time, and new Church of
Jean Jacques Rousseau? It had its causes; also its effects.
In such manner labour the National Deputies; perfecting their
Theory of Irregular Verbs; governing France, and being governed
by it; with toil and noise;—cutting asunder ancient intolerable
bonds; and, for new ones, assiduously spinning ropes of sand.
Were their labours a nothing or a something, yet the eyes of all
France being reverently fixed on them, History can never very
long leave them altogether out of sight.
For the present, if we glance into that Assembly Hall of theirs,
it will be found, as is natural, 'most irregular.' As many as 'a
hundred members are on their feet at once;' no rule in making
motions, or only commencements of a rule; Spectators' Gallery
allowed to applaud, and even to hiss; (_Arthur Young, i. 111._)
President, appointed once a fortnight, raising many times no
serene head above the waves. Nevertheless, as in all human
Assemblages, like does begin arranging itself to like; the
perennial rule, Ubi homines sunt modi sunt, proves valid.
Rudiments of Methods disclose themselves; rudiments of Parties.
There is a Right Side (_Cote Droit_), a Left Side (_Cote
Gauche_); sitting on M. le President's right hand, or on his
left: the Cote Droit conservative; the Cote Gauche destructive.
Intermediate is Anglomaniac Constitutionalism, or Two-Chamber
Royalism; with its Mouniers, its Lallys,—fast verging towards
nonentity. Preeminent, on the Right Side, pleads and perorates
Cazales, the Dragoon-captain, eloquent, mildly fervent; earning
for himself the shadow of a name. There also blusters
Barrel-Mirabeau, the Younger Mirabeau, not without wit: dusky
d'Espremenil does nothing but sniff and ejaculate; might, it is
fondly thought, lay prostrate the Elder Mirabeau himself, would
he but try, (_Biographie Universelle, para D'Espremenil (_by
Beaulieu_)._)—which he does not. Last and greatest, see, for one
moment, the Abbe Maury; with his jesuitic eyes, his impassive
brass face, 'image of all the cardinal sins.' Indomitable,
unquenchable, he fights jesuitico-rhetorically; with toughest
lungs and heart; for Throne, especially for Altar and Tithes. So
that a shrill voice exclaims once, from the Gallery: "Messieurs
of the Clergy, you have to be shaved; if you wriggle too much,
you will get cut." (_Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans, ii. 519._)
The Left side is also called the d'Orleans side; and sometimes
derisively, the Palais Royal. And yet, so confused,
real-imaginary seems everything, 'it is doubtful,' as Mirabeau
said, 'whether d'Orleans himself belong to that same d'Orleans
Party.' What can be known and seen is, that his moon-visage does
beam forth from that point of space. There likewise sits seagreen
Robespierre; throwing in his light weight, with decision, not yet
with effect. A thin lean Puritan and Precisian; he would make
away with formulas; yet lives, moves, and has his being, wholly
in formulas, of another sort. 'Peuple,' such according to
Robespierre ought to be the Royal method of promulgating laws,
'Peuple, this is the Law I have framed for thee; dost thou accept
it?'—answered from Right Side, from Centre and Left, by
inextinguishable laughter. (_Moniteur, No. 67 (_in
Hist.Parl._)._) Yet men of insight discern that the Seagreen may
by chance go far: "this man," observes Mirabeau, "will do
somewhat; he believes every word he says."
Abbe Sieyes is busy with mere Constitutional work: wherein,
unluckily, fellow-workmen are less pliable than, with one who has
completed the Science of Polity, they ought to be. Courage,
Sieyes nevertheless! Some twenty months of heroic travail, of
contradiction from the stupid, and the Constitution shall be
built; the top-stone of it brought out with shouting,—say rather,
the top-paper, for it is all Paper; and thou hast done in it what
the Earth or the Heaven could require, thy utmost. Note likewise
this Trio; memorable for several things; memorable were it only
that their history is written in an epigram: 'whatsoever these
Three have in hand,' it is said, 'Duport thinks it, Barnave
speaks it, Lameth does it.' (_See Toulongeon, i. c. 3._)
But royal Mirabeau? Conspicuous among all parties, raised above
and beyond them all, this man rises more and more. As we often
say, he has an eye, he is a reality; while others are formulas
and eye-glasses. In the Transient he will detect the Perennial,
find some firm footing even among Paper-vortexes. His fame is
gone forth to all lands; it gladdened the heart of the crabbed
old Friend of Men himself before he died. The very Postilions of
inns have heard of Mirabeau: when an impatient Traveller
complains that the team is insufficient, his Postilion answers,
"Yes, Monsieur, the wheelers are weak; but my mirabeau (_main
horse_), you see, is a right one, mais mon mirabeau est
excellent." (_Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 255._)
And now, Reader, thou shalt quit this noisy Discrepancy of a
National Assembly; not (_if thou be of humane mind_) without
pity. Twelve Hundred brother men are there, in the centre of
Twenty-five Millions; fighting so fiercely with Fate and with one
another; struggling their lives out, as most sons of Adam do, for
that which profiteth not. Nay, on the whole, it is admitted
further to be very dull. "Dull as this day's Assembly," said some
one. "Why date, Pourquoi dater?" answered Mirabeau.
Consider that they are Twelve Hundred; that they not only speak,
but read their speeches; and even borrow and steal speeches to
read! With Twelve Hundred fluent speakers, and their Noah's
Deluge of vociferous commonplace, unattainable silence may well
seem the one blessing of Life. But figure Twelve Hundred
pamphleteers; droning forth perpetual pamphlets: and no man to
gag them! Neither, as in the American Congress, do the
arrangements seem perfect. A Senator has not his own Desk and
Newspaper here; of Tobacco (_much less of Pipes_) there is not
the slightest provision. Conversation itself must be transacted
in a low tone, with continual interruption: only 'pencil Notes'
circulate freely; 'in incredible numbers to the foot of the very
tribune.' (_See Dumont (_pp. 159-67_); Arthur Young, &c._)—Such
work is it, regenerating a Nation; perfecting one's Theory of
Irregular Verbs!
Chapter 1.6.III.
The General Overturn.
Of the King's Court, for the present, there is almost nothing
whatever to be said. Silent, deserted are these halls; Royalty
languishes forsaken of its war-god and all its hopes, till once
the Oeil-de-Boeuf rally again. The sceptre is departed from King
Louis; is gone over to the Salles des Menus, to the Paris
Townhall, or one knows not whither. In the July days, while all
ears were yet deafened by the crash of the Bastille, and
Ministers and Princes were scattered to the four winds, it seemed
as if the very Valets had grown heavy of hearing. Besenval, also
in flight towards Infinite Space, but hovering a little at
Versailles, was addressing his Majesty personally for an Order
about post-horses; when, lo, 'the Valet in waiting places himself
familiarly between his Majesty and me,' stretching out his rascal
neck to learn what it was! His Majesty, in sudden choler, whirled
round; made a clutch at the tongs: 'I gently prevented him; he
grasped my hand in thankfulness; and I noticed tears in his
eyes.' (_Besenval, iii. 419._)
Poor King; for French Kings also are men! Louis Fourteenth
himself once clutched the tongs, and even smote with them; but
then it was at Louvois, and Dame Maintenon ran up.—The Queen sits
weeping in her inner apartments, surrounded by weak women: she is
'at the height of unpopularity;' universally regarded as the evil
genius of France. Her friends and familiar counsellors have all
fled; and fled, surely, on the foolishest errand. The Chateau
Polignac still frowns aloft, on its 'bold and enormous' cubical
rock, amid the blooming champaigns, amid the blue girdling
mountains of Auvergne: (_Arthur Young, i. 165._) but no Duke and
Duchess Polignac look forth from it; they have fled, they have
'met Necker at Bale;' they shall not return. That France should
see her Nobles resist the Irresistible, Inevitable, with the face
of angry men, was unhappy, not unexpected: but with the face and
sense of pettish children? This was her peculiarity. They
understood nothing; would understand nothing. Does not, at this
hour, a new Polignac, first-born of these Two, sit reflective in
the Castle of Ham; (_A.D. 1835._) in an astonishment he will
never recover from; the most confused of existing mortals?
King Louis has his new Ministry: mere Popularities; Old-President
Pompignan; Necker, coming back in triumph; and other such.
(_Montgaillard, ii. 108._) But what will it avail him? As was
said, the sceptre, all but the wooden gilt sceptre, has departed
elsewhither. Volition, determination is not in this man: only
innocence, indolence; dependence on all persons but himself, on
all circumstances but the circumstances he were lord of. So
troublous internally is our Versailles and its work. Beautiful,
if seen from afar, resplendent like a Sun; seen near at hand, a
mere Sun's-Atmosphere, hiding darkness, confused ferment of ruin!
But over France, there goes on the indisputablest 'destruction of
formulas;' transaction of realities that follow therefrom. So
many millions of persons, all gyved, and nigh strangled, with
formulas; whose Life nevertheless, at least the digestion and
hunger of it, was real enough! Heaven has at length sent an
abundant harvest; but what profits it the poor man, when Earth
with her formulas interposes? Industry, in these times of
Insurrection, must needs lie dormant; capital, as usual, not
circulating, but stagnating timorously in nooks. The poor man is
short of work, is therefore short of money; nay even had he
money, bread is not to be bought for it. Were it plotting of
Aristocrats, plotting of d'Orleans; were it Brigands,
preternatural terror, and the clang of Phoebus Apollo's silver
bow,—enough, the markets are scarce of grain, plentiful only in
tumult. Farmers seem lazy to thresh;—being either 'bribed;' or
needing no bribe, with prices ever rising, with perhaps rent
itself no longer so pressing. Neither, what is singular, do
municipal enactments, 'That along with so many measures of wheat
you shall sell so many of rye,' and other the like, much mend the
matter. Dragoons with drawn swords stand ranked among the
corn-sacks, often more dragoons than sacks. (_Arthur Young, i.
129, &c._) Meal-mobs abound; growing into mobs of a still darker
quality.
Starvation has been known among the French Commonalty before
this; known and familiar. Did we not see them, in the year 1775,
presenting, in sallow faces, in wretchedness and raggedness,
their Petition of Grievances; and, for answer, getting a
brand-new Gallows forty feet high? Hunger and Darkness, through
long years! For look back on that earlier Paris Riot, when a
Great Personage, worn out by debauchery, was believed to be in
want of Blood-baths; and Mothers, in worn raiment, yet with
living hearts under it, 'filled the public places' with their
wild Rachel-cries,—stilled also by the Gallows. Twenty years ago,
the Friend of Men (_preaching to the deaf_) described the
Limousin Peasants as wearing a pain-stricken (_souffre-douleur_)
look, a look past complaint, 'as if the oppression of the great
were like the hail and the thunder, a thing irremediable, the
ordinance of Nature.' (_Fils Adoptif: Memoires de Mirabeau, i.
364-394._) And now, if in some great hour, the shock of a falling
Bastille should awaken you; and it were found to be the ordinance
of Art merely; and remediable, reversible!
Or has the Reader forgotten that 'flood of savages,' which, in
sight of the same Friend of Men, descended from the mountains at
Mont d'Or? Lank-haired haggard faces; shapes rawboned, in high
sabots; in woollen jupes, with leather girdles studded with
copper-nails! They rocked from foot to foot, and beat time with
their elbows too, as the quarrel and battle which was not long in
beginning went on; shouting fiercely; the lank faces distorted
into the similitude of a cruel laugh. For they were darkened and
hardened: long had they been the prey of excise-men and tax-men;
of 'clerks with the cold spurt of their pen.' It was the fixed
prophecy of our old Marquis, which no man would listen to, that
'such Government by Blind-man's-buff, stumbling along too far,
would end by the General Overturn, the Culbute Generale!'
No man would listen, each went his thoughtless way;—and Time and
Destiny also travelled on. The Government by Blind-man's-buff,
stumbling along, has reached the precipice inevitable for it.
Dull Drudgery, driven on, by clerks with the cold dastard spurt
of their pen, has been driven—into a Communion of Drudges! For
now, moreover, there have come the strangest confused tidings; by
Paris Journals with their paper wings; or still more portentous,
where no Journals are, (_See Arthur Young, i. 137, 150, &c._) by
rumour and conjecture: Oppression not inevitable; a Bastille
prostrate, and the Constitution fast getting ready! Which
Constitution, if it be something and not nothing, what can it be
but bread to eat?
The Traveller, 'walking up hill bridle in hand,' overtakes 'a
poor woman;' the image, as such commonly are, of drudgery and
scarcity; 'looking sixty years of age, though she is not yet
twenty-eight.' They have seven children, her poor drudge and she:
a farm, with one cow, which helps to make the children soup; also
one little horse, or garron. They have rents and quit-rents, Hens
to pay to this Seigneur, Oat-sacks to that; King's taxes,
Statute-labour, Church-taxes, taxes enough;—and think the times
inexpressible. She has heard that somewhere, in some manner,
something is to be done for the poor: "God send it soon; for the
dues and taxes crush us down (_nous ecrasent_)!" (_Ibid. i.
134._)
Fair prophecies are spoken, but they are not fulfilled. There
have been Notables, Assemblages, turnings out and comings in.
Intriguing and manoeuvring; Parliamentary eloquence and arguing,
Greek meeting Greek in high places, has long gone on; yet still
bread comes not. The harvest is reaped and garnered; yet still we
have no bread. Urged by despair and by hope, what can Drudgery
do, but rise, as predicted, and produce the General Overturn?
Fancy, then, some Five full-grown Millions of such gaunt figures,
with their haggard faces (_figures haves_); in woollen jupes,
with copper-studded leather girths, and high sabots,—starting up
to ask, as in forest-roarings, their washed Upper-Classes, after
long unreviewed centuries, virtually this question: How have ye
treated us; how have ye taught us, fed us, and led us, while we
toiled for you? The answer can be read in flames, over the
nightly summer sky. This is the feeding and leading we have had
of you: EMPTINESS,—of pocket, of stomach, of head, and of heart.
Behold there is nothing in us; nothing but what Nature gives her
wild children of the desert: Ferocity and Appetite; Strength
grounded on Hunger. Did ye mark among your Rights of Man, that
man was not to die of starvation, while there was bread reaped by
him? It is among the Mights of Man.
Seventy-two Chateaus have flamed aloft in the Maconnais and
Beaujolais alone: this seems the centre of the conflagration; but
it has spread over Dauphine, Alsace, the Lyonnais; the whole
South-East is in a blaze. All over the North, from Rouen to Metz,
disorder is abroad: smugglers of salt go openly in armed bands:
the barriers of towns are burnt; toll-gatherers, tax-gatherers,
official persons put to flight. 'It was thought,' says Young,
'the people, from hunger, would revolt;' and we see they have
done it. Desperate Lackalls, long prowling aimless, now finding
hope in desperation itself, everywhere form a nucleus. They ring
the Church bell by way of tocsin: and the Parish turns out to the
work. (_See Hist. Parl. ii. 243-6._) Ferocity, atrocity; hunger
and revenge: such work as we can imagine!
Ill stands it now with the Seigneur, who, for example, 'has
walled up the only Fountain of the Township;' who has ridden high
on his chartier and parchments; who has preserved Game not wisely
but too well. Churches also, and Canonries, are sacked, without
mercy; which have shorn the flock too close, forgetting to feed
it. Wo to the land over which Sansculottism, in its day of
vengeance, tramps roughshod,—shod in sabots! Highbred Seigneurs,
with their delicate women and little ones, had to 'fly
half-naked,' under cloud of night; glad to escape the flames, and
even worse. You meet them at the tables-d'hote of inns; making
wise reflections or foolish that 'rank is destroyed;' uncertain
whither they shall now wend. (_See Young, i. 149, &c._) The
metayer will find it convenient to be slack in paying rent. As
for the Tax-gatherer, he, long hunting as a biped of prey, may
now get hunted as one; his Majesty's Exchequer will not 'fill up
the Deficit,' this season: it is the notion of many that a
Patriot Majesty, being the Restorer of French Liberty, has
abolished most taxes, though, for their private ends, some men
make a secret of it.
Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophecy; whither all
Delusions are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion
has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is
this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very
Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born
again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against
them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance
incessantly towards their hour. 'The sign of a Grand Seigneur
being landlord,' says the vehement plain-spoken Arthur Young,
'are wastes, landes, deserts, ling: go to his residence, you will
find it in the middle of a forest, peopled with deer, wild boars
and wolves. The fields are scenes of pitiable management, as the
houses are of misery. To see so many millions of hands, that
would be industrious, all idle and starving: Oh, if I were
legislator of France, for one day, I would make these great lords
skip again!' (_Arthur Young, i. 12, 48, 84, &c._) O Arthur, thou
now actually beholdest them skip:—wilt thou grow to grumble at
that too?
For long years and generations it lasted, but the time came.
Featherbrain, whom no reasoning and no pleading could touch, the
glare of the firebrand had to illuminate: there remained but that
method. Consider it, look at it! The widow is gathering nettles
for her children's dinner; a perfumed Seigneur, delicately
lounging in the Oeil-de-Boeuf, has an alchemy whereby he will
extract from her the third nettle, and name it Rent and Law: such
an arrangement must end. Ought it? But, O most fearful is such an
ending! Let those, to whom God, in His great mercy, has granted
time and space, prepare another and milder one.
To women it is a matter of wonder that the Seigneurs did not do
something to help themselves; say, combine, and arm: for there
were a 'hundred and fifty thousand of them,' all violent enough.
Unhappily, a hundred and fifty thousand, scattered over wide
Provinces, divided by mutual ill-will, cannot combine. The
highest Seigneurs, as we have seen, had already emigrated,—with a
view of putting France to the blush. Neither are arms now the
peculiar property of Seigneurs; but of every mortal who has ten
shillings, wherewith to buy a secondhand firelock.
Besides, those starving Peasants, after all, have not four feet
and claws, that you could keep them down permanently in that
manner. They are not even of black colour; they are mere Unwashed
Seigneurs; and a Seigneur too has human bowels!—The Seigneurs did
what they could; enrolled in National Guards; fled, with shrieks,
complaining to Heaven and Earth. One Seigneur, famed Memmay of
Quincey, near Vesoul, invited all the rustics of his
neighbourhood to a banquet; blew up his Chateau and them with
gunpowder; and instantaneously vanished, no man yet knows
whither. (_Hist. Parl. ii. 161._) Some half dozen years after, he
came back; and demonstrated that it was by accident.
Nor are the authorities idle: though unluckily, all Authorities,
Municipalities and such like, are in the uncertain transitionary
state; getting regenerated from old Monarchic to new Democratic;
no Official yet knows clearly what he is. Nevertheless, Mayors
old or new do gather Marechaussees, National Guards, Troops of
the line; justice, of the most summary sort, is not wanting. The
Electoral Committee of Macon, though but a Committee, goes the
length of hanging, for its own behoof, as many as twenty. The
Prevot of Dauphine traverses the country 'with a movable column,'
with tipstaves, gallows-ropes; for gallows any tree will serve,
and suspend its culprit, or 'thirteen' culprits.
Unhappy country! How is the fair gold-and-green of the ripe
bright Year defaced with horrid blackness: black ashes of
Chateaus, black bodies of gibetted Men! Industry has ceased in
it; not sounds of the hammer and saw, but of the tocsin and
alarm-drum. The sceptre has departed, whither one knows
not;—breaking itself in pieces: here impotent, there tyrannous.
National Guards are unskilful, and of doubtful purpose; Soldiers
are inclined to mutiny: there is danger that they two may
quarrel, danger that they may agree. Strasburg has seen riots: a
Townhall torn to shreds, its archives scattered white on the
winds; drunk soldiers embracing drunk citizens for three days,
and Mayor Dietrich and Marshal Rochambeau reduced nigh to
desperation. (_Arthur Young, i. 141.—Dampmartin: Evenemens qui se
sont passes sous mes yeux, i. 105-127._)
Through the middle of all which phenomena, is seen, on his
triumphant transit, 'escorted,' through Befort for instance, 'by
fifty National Horsemen and all the military music of the
place,'—M. Necker, returning from Bale! Glorious as the meridian;
though poor Necker himself partly guesses whither it is leading.
(_Biographie Universelle, para Necker (_by Lally-Tollendal_)._)
One highest culminating day, at the Paris Townhall; with immortal
vivats, with wife and daughter kneeling publicly to kiss his
hand; with Besenval's pardon granted,—but indeed revoked before
sunset: one highest day, but then lower days, and ever lower,
down even to lowest! Such magic is in a name; and in the want of
a name. Like some enchanted Mambrino's Helmet, essential to
victory, comes this 'Saviour of France;' beshouted, becymballed
by the world:—alas, so soon, to be disenchanted, to be pitched
shamefully over the lists as a Barber's Bason! Gibbon 'could wish
to shew him' (_in this ejected, Barber's-Bason state_) to any man
of solidity, who were minded to have the soul burnt out of him,
and become a caput mortuum, by Ambition, unsuccessful or
successful. (_Gibbon's Letters._)
Another small phasis we add, and no more: how, in the Autumn
months, our sharp-tempered Arthur has been 'pestered for some
days past,' by shot, lead-drops and slugs, 'rattling five or six
times into my chaise and about my ears;' all the mob of the
country gone out to kill game! (_Young, i. 176._) It is even so.
On the Cliffs of Dover, over all the Marches of France, there
appear, this autumn, two Signs on the Earth: emigrant flights of
French Seigneurs; emigrant winged flights of French Game!
Finished, one may say, or as good as finished, is the
Preservation of Game on this Earth; completed for endless Time.
What part it had to play in the History of Civilisation is played
plaudite; exeat!
In this manner does Sansculottism blaze up, illustrating many
things;—producing, among the rest, as we saw, on the Fourth of
August, that semi-miraculous Night of Pentecost in the National
Assembly; semi miraculous, which had its causes, and its effects.
Feudalism is struck dead; not on parchment only, and by ink; but
in very fact, by fire; say, by self-combustion. This
conflagration of the South-East will abate; will be got
scattered, to the West, or elsewhither: extinguish it will not,
till the fuel be all done.
Chapter 1.6.IV.
In Queue.
If we look now at Paris, one thing is too evident: that the
Baker's shops have got their Queues, or Tails; their long strings
of purchasers, arranged in tail, so that the first come be the
first served,—were the shop once open! This waiting in tail, not
seen since the early days of July, again makes its appearance in
August. In time, we shall see it perfected by practice to the
rank almost of an art; and the art, or quasi-art, of standing in
tail become one of the characteristics of the Parisian People,
distinguishing them from all other Peoples whatsoever.
But consider, while work itself is so scarce, how a man must not
only realise money; but stand waiting (_if his wife is too weak
to wait and struggle_) for half days in the Tail, till he get it
changed for dear bad bread! Controversies, to the length,
sometimes of blood and battery, must arise in these exasperated
Queues. Or if no controversy, then it is but one accordant Pange
Lingua of complaint against the Powers that be. France has begun
her long Curriculum of Hungering, instructive and productive
beyond Academic Curriculums; which extends over some seven most
strenuous years. As Jean Paul says, of his own Life, 'to a great
height shall the business of Hungering go.'
Or consider, in strange contrast, the jubilee Ceremonies; for, in
general, the aspect of Paris presents these two features: jubilee
ceremonials and scarcity of victual. Processions enough walk in
jubilee; of Young Women, decked and dizened, their ribands all
tricolor; moving with song and tabor, to the Shrine of Sainte
Genevieve, to thank her that the Bastille is down. The Strong Men
of the Market, and the Strong Women, fail not with their bouquets
and speeches. Abbe Fauchet, famed in such work (_for Abbe Lefevre
could only distribute powder_) blesses tricolor cloth for the
National Guard; and makes it a National Tricolor Flag;
victorious, or to be victorious, in the cause of civil and
religious liberty all over the world. Fauchet, we say, is the man
for Te-Deums, and public Consecrations;—to which, as in this
instance of the Flag, our National Guard will 'reply with volleys
of musketry,' Church and Cathedral though it be; (_See Hist.
Parl. iii. 20; Mercier, Nouveau Paris, &c._) filling Notre Dame
with such noisiest fuliginous Amen, significant of several
things.
On the whole, we will say our new Mayor Bailly; our new Commander
Lafayette, named also 'Scipio-Americanus,' have bought their
preferment dear. Bailly rides in gilt state-coach, with
beefeaters and sumptuosity; Camille Desmoulins, and others,
sniffing at him for it: Scipio bestrides the 'white charger,' and
waves with civic plumes in sight of all France. Neither of them,
however, does it for nothing; but, in truth, at an exorbitant
rate. At this rate, namely: of feeding Paris, and keeping it from
fighting. Out of the City-funds, some seventeen thousand of the
utterly destitute are employed digging on Montmartre, at tenpence
a day, which buys them, at market price, almost two pounds of bad
bread;—they look very yellow, when Lafayette goes to harangue
them. The Townhall is in travail, night and day; it must bring
forth Bread, a Municipal Constitution, regulations of all kinds,
curbs on the Sansculottic Press; above all, Bread, Bread.
Purveyors prowl the country far and wide, with the appetite of
lions; detect hidden grain, purchase open grain; by gentle means
or forcible, must and will find grain. A most thankless task; and
so difficult, so dangerous,—even if a man did gain some trifle by
it! On the 19th August, there is food for one day. (_See Bailly,
Memoires, ii. 137-409._) Complaints there are that the food is
spoiled, and produces an effect on the intestines: not corn but
plaster-of-Paris! Which effect on the intestines, as well as that
'smarting in the throat and palate,' a Townhall Proclamation
warns you to disregard, or even to consider as
drastic-beneficial. The Mayor of Saint-Denis, so black was his
bread, has, by a dyspeptic populace, been hanged on the Lanterne
there. National Guards protect the Paris Corn-Market: first ten
suffice; then six hundred. (_Hist. Parl. ii. 421._) Busy are ye,
Bailly, Brissot de Warville, Condorcet, and ye others!
For, as just hinted, there is a Municipal Constitution to be made
too. The old Bastille Electors, after some ten days of
psalmodying over their glorious victory, began to hear it asked,
in a splenetic tone, Who put you there? They accordingly had to
give place, not without moanings, and audible growlings on both
sides, to a new larger Body, specially elected for that post.
Which new Body, augmented, altered, then fixed finally at the
number of Three Hundred, with the title of Town Representatives
(_Representans de la Commune_), now sits there; rightly portioned
into Committees; assiduous making a Constitution; at all moments
when not seeking flour.
And such a Constitution; little short of miraculous: one that
shall 'consolidate the Revolution'! The Revolution is finished,
then? Mayor Bailly and all respectable friends of Freedom would
fain think so. Your Revolution, like jelly sufficiently boiled,
needs only to be poured into shapes, of Constitution, and
'consolidated' therein? Could it, indeed, contrive to cool; which
last, however, is precisely the doubtful thing, or even the not
doubtful!
Unhappy friends of Freedom; consolidating a Revolution! They must
sit at work there, their pavilion spread on very Chaos; between
two hostile worlds, the Upper Court-world, the Nether
Sansculottic one; and, beaten on by both, toil painfully,
perilously,—doing, in sad literal earnest, 'the impossible.'
Chapter 1.6.V.
The Fourth Estate.
Pamphleteering opens its abysmal throat wider and wider: never to
close more. Our Philosophes, indeed, rather withdraw; after the
manner of Marmontel, 'retiring in disgust the first day.' Abbe
Raynal, grown gray and quiet in his Marseilles domicile, is
little content with this work; the last literary act of the man
will again be an act of rebellion: an indignant Letter to the
Constituent Assembly; answered by 'the order of the day.' Thus
also Philosophe Morellet puckers discontented brows; being indeed
threatened in his benefices by that Fourth of August: it is
clearly going too far. How astonishing that those 'haggard
figures in woollen jupes' would not rest as satisfied with
Speculation, and victorious Analysis, as we!
Alas, yes: Speculation, Philosophism, once the ornament and
wealth of the saloon, will now coin itself into mere Practical
Propositions, and circulate on street and highway, universally;
with results! A Fourth Estate, of Able Editors, springs up;
increases and multiplies; irrepressible, incalculable. New
Printers, new Journals, and ever new (_so prurient is the
world_), let our Three Hundred curb and consolidate as they can!
Loustalot, under the wing of Prudhomme dull-blustering Printer,
edits weekly his Revolutions de Paris; in an acrid, emphatic
manner. Acrid, corrosive, as the spirit of sloes and copperas, is
Marat, Friend of the People; struck already with the fact that
the National Assembly, so full of Aristocrats, 'can do nothing,'
except dissolve itself, and make way for a better; that the
Townhall Representatives are little other than babblers and
imbeciles, if not even knaves. Poor is this man; squalid, and
dwells in garrets; a man unlovely to the sense, outward and
inward; a man forbid;—and is becoming fanatical, possessed with
fixed-idea. Cruel lusus of Nature! Did Nature, O poor Marat, as
in cruel sport, knead thee out of her leavings, and miscellaneous
waste clay; and fling thee forth stepdamelike, a Distraction into
this distracted Eighteenth Century? Work is appointed thee there;
which thou shalt do. The Three Hundred have summoned and will
again summon Marat: but always he croaks forth answer sufficient;
always he will defy them, or elude them; and endure no gag.
Carra, 'Ex-secretary of a decapitated Hospodar,' and then of a
Necklace-Cardinal; likewise pamphleteer, Adventurer in many
scenes and lands,—draws nigh to Mercier, of the Tableau de Paris;
and, with foam on his lips, proposes an Annales Patriotiques. The
Moniteur goes its prosperous way; Barrere 'weeps,' on Paper as
yet loyal; Rivarol, Royou are not idle. Deep calls to deep: your
Domine Salvum Fac Regem shall awaken Pange Lingua; with an
Ami-du-Peuple there is a King's-Friend Newspaper, Ami-du-Roi.
Camille Desmoulins has appointed himself Procureur-General de la
Lanterne, Attorney-General of the Lamp-iron; and pleads, not with
atrocity, under an atrocious title; editing weekly his brilliant
Revolutions of Paris and Brabant. Brilliant, we say: for if, in
that thick murk of Journalism, with its dull blustering, with its
fixed or loose fury, any ray of genius greet thee, be sure it is
Camille's. The thing that Camille teaches he, with his light
finger, adorns: brightness plays, gentle, unexpected, amid
horrible confusions; often is the word of Camille worth reading,
when no other's is. Questionable Camille, how thou glitterest
with a fallen, rebellious, yet still semi-celestial light; as is
the star-light on the brow of Lucifer! Son of the Morning, into
what times and what lands, art thou fallen!
But in all things is good;—though not good for 'consolidating
Revolutions.' Thousand wagon-loads of this Pamphleteering and
Newspaper matter, lie rotting slowly in the Public Libraries of
our Europe. Snatched from the great gulf, like oysters by
bibliomaniac pearl-divers, there must they first rot, then what
was pearl, in Camille or others, may be seen as such, and
continue as such.
Nor has public speaking declined, though Lafayette and his
Patrols look sour on it. Loud always is the Palais Royal, loudest
the Cafe de Foy; such a miscellany of Citizens and Citizenesses
circulating there. 'Now and then,' according to Camille, 'some
Citizens employ the liberty of the press for a private purpose;
so that this or the other Patriot finds himself short of his
watch or pocket-handkerchief!' But, for the rest, in Camille's
opinion, nothing can be a livelier image of the Roman Forum. 'A
Patriot proposes his motion; if it finds any supporters, they
make him mount on a chair, and speak. If he is applauded, he
prospers and redacts; if he is hissed, he goes his ways.' Thus
they, circulating and perorating. Tall shaggy Marquis
Saint-Huruge, a man that has had losses, and has deserved them,
is seen eminent, and also heard. 'Bellowing' is the character of
his voice, like that of a Bull of Bashan; voice which drowns all
voices, which causes frequently the hearts of men to leap.
Cracked or half-cracked is this tall Marquis's head; uncracked
are his lungs; the cracked and the uncracked shall alike avail
him.
Consider further that each of the Forty-eight Districts has its
own Committee; speaking and motioning continually; aiding in the
search for grain, in the search for a Constitution; checking and
spurring the poor Three Hundred of the Townhall. That Danton,
with a 'voice reverberating from the domes,' is President of the
Cordeliers District; which has already become a Goshen of
Patriotism. That apart from the 'seventeen thousand utterly
necessitous, digging on Montmartre,' most of whom, indeed, have
got passes, and been dismissed into Space 'with four
shillings,'—there is a strike, or union, of Domestics out of
place; who assemble for public speaking: next, a strike of
Tailors, for even they will strike and speak; further, a strike
of Journeymen Cordwainers; a strike of Apothecaries: so dear is
bread. (_Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 359, 417, 423._) All these,
having struck, must speak; generally under the open canopy; and
pass resolutions;—Lafayette and his Patrols watching them
suspiciously from the distance.
Unhappy mortals: such tugging and lugging, and throttling of one
another, to divide, in some not intolerable way, the joint
Felicity of man in this Earth; when the whole lot to be divided
is such a 'feast of shells!'—Diligent are the Three Hundred; none
equals Scipio Americanus in dealing with mobs. But surely all
these things bode ill for the consolidating of a Revolution.
BOOK VII.
THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN
Chapter 1.7.I.
Patrollotism.
No, Friends, this Revolution is not of the consolidating kind. Do
not fires, fevers, sown seeds, chemical mixtures, men, events;
all embodiments of Force that work in this miraculous Complex of
Forces, named Universe,—go on growing, through their natural
phases and developments, each according to its kind; reach their
height, reach their visible decline; finally sink under,
vanishing, and what we call die? They all grow; there is nothing
but what grows, and shoots forth into its special expansion,—once
give it leave to spring. Observe too that each grows with a
rapidity proportioned, in general, to the madness and
unhealthiness there is in it: slow regular growth, though this
also ends in death, is what we name health and sanity.
A Sansculottism, which has prostrated Bastilles, which has got
pike and musket, and now goes burning Chateaus, passing
resolutions and haranguing under roof and sky, may be said to
have sprung; and, by law of Nature, must grow. To judge by the
madness and diseasedness both of itself, and of the soil and
element it is in, one might expect the rapidity and monstrosity
would be extreme.
Many things too, especially all diseased things, grow by shoots
and fits. The first grand fit and shooting forth of Sansculottism
with that of Paris conquering its King; for Bailly's figure of
rhetoric was all-too sad a reality. The King is conquered; going
at large on his parole; on condition, say, of absolutely good
behaviour,—which, in these circumstances, will unhappily mean no
behaviour whatever. A quite untenable position, that of Majesty
put on its good behaviour! Alas, is it not natural that whatever
lives try to keep itself living? Whereupon his Majesty's
behaviour will soon become exceptionable; and so the Second grand
Fit of Sansculottism, that of putting him in durance, cannot be
distant.
Necker, in the National Assembly, is making moan, as usual about
his Deficit: Barriers and Customhouses burnt; the Tax-gatherer
hunted, not hunting; his Majesty's Exchequer all but empty. The
remedy is a Loan of thirty millions; then, on still more enticing
terms, a Loan of eighty millions: neither of which Loans,
unhappily, will the Stockjobbers venture to lend. The Stockjobber
has no country, except his own black pool of Agio.
And yet, in those days, for men that have a country, what a glow
of patriotism burns in many a heart; penetrating inwards to the
very purse! So early as the 7th of August, a Don Patriotique, 'a
Patriotic Gift of jewels to a considerable extent,' has been
solemnly made by certain Parisian women; and solemnly accepted,
with honourable mention. Whom forthwith all the world takes to
imitating and emulating. Patriotic Gifts, always with some heroic
eloquence, which the President must answer and the Assembly
listen to, flow in from far and near: in such number that the
honourable mention can only be performed in 'lists published at
stated epochs.' Each gives what he can: the very cordwainers have
behaved munificently; one landed proprietor gives a forest;
fashionable society gives its shoebuckles, takes cheerfully to
shoe-ties. Unfortunate females give what they 'have amassed in
loving.' (_Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 427._) The smell of all
cash, as Vespasian thought, is good.
Beautiful, and yet inadequate! The Clergy must be 'invited' to
melt their superfluous Church-plate,—in the Royal Mint. Nay
finally, a Patriotic Contribution, of the forcible sort, must be
determined on, though unwillingly: let the fourth part of your
declared yearly revenue, for this once only, be paid down; so
shall a National Assembly make the Constitution, undistracted at
least by insolvency. Their own wages, as settled on the 17th of
August, are but Eighteen Francs a day, each man; but the Public
Service must have sinews, must have money. To appease the
Deficit; not to 'combler, or choke the Deficit,' if you or mortal
could! For withal, as Mirabeau was heard saying, "it is the
Deficit that saves us."
Towards the end of August, our National Assembly in its
constitutional labours, has got so far as the question of Veto:
shall Majesty have a Veto on the National Enactments; or not have
a Veto? What speeches were spoken, within doors and without;
clear, and also passionate logic; imprecations, comminations;
gone happily, for most part, to Limbo! Through the cracked brain,
and uncracked lungs of Saint-Huruge, the Palais Royal rebellows
with Veto. Journalism is busy, France rings with Veto. 'I shall
never forget,' says Dumont, 'my going to Paris, one of these
days, with Mirabeau; and the crowd of people we found waiting for
his carriage, about Le Jay the Bookseller's shop. They flung
themselves before him; conjuring him with tears in their eyes not
to suffer the Veto Absolu. They were in a frenzy: "Monsieur le
Comte, you are the people's father; you must save us; you must
defend us against those villains who are bringing back Despotism.
If the King get this Veto, what is the use of National Assembly?
We are slaves, all is done."' (_Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 156._)
Friends, if the sky fall, there will be catching of larks!
Mirabeau, adds Dumont, was eminent on such occasions: he answered
vaguely, with a Patrician imperturbability, and bound himself to
nothing.
Deputations go to the Hotel-de-Ville; anonymous Letters to
Aristocrats in the National Assembly, threatening that fifteen
thousand, or sometimes that sixty thousand, 'will march to
illuminate you.' The Paris Districts are astir; Petitions
signing: Saint-Huruge sets forth from the Palais Royal, with an
escort of fifteen hundred individuals, to petition in person.
Resolute, or seemingly so, is the tall shaggy Marquis, is the
Cafe de Foy: but resolute also is Commandant-General Lafayette.
The streets are all beset by Patrols: Saint-Huruge is stopped at
the Barriere des Bon Hommes; he may bellow like the bulls of
Bashan; but absolutely must return. The brethren of the Palais
Royal 'circulate all night,' and make motions, under the open
canopy; all Coffee-houses being shut. Nevertheless Lafayette and
the Townhall do prevail: Saint-Huruge is thrown into prison; Veto
Absolu adjusts itself into Suspensive Veto, prohibition not
forever, but for a term of time; and this doom's-clamour will
grow silent, as the others have done.
So far has Consolidation prospered, though with difficulty;
repressing the Nether Sansculottic world; and the Constitution
shall be made. With difficulty: amid jubilee and scarcity;
Patriotic Gifts, Bakers'-queues; Abbe-Fauchet Harangues, with
their Amen of platoon-musketry! Scipio Americanus has deserved
thanks from the National Assembly and France. They offer him
stipends and emoluments, to a handsome extent; all which stipends
and emoluments he, covetous of far other blessedness than mere
money, does, in his chivalrous way, without scruple, refuse.
To the Parisian common man, meanwhile, one thing remains
inconceivable: that now when the Bastille is down, and French
Liberty restored, grain should continue so dear. Our Rights of
Man are voted, Feudalism and all Tyranny abolished; yet behold we
stand in queue! Is it Aristocrat forestallers; a Court still bent
on intrigues? Something is rotten, somewhere.
And yet, alas, what to do? Lafayette, with his Patrols prohibits
every thing, even complaint. Saint-Huruge and other heroes of the
Veto lie in durance. People's-Friend Marat was seized; Printers
of Patriotic Journals are fettered and forbidden; the very
Hawkers cannot cry, till they get license, and leaden badges.
Blue National Guards ruthlessly dissipate all groups; scour, with
levelled bayonets, the Palais Royal itself. Pass, on your
affairs, along the Rue Taranne, the Patrol, presenting his
bayonet, cries, To the left! Turn into the Rue Saint-Benoit, he
cries, To the right! A judicious Patriot (_like Camille
Desmoulins, in this instance_) is driven, for quietness's sake,
to take the gutter.
O much-suffering People, our glorious Revolution is evaporating
in tricolor ceremonies, and complimentary harangues! Of which
latter, as Loustalot acridly calculates, 'upwards of two thousand
have been delivered within the last month, at the Townhall
alone.' (_Revolutions de Paris Newspaper (_cited in Histoire
Parlementaire, ii. 357_)._) And our mouths, unfilled with bread,
are to be shut, under penalties? The Caricaturist promulgates his
emblematic Tablature: Le Patrouillotisme chassant le Patriotisme,
Patriotism driven out by Patrollotism. Ruthless Patrols; long
superfine harangues; and scanty ill-baked loaves, more like baked
Bath bricks,—which produce an effect on the intestines! Where
will this end? In consolidation?
Chapter 1.7.II.
O Richard, O my King.
For, alas, neither is the Townhall itself without misgivings. The
Nether Sansculottic world has been suppressed hitherto: but then
the Upper Court-world! Symptoms there are that the Oeil-de-Boeuf
is rallying.
More than once in the Townhall Sanhedrim; often enough, from
those outspoken Bakers'-queues, has the wish uttered itself: O
that our Restorer of French Liberty were here; that he could see
with his own eyes, not with the false eyes of Queens and Cabals,
and his really good heart be enlightened! For falsehood still
environs him; intriguing Dukes de Guiche, with Bodyguards; scouts
of Bouille; a new flight of intriguers, now that the old is
flown. What else means this advent of the Regiment de Flandre;
entering Versailles, as we hear, on the 23rd of September, with
two pieces of cannon? Did not the Versailles National Guard do
duty at the Chateau? Had they not Swiss; Hundred Swiss;
Gardes-du-Corps, Bodyguards so-called? Nay, it would seem, the
number of Bodyguards on duty has, by a manoeuvre, been doubled:
the new relieving Battalion of them arrived at its time; but the
old relieved one does not depart!
Actually, there runs a whisper through the best informed
Upper-Circles, or a nod still more potentous than whispering, of
his Majesty's flying to Metz; of a Bond (_to stand by him
therein_) which has been signed by Noblesse and Clergy, to the
incredible amount of thirty, or even of sixty thousand. Lafayette
coldly whispers it, and coldly asseverates it, to Count d'Estaing
at the Dinner-table; and d'Estaing, one of the bravest men,
quakes to the core lest some lackey overhear it; and tumbles
thoughtful, without sleep, all night. (_Brouillon de Lettre de M.
d'Estaing a la Reine in Histoire Parlementaire, iii. 24._)
Regiment Flandre, as we said, is clearly arrived. His Majesty,
they say, hesitates about sanctioning the Fourth of August; makes
observations, of chilling tenor, on the very Rights of Man!
Likewise, may not all persons, the Bakers'-queues themselves
discern on the streets of Paris, the most astonishing number of
Officers on furlough, Crosses of St. Louis, and such like? Some
reckon 'from a thousand to twelve hundred.' Officers of all
uniforms; nay one uniform never before seen by eye: green faced
with red! The tricolor cockade is not always visible: but what,
in the name of Heaven, may these black cockades, which some wear,
foreshadow?
Hunger whets everything, especially Suspicion and Indignation.
Realities themselves, in this Paris, have grown unreal:
preternatural. Phantasms once more stalk through the brain of
hungry France. O ye laggards and dastards, cry shrill voices from
the Queues, if ye had the hearts of men, ye would take your pikes
and secondhand firelocks, and look into it; not leave your wives
and daughters to be starved, murdered, and worse!—Peace, women!
The heart of man is bitter and heavy; Patriotism, driven out by
Patrollotism, knows not what to resolve on.
The truth is, the Oeil-de-Boeuf has rallied; to a certain unknown
extent. A changed Oeil-de-Boeuf; with Versailles National Guards,
in their tricolor cockades, doing duty there; a Court all flaring
with tricolor! Yet even to a tricolor Court men will rally. Ye
loyal hearts, burnt-out Seigneurs, rally round your Queen! With
wishes; which will produce hopes; which will produce attempts!
For indeed self-preservation being such a law of Nature, what can
a rallied Court do, but attempt and endeavour, or call it
plot,—with such wisdom and unwisdom as it has? They will fly,
escorted, to Metz, where brave Bouille commands; they will raise
the Royal Standard: the Bond-signatures shall become armed men.
Were not the King so languid! Their Bond, if at all signed, must
be signed without his privity.—Unhappy King, he has but one
resolution: not to have a civil war. For the rest, he still
hunts, having ceased lockmaking; he still dozes, and digests; is
clay in the hands of the potter. Ill will it fare with him, in a
world where all is helping itself; where, as has been written,
'whosoever is not hammer must be stithy;' and 'the very hyssop on
the wall grows there, in that chink, because the whole Universe
could not prevent its growing!'
But as for the coming up of this Regiment de Flandre, may it not
be urged that there were Saint-Huruge Petitions, and continual
meal-mobs? Undebauched Soldiers, be there plot, or only dim
elements of a plot, are always good. Did not the Versailles
Municipality (_an old Monarchic one, not yet refounded into a
Democratic_) instantly second the proposal? Nay the very
Versailles National Guard, wearied with continual duty at the
Chateau, did not object; only Draper Lecointre, who is now Major
Lecointre, shook his head.—Yes, Friends, surely it was natural
this Regiment de Flandre should be sent for, since it could be
got. It was natural that, at sight of military bandoleers, the
heart of the rallied Oeil-de-Boeuf should revive; and Maids of
Honour, and gentlemen of honour, speak comfortable words to
epauletted defenders, and to one another. Natural also, and mere
common civility, that the Bodyguards, a Regiment of Gentlemen,
should invite their Flandre brethren to a Dinner of welcome!—Such
invitation, in the last days of September, is given and accepted.
Dinners are defined as 'the ultimate act of communion;' men that
can have communion in nothing else, can sympathetically eat
together, can still rise into some glow of brotherhood over food
and wine. The dinner is fixed on, for Thursday the First of
October; and ought to have a fine effect. Further, as such Dinner
may be rather extensive, and even the Noncommissioned and the
Common man be introduced, to see and to hear, could not His
Majesty's Opera Apartment, which has lain quite silent ever since
Kaiser Joseph was here, be obtained for the purpose?—The Hall of
the Opera is granted; the Salon d'Hercule shall be drawingroom.
Not only the Officers of Flandre, but of the Swiss, of the
Hundred Swiss, nay of the Versailles National Guard, such of them
as have any loyalty, shall feast: it will be a Repast like few.
And now suppose this Repast, the solid part of it, transacted;
and the first bottle over. Suppose the customary loyal toasts
drunk; the King's health, the Queen's with deafening vivats;—that
of the Nation 'omitted,' or even 'rejected.' Suppose champagne
flowing; with pot-valorous speech, with instrumental music; empty
feathered heads growing ever the noisier, in their own emptiness,
in each other's noise! Her Majesty, who looks unusually sad
to-night (_his Majesty sitting dulled with the day's hunting_),
is told that the sight of it would cheer her. Behold! She enters
there, issuing from her State-rooms, like the Moon from the
clouds, this fairest unhappy Queen of Hearts; royal Husband by
her side, young Dauphin in her arms! She descends from the Boxes,
amid splendour and acclaim; walks queen-like, round the Tables;
gracefully escorted, gracefully nodding; her looks full of
sorrow, yet of gratitude and daring, with the hope of France on
her mother-bosom! And now, the band striking up, O Richard, O mon
Roi, l'univers t'abandonne (_O Richard, O my King, and world is
all forsaking thee_)—could man do other than rise to height of
pity, of loyal valour? Could featherheaded young ensigns do other
than, by white Bourbon Cockades, handed them from fair fingers;
by waving of swords, drawn to pledge the Queen's health; by
trampling of National Cockades; by scaling the Boxes, whence
intrusive murmurs may come; by vociferation, tripudiation, sound,
fury and distraction, within doors and without,—testify what
tempest-tost state of vacuity they are in? Till champagne and
tripudiation do their work; and all lie silent, horizontal;
passively slumbering, with meed-of-battle dreams!—
A natural Repast, in ordinary times, a harmless one: now fatal,
as that of Thyestes; as that of Job's Sons, when a strong wind
smote the four corners of their banquet-house! Poor ill-advised
Marie-Antoinette; with a woman's vehemence, not with a
sovereign's foresight! It was so natural, yet so unwise. Next
day, in public speech of ceremony, her Majesty declares herself
'delighted with the Thursday.'
The heart of the Oeil-de-Boeuf glows into hope; into daring,
which is premature. Rallied Maids of Honour, waited on by Abbes,
sew 'white cockades;' distribute them, with words, with glances,
to epauletted youths; who in return, may kiss, not without
fervour, the fair sewing fingers. Captains of horse and foot go
swashing with 'enormous white cockades;' nay one Versailles
National Captain had mounted the like, so witching were the words
and glances; and laid aside his tricolor! Well may Major
Lecointre shake his head with a look of severity; and speak
audible resentful words. But now a swashbuckler, with enormous
white cockade, overhearing the Major, invites him insolently,
once and then again elsewhere, to recant; and failing that, to
duel. Which latter feat Major Lecointre declares that he will not
perform, not at least by any known laws of fence; that he
nevertheless will, according to mere law of Nature, by dirk and
blade, 'exterminate' any 'vile gladiator,' who may insult him or
the Nation;—whereupon (_for the Major is actually drawing his
implement_) 'they are parted,' and no weasands slit. (_Moniteur
(_in Histoire Parlementaire, iii. 59_); Deux Amis (_iii.
128-141_); Campan (_ii. 70-85_), &c. &c._)
Chapter 1.7.III.
Black Cockades.
But fancy what effect this Thyestes Repast and trampling on the
National Cockade, must have had in the Salle des Menus; in the
famishing Bakers'-queues at Paris! Nay such Thyestes Repasts, it
would seem, continue. Flandre has given its Counter-Dinner to the
Swiss and Hundred Swiss; then on Saturday there has been another.
Yes, here with us is famine; but yonder at Versailles is food;
enough and to spare! Patriotism stands in queue, shivering
hungerstruck, insulted by Patrollotism; while bloodyminded
Aristocrats, heated with excess of high living, trample on the
National Cockade. Can the atrocity be true? Nay, look: green
uniforms faced with red; black cockades,—the colour of Night! Are
we to have military onfall; and death also by starvation? For
behold the Corbeil Cornboat, which used to come twice a-day, with
its Plaster-of-Paris meal, now comes only once. And the Townhall
is deaf; and the men are laggard and dastard!—At the Cafe de Foy,
this Saturday evening, a new thing is seen, not the last of its
kind: a woman engaged in public speaking. Her poor man, she says,
was put to silence by his District; their Presidents and
Officials would not let him speak. Wherefore she here with her
shrill tongue will speak; denouncing, while her breath endures,
the Corbeil-Boat, the Plaster-of-Paris bread, sacrilegious
Opera-dinners, green uniforms, Pirate Aristocrats, and those
black cockades of theirs!—
Truly, it is time for the black cockades at least, to vanish.
Them Patrollotism itself will not protect. Nay, sharp-tempered
'M. Tassin,' at the Tuileries parade on Sunday morning, forgets
all National military rule; starts from the ranks, wrenches down
one black cockade which is swashing ominous there; and tramples
it fiercely into the soil of France. Patrollotism itself is not
without suppressed fury. Also the Districts begin to stir; the
voice of President Danton reverberates in the Cordeliers:
People's-Friend Marat has flown to Versailles and back
again;—swart bird, not of the halcyon kind! (_Camille's
Newspaper, Revolutions de Paris et de Brabant in Histoire
Parlementaire, iii. 108._)
And so Patriot meets promenading Patriot, this Sunday; and sees
his own grim care reflected on the face of another. Groups, in
spite of Patrollotism, which is not so alert as usual, fluctuate
deliberative: groups on the Bridges, on the Quais, at the
patriotic Cafes. And ever as any black cockade may emerge, rises
the many-voiced growl and bark: A bas, Down! All black cockades
are ruthlessly plucked off: one individual picks his up again;
kisses it, attempts to refix it; but a 'hundred canes start into
the air,' and he desists. Still worse went it with another
individual; doomed, by extempore Plebiscitum, to the Lanterne;
saved, with difficulty, by some active Corps-de-Garde.—Lafayette
sees signs of an effervescence; which he doubles his Patrols,
doubles his diligence, to prevent. So passes Sunday, the 4th of
October 1789.
Sullen is the male heart, repressed by Patrollotism; vehement is
the female, irrepressible. The public-speaking woman at the
Palais Royal was not the only speaking one:—Men know not what the
pantry is, when it grows empty, only house-mothers know. O women,
wives of men that will only calculate and not act! Patrollotism
is strong; but Death, by starvation and military onfall, is
stronger. Patrollotism represses male Patriotism: but female
Patriotism? Will Guards named National thrust their bayonets into
the bosoms of women? Such thought, or rather such dim unshaped
raw-material of a thought, ferments universally under the female
night-cap; and, by earliest daybreak, on slight hint, will
explode.
Chapter 1.7.IV.
The Menads.
If Voltaire once, in splenetic humour, asked his countrymen: "But
you, Gualches, what have you invented?" they can now answer: The
Art of Insurrection. It was an art needed in these last singular
times: an art, for which the French nature, so full of vehemence,
so free from depth, was perhaps of all others the fittest.
Accordingly, to what a height, one may well say of perfection,
has this branch of human industry been carried by France, within
the last half-century! Insurrection, which, Lafayette thought,
might be 'the most sacred of duties,' ranks now, for the French
people, among the duties which they can perform. Other mobs are
dull masses; which roll onwards with a dull fierce tenacity, a
dull fierce heat, but emit no light-flashes of genius as they go.
The French mob, again, is among the liveliest phenomena of our
world. So rapid, audacious; so clear-sighted, inventive, prompt
to seize the moment; instinct with life to its finger-ends! That
talent, were there no other, of spontaneously standing in queue,
distinguishes, as we said, the French People from all Peoples,
ancient and modern.
Let the Reader confess too that, taking one thing with another,
perhaps few terrestrial Appearances are better worth considering
than mobs. Your mob is a genuine outburst of Nature; issuing
from, or communicating with, the deepest deep of Nature. When so
much goes grinning and grimacing as a lifeless Formality, and
under the stiff buckram no heart can be felt beating, here once
more, if nowhere else, is a Sincerity and Reality. Shudder at it;
or even shriek over it, if thou must; nevertheless consider it.
Such a Complex of human Forces and Individualities hurled forth,
in their transcendental mood, to act and react, on circumstances
and on one another; to work out what it is in them to work. The
thing they will do is known to no man; least of all to
themselves. It is the inflammablest immeasurable Fire-work,
generating, consuming itself. With what phases, to what extent,
with what results it will burn off, Philosophy and Perspicacity
conjecture in vain.
'Man,' as has been written, 'is for ever interesting to man; nay
properly there is nothing else interesting.' In which light also,
may we not discern why most Battles have become so wearisome?
Battles, in these ages, are transacted by mechanism; with the
slightest possible developement of human individuality or
spontaneity: men now even die, and kill one another, in an
artificial manner. Battles ever since Homer's time, when they
were Fighting Mobs, have mostly ceased to be worth looking at,
worth reading of, or remembering. How many wearisome bloody
Battles does History strive to represent; or even, in a husky
way, to sing:—and she would omit or carelessly slur-over this one
Insurrection of Women?
A thought, or dim raw-material of a thought, was fermenting all
night, universally in the female head, and might explode. In
squalid garret, on Monday morning, Maternity awakes, to hear
children weeping for bread. Maternity must forth to the streets,
to the herb-markets and Bakers'—queues; meets there with
hunger-stricken Maternity, sympathetic, exasperative. O we
unhappy women! But, instead of Bakers'-queues, why not to
Aristocrats' palaces, the root of the matter? Allons! Let us
assemble. To the Hotel-de-Ville; to Versailles; to the Lanterne!
In one of the Guardhouses of the Quartier Saint-Eustache, 'a
young woman' seizes a drum,—for how shall National Guards give
fire on women, on a young woman? The young woman seizes the drum;
sets forth, beating it, 'uttering cries relative to the dearth of
grains.' Descend, O mothers; descend, ye Judiths, to food and
revenge!—All women gather and go; crowds storm all stairs, force
out all women: the female Insurrectionary Force, according to
Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there is a universal
'Press of women.' Robust Dames of the Halle, slim Mantua-makers,
assiduous, risen with the dawn; ancient Virginity tripping to
matins; the Housemaid, with early broom; all must go. Rouse ye, O
women; the laggard men will not act; they say, we ourselves may
act!
And so, like snowbreak from the mountains, for every staircase is
a melted brook, it storms; tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards
the Hotel-de-Ville. Tumultuous, with or without drum-music: for
the Faubourg Saint-Antoine also has tucked up its gown; and, with
besom-staves, fire-irons, and even rusty pistols (_void of
ammunition_), is flowing on. Sound of it flies, with a velocity
of sound, to the outmost Barriers. By seven o'clock, on this raw
October morning, fifth of the month, the Townhall will see
wonders. Nay, as chance would have it, a male party are already
there; clustering tumultuously round some National Patrol, and a
Baker who has been seized with short weights. They are there; and
have even lowered the rope of the Lanterne. So that the official
persons have to smuggle forth the short-weighing Baker by back
doors, and even send 'to all the Districts' for more force.
Grand it was, says Camille, to see so many Judiths, from eight to
ten thousand of them in all, rushing out to search into the root
of the matter! Not unfrightful it must have been;
ludicro-terrific, and most unmanageable. At such hour the
overwatched Three Hundred are not yet stirring: none but some
Clerks, a company of National Guards; and M. de Gouvion, the
Major-general. Gouvion has fought in America for the cause of
civil Liberty; a man of no inconsiderable heart, but deficient in
head. He is, for the moment, in his back apartment; assuaging
Usher Maillard, the Bastille-serjeant, who has come, as too many
do, with 'representations.' The assuagement is still incomplete
when our Judiths arrive.
The National Guards form on the outer stairs, with levelled
bayonets; the ten thousand Judiths press up, resistless; with
obtestations, with outspread hands,—merely to speak to the Mayor.
The rear forces them; nay, from male hands in the rear, stones
already fly: the National Guards must do one of two things; sweep
the Place de Greve with cannon, or else open to right and left.
They open; the living deluge rushes in. Through all rooms and
cabinets, upwards to the topmost belfry: ravenous; seeking arms,
seeking Mayors, seeking justice;—while, again, the better-cressed
(_dressed?_) speak kindly to the Clerks; point out the misery of
these poor women; also their ailments, some even of an
interesting sort. (_Deux Amis, iii. 141-166._)
Poor M. de Gouvion is shiftless in this extremity;—a man
shiftless, perturbed; who will one day commit suicide. How happy
for him that Usher Maillard, the shifty, was there, at the
moment, though making representations! Fly back, thou shifty
Maillard; seek the Bastille Company; and O return fast with it;
above all, with thy own shifty head! For, behold, the Judiths can
find no Mayor or Municipal; scarcely, in the topmost belfry, can
they find poor Abbe Lefevre the Powder-distributor. Him, for want
of a better, they suspend there; in the pale morning light; over
the top of all Paris, which swims in one's failing eyes:—a
horrible end? Nay, the rope broke, as French ropes often did; or
else an Amazon cut it. Abbe Lefevre falls, some twenty feet,
rattling among the leads; and lives long years after, though
always with 'a tremblement in the limbs.' (_Dusaulx, Prise de la
Bastille (_note, p. 281._)._)
And now doors fly under hatchets; the Judiths have broken the
Armoury; have seized guns and cannons, three money-bags,
paper-heaps; torches flare: in few minutes, our brave
Hotel-de-Ville which dates from the Fourth Henry, will, with all
that it holds, be in flames!
Chapter 1.7.V.
Usher Maillard.
In flames, truly,—were it not that Usher Maillard, swift of foot,
shifty of head, has returned!
Maillard, of his own motion, for Gouvion or the rest would not
even sanction him,—snatches a drum; descends the Porch-stairs,
ran-tan, beating sharp, with loud rolls, his Rogues'-march: To
Versailles! Allons; a Versailles! As men beat on kettle or
warmingpan, when angry she-bees, or say, flying desperate wasps,
are to be hived; and the desperate insects hear it, and cluster
round it,—simply as round a guidance, where there was none: so
now these Menads round shifty Maillard, Riding-Usher of the
Chatelet. The axe pauses uplifted; Abbe Lefevre is left
half-hanged; from the belfry downwards all vomits itself. What
rub-a-dub is that? Stanislas Maillard, Bastille-hero, will lead
us to Versailles? Joy to thee, Maillard; blessed art thou above
Riding-Ushers! Away then, away!
The seized cannon are yoked with seized cart-horses: brown-locked
Demoiselle Theroigne, with pike and helmet, sits there as
gunneress, 'with haughty eye and serene fair countenance;'
comparable, some think, to the Maid of Orleans, or even recalling
'the idea of Pallas Athene.' (_Deux Amis, iii. 157._) Maillard
(_for his drum still rolls_) is, by heaven-rending acclamation,
admitted General. Maillard hastens the languid march. Maillard,
beating rhythmic, with sharp ran-tan, all along the Quais, leads
forward, with difficulty his Menadic host. Such a host—marched
not in silence! The bargeman pauses on the River; all wagoners
and coachdrivers fly; men peer from windows,—not women, lest they
be pressed. Sight of sights: Bacchantes, in these ultimate
Formalized Ages! Bronze Henri looks on, from his Pont-Neuf; the
Monarchic Louvre, Medicean Tuileries see a day not theretofore
seen.
And now Maillard has his Menads in the Champs Elysees (_Fields
Tartarean rather_); and the Hotel-de-Ville has suffered
comparatively nothing. Broken doors; an Abbe Lefevre, who shall
never more distribute powder; three sacks of money, most part of
which (_for Sansculottism, though famishing, is not without
honour_) shall be returned: (_Hist. Parl. iii. 310._) this is all
the damage. Great Maillard! A small nucleus of Order is round his
drum; but his outskirts fluctuate like the mad Ocean: for
Rascality male and female is flowing in on him, from the four
winds; guidance there is none but in his single head and two
drumsticks.
O Maillard, when, since War first was, had General of Force such
a task before him, as thou this day? Walter the Penniless still
touches the feeling heart: but then Walter had sanction; had
space to turn in; and also his Crusaders were of the male sex.
Thou, this day, disowned of Heaven and Earth, art General of
Menads. Their inarticulate frenzy thou must on the spur of the
instant, render into articulate words, into actions that are not
frantic. Fail in it, this way or that! Pragmatical Officiality,
with its penalties and law-books, waits before thee; Menads storm
behind. If such hewed off the melodious head of Orpheus, and
hurled it into the Peneus waters, what may they not make of
thee,—thee rhythmic merely, with no music but a sheepskin
drum!—Maillard did not fail. Remarkable Maillard, if fame were
not an accident, and History a distillation of Rumour, how
remarkable wert thou!
On the Elysian Fields, there is pause and fluctuation; but, for
Maillard, no return. He persuades his Menads, clamorous for arms
and the Arsenal, that no arms are in the Arsenal; that an unarmed
attitude, and petition to a National Assembly, will be the best:
he hastily nominates or sanctions generalesses, captains of tens
and fifties;—and so, in loosest-flowing order, to the rhythm of
some 'eight drums' (_having laid aside his own_), with the
Bastille Volunteers bringing up his rear, once more takes the
road.
Chaillot, which will promptly yield baked loaves, is not
plundered; nor are the Sevres Potteries broken. The old arches of
Sevres Bridge echo under Menadic feet; Seine River gushes on with
his perpetual murmur; and Paris flings after us the boom of
tocsin and alarm-drum,—inaudible, for the present, amid
shrill-sounding hosts, and the splash of rainy weather. To
Meudon, to Saint Cloud, on both hands, the report of them is gone
abroad; and hearths, this evening, will have a topic. The press
of women still continues, for it is the cause of all Eve's
Daughters, mothers that are, or that hope to be. No
carriage-lady, were it with never such hysterics, but must
dismount, in the mud roads, in her silk shoes, and walk. (_Deux
Amis, iii. 159._) In this manner, amid wild October weather, they
a wild unwinged stork-flight, through the astonished country,
wend their way. Travellers of all sorts they stop; especially
travellers or couriers from Paris. Deputy Lechapelier, in his
elegant vesture, from his elegant vehicle, looks forth amazed
through his spectacles; apprehensive for life;—states eagerly
that he is Patriot-Deputy Lechapelier, and even Old-President
Lechapelier, who presided on the Night of Pentecost, and is
original member of the Breton Club. Thereupon 'rises huge shout
of Vive Lechapelier, and several armed persons spring up behind
and before to escort him.' (_Ibid. iii. 177; Dictionnaire des
Hommes Marquans, ii. 379._)
Nevertheless, news, despatches from Lafayette, or vague noise of
rumour, have pierced through, by side roads. In the National
Assembly, while all is busy discussing the order of the day;
regretting that there should be Anti-national Repasts in
Opera-Halls; that his Majesty should still hesitate about
accepting the Rights of Man, and hang conditions and
peradventures on them,—Mirabeau steps up to the President,
experienced Mounier as it chanced to be; and articulates, in bass
under-tone: "Mounier, Paris marche sur nous (_Paris is marching
on us_)."—"May be (_Je n'en sais rien_)!"—"Believe it or
disbelieve it, that is not my concern; but Paris, I say, is
marching on us. Fall suddenly unwell; go over to the Chateau;
tell them this. There is not a moment to lose."—"Paris marching
on us?" responds Mounier, with an atrabiliar accent, "Well, so
much the better! We shall the sooner be a Republic." Mirabeau
quits him, as one quits an experienced President getting
blindfold into deep waters; and the order of the day continues as
before.
Yes, Paris is marching on us; and more than the women of Paris!
Scarcely was Maillard gone, when M. de Gouvion's message to all
the Districts, and such tocsin and drumming of the generale,
began to take effect. Armed National Guards from every District;
especially the Grenadiers of the Centre, who are our old Gardes
Francaises, arrive, in quick sequence, on the Place de Greve. An
'immense people' is there; Saint-Antoine, with pike and rusty
firelock, is all crowding thither, be it welcome or unwelcome.
The Centre Grenadiers are received with cheering: "it is not
cheers that we want," answer they gloomily; "the nation has been
insulted; to arms, and come with us for orders!" Ha, sits the
wind so? Patriotism and Patrollotism are now one!
The Three Hundred have assembled; 'all the Committees are in
activity;' Lafayette is dictating despatches for Versailles, when
a Deputation of the Centre Grenadiers introduces itself to him.
The Deputation makes military obeisance; and thus speaks, not
without a kind of thought in it: "Mon General, we are deputed by
the Six Companies of Grenadiers. We do not think you a traitor,
but we think the Government betrays you; it is time that this
end. We cannot turn our bayonets against women crying to us for
bread. The people are miserable, the source of the mischief is at
Versailles: we must go seek the King, and bring him to Paris. We
must exterminate (_exterminer_) the Regiment de Flandre and the
Gardes-du-Corps, who have dared to trample on the National
Cockade. If the King be too weak to wear his crown, let him lay
it down. You will crown his Son, you will name a Council of
Regency; and all will go better." (_Deux Amis, iii. 161._)
Reproachful astonishment paints itself on the face of Lafayette;
speaks itself from his eloquent chivalrous lips: in vain. "My
General, we would shed the last drop of our blood for you; but
the root of the mischief is at Versailles; we must go and bring
the King to Paris; all the people wish it, tout le peuple le
veut."
My General descends to the outer staircase; and harangues: once
more in vain. "To Versailles! To Versailles!" Mayor Bailly, sent
for through floods of Sansculottism, attempts academic oratory
from his gilt state-coach; realizes nothing but infinite hoarse
cries of: "Bread! To Versailles!"—and gladly shrinks within
doors. Lafayette mounts the white charger; and again harangues
and reharangues: with eloquence, with firmness, indignant
demonstration; with all things but persuasion. "To Versailles! To
Versailles!" So lasts it, hour after hour; for the space of half
a day.
The great Scipio Americanus can do nothing; not so much as
escape. "Morbleu, mon General," cry the Grenadiers serrying their
ranks as the white charger makes a motion that way, "You will not
leave us, you will abide with us!" A perilous juncture: Mayor
Bailly and the Municipals sit quaking within doors; My General is
prisoner without: the Place de Greve, with its thirty thousand
Regulars, its whole irregular Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau, is
one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel; all hearts set, with a
moody fixedness, on one object. Moody, fixed are all hearts:
tranquil is no heart,—if it be not that of the white charger, who
paws there, with arched neck, composedly champing his bit; as if
no world, with its Dynasties and Eras, were now rushing down. The
drizzly day tends westward; the cry is still: "To Versailles!"
Nay now, borne from afar, come quite sinister cries; hoarse,
reverberating in longdrawn hollow murmurs, with syllables too
like those of Lanterne! Or else, irregular Sansculottism may be
marching off, of itself; with pikes, nay with cannon. The
inflexible Scipio does at length, by aide-de-camp, ask of the
Municipals: Whether or not he may go? A Letter is handed out to
him, over armed heads; sixty thousand faces flash fixedly on his,
there is stillness and no bosom breathes, till he have read. By
Heaven, he grows suddenly pale! Do the Municipals permit? 'Permit
and even order,'—since he can no other. Clangour of approval
rends the welkin. To your ranks, then; let us march!
It is, as we compute, towards three in the afternoon. Indignant
National Guards may dine for once from their haversack: dined or
undined, they march with one heart. Paris flings up her windows,
claps hands, as the Avengers, with their shrilling drums and
shalms tramp by; she will then sit pensive, apprehensive, and
pass rather a sleepless night. (_Deux Amis, iii. 165._) On the
white charger, Lafayette, in the slowest possible manner, going
and coming, and eloquently haranguing among the ranks, rolls
onward with his thirty thousand. Saint-Antoine, with pike and
cannon, has preceded him; a mixed multitude, of all and of no
arms, hovers on his flanks and skirts; the country once more
pauses agape: Paris marche sur nous.
Chapter 1.7.VI.
To Versailles.
For, indeed, about this same moment, Maillard has halted his
draggled Menads on the last hill-top; and now Versailles, and the
Chateau of Versailles, and far and wide the inheritance of
Royalty opens to the wondering eye. From far on the right, over
Marly and Saint-Germains-en-Laye; round towards Rambouillet, on
the left: beautiful all; softly embosomed; as if in sadness, in
the dim moist weather! And near before us is Versailles, New and
Old; with that broad frondent Avenue de Versailles
between,—stately-frondent, broad, three hundred feet as men
reckon, with four Rows of Elms; and then the Chateau de
Versailles, ending in royal Parks and Pleasances, gleaming
lakelets, arbours, Labyrinths, the Menagerie, and Great and
Little Trianon. High-towered dwellings, leafy pleasant places;
where the gods of this lower world abide: whence, nevertheless,
black Care cannot be excluded; whither Menadic Hunger is even now
advancing, armed with pike-thyrsi!
Yes, yonder, Mesdames, where our straight frondent Avenue,
joined, as you note, by Two frondent brother Avenues from this
hand and from that, spreads out into Place Royale and Palace
Forecourt; yonder is the Salle des Menus. Yonder an august
Assembly sits regenerating France. Forecourt, Grand Court, Court
of Marble, Court narrowing into Court you may discern next, or
fancy: on the extreme verge of which that glass-dome, visibly
glittering like a star of hope, is the—Oeil-de-Boeuf! Yonder, or
nowhere in the world, is bread baked for us. But, O Mesdames,
were not one thing good: That our cannons, with Demoiselle
Theroigne and all show of war, be put to the rear? Submission
beseems petitioners of a National Assembly; we are strangers in
Versailles,—whence, too audibly, there comes even now sound as of
tocsin and generale! Also to put on, if possible, a cheerful
countenance, hiding our sorrows; and even to sing? Sorrow, pitied
of the Heavens, is hateful, suspicious to the Earth.—So counsels
shifty Maillard; haranguing his Menads, on the heights near
Versailles. (_See Hist. Parl. iii. 70-117; Deux Amis, iii.
166-177, &c._)
Cunning Maillard's dispositions are obeyed. The draggled
Insurrectionists advance up the Avenue, 'in three columns, among
the four Elm-rows; 'singing Henri Quatre,' with what melody they
can; and shouting Vive le Roi. Versailles, though the Elm-rows
are dripping wet, crowds from both sides, with: "Vivent nos
Parisiennes, Our Paris ones for ever!"
Prickers, scouts have been out towards Paris, as the rumour
deepened: whereby his Majesty, gone to shoot in the Woods of
Meudon, has been happily discovered, and got home; and the
generale and tocsin set a-sounding. The Bodyguards are already
drawn up in front of the Palace Grates; and look down the Avenue
de Versailles; sulky, in wet buckskins. Flandre too is there,
repentant of the Opera-Repast. Also Dragoons dismounted are
there. Finally Major Lecointre, and what he can gather of the
Versailles National Guard; though, it is to be observed, our
Colonel, that same sleepless Count d'Estaing, giving neither
order nor ammunition, has vanished most improperly; one supposes,
into the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Red-coated Swiss stand within the Grates,
under arms. There likewise, in their inner room, 'all the
Ministers,' Saint-Priest, Lamentation Pompignan and the rest, are
assembled with M. Necker: they sit with him there; blank,
expecting what the hour will bring.
President Mounier, though he answered Mirabeau with a tant mieux,
and affected to slight the matter, had his own forebodings.
Surely, for these four weary hours, he has reclined not on roses!
The order of the day is getting forward: a Deputation to his
Majesty seems proper, that it might please him to grant
'Acceptance pure and simple' to those Constitution-Articles of
ours; the 'mixed qualified Acceptance,' with its peradventures,
is satisfactory to neither gods nor men.
So much is clear. And yet there is more, which no man speaks,
which all men now vaguely understand. Disquietude, absence of
mind is on every face; Members whisper, uneasily come and go: the
order of the day is evidently not the day's want. Till at length,
from the outer gates, is heard a rustling and justling, shrill
uproar and squabbling, muffled by walls; which testifies that the
hour is come! Rushing and crushing one hears now; then enter
Usher Maillard, with a Deputation of Fifteen muddy dripping
Women,—having by incredible industry, and aid of all the macers,
persuaded the rest to wait out of doors. National Assembly shall
now, therefore, look its august task directly in the face:
regenerative Constitutionalism has an unregenerate Sansculottism
bodily in front of it; crying, "Bread! Bread!"
Shifty Maillard, translating frenzy into articulation; repressive
with the one hand, expostulative with the other, does his best;
and really, though not bred to public speaking, manages rather
well:—In the present dreadful rarity of grains, a Deputation of
Female Citizens has, as the august Assembly can discern, come out
from Paris to petition. Plots of Aristocrats are too evident in
the matter; for example, one miller has been bribed 'by a
banknote of 200 livres' not to grind,—name unknown to the Usher,
but fact provable, at least indubitable. Further, it seems, the
National Cockade has been trampled on; also there are Black
Cockades, or were. All which things will not an august National
Assembly, the hope of France, take into its wise immediate
consideration?
And Menadic Hunger, impressible, crying "Black Cockades," crying
"Bread, Bread," adds, after such fashion: "Will it not?—Yes,
Messieurs, if a Deputation to his Majesty, for the 'Acceptance
pure and simple,' seemed proper,—how much more now, for 'the
afflicting situation of Paris;' for the calming of this
effervescence!" President Mounier, with a speedy Deputation,
among whom we notice the respectable figure of Doctor Guillotin,
gets himself forthwith on march. Vice-President shall continue
the order of the day; Usher Maillard shall stay by him to repress
the women. It is four o'clock, of the miserablest afternoon, when
Mounier steps out.
O experienced Mounier, what an afternoon; the last of thy
political existence! Better had it been to 'fall suddenly
unwell,' while it was yet time. For, behold, the Esplanade, over
all its spacious expanse, is covered with groups of squalid
dripping Women; of lankhaired male Rascality, armed with axes,
rusty pikes, old muskets, ironshod clubs (_baton ferres, which
end in knives or sword-blades, a kind of extempore
billhook_);—looking nothing but hungry revolt. The rain pours:
Gardes-du-Corps go caracoling through the groups 'amid hisses;'
irritating and agitating what is but dispersed here to reunite
there.
Innumerable squalid women beleaguer the President and Deputation;
insist on going with him: has not his Majesty himself, looking
from the window, sent out to ask, What we wanted? "Bread and
speech with the King (_Du pain, et parler au Roi_)," that was the
answer. Twelve women are clamorously added to the Deputation; and
march with it, across the Esplanade; through dissipated groups,
caracoling Bodyguards, and the pouring rain.
President Mounier, unexpectedly augmented by Twelve Women,
copiously escorted by Hunger and Rascality, is himself mistaken
for a group: himself and his Women are dispersed by caracolers;
rally again with difficulty, among the mud. (_Mounier, Expose
Justificatif (_cited in Deux Amis, iii. 185_)._) Finally the
Grates are opened: the Deputation gets access, with the Twelve
Women too in it; of which latter, Five shall even see the face of
his Majesty. Let wet Menadism, in the best spirits it can expect
their return.
Chapter 1.7.VII.
At Versailles.
But already Pallas Athene (_in the shape of Demoiselle
Theroigne_) is busy with Flandre and the dismounted Dragoons.
She, and such women as are fittest, go through the ranks; speak
with an earnest jocosity; clasp rough troopers to their patriot
bosom, crush down spontoons and musketoons with soft arms: can a
man, that were worthy of the name of man, attack famishing
patriot women?
One reads that Theroigne had bags of money, which she distributed
over Flandre:—furnished by whom? Alas, with money-bags one seldom
sits on insurrectionary cannon. Calumnious Royalism! Theroigne
had only the limited earnings of her profession of
unfortunate-female; money she had not, but brown locks, the
figure of a heathen Goddess, and an eloquent tongue and heart.
Meanwhile, Saint-Antoine, in groups and troops, is continually
arriving; wetted, sulky; with pikes and impromptu billhooks:
driven thus far by popular fixed-idea. So many hirsute figures
driven hither, in that manner: figures that have come to do they
know not what; figures that have come to see it done!
Distinguished among all figures, who is this, of gaunt stature,
with leaden breastplate, though a small one; (_See Weber, ii.
185-231._) bushy in red grizzled locks; nay, with long
tile-beard? It is Jourdan, unjust dealer in mules; a dealer no
longer, but a Painter's Layfigure, playing truant this day. From
the necessities of Art comes his long tile-beard; whence his
leaden breastplate (_unless indeed he were some Hawker licensed
by leaden badge_) may have come,—will perhaps remain for ever a
Historical Problem. Another Saul among the people we discern:
'Pere Adam, Father Adam,' as the groups name him; to us better
known as bull-voiced Marquis Saint-Huruge; hero of the Veto; a
man that has had losses, and deserved them. The tall Marquis,
emitted some days ago from limbo, looks peripatetically on this
scene, from under his umbrella, not without interest. All which
persons and things, hurled together as we see; Pallas Athene,
busy with Flandre; patriotic Versailles National Guards, short of
ammunition, and deserted by d'Estaing their Colonel, and
commanded by Lecointre their Major; then caracoling Bodyguards,
sour, dispirited, with their buckskins wet; and finally this
flowing sea of indignant Squalor,—may they not give rise to
occurrences?
Behold, however, the Twelve She-deputies return from the Chateau.
Without President Mounier, indeed; but radiant with joy, shouting
"Life to the King and his House." Apparently the news are good,
Mesdames? News of the best! Five of us were admitted to the
internal splendours, to the Royal Presence. This slim damsel,
'Louison Chabray, worker in sculpture, aged only seventeen,' as
being of the best looks and address, her we appointed speaker. On
whom, and indeed on all of us, his Majesty looked nothing but
graciousness. Nay, when Louison, addressing him, was like to
faint, he took her in his royal arms; and said gallantly, "It was
well worth while (_Elle en valut bien la peine_)." Consider, O
women, what a King! His words were of comfort, and that only:
there shall be provision sent to Paris, if provision is in the
world; grains shall circulate free as air; millers shall grind,
or do worse, while their millstones endure; and nothing be left
wrong which a Restorer of French Liberty can right.
Good news these; but, to wet Menads, all too incredible! There
seems no proof, then? Words of comfort are words only; which will
feed nothing. O miserable people, betrayed by Aristocrats, who
corrupt thy very messengers! In his royal arms, Mademoiselle
Louison? In his arms? Thou shameless minx, worthy of a name—that
shall be nameless! Yes, thy skin is soft: ours is rough with
hardship; and well wetted, waiting here in the rain. No children
hast thou hungry at home; only alabaster dolls, that weep not!
The traitress! To the Lanterne!—And so poor Louison Chabray, no
asseveration or shrieks availing her, fair slim damsel, late in
the arms of Royalty, has a garter round her neck, and furibund
Amazons at each end; is about to perish so,—when two Bodyguards
gallop up, indignantly dissipating; and rescue her. The
miscredited Twelve hasten back to the Chateau, for an 'answer in
writing.'
Nay, behold, a new flight of Menads, with 'M. Brunout Bastille
Volunteer,' as impressed-commandant, at the head of it. These
also will advance to the Grate of the Grand Court, and see what
is toward. Human patience, in wet buckskins, has its limits.
Bodyguard Lieutenant, M. de Savonnieres, for one moment, lets his
temper, long provoked, long pent, give way. He not only
dissipates these latter Menads; but caracoles and cuts, or
indignantly flourishes, at M. Brunout, the impressed-commandant;
and, finding great relief in it, even chases him; Brunout flying
nimbly, though in a pirouette manner, and now with sword also
drawn. At which sight of wrath and victory two other Bodyguards
(_for wrath is contagious, and to pent Bodyguards is so
solacing_) do likewise give way; give chase, with brandished
sabre, and in the air make horrid circles. So that poor Brunout
has nothing for it but to retreat with accelerated nimbleness,
through rank after rank; Parthian-like, fencing as he flies;
above all, shouting lustily, "On nous laisse assassiner, They are
getting us assassinated?"
Shameful! Three against one! Growls come from the Lecointrian
ranks; bellowings,—lastly shots. Savonnieres' arm is raised to
strike: the bullet of a Lecointrian musket shatters it; the
brandished sabre jingles down harmless. Brunout has escaped, this
duel well ended: but the wild howl of war is everywhere beginning
to pipe!
The Amazons recoil; Saint-Antoine has its cannon pointed (_full
of grapeshot_); thrice applies the lit flambeau; which thrice
refuses to catch,—the touchholes are so wetted; and voices cry:
"Arretez, il n'est pas temps encore, Stop, it is not yet time!"
(_Deux Amis, iii. 192-201._) Messieurs of the Garde-du-Corps, ye
had orders not to fire; nevertheless two of you limp dismounted,
and one war-horse lies slain. Were it not well to draw back out
of shot-range; finally to file off,—into the interior? If in so
filing off, there did a musketoon or two discharge itself, at
these armed shopkeepers, hooting and crowing, could man wonder?
Draggled are your white cockades of an enormous size; would to
Heaven they were got exchanged for tricolor ones! Your buckskins
are wet, your hearts heavy. Go, and return not!
The Bodyguards file off, as we hint; giving and receiving shots;
drawing no life-blood; leaving boundless indignation. Some three
times in the thickening dusk, a glimpse of them is seen, at this
or the other Portal: saluted always with execrations, with the
whew of lead. Let but a Bodyguard shew face, he is hunted by
Rascality;—for instance, poor 'M. de Moucheton of the Scotch
Company,' owner of the slain war-horse; and has to be smuggled
off by Versailles Captains. Or rusty firelocks belch after him,
shivering asunder his—hat. In the end, by superior Order, the
Bodyguards, all but the few on immediate duty, disappear; or as
it were abscond; and march, under cloud of night, to Rambouillet.
(_Weber, ubi supra._)
We remark also that the Versaillese have now got ammunition: all
afternoon, the official Person could find none; till, in these so
critical moments, a patriotic Sublieutenant set a pistol to his
ear, and would thank him to find some,—which he thereupon
succeeded in doing. Likewise that Flandre, disarmed by Pallas
Athene, says openly, it will not fight with citizens; and for
token of peace, has exchanged cartridges with the Versaillese.
Sansculottism is now among mere friends; and can 'circulate
freely;' indignant at Bodyguards;—complaining also considerably
of hunger.
Chapter 1.7.VIII.
The Equal Diet.
But why lingers Mounier; returns not with his Deputation? It is
six, it is seven o'clock; and still no Mounier, no Acceptance
pure and simple.
And, behold, the dripping Menads, not now in deputation but in
mass, have penetrated into the Assembly: to the shamefullest
interruption of public speaking and order of the day. Neither
Maillard nor Vice-President can restrain them, except within wide
limits; not even, except for minutes, can the lion-voice of
Mirabeau, though they applaud it: but ever and anon they break in
upon the regeneration of France with cries of: "Bread; not so
much discoursing! Du pain; pas tant de longs discours!"—So
insensible were these poor creatures to bursts of Parliamentary
eloquence!
One learns also that the royal Carriages are getting yoked, as if
for Metz. Carriages, royal or not, have verily showed themselves
at the back Gates. They even produced, or quoted, a written order
from our Versailles Municipality,—which is a Monarchic not a
Democratic one. However, Versailles Patroles drove them in again;
as the vigilant Lecointre had strictly charged them to do.
A busy man, truly, is Major Lecointre, in these hours. For
Colonel d'Estaing loiters invisible in the Oeil-de-Boeuf;
invisible, or still more questionably visible, for instants: then
also a too loyal Municipality requires supervision: no order,
civil or military, taken about any of these thousand things!
Lecointre is at the Versailles Townhall: he is at the Grate of
the Grand Court; communing with Swiss and Bodyguards. He is in
the ranks of Flandre; he is here, he is there: studious to
prevent bloodshed; to prevent the Royal Family from flying to
Metz; the Menads from plundering Versailles.
At the fall of night, we behold him advance to those armed groups
of Saint-Antoine, hovering all-too grim near the Salle des Menus.
They receive him in a half-circle; twelve speakers behind
cannons, with lighted torches in hand, the cannon-mouths towards
Lecointre: a picture for Salvator! He asks, in temperate but
courageous language: What they, by this their journey to
Versailles, do specially want? The twelve speakers reply, in few
words inclusive of much: "Bread, and the end of these brabbles,
Du pain, et la fin des affaires." When the affairs will end, no
Major Lecointre, nor no mortal, can say; but as to bread, he
inquires, How many are you?—learns that they are six hundred,
that a loaf each will suffice; and rides off to the Municipality
to get six hundred loaves.
Which loaves, however, a Municipality of Monarchic temper will
not give. It will give two tons of rice rather,—could you but
know whether it should be boiled or raw. Nay when this too is
accepted, the Municipals have disappeared;—ducked under, as the
Six-and-Twenty Long-gowned of Paris did; and, leaving not the
smallest vestage of rice, in the boiled or raw state, they there
vanish from History!
Rice comes not; one's hope of food is baulked; even one's hope of
vengeance: is not M. de Moucheton of the Scotch Company, as we
said, deceitfully smuggled off? Failing all which, behold only M.
de Moucheton's slain warhorse, lying on the Esplanade there!
Saint-Antoine, baulked, esurient, pounces on the slain warhorse;
flays it; roasts it, with such fuel, of paling, gates, portable
timber as can be come at,—not without shouting: and, after the
manner of ancient Greek Heroes, they lifted their hands to the
daintily readied repast; such as it might be. (_Weber, Deux Amis,
&c._) Other Rascality prowls discursive; seeking what it may
devour. Flandre will retire to its barracks; Lecointre also with
his Versaillese,—all but the vigilant Patrols, charged to be
doubly vigilant.
So sink the shadows of Night, blustering, rainy; and all paths
grow dark. Strangest Night ever seen in these regions,—perhaps
since the Bartholomew Night, when Versailles, as Bassompierre
writes of it, was a chetif chateau. O for the Lyre of some
Orpheus, to constrain, with touch of melodious strings, these mad
masses into Order! For here all seems fallen asunder, in
wide-yawning dislocation. The highest, as in down-rushing of a
World, is come in contact with the lowest: the Rascality of
France beleaguering the Royalty of France; 'ironshod batons'
lifted round the diadem, not to guard it! With denunciations of
bloodthirsty Anti-national Bodyguards, are heard dark growlings
against a Queenly Name.
The Court sits tremulous, powerless; varies with the varying
temper of the Esplanade, with the varying colour of the rumours
from Paris. Thick-coming rumours; now of peace, now of war.
Necker and all the Ministers consult; with a blank issue. The
Oeil-de-Boeuf is one tempest of whispers:—We will fly to Metz; we
will not fly. The royal Carriages again attempt egress;—though
for trial merely; they are again driven in by Lecointre's
Patrols. In six hours, nothing has been resolved on; not even the
Acceptance pure and simple.
In six hours? Alas, he who, in such circumstances, cannot resolve
in six minutes, may give up the enterprise: him Fate has already
resolved for. And Menadism, meanwhile, and Sansculottism takes
counsel with the National Assembly; grows more and more
tumultuous there. Mounier returns not; Authority nowhere shews
itself: the Authority of France lies, for the present, with
Lecointre and Usher Maillard.—This then is the abomination of
desolation; come suddenly, though long foreshadowed as
inevitable! For, to the blind, all things are sudden. Misery
which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now
be its own helper and speak for itself. The dialect, one of the
rudest, is, what it could be, this.
At eight o'clock there returns to our Assembly not the
Deputation; but Doctor Guillotin announcing that it will return;
also that there is hope of the Acceptance pure and simple. He
himself has brought a Royal Letter, authorising and commanding
the freest 'circulation of grains.' Which Royal Letter Menadism
with its whole heart applauds. Conformably to which the Assembly
forthwith passes a Decree; also received with rapturous Menadic
plaudits:—Only could not an august Assembly contrive further to
"fix the price of bread at eight sous the half-quartern;
butchers'-meat at six sous the pound;" which seem fair rates?
Such motion do 'a multitude of men and women,' irrepressible by
Usher Maillard, now make; does an august Assembly hear made.
Usher Maillard himself is not always perfectly measured in
speech; but if rebuked, he can justly excuse himself by the
peculiarity of the circumstances. (_Moniteur (_in Hist. Parl. ii.
105_)._)
But finally, this Decree well passed, and the disorder
continuing; and Members melting away, and no President Mounier
returning,—what can the Vice-President do but also melt away? The
Assembly melts, under such pressure, into deliquium; or, as it is
officially called, adjourns. Maillard is despatched to Paris,
with the 'Decree concerning Grains' in his pocket; he and some
women, in carriages belonging to the King. Thitherward slim
Louison Chabray has already set forth, with that 'written
answer,' which the Twelve She-deputies returned in to seek. Slim
sylph, she has set forth, through the black muddy country: she
has much to tell, her poor nerves so flurried; and travels, as
indeed to-day on this road all persons do, with extreme slowness.
President Mounier has not come, nor the Acceptance pure and
simple; though six hours with their events have come; though
courier on courier reports that Lafayette is coming. Coming, with
war or with peace? It is time that the Chateau also should
determine on one thing or another; that the Chateau also should
show itself alive, if it would continue living!
Victorious, joyful after such delay, Mounier does arrive at last,
and the hard-earned Acceptance with him; which now, alas, is of
small value. Fancy Mounier's surprise to find his Senate, whom he
hoped to charm by the Acceptance pure and simple,—all gone; and
in its stead a Senate of Menads! For as Erasmus's Ape mimicked,
say with wooden splint, Erasmus shaving, so do these Amazons
hold, in mock majesty, some confused parody of National Assembly.
They make motions; deliver speeches; pass enactments; productive
at least of loud laughter. All galleries and benches are filled;
a strong Dame of the Market is in Mounier's Chair. Not without
difficulty, Mounier, by aid of macers, and persuasive speaking,
makes his way to the Female-President: the Strong Dame before
abdicating signifies that, for one thing, she and indeed her
whole senate male and female (_for what was one roasted warhorse
among so many?_) are suffering very considerably from hunger.
Experienced Mounier, in these circumstances, takes a twofold
resolution: To reconvoke his Assembly Members by sound of drum;
also to procure a supply of food. Swift messengers fly, to all
bakers, cooks, pastrycooks, vintners, restorers; drums beat,
accompanied with shrill vocal proclamation, through all streets.
They come: the Assembly Members come; what is still better, the
provisions come. On tray and barrow come these latter; loaves,
wine, great store of sausages. The nourishing baskets circulate
harmoniously along the benches; _nor_, according to the Father of
Epics, _did any soul lack a fair share of victual_ (δαῖτος
ὲἱσης), _an equal diet_); highly desirable, at the moment. (_Deux
Amis, iii. 208._)
Gradually some hundred or so of Assembly members get edged in,
Menadism making way a little, round Mounier's Chair; listen to
the Acceptance pure and simple; and begin, what is the order of
the night, 'discussion of the Penal Code.' All benches are
crowded; in the dusky galleries, duskier with unwashed heads, is
a strange 'coruscation,'—of impromptu billhooks. (_Courier de
Provence (_Mirabeau's Newspaper_), No. 50, p. 19._) It is exactly
five months this day since these same galleries were filled with
high-plumed jewelled Beauty, raining bright influences; and now?
To such length have we got in regenerating France. Methinks the
travail-throes are of the sharpest!—Menadism will not be
restrained from occasional remarks; asks, "What is use of the
Penal Code? The thing we want is Bread." Mirabeau turns round
with lion-voiced rebuke; Menadism applauds him; but recommences.
Thus they, chewing tough sausages, discussing the Penal Code,
make night hideous. What the issue will be? Lafayette with his
thirty thousand must arrive first: him, who cannot now be
distant, all men expect, as the messenger of Destiny.
Chapter 1.7.IX.
Lafayette.
Towards midnight lights flare on the hill; Lafayette's lights!
The roll of his drums comes up the Avenue de Versailles. With
peace, or with war? Patience, friends! With neither. Lafayette is
come, but not yet the catastrophe.
He has halted and harangued so often, on the march; spent nine
hours on four leagues of road. At Montreuil, close on Versailles,
the whole Host had to pause; and, with uplifted right hand, in
the murk of Night, to these pouring skies, swear solemnly to
respect the King's Dwelling; to be faithful to King and National
Assembly. Rage is driven down out of sight, by the laggard march;
the thirst of vengeance slaked in weariness and soaking clothes.
Flandre is again drawn out under arms: but Flandre, grown so
patriotic, now needs no 'exterminating.' The wayworn Batallions
halt in the Avenue: they have, for the present, no wish so
pressing as that of shelter and rest.
Anxious sits President Mounier; anxious the Chateau. There is a
message coming from the Chateau, that M. Mounier would please
return thither with a fresh Deputation, swiftly; and so at least
unite our two anxieties. Anxious Mounier does of himself send,
meanwhile, to apprise the General that his Majesty has been so
gracious as to grant us the Acceptance pure and simple. The
General, with a small advance column, makes answer in passing;
speaks vaguely some smooth words to the National
President,—glances, only with the eye, at that so mixtiform
National Assembly; then fares forward towards the Chateau. There
are with him two Paris Municipals; they were chosen from the
Three Hundred for that errand. He gets admittance through the
locked and padlocked Grates, through sentries and ushers, to the
Royal Halls.
The Court, male and female, crowds on his passage, to read their
doom on his face; which exhibits, say Historians, a mixture 'of
sorrow, of fervour and valour,' singular to behold. (_Memoire de
M. le Comte de Lally-Tollendal (_Janvier 1790_), p. 161-165._)
The King, with Monsieur, with Ministers and Marshals, is waiting
to receive him: He "is come," in his highflown chivalrous way,
"to offer his head for the safety of his Majesty's." The two
Municipals state the wish of Paris: four things, of quite pacific
tenor. First, that the honour of Guarding his sacred person be
conferred on patriot National Guards;—say, the Centre Grenadiers,
who as Gardes Francaises were wont to have that privilege.
Second, that provisions be got, if possible. Third, that the
Prisons, all crowded with political delinquents, may have judges
sent them. Fourth, that it would please his Majesty to come and
live in Paris. To all which four wishes, except the fourth, his
Majesty answers readily, Yes; or indeed may almost say that he
has already answered it. To the fourth he can answer only, Yes or
No; would so gladly answer, Yes and No!—But, in any case, are not
their dispositions, thank Heaven, so entirely pacific? There is
time for deliberation. The brunt of the danger seems past!
Lafayette and d'Estaing settle the watches; Centre Grenadiers are
to take the Guard-room they of old occupied as Gardes
Francaises;—for indeed the Gardes du Corps, its late ill-advised
occupants, are gone mostly to Rambouillet. That is the order of
this night; sufficient for the night is the evil thereof.
Whereupon Lafayette and the two Municipals, with highflown
chivalry, take their leave.
So brief has the interview been, Mounier and his Deputation were
not yet got up. So brief and satisfactory. A stone is rolled from
every heart. The fair Palace Dames publicly declare that this
Lafayette, detestable though he be, is their saviour for once.
Even the ancient vinaigrous Tantes admit it; the King's Aunts,
ancient Graille and Sisterhood, known to us of old. Queen
Marie-Antoinette has been heard often say the like. She alone,
among all women and all men, wore a face of courage, of lofty
calmness and resolve, this day. She alone saw clearly what she
meant to do; and Theresa's Daughter dares do what she means, were
all France threatening her: abide where her children are, where
her husband is.
Towards three in the morning all things are settled: the watches
set, the Centre Grenadiers put into their old Guard-room, and
harangued; the Swiss, and few remaining Bodyguards harangued. The
wayworn Paris Batallions, consigned to 'the hospitality of
Versailles,' lie dormant in spare-beds, spare-barracks,
coffeehouses, empty churches. A troop of them, on their way to
the Church of Saint-Louis, awoke poor Weber, dreaming troublous,
in the Rue Sartory. Weber has had his waistcoat-pocket full of
balls all day; 'two hundred balls, and two pears of powder!' For
waistcoats were waistcoats then, and had flaps down to mid-thigh.
So many balls he has had all day; but no opportunity of using
them: he turns over now, execrating disloyal bandits; swears a
prayer or two, and straight to sleep again.
Finally, the National Assembly is harangued; which thereupon, on
motion of Mirabeau, discontinues the Penal Code, and dismisses
for this night. Menadism, Sansculottism has cowered into
guard-houses, barracks of Flandre, to the light of cheerful fire;
failing that, to churches, office-houses, sentry-boxes,
wheresoever wretchedness can find a lair. The troublous Day has
brawled itself to rest: no lives yet lost but that of one
warhorse. Insurrectionary Chaos lies slumbering round the Palace,
like Ocean round a Diving-bell,—no crevice yet disclosing itself.
Deep sleep has fallen promiscuously on the high and on the low;
suspending most things, even wrath and famine. Darkness covers
the Earth. But, far on the North-east, Paris flings up her great
yellow gleam; far into the wet black Night. For all is
illuminated there, as in the old July Nights; the streets
deserted, for alarm of war; the Municipals all wakeful; Patrols
hailing, with their hoarse Who-goes. There, as we discover, our
poor slim Louison Chabray, her poor nerves all fluttered, is
arriving about this very hour. There Usher Maillard will arrive,
about an hour hence, 'towards four in the morning.' They report,
successively, to a wakeful Hotel-de-Ville what comfort they can
report; which again, with early dawn, large comfortable Placards,
shall impart to all men.
Lafayette, in the Hotel de Noailles, not far from the Chateau,
having now finished haranguing, sits with his Officers
consulting: at five o'clock the unanimous best counsel is, that a
man so tost and toiled for twenty-four hours and more, fling
himself on a bed, and seek some rest.
Thus, then, has ended the First Act of the Insurrection of Women.
How it will turn on the morrow? The morrow, as always, is with
the Fates! But his Majesty, one may hope, will consent to come
honourably to Paris; at all events, he can visit Paris.
Anti-national Bodyguards, here and elsewhere, must take the
National Oath; make reparation to the Tricolor; Flandre will
swear. There may be much swearing; much public speaking there
will infallibly be: and so, with harangues and vows, may the
matter in some handsome way, wind itself up.
Or, alas, may it not be all otherwise, unhandsome: the consent
not honourable, but extorted, ignominious? Boundless Chaos of
Insurrection presses slumbering round the Palace, like Ocean
round a Diving-bell; and may penetrate at any crevice. Let but
that accumulated insurrectionary mass find entrance! Like the
infinite inburst of water; or say rather, of inflammable,
self-igniting fluid; for example, 'turpentine-and-phosphorus
oil,'—fluid known to Spinola Santerre!
Chapter 1.7.X.
The Grand Entries.
The dull dawn of a new morning, drizzly and chill, had but broken
over Versailles, when it pleased Destiny that a Bodyguard should
look out of window, on the right wing of the Chateau, to see what
prospect there was in Heaven and in Earth. Rascality male and
female is prowling in view of him. His fasting stomach is, with
good cause, sour; he perhaps cannot forbear a passing malison on
them; least of all can he forbear answering such.
Ill words breed worse: till the worst word came; and then the ill
deed. Did the maledicent Bodyguard, getting (_as was too
inevitable_) better malediction than he gave, load his musketoon,
and threaten to fire; and actually fire? Were wise who wist! It
stands asserted; to us not credibly. Be this as it may, menaced
Rascality, in whinnying scorn, is shaking at all Grates: the
fastening of one (_some write, it was a chain merely_) gives way;
Rascality is in the Grand Court, whinnying louder still.
The maledicent Bodyguard, more Bodyguards than he do now give
fire; a man's arm is shattered. Lecointre will depose
(_Deposition de Lecointre in Hist. Parl. iii. 111-115._) that
'the Sieur Cardaine, a National Guard without arms, was stabbed.'
But see, sure enough, poor Jerome l'Heritier, an unarmed National
Guard he too, 'cabinet-maker, a saddler's son, of Paris,' with
the down of youthhood still on his chin,—he reels death-stricken;
rushes to the pavement, scattering it with his blood and
brains!—Allelew! Wilder than Irish wakes, rises the howl: of
pity; of infinite revenge. In few moments, the Grate of the inner
and inmost Court, which they name Court of Marble, this too is
forced, or surprised, and burst open: the Court of Marble too is
overflowed: up the Grand Staircase, up all stairs and entrances
rushes the living Deluge! Deshuttes and Varigny, the two sentry
Bodyguards, are trodden down, are massacred with a hundred pikes.
Women snatch their cutlasses, or any weapon, and storm-in
Menadic:—other women lift the corpse of shot Jerome; lay it down
on the Marble steps; there shall the livid face and smashed head,
dumb for ever, speak.
Wo now to all Bodyguards, mercy is none for them! Miomandre de
Sainte-Marie pleads with soft words, on the Grand Staircase,
'descending four steps:'—to the roaring tornado. His comrades
snatch him up, by the skirts and belts; literally, from the jaws
of Destruction; and slam-to their Door. This also will stand few
instants; the panels shivering in, like potsherds. Barricading
serves not: fly fast, ye Bodyguards; rabid Insurrection, like the
hellhound Chase, uproaring at your heels!
The terrorstruck Bodyguards fly, bolting and barricading; it
follows. Whitherward? Through hall on hall: wo, now! towards the
Queen's Suite of Rooms, in the furtherest room of which the Queen
is now asleep. Five sentinels rush through that long Suite; they
are in the Anteroom knocking loud: "Save the Queen!" Trembling
women fall at their feet with tears; are answered: "Yes, we will
die; save ye the Queen!"
Tremble not, women, but haste: for, lo, another voice shouts far
through the outermost door, "Save the Queen!" and the door shut.
It is brave Miomandre's voice that shouts this second warning. He
has stormed across imminent death to do it; fronts imminent
death, having done it. Brave Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the
same desperate service, was borne down with pikes; his comrades
hardly snatched him in again alive. Miomandre and Tardivet: let
the names of these two Bodyguards, as the names of brave men
should, live long.
Trembling Maids of Honour, one of whom from afar caught glimpse
of Miomandre as well as heard him, hastily wrap the Queen; not in
robes of State. She flies for her life, across the Oeil-de-Boeuf;
against the main door of which too Insurrection batters. She is
in the King's Apartment, in the King's arms; she clasps her
children amid a faithful few. The Imperial-hearted bursts into
mother's tears: "O my friends, save me and my children, O mes
amis, sauvez moi et mes enfans!" The battering of Insurrectionary
axes clangs audible across the Oeil-de-Boeuf. What an hour!
Yes, Friends: a hideous fearful hour; shameful alike to Governed
and Governor; wherein Governed and Governor ignominiously testify
that their relation is at an end. Rage, which had brewed itself
in twenty thousand hearts, for the last four-and-twenty hours,
has taken fire: Jerome's brained corpse lies there as live-coal.
It is, as we said, the infinite Element bursting in: wild-surging
through all corridors and conduits.
Meanwhile, the poor Bodyguards have got hunted mostly into the
Oeil-de-Boeuf. They may die there, at the King's threshhold; they
can do little to defend it. They are heaping tabourets (_stools
of honour_), benches and all moveables, against the door; at
which the axe of Insurrection thunders.—But did brave Miomandre
perish, then, at the Queen's door? No, he was fractured, slashed,
lacerated, left for dead; he has nevertheless crawled hither; and
shall live, honoured of loyal France. Remark also, in flat
contradiction to much which has been said and sung, that
Insurrection did not burst that door he had defended; but hurried
elsewhither, seeking new bodyguards. (_Campan, ii. 75-87._)
Poor Bodyguards, with their Thyestes' Opera-Repast! Well for
them, that Insurrection has only pikes and axes; no right sieging
tools! It shakes and thunders. Must they all perish miserably,
and Royalty with them? Deshuttes and Varigny, massacred at the
first inbreak, have been beheaded in the Marble Court: a
sacrifice to Jerome's manes: Jourdan with the tile-beard did that
duty willingly; and asked, If there were no more? Another captive
they are leading round the corpse, with howl-chauntings: may not
Jourdan again tuck up his sleeves?
And louder and louder rages Insurrection within, plundering if it
cannot kill; louder and louder it thunders at the Oeil-de-Boeuf:
what can now hinder its bursting in?—On a sudden it ceases; the
battering has ceased! Wild rushing: the cries grow fainter: there
is silence, or the tramp of regular steps; then a friendly
knocking: "We are the Centre Grenadiers, old Gardes Francaises:
Open to us, Messieurs of the Garde-du-Corps; we have not
forgotten how you saved us at Fontenoy!" (_Toulongeon, i. 144._)
The door is opened; enter Captain Gondran and the Centre
Grenadiers: there are military embracings; there is sudden
deliverance from death into life.
Strange Sons of Adam! It was to 'exterminate' these
Gardes-du-Corps that the Centre Grenadiers left home: and now
they have rushed to save them from extermination. The memory of
common peril, of old help, melts the rough heart; bosom is
clasped to bosom, not in war. The King shews himself, one moment,
through the door of his Apartment, with: "Do not hurt my
Guards!"—"Soyons freres, Let us be brothers!" cries Captain
Gondran; and again dashes off, with levelled bayonets, to sweep
the Palace clear.
Now too Lafayette, suddenly roused, not from sleep (_for his eyes
had not yet closed_), arrives; with passionate popular eloquence,
with prompt military word of command. National Guards, suddenly
roused, by sound of trumpet and alarm-drum, are all arriving. The
death-melly ceases: the first sky-lambent blaze of Insurrection
is got damped down; it burns now, if unextinguished, yet
flameless, as charred coals do, and not inextinguishable. The
King's Apartments are safe. Ministers, Officials, and even some
loyal National deputies are assembling round their Majesties. The
consternation will, with sobs and confusion, settle down
gradually, into plan and counsel, better or worse.
But glance now, for a moment, from the royal windows! A roaring
sea of human heads, inundating both Courts; billowing against all
passages: Menadic women; infuriated men, mad with revenge, with
love of mischief, love of plunder! Rascality has slipped its
muzzle; and now bays, three-throated, like the Dog of Erebus.
Fourteen Bodyguards are wounded; two massacred, and as we saw,
beheaded; Jourdan asking, "Was it worth while to come so far for
two?" Hapless Deshuttes and Varigny! Their fate surely was sad.
Whirled down so suddenly to the abyss; as men are, suddenly, by
the wide thunder of the Mountain Avalanche, awakened not by them,
awakened far off by others! When the Chateau Clock last struck,
they two were pacing languid, with poised musketoon; anxious
mainly that the next hour would strike. It has struck; to them
inaudible. Their trunks lie mangled: their heads parade, 'on
pikes twelve feet long,' through the streets of Versailles; and
shall, about noon reach the Barriers of Paris,—a too ghastly
contradiction to the large comfortable Placards that have been
posted there!
The other captive Bodyguard is still circling the corpse of
Jerome, amid Indian war-whooping; bloody Tilebeard, with tucked
sleeves, brandishing his bloody axe; when Gondran and the
Grenadiers come in sight. "Comrades, will you see a man massacred
in cold blood?"—"Off, butchers!" answer they; and the poor
Bodyguard is free. Busy runs Gondran, busy run Guards and
Captains; scouring at all corridors; dispersing Rascality and
Robbery; sweeping the Palace clear. The mangled carnage is
removed; Jerome's body to the Townhall, for inquest: the fire of
Insurrection gets damped, more and more, into measurable,
manageable heat.
Transcendent things of all sorts, as in the general outburst of
multitudinous Passion, are huddled together; the ludicrous, nay
the ridiculous, with the horrible. Far over the billowy sea of
heads, may be seen Rascality, caprioling on horses from the Royal
Stud. The Spoilers these; for Patriotism is always infected so,
with a proportion of mere thieves and scoundrels. Gondran
snatched their prey from them in the Chateau; whereupon they
hurried to the Stables, and took horse there. But the generous
Diomedes' steeds, according to Weber, disdained such
scoundrel-burden; and, flinging up their royal heels, did soon
project most of it, in parabolic curves, to a distance, amid
peals of laughter: and were caught. Mounted National Guards
secured the rest.
Now too is witnessed the touching last-flicker of Etiquette;
which sinks not here, in the Cimmerian World-wreckage, without a
sign, as the house-cricket might still chirp in the pealing of a
Trump of Doom. "Monsieur," said some Master of Ceremonies (_one
hopes it might be de Breze_), as Lafayette, in these fearful
moments, was rushing towards the inner Royal Apartments,
"Monsieur, le Roi vous accorde les grandes entrees, Monsieur, the
King grants you the Grand Entries,"—not finding it convenient to
refuse them! (_Toulongeon, 1 App. 120._)
Chapter 1.7.XI.
From Versailles.
However, the Paris National Guard, wholly under arms, has cleared
the Palace, and even occupies the nearer external spaces;
extruding miscellaneous Patriotism, for most part, into the Grand
Court, or even into the Forecourt.
The Bodyguards, you can observe, have now of a verity, 'hoisted
the National Cockade:' for they step forward to the windows or
balconies, hat aloft in hand, on each hat a huge tricolor; and
fling over their bandoleers in sign of surrender; and shout Vive
la Nation. To which how can the generous heart respond but with,
Vive le Roi; vivent les Gardes-du-Corps? His Majesty himself has
appeared with Lafayette on the balcony, and again appears: Vive
le Roi greets him from all throats; but also from some one throat
is heard "Le Roi a Paris, The King to Paris!"
Her Majesty too, on demand, shows herself, though there is peril
in it: she steps out on the balcony, with her little boy and
girl. "No children, Point d'enfans!" cry the voices. She gently
pushes back her children; and stands alone, her hands serenely
crossed on her breast: "should I die," she had said, "I will do
it." Such serenity of heroism has its effect. Lafayette, with
ready wit, in his highflown chivalrous way, takes that fair
queenly hand; and reverently kneeling, kisses it: thereupon the
people do shout Vive la Reine. Nevertheless, poor Weber 'saw'
(_or even thought he saw; for hardly the third part of poor
Weber's experiences, in such hysterical days, will stand
scrutiny_) 'one of these brigands level his musket at her
Majesty,'—with or without intention to shoot; for another of the
brigands 'angrily struck it down.'
So that all, and the Queen herself, nay the very Captain of the
Bodyguards, have grown National! The very Captain of the
Bodyguards steps out now with Lafayette. On the hat of the
repentant man is an enormous tricolor; large as a soup-platter,
or sun-flower; visible to the utmost Forecourt. He takes the
National Oath with a loud voice, elevating his hat; at which
sight all the army raise their bonnets on their bayonets, with
shouts. Sweet is reconcilement to the heart of man. Lafayette has
sworn Flandre; he swears the remaining Bodyguards, down in the
Marble Court; the people clasp them in their arms:—O, my
brothers, why would ye force us to slay you? Behold there is joy
over you, as over returning prodigal sons!—The poor Bodyguards,
now National and tricolor, exchange bonnets, exchange arms; there
shall be peace and fraternity. And still "Vive le Roi;" and also
"Le Roi a Paris," not now from one throat, but from all throats
as one, for it is the heart's wish of all mortals.
Yes, The King to Paris: what else? Ministers may consult, and
National Deputies wag their heads: but there is now no other
possibility. You have forced him to go willingly. "At one
o'clock!" Lafayette gives audible assurance to that purpose; and
universal Insurrection, with immeasurable shout, and a discharge
of all the firearms, clear and rusty, great and small, that it
has, returns him acceptance. What a sound; heard for leagues: a
doom peal!—That sound too rolls away, into the Silence of Ages.
And the Chateau of Versailles stands ever since vacant, hushed
still; its spacious Courts grassgrown, responsive to the hoe of
the weeder. Times and generations roll on, in their confused
Gulf-current; and buildings like builders have their destiny.
Till one o'clock, then, there will be three parties, National
Assembly, National Rascality, National Royalty, all busy enough.
Rascality rejoices; women trim themselves with tricolor. Nay
motherly Paris has sent her Avengers sufficient 'cartloads of
loaves;' which are shouted over, which are gratefully consumed.
The Avengers, in return, are searching for grain-stores; loading
them in fifty waggons; that so a National King, probable
harbinger of all blessings, may be the evident bringer of plenty,
for one.
And thus has Sansculottism made prisoner its King; revoking his
parole. The Monarchy has fallen; and not so much as honourably:
no, ignominiously; with struggle, indeed, oft repeated; but then
with unwise struggle; wasting its strength in fits and paroxysms;
at every new paroxysm, foiled more pitifully than before. Thus
Broglie's whiff of grapeshot, which might have been something,
has dwindled to the pot-valour of an Opera Repast, and O Richard,
O mon Roi. Which again we shall see dwindle to a Favras'
Conspiracy, a thing to be settled by the hanging of one
Chevalier.
Poor Monarchy! But what save foulest defeat can await that man,
who wills, and yet wills not? Apparently the King either has a
right, assertible as such to the death, before God and man; or
else he has no right. Apparently, the one or the other; could he
but know which! May Heaven pity him! Were Louis wise he would
this day abdicate.—Is it not strange so few Kings abdicate; and
none yet heard of has been known to commit suicide? Fritz the
First, of Prussia, alone tried it; and they cut the rope.
As for the National Assembly, which decrees this morning that it
'is inseparable from his Majesty,' and will follow him to Paris,
there may one thing be noted: its extreme want of bodily health.
After the Fourteenth of July there was a certain sickliness
observable among honourable Members; so many demanding passports,
on account of infirm health. But now, for these following days,
there is a perfect murrian: President Mounier, Lally Tollendal,
Clermont Tonnere, and all Constitutional Two-Chamber Royalists
needing change of air; as most No-Chamber Royalists had formerly
done.
For, in truth, it is the second Emigration this that has now
come; most extensive among Commons Deputies, Noblesse, Clergy: so
that 'to Switzerland alone there go sixty thousand.' They will
return in the day of accounts! Yes, and have hot welcome.—But
Emigration on Emigration is the peculiarity of France. One
Emigration follows another; grounded on reasonable fear,
unreasonable hope, largely also on childish pet. The highflyers
have gone first, now the lower flyers; and ever the lower will go
down to the crawlers. Whereby, however, cannot our National
Assembly so much the more commodiously make the Constitution;
your Two-Chamber Anglomaniacs being all safe, distant on foreign
shores? Abbe Maury is seized, and sent back again: he, tough as
tanned leather, with eloquent Captain Cazales and some others,
will stand it out for another year.
But here, meanwhile, the question arises: Was Philippe d'Orleans
seen, this day, 'in the Bois de Boulogne, in grey surtout;'
waiting under the wet sere foliage, what the day might bring
forth? Alas, yes, the Eidolon of him was,—in Weber's and other
such brains. The Chatelet shall make large inquisition into the
matter, examining a hundred and seventy witnesses, and Deputy
Chabroud publish his Report; but disclose nothing further.
(_Rapport de Chabroud (_Moniteur, du 31 December, 1789_)._) What
then has caused these two unparalleled October Days? For surely
such dramatic exhibition never yet enacted itself without
Dramatist and Machinist. Wooden Punch emerges not, with his
domestic sorrows, into the light of day, unless the wire be
pulled: how can human mobs? Was it not d'Orleans then, and
Laclos, Marquis Sillery, Mirabeau and the sons of confusion,
hoping to drive the King to Metz, and gather the spoil? Nay was
it not, quite contrariwise, the Oeil-de-Boeuf, Bodyguard Colonel
de Guiche, Minister Saint-Priest and highflying Loyalists; hoping
also to drive him to Metz; and try it by the sword of civil war?
Good Marquis Toulongeon, the Historian and Deputy, feels
constrained to admit that it was both. (_Toulongeon, i. 150._)
Alas, my Friends, credulous incredulity is a strange matter. But
when a whole Nation is smitten with Suspicion, and sees a
dramatic miracle in the very operation of the gastric juices,
what help is there? Such Nation is already a mere hypochondriac
bundle of diseases; as good as changed into glass; atrabiliar,
decadent; and will suffer crises. Is not Suspicion itself the one
thing to be suspected, as Montaigne feared only fear?
Now, however, the short hour has struck. His Majesty is in his
carriage, with his Queen, sister Elizabeth, and two royal
children. Not for another hour can the infinite Procession get
marshalled, and under way. The weather is dim drizzling; the mind
confused; and noise great.
Processional marches not a few our world has seen; Roman triumphs
and ovations, Cabiric cymbal-beatings, Royal progresses, Irish
funerals: but this of the French Monarchy marching to its bed
remained to be seen. Miles long, and of breadth losing itself in
vagueness, for all the neighbouring country crowds to see. Slow;
stagnating along, like shoreless Lake, yet with a noise like
Niagara, like Babel and Bedlam. A splashing and a tramping; a
hurrahing, uproaring, musket-volleying;—the truest segment of
Chaos seen in these latter Ages! Till slowly it disembogue
itself, in the thickening dusk, into expectant Paris, through a
double row of faces all the way from Passy to the Hotel-de-Ville.
Consider this: Vanguard of National troops; with trains of
artillery; of pikemen and pikewomen, mounted on cannons, on
carts, hackney-coaches, or on foot;—tripudiating, in tricolor
ribbons from head to heel; loaves stuck on the points of
bayonets, green boughs stuck in gun barrels. (_Mercier, Nouveau
Paris, iii. 21._) Next, as main-march, 'fifty cartloads of corn,'
which have been lent, for peace, from the stores of Versailles.
Behind which follow stragglers of the Garde-du-Corps; all
humiliated, in Grenadier bonnets. Close on these comes the Royal
Carriage; come Royal Carriages: for there are an Hundred National
Deputies too, among whom sits Mirabeau,—his remarks not given.
Then finally, pellmell, as rearguard, Flandre, Swiss, Hundred
Swiss, other Bodyguards, Brigands, whosoever cannot get before.
Between and among all which masses, flows without limit
Saint-Antoine, and the Menadic Cohort. Menadic especially about
the Royal Carriage; tripudiating there, covered with tricolor;
singing 'allusive songs;' pointing with one hand to the Royal
Carriage, which the illusions hit, and pointing to the
Provision-wagons, with the other hand, and these words: "Courage,
Friends! We shall not want bread now; we are bringing you the
Baker, the Bakeress, and Baker's Boy (_le Boulanger, la
Boulangere, et le petit Mitron_)." (_Toulongeon, i. 134-161; Deux
Amis (_iii. c. 9_); &c. &c._)
The wet day draggles the tricolor, but the joy is
unextinguishable. Is not all well now? "Ah, Madame, notre bonne
Reine," said some of these Strong-women some days hence, "Ah
Madame, our good Queen, don't be a traitor any more (_ne soyez
plus traitre_), and we will all love you!" Poor Weber went
splashing along, close by the Royal carriage, with the tear in
his eye: 'their Majesties did me the honour,' or I thought they
did it, 'to testify, from time to time, by shrugging of the
shoulders, by looks directed to Heaven, the emotions they felt.'
Thus, like frail cockle, floats the Royal Life-boat, helmless, on
black deluges of Rascality.
Mercier, in his loose way, estimates the Procession and
assistants at two hundred thousand. He says it was one boundless
inarticulate Haha;—transcendent World-Laughter; comparable to the
Saturnalia of the Ancients. Why not? Here too, as we said, is
Human Nature once more human; shudder at it whoso is of
shuddering humour: yet behold it is human. It has 'swallowed all
formulas;' it tripudiates even so. For which reason they that
collect Vases and Antiques, with figures of Dancing Bacchantes
'in wild and all but impossible positions,' may look with some
interest on it.
Thus, however, has the slow-moving Chaos or modern Saturnalia of
the Ancients, reached the Barrier; and must halt, to be harangued
by Mayor Bailly. Thereafter it has to lumber along, between the
double row of faces, in the transcendent heaven-lashing Haha; two
hours longer, towards the Hotel-de-Ville. Then again to be
harangued there, by several persons; by Moreau de Saint-Mery,
among others; Moreau of the Three-thousand orders, now National
Deputy for St. Domingo. To all which poor Louis, who seemed to
'experience a slight emotion' on entering this Townhall, can
answer only that he "comes with pleasure, with confidence among
his people." Mayor Bailly, in reporting it, forgets 'confidence;'
and the poor Queen says eagerly: "Add, with
confidence."—"Messieurs," rejoins Bailly, "You are happier than
if I had not forgot."
Finally, the King is shewn on an upper balcony, by torchlight,
with a huge tricolor in his hat: 'And all the "people," says
Weber, grasped one another's hands;—thinking now surely the New
Era was born.' Hardly till eleven at night can Royalty get to its
vacant, long-deserted Palace of the Tuileries: to lodge there,
somewhat in strolling-player fashion. It is Tuesday, the sixth of
October, 1789.
Poor Louis has Two other Paris Processions to make: one
ludicrous-ignominious like this; the other not ludicrous nor
ignominious, but serious, nay sublime.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
VOLUME II.
THE CONSTITUTION
BOOK 2.I.
THE FEAST OF PIKES
Chapter 2.1.I.
In the Tuileries.
The victim having once got his stroke-of-grace, the catastrophe
can be considered as almost come. There is small interest now in
watching his long low moans: notable only are his sharper
agonies, what convulsive struggles he may take to cast the
torture off from him; and then finally the last departure of life
itself, and how he lies extinct and ended, either wrapt like
Caesar in decorous mantle-folds, or unseemly sunk together, like
one that had not the force even to die.
Was French Royalty, when wrenched forth from its tapestries in
that fashion, on that Sixth of October 1789, such a victim?
Universal France, and Royal Proclamation to all the Provinces,
answers anxiously, No; nevertheless one may fear the worst.
Royalty was beforehand so decrepit, moribund, there is little
life in it to heal an injury. How much of its strength, which was
of the imagination merely, has fled; Rascality having looked
plainly in the King's face, and not died! When the assembled
crows can pluck up their scarecrow, and say to it, Here shalt
thou stand and not there; and can treat with it, and make it,
from an infinite, a quite finite Constitutional scarecrow,—what
is to be looked for? Not in the finite Constitutional scarecrow,
but in what still unmeasured, infinite-seeming force may rally
round it, is there thenceforth any hope. For it is most true that
all available Authority is mystic in its conditions, and comes
'by the grace of God.'
Cheerfuller than watching the death-struggles of Royalism will it
be to watch the growth and gambollings of Sansculottism; for, in
human things, especially in human society, all death is but a
death-birth: thus if the sceptre is departing from Louis, it is
only that, in other forms, other sceptres, were it even
pike-sceptres, may bear sway. In a prurient element, rich with
nutritive influences, we shall find that Sansculottism grows
lustily, and even frisks in not ungraceful sport: as indeed most
young creatures are sportful; nay, may it not be noted further,
that as the grown cat, and cat-species generally, is the
cruellest thing known, so the merriest is precisely the kitten,
or growing cat?
But fancy the Royal Family risen from its truckle-beds on the
morrow of that mad day: fancy the Municipal inquiry, "How would
your Majesty please to lodge?"—and then that the King's rough
answer, "Each may lodge as he can, I am well enough," is congeed
and bowed away, in expressive grins, by the Townhall
Functionaries, with obsequious upholsterers at their back; and
how the Chateau of the Tuileries is repainted, regarnished into a
golden Royal Residence; and Lafayette with his blue National
Guards lies encompassing it, as blue Neptune (_in the language of
poets_) does an island, wooingly. Thither may the wrecks of
rehabilitated Loyalty gather; if it will become Constitutional;
for Constitutionalism thinks no evil; Sansculottism itself
rejoices in the King's countenance. The rubbish of a Menadic
Insurrection, as in this ever-kindly world all rubbish can and
must be, is swept aside; and so again, on clear arena, under new
conditions, with something even of a new stateliness, we begin a
new course of action.
Arthur Young has witnessed the strangest scene: Majesty walking
unattended in the Tuileries Gardens; and miscellaneous tricolor
crowds, who cheer it, and reverently make way for it: the very
Queen commands at lowest respectful silence, regretful avoidance.
(_Arthur Young's Travels, i. 264-280._) Simple ducks, in those
royal waters, quackle for crumbs from young royal fingers: the
little Dauphin has a little railed garden, where he is seen
delving, with ruddy cheeks and flaxen curled hair; also a little
hutch to put his tools in, and screen himself against showers.
What peaceable simplicity! Is it peace of a Father restored to
his children? Or of a Taskmaster who has lost his whip? Lafayette
and the Municipality and universal Constitutionalism assert the
former, and do what is in them to realise it. Such Patriotism as
snarls dangerously, and shows teeth, Patrollotism shall suppress;
or far better, Royalty shall soothe down the angry hair of it, by
gentle pattings; and, most effectual of all, by fuller diet. Yes,
not only shall Paris be fed, but the King's hand be seen in that
work. The household goods of the Poor shall, up to a certain
amount, by royal bounty, be disengaged from pawn, and that
insatiable Mont de Piete disgorge: rides in the city with their
vive-le-roi need not fail; and so by substance and show, shall
Royalty, if man's art can popularise it, be popularised. (_Deux
Amis, iii. c. 10._)
Or, alas, is it neither restored Father nor diswhipped Taskmaster
that walks there; but an anomalous complex of both these, and of
innumerable other heterogeneities; reducible to no rubric, if not
to this newly devised one: King Louis Restorer of French Liberty?
Man indeed, and King Louis like other men, lives in this world to
make rule out of the ruleless; by his living energy, he shall
force the absurd itself to become less absurd. But then if there
be no living energy; living passivity only? King Serpent, hurled
into his unexpected watery dominion, did at least bite, and
assert credibly that he was there: but as for the poor King Log,
tumbled hither and thither as thousandfold chance and other will
than his might direct, how happy for him that he was indeed
wooden; and, doing nothing, could also see and suffer nothing! It
is a distracted business.
For his French Majesty, meanwhile, one of the worst things is
that he can get no hunting. Alas, no hunting henceforth; only a
fatal being-hunted! Scarcely, in the next June weeks, shall he
taste again the joys of the game-destroyer; in next June, and
never more. He sends for his smith-tools; gives, in the course of
the day, official or ceremonial business being ended, 'a few
strokes of the file, quelques coups de lime. (_Le Chateau des
Tuileries, ou recit, &c., par Roussel (_in Hist. Parl. iv.
195-219_)._) Innocent brother mortal, why wert thou not an
obscure substantial maker of locks; but doomed in that other
far-seen craft, to be a maker only of world-follies, unrealities;
things self destructive, which no mortal hammering could rivet
into coherence!
Poor Louis is not without insight, nor even without the elements
of will; some sharpness of temper, spurting at times from a
stagnating character. If harmless inertness could save him, it
were well; but he will slumber and painfully dream, and to do
aught is not given him. Royalist Antiquarians still shew the
rooms where Majesty and suite, in these extraordinary
circumstances, had their lodging. Here sat the Queen;
reading,—for she had her library brought hither, though the King
refused his; taking vehement counsel of the vehement
uncounselled; sorrowing over altered times; yet with sure hope of
better: in her young rosy Boy, has she not the living emblem of
hope! It is a murky, working sky; yet with golden gleams—of dawn,
or of deeper meteoric night? Here again this chamber, on the
other side of the main entrance, was the King's: here his Majesty
breakfasted, and did official work; here daily after breakfast he
received the Queen; sometimes in pathetic friendliness; sometimes
in human sulkiness, for flesh is weak; and, when questioned about
business would answer: "Madame, your business is with the
children." Nay, Sire, were it not better you, your Majesty's
self, took the children? So asks impartial History; scornful that
the thicker vessel was not also the stronger; pity-struck for the
porcelain-clay of humanity rather than for the tile-clay,—though
indeed both were broken!
So, however, in this Medicean Tuileries, shall the French King
and Queen now sit, for one-and-forty months; and see a
wild-fermenting France work out its own destiny, and theirs.
Months bleak, ungenial, of rapid vicissitude; yet with a mild
pale splendour, here and there: as of an April that were leading
to leafiest Summer; as of an October that led only to everlasting
Frost. Medicean Tuileries, how changed since it was a peaceful
Tile field! Or is the ground itself fate-stricken, accursed: an
Atreus' Palace; for that Louvre window is still nigh, out of
which a Capet, whipt of the Furies, fired his signal of the Saint
Bartholomew! Dark is the way of the Eternal as mirrored in this
world of Time: God's way is in the sea, and His path in the great
deep.
Chapter 2.1.II.
In the Salle de Manege.
To believing Patriots, however, it is now clear, that the
Constitution will march, marcher,—had it once legs to stand on.
Quick, then, ye Patriots, bestir yourselves, and make it; shape
legs for it! In the Archeveche, or Archbishop's Palace, his Grace
himself having fled; and afterwards in the Riding-hall, named
Manege, close on the Tuileries: there does a National Assembly
apply itself to the miraculous work. Successfully, had there been
any heaven-scaling Prometheus among them; not successfully since
there was none! There, in noisy debate, for the sessions are
occasionally 'scandalous,' and as many as three speakers have
been seen in the Tribune at once,—let us continue to fancy it
wearing the slow months.
Tough, dogmatic, long of wind is Abbe Maury; Ciceronian pathetic
is Cazales. Keen-trenchant, on the other side, glitters a young
Barnave; abhorrent of sophistry; sheering, like keen Damascus
sabre, all sophistry asunder,—reckless what else he sheer with
it. Simple seemest thou, O solid Dutch-built Petion; if solid,
surely dull. Nor lifegiving in that tone of thine, livelier
polemical Rabaut. With ineffable serenity sniffs great Sieyes,
aloft, alone; his Constitution ye may babble over, ye may mar,
but can by no possibility mend: is not Polity a science he has
exhausted? Cool, slow, two military Lameths are visible, with
their quality sneer, or demi-sneer; they shall gallantly refund
their Mother's Pension, when the Red Book is produced; gallantly
be wounded in duels. A Marquis Toulongeon, whose Pen we yet
thank, sits there; in stoical meditative humour, oftenest silent,
accepts what destiny will send. Thouret and Parlementary Duport
produce mountains of Reformed Law; liberal, Anglomaniac,
available and unavailable. Mortals rise and fall. Shall goose
Gobel, for example,—or Go(_with an umlaut_)bel, for he is of
Strasburg German breed, be a Constitutional Archbishop?
Alone of all men there, Mirabeau may begin to discern clearly
whither all this is tending. Patriotism, accordingly, regrets
that his zeal seems to be getting cool. In that famed
Pentecost-Night of the Fourth of August, when new Faith rose
suddenly into miraculous fire, and old Feudality was burnt up,
men remarked that Mirabeau took no hand in it; that, in fact, he
luckily happened to be absent. But did he not defend the Veto,
nay Veto Absolu; and tell vehement Barnave that six hundred
irresponsible senators would make of all tyrannies the
insupportablest? Again, how anxious was he that the King's
Ministers should have seat and voice in the National
Assembly;—doubtless with an eye to being Minister himself!
Whereupon the National Assembly decides, what is very momentous,
that no Deputy shall be Minister; he, in his haughty stormful
manner, advising us to make it, 'no Deputy called Mirabeau.'
(_Moniteur, Nos. 65, 86 (_29th September, 7th November, 1789_)._)
A man of perhaps inveterate Feudalisms; of stratagems; too often
visible leanings towards the Royalist side: a man suspect; whom
Patriotism will unmask! Thus, in these June days, when the
question Who shall have right to declare war? comes on, you hear
hoarse Hawkers sound dolefully through the streets, "Grand
Treason of Count Mirabeau, price only one sou;"—because he pleads
that it shall be not the Assembly but the King! Pleads; nay
prevails: for in spite of the hoarse Hawkers, and an endless
Populace raised by them to the pitch even of 'Lanterne,' he
mounts the Tribune next day; grim-resolute; murmuring aside to
his friends that speak of danger: "I know it: I must come hence
either in triumph, or else torn in fragments;" and it was in
triumph that he came.
A man of stout heart; whose popularity is not of the populace,
'pas populaciere;' whom no clamour of unwashed mobs without
doors, or of washed mobs within, can scarce from his way! Dumont
remembers hearing him deliver a Report on Marseilles; 'every word
was interrupted on the part of the Cote Droit by abusive
epithets; calumniator, liar, assassin, scoundrel (_scelerat_):
Mirabeau pauses a moment, and, in a honeyed tone, addressing the
most furious, says: "I wait, Messieurs, till these amenities be
exhausted."' (_Dumont, Souvenirs, p. 278._) A man enigmatic,
difficult to unmask! For example, whence comes his money? Can the
profit of a Newspaper, sorely eaten into by Dame Le Jay; can
this, and the eighteen francs a-day your National Deputy has, be
supposed equal to this expenditure? House in the Chaussee
d'Antin; Country-house at Argenteuil; splendours, sumptuosities,
orgies;—living as if he had a mint! All saloons barred against
Adventurer Mirabeau, are flung wide open to King Mirabeau, the
cynosure of Europe, whom female France flutters to behold,—though
the Man Mirabeau is one and the same. As for money, one may
conjecture that Royalism furnishes it; which if Royalism do, will
not the same be welcome, as money always is to him?
'Sold,' whatever Patriotism thinks, he cannot readily be: the
spiritual fire which is in that man; which shining through such
confusions is nevertheless Conviction, and makes him strong, and
without which he had no strength,—is not buyable nor saleable; in
such transference of barter, it would vanish and not be. Perhaps
'paid and not sold, paye pas vendu:' as poor Rivarol, in the
unhappier converse way, calls himself 'sold and not paid!' A man
travelling, comet-like, in splendour and nebulosity, his wild
way; whom telescopic Patriotism may long watch, but, without
higher mathematics, will not make out. A questionable most
blameable man; yet to us the far notablest of all. With rich
munificence, as we often say, in a most blinkard, bespectacled,
logic-chopping generation, Nature has gifted this man with an
eye. Welcome is his word, there where he speaks and works; and
growing ever welcomer; for it alone goes to the heart of the
business: logical cobwebbery shrinks itself together; and thou
seest a thing, how it is, how is may be worked with.
Unhappily our National Assembly has much to do: a France to
regenerate; and France is short of so many requisites; short even
of cash! These same Finances give trouble enough; no choking of
the Deficit; which gapes ever, Give, give! To appease the Deficit
we venture on a hazardous step, sale of the Clergy's Lands and
superfluous Edifices; most hazardous. Nay, given the sale, who is
to buy them, ready-money having fled? Wherefore, on the 19th day
of December, a paper-money of 'Assignats,' of Bonds secured, or
assigned, on that Clerico-National Property, and unquestionable
at least in payment of that,—is decreed: the first of a long
series of like financial performances, which shall astonish
mankind. So that now, while old rags last, there shall be no lack
of circulating medium; whether of commodities to circulate
thereon is another question. But, after all, does not this
Assignat business speak volumes for modern science? Bankruptcy,
we may say, was come, as the end of all Delusions needs must
come: yet how gently, in softening diffusion, in mild succession,
was it hereby made to fall;—like no all-destroying avalanche;
like gentle showers of a powdery impalpable snow, shower after
shower, till all was indeed buried, and yet little was destroyed
that could not be replaced, be dispensed with! To such length has
modern machinery reached. Bankruptcy, we said, was great; but
indeed Money itself is a standing miracle.
On the whole, it is a matter of endless difficulty, that of the
Clergy. Clerical property may be made the Nation's, and the
Clergy hired servants of the State; but if so, is it not an
altered Church? Adjustment enough, of the most confused sort, has
become unavoidable. Old landmarks, in any sense, avail not in a
new France. Nay literally, the very Ground is new divided; your
old party-coloured Provinces become new uniform Departments,
Eighty-three in number;—whereby, as in some sudden shifting of
the Earth's axis, no mortal knows his new latitude at once. The
Twelve old Parlements too, what is to be done with them? The old
Parlements are declared to be all 'in permanent vacation,'—till
once the new equal-justice, of Departmental Courts, National
Appeal-Court, of elective Justices, Justices of Peace, and other
Thouret-and-Duport apparatus be got ready. They have to sit
there, these old Parlements, uneasily waiting; as it were, with
the rope round their neck; crying as they can, Is there none to
deliver us? But happily the answer being, None, none, they are a
manageable class, these Parlements. They can be bullied, even
into silence; the Paris Parliament, wiser than most, has never
whimpered. They will and must sit there; in such vacation as is
fit; their Chamber of Vacation distributes in the interim what
little justice is going. With the rope round their neck, their
destiny may be succinct! On the 13th of November 1790, Mayor
Bailly shall walk to the Palais de Justice, few even heeding him;
and with municipal seal-stamp and a little hot wax, seal up the
Parlementary Paper-rooms,—and the dread Parlement of Paris pass
away, into Chaos, gently as does a Dream! So shall the Parlements
perish, succinctly; and innumerable eyes be dry.
Not so the Clergy. For granting even that Religion were dead;
that it had died, half-centuries ago, with unutterable Dubois; or
emigrated lately, to Alsace, with Necklace-Cardinal Rohan; or
that it now walked as goblin revenant with Bishop Talleyrand of
Autun; yet does not the Shadow of Religion, the Cant of Religion,
still linger? The Clergy have means and material: means, of
number, organization, social weight; a material, at lowest, of
public ignorance, known to be the mother of devotion. Nay,
withal, is it incredible that there might, in simple hearts,
latent here and there like gold grains in the mud-beach, still
dwell some real Faith in God, of so singular and tenacious a sort
that even a Maury or a Talleyrand, could still be the symbol for
it?—Enough, and Clergy has strength, the Clergy has craft and
indignation. It is a most fatal business this of the Clergy. A
weltering hydra-coil, which the National Assembly has stirred up
about its ears; hissing, stinging; which cannot be appeased,
alive; which cannot be trampled dead! Fatal, from first to last!
Scarcely after fifteen months' debating, can a Civil Constitution
of the Clergy be so much as got to paper; and then for getting it
into reality? Alas, such Civil Constitution is but an agreement
to disagree. It divides France from end to end, with a new split,
infinitely complicating all the other splits;—Catholicism, what
of it there is left, with the Cant of Catholicism, raging on the
one side, and sceptic Heathenism on the other; both, by
contradiction , waxing fanatic. What endless jarring, of
Refractory hated Priests, and Constitutional despised ones; of
tender consciences, like the King's, and consciences hot-seared,
like certain of his People's: the whole to end in Feasts of
Reason and a War of La Vendee! So deep-seated is Religion in the
heart of man, and holds of all infinite passions. If the dead
echo of it still did so much, what could not the living voice of
it once do?
Finance and Constitution, Law and Gospel: this surely were work
enough; yet this is not all. In fact, the Ministry, and Necker
himself whom a brass inscription 'fastened by the people over his
door-lintel' testifies to be the 'Ministre adore,' are dwindling
into clearer and clearer nullity. Execution or legislation,
arrangement or detail, from their nerveless fingers all drops
undone; all lights at last on the toiled shoulders of an august
Representative Body. Heavy-laden National Assembly! It has to
hear of innumerable fresh revolts, Brigand expeditions; of
Chateaus in the West, especially of Charter-chests, Chartiers,
set on fire; for there too the overloaded Ass frightfully
recalcitrates. Of Cities in the South full of heats and
jealousies; which will end in crossed sabres, Marseilles against
Toulon, and Carpentras beleaguered by Avignon;—such Royalist
collision in a career of Freedom; nay Patriot collision, which a
mere difference of velocity will bring about! Of a Jourdan
Coup-tete, who has skulked thitherward, from the claws of the
Chatelet; and will raise whole scoundrel-regiments.
Also it has to hear of Royalist Camp of Jales: Jales
mountain-girdled Plain, amid the rocks of the Cevennes; whence
Royalism, as is feared and hoped, may dash down like a mountain
deluge, and submerge France! A singular thing this camp of Jales;
existing mostly on paper. For the Soldiers at Jales, being
peasants or National Guards, were in heart sworn Sansculottes;
and all that the Royalist Captains could do was, with false
words, to keep them, or rather keep the report of them, drawn up
there, visible to all imaginations, for a terror and a sign,—if
peradventure France might be reconquered by theatrical machinery,
by the picture of a Royalist Army done to the life! (_Dampmartin,
Evenemens, i. 208._) Not till the third summer was this portent,
burning out by fits and then fading, got finally extinguished;
was the old Castle of Jales, no Camp being visible to the bodily
eye, got blown asunder by some National Guards.
Also it has to hear not only of Brissot and his Friends of the
Blacks, but by and by of a whole St. Domingo blazing skyward;
blazing in literal fire, and in far worse metaphorical; beaconing
the nightly main. Also of the shipping interest, and the
landed-interest, and all manner of interests, reduced to
distress. Of Industry every where manacled, bewildered; and only
Rebellion thriving. Of sub-officers, soldiers and sailors in
mutiny by land and water. Of soldiers, at Nanci, as we shall see,
needing to be cannonaded by a brave Bouille. Of sailors, nay the
very galley-slaves, at Brest, needing also to be cannonaded; but
with no Bouille to do it. For indeed, to say it in a word, in
those days there was no King in Israel, and every man did that
which was right in his own eyes. (_See Deux Amis, iii. c. 14; iv.
c. 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 14. Expedition des Volontaires de Brest sur
Lannion; Les Lyonnais Sauveurs des Dauphinois; Massacre au Mans;
Troubles du Maine (_Pamphlets and Excerpts, in Hist. Parl. iii.
251; iv. 162-168_), &c._)
Such things has an august National Assembly to hear of, as it
goes on regenerating France. Sad and stern: but what remedy? Get
the Constitution ready; and all men will swear to it: for do not
'Addresses of adhesion' arrive by the cartload? In this manner,
by Heaven's blessing, and a Constitution got ready, shall the
bottomless fire-gulf be vaulted in, with rag-paper; and Order
will wed Freedom, and live with her there,—till it grow too hot
for them. O Cote Gauche, worthy are ye, as the adhesive Addresses
generally say, to 'fix the regards of the Universe;' the regards
of this one poor Planet, at lowest!—
Nay, it must be owned, the Cote Droit makes a still madder
figure. An irrational generation; irrational, imbecile, and with
the vehement obstinacy characteristic of that; a generation which
will not learn. Falling Bastilles, Insurrections of Women,
thousands of smoking Manorhouses, a country bristling with no
crop but that of Sansculottic steel: these were tolerably
didactic lessons; but them they have not taught. There are still
men, of whom it was of old written, Bray them in a mortar! Or, in
milder language, They have wedded their delusions: fire nor
steel, nor any sharpness of Experience, shall sever the bond;
till death do us part! Of such may the Heavens have mercy; for
the Earth, with her rigorous Necessity, will have none.
Admit, at the same time, that it was most natural. Man lives by
Hope: Pandora when her box of gods'-gifts flew all out, and
became gods'-curses, still retained Hope. How shall an irrational
mortal, when his high-place is never so evidently pulled down,
and he, being irrational, is left resourceless,—part with the
belief that it will be rebuilt? It would make all so straight
again; it seems so unspeakably desirable; so reasonable,—would
you but look at it aright! For, must not the thing which was
continue to be; or else the solid World dissolve? Yes, persist, O
infatuated Sansculottes of France! Revolt against constituted
Authorities; hunt out your rightful Seigneurs, who at bottom so
loved you, and readily shed their blood for you,—in country's
battles as at Rossbach and elsewhere; and, even in preserving
game, were preserving you, could ye but have understood it: hunt
them out, as if they were wild wolves; set fire to their Chateaus
and Chartiers as to wolf-dens; and what then? Why, then turn
every man his hand against his fellow! In confusion, famine,
desolation, regret the days that are gone; rueful recall them,
recall us with them. To repentant prayers we will not be deaf.
So, with dimmer or clearer consciousness, must the Right Side
reason and act. An inevitable position perhaps; but a most false
one for them. Evil, be thou our good: this henceforth must
virtually be their prayer. The fiercer the effervescence grows,
the sooner will it pass; for after all it is but some mad
effervescence; the World is solid, and cannot dissolve.
For the rest, if they have any positive industry, it is that of
plots, and backstairs conclaves. Plots which cannot be executed;
which are mostly theoretic on their part;—for which nevertheless
this and the other practical Sieur Augeard, Sieur Maillebois,
Sieur Bonne Savardin, gets into trouble, gets imprisoned, and
escapes with difficulty. Nay there is a poor practical Chevalier
Favras who, not without some passing reflex on Monsieur himself,
gets hanged for them, amid loud uproar of the world. Poor Favras,
he keeps dictating his last will at the 'Hotel-de-Ville, through
the whole remainder of the day,' a weary February day; offers to
reveal secrets, if they will save him; handsomely declines since
they will not; then dies, in the flare of torchlight, with
politest composure; remarking, rather than exclaiming, with
outspread hands: "People, I die innocent; pray for me." (_See
Deux Amis, iv. c. 14, 7; Hist. Parl. vi. 384._) Poor Favras;—type
of so much that has prowled indefatigable over France, in days
now ending; and, in freer field, might have earned instead of
prowling,—to thee it is no theory!
In the Senate-house again, the attitude of the Right Side is that
of calm unbelief. Let an august National Assembly make a
Fourth-of-August Abolition of Feudality; declare the Clergy
State-servants who shall have wages; vote Suspensive Vetos, new
Law-Courts; vote or decree what contested thing it will; have it
responded to from the four corners of France, nay get King's
Sanction, and what other Acceptance were conceivable,—the Right
Side, as we find, persists, with imperturbablest tenacity, in
considering, and ever and anon shews that it still considers, all
these so-called Decrees as mere temporary whims, which indeed
stand on paper, but in practice and fact are not, and cannot be.
Figure the brass head of an Abbe Maury flooding forth Jesuitic
eloquence in this strain; dusky d'Espremenil, Barrel Mirabeau
(_probably in liquor_), and enough of others, cheering him from
the Right; and, for example, with what visage a seagreen
Robespierre eyes him from the Left. And how Sieyes ineffably
sniffs on him, or does not deign to sniff; and how the Galleries
groan in spirit, or bark rabid on him: so that to escape the
Lanterne, on stepping forth, he needs presence of mind, and a
pair of pistols in his girdle! For he is one of the toughest of
men.
Here indeed becomes notable one great difference between our two
kinds of civil war; between the modern lingual or
Parliamentary-logical kind, and the ancient, or manual kind, in
the steel battle-field;—much to the disadvantage of the former.
In the manual kind, where you front your foe with drawn weapon,
one right stroke is final; for, physically speaking, when the
brains are out the man does honestly die, and trouble you no
more. But how different when it is with arguments you fight! Here
no victory yet definable can be considered as final. Beat him
down, with Parliamentary invective, till sense be fled; cut him
in two, hanging one half in this dilemma-horn, the other on that;
blow the brains or thinking-faculty quite out of him for the
time: it skills not; he rallies and revives on the morrow;
to-morrow he repairs his golden fires! The think that will
logically extinguish him is perhaps still a desideratum in
Constitutional civilisation. For how, till a man know, in some
measure, at what point he becomes logically defunct, can
Parliamentary Business be carried on, and Talk cease or slake?
Doubtless it was some feeling of this difficulty; and the clear
insight how little such knowledge yet existed in the French
Nation, new in the Constitutional career, and how defunct
Aristocrats would continue to walk for unlimited periods, as
Partridge the Alamanack-maker did,—that had sunk into the deep
mind of People's-friend Marat, an eminently practical mind; and
had grown there, in that richest putrescent soil, into the most
original plan of action ever submitted to a People. Not yet has
it grown; but it has germinated, it is growing; rooting itself
into Tartarus, branching towards Heaven: the second season hence,
we shall see it risen out of the bottomless Darkness, full-grown,
into disastrous Twilight,—a Hemlock-tree, great as the world; on
or under whose boughs all the People's-friends of the world may
lodge. 'Two hundred and sixty thousand Aristocrat heads:' that is
the precisest calculation, though one would not stand on a few
hundreds; yet we never rise as high as the round three hundred
thousand. Shudder at it, O People; but it is as true as that ye
yourselves, and your People's-friend, are alive. These prating
Senators of yours hover ineffectual on the barren letter, and
will never save the Revolution. A Cassandra-Marat cannot do it,
with his single shrunk arm; but with a few determined men it were
possible. "Give me," said the People's-friend, in his cold way,
when young Barbaroux, once his pupil in a course of what was
called Optics, went to see him, "Give me two hundred Naples
Bravoes, armed each with a good dirk, and a muff on his left arm
by way of shield: with them I will traverse France, and
accomplish the Revolution." (_Memoires de Barbaroux (_Paris,
1822_), p. 57._) Nay, be brave, young Barbaroux; for thou seest,
there is no jesting in those rheumy eyes; in that soot-bleared
figure, most earnest of created things; neither indeed is there
madness, of the strait-waistcoat sort.
Such produce shall the Time ripen in cavernous Marat, the man
forbid; living in Paris cellars, lone as fanatic Anchorite in his
Thebaid; say, as far-seen Simon on his Pillar,—taking peculiar
views therefrom. Patriots may smile; and, using him as bandog now
to be muzzled, now to be let bark, name him, as Desmoulins does,
'Maximum of Patriotism' and 'Cassandra-Marat:' but were it not
singular if this dirk-and-muff plan of his (_with superficial
modifications_) proved to be precisely the plan adopted?
After this manner, in these circumstances, do august Senators
regenerate France. Nay, they are, in very deed, believed to be
regenerating it; on account of which great fact, main fact of
their history, the wearied eye can never be permitted wholly to
ignore them.
But looking away now from these precincts of the Tuileries, where
Constitutional Royalty, let Lafayette water it as he will,
languishes too like a cut branch; and august Senators are perhaps
at bottom only perfecting their 'theory of defective verbs,'—how
does the young Reality, young Sansculottism thrive? The attentive
observer can answer: It thrives bravely; putting forth new buds;
expanding the old buds into leaves, into boughs. Is not French
Existence, as before, most prurient, all loosened, most nutrient
for it? Sansculottism has the property of growing by what other
things die of: by agitation, contention, disarrangement; nay in a
word, by what is the symbol and fruit of all these: Hunger.
In such a France as this, Hunger, as we have remarked, can hardly
fail. The Provinces, the Southern Cities feel it in their turn;
and what it brings: Exasperation, preternatural Suspicion. In
Paris some halcyon days of abundance followed the Menadic
Insurrection, with its Versailles grain-carts, and recovered
Restorer of Liberty; but they could not continue. The month is
still October when famishing Saint-Antoine, in a moment of
passion, seizes a poor Baker, innocent 'Francois the Baker;'
(_21st October, 1789 (_Moniteur, No. 76_)._) and hangs him, in
Constantinople wise;—but even this, singular as it my seem, does
not cheapen bread! Too clear it is, no Royal bounty, no Municipal
dexterity can adequately feed a Bastille-destroying Paris.
Wherefore, on view of the hanged Baker, Constitutionalism in
sorrow and anger demands 'Loi Martiale,' a kind of Riot Act;—and
indeed gets it, most readily, almost before the sun goes down.
This is that famed Martial law, with its Red Flag, its 'Drapeau
Rouge:' in virtue of which Mayor Bailly, or any Mayor, has but
henceforth to hang out that new Oriflamme of his; then to read or
mumble something about the King's peace; and, after certain
pauses, serve any undispersing Assemblage with musket-shot, or
whatever shot will disperse it. A decisive Law; and most just on
one proviso: that all Patrollotism be of God, and all
mob-assembling be of the Devil;—otherwise not so just. Mayor
Bailly be unwilling to use it! Hang not out that new Oriflamme,
flame not of gold but of the want of gold! The thrice-blessed
Revolution is done, thou thinkest? If so it will be well with
thee.
But now let no mortal say henceforth that an august National
Assembly wants riot: all it ever wanted was riot enough to
balance Court-plotting; all it now wants, of Heaven or of Earth,
is to get its theory of defective verbs perfected.
Chapter 2.1.III.
The Muster.
With famine and a Constitutional theory of defective verbs going
on, all other excitement is conceivable. A universal shaking and
sifting of French Existence this is: in the course of which, for
one thing, what a multitude of low-lying figures are sifted to
the top, and set busily to work there!
Dogleech Marat, now for-seen as Simon Stylites, we already know;
him and others, raised aloft. The mere sample, these, of what is
coming, of what continues coming, upwards from the realm of
Night!—Chaumette, by and by Anaxagoras Chaumette, one already
descries: mellifluous in street-groups; not now a sea-boy on the
high and giddy mast: a mellifluous tribune of the common people,
with long curling locks, on bourne-stone of the thoroughfares;
able sub-editor too; who shall rise—to the very gallows. Clerk
Tallien, he also is become sub-editor; shall become able editor;
and more. Bibliopolic Momoro, Typographic Pruhomme see new trades
opening. Collot d'Herbois, tearing a passion to rags, pauses on
the Thespian boards; listens, with that black bushy head, to the
sound of the world's drama: shall the Mimetic become Real? Did ye
hiss him, O men of Lyons? (_Buzot, Memoires (_Paris, 1823_), p.
90._) Better had ye clapped!
Happy now, indeed, for all manner of mimetic, half-original men!
Tumid blustering, with more or less of sincerity, which need not
be entirely sincere, yet the sincerer the better, is like to go
far. Shall we say, the Revolution-element works itself rarer and
rarer; so that only lighter and lighter bodies will float in it;
till at last the mere blown-bladder is your only swimmer?
Limitation of mind, then vehemence, promptitude, audacity, shall
all be available; to which add only these two: cunning and good
lungs. Good fortune must be presupposed. Accordingly, of all
classes the rising one, we observe, is now the Attorney class:
witness Bazires, Carriers, Fouquier-Tinvilles, Bazoche-Captain
Bourdons: more than enough. Such figures shall Night, from her
wonder-bearing bosom, emit; swarm after swarm. Of another deeper
and deepest swarm, not yet dawned on the astonished eye; of
pilfering Candle-snuffers, Thief-valets, disfrocked Capuchins,
and so many Heberts, Henriots, Ronsins, Rossignols, let us, as
long as possible, forbear speaking.
Thus, over France, all stirs that has what the Physiologists call
irritability in it: how much more all wherein irritability has
perfected itself into vitality; into actual vision, and force
that can will! All stirs; and if not in Paris, flocks thither.
Great and greater waxes President Danton in his Cordeliers
Section; his rhetorical tropes are all 'gigantic:' energy flashes
from his black brows, menaces in his athletic figure, rolls in
the sound of his voice 'reverberating from the domes;' this man
also, like Mirabeau, has a natural eye, and begins to see whither
Constitutionalism is tending, though with a wish in it different
from Mirabeau's.
Remark, on the other hand, how General Dumouriez has quitted
Normandy and the Cherbourg Breakwater, to come—whither we may
guess. It is his second or even third trial at Paris, since this
New Era began; but now it is in right earnest, for he has quitted
all else. Wiry, elastic unwearied man; whose life was but a
battle and a march! No, not a creature of Choiseul's; "the
creature of God and of my sword,"—he fiercely answered in old
days. Overfalling Corsican batteries, in the deadly fire-hail;
wriggling invincible from under his horse, at Closterkamp of the
Netherlands, though tethered with 'crushed stirrup-iron and
nineteen wounds;' tough, minatory, standing at bay, as forlorn
hope, on the skirts of Poland; intriguing, battling in cabinet
and field; roaming far out, obscure, as King's spial, or sitting
sealed up, enchanted in Bastille; fencing, pamphleteering,
scheming and struggling from the very birth of him, (_Dumouriez,
Memoires, i. 28, &c._)—the man has come thus far. How repressed,
how irrepressible! Like some incarnate spirit in prison, which
indeed he was; hewing on granite walls for deliverance; striking
fire flashes from them. And now has the general earthquake rent
his cavern too? Twenty years younger, what might he not have
done! But his hair has a shade of gray: his way of thought is all
fixed, military. He can grow no further, and the new world is in
such growth. We will name him, on the whole, one of Heaven's
Swiss; without faith; wanting above all things work, work on any
side. Work also is appointed him; and he will do it.
Not from over France only are the unrestful flocking towards
Paris; but from all sides of Europe. Where the carcase is,
thither will the eagles gather. Think how many a Spanish Guzman,
Martinico Fournier named 'Fournier l'Americain,' Engineer Miranda
from the very Andes, were flocking or had flocked! Walloon
Pereyra might boast of the strangest parentage: him, they say,
Prince Kaunitz the Diplomatist heedlessly dropped;' like
ostrich-egg, to be hatched of Chance—into an ostrich-eater!
Jewish or German Freys do business in the great Cesspool of Agio;
which Cesspool this Assignat-fiat has quickened, into a Mother of
dead dogs. Swiss Claviere could found no Socinian Genevese Colony
in Ireland; but he paused, years ago, prophetic before the
Minister's Hotel at Paris; and said, it was borne on his mind
that he one day was to be Minister, and laughed. (_Dumont,
Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 399._) Swiss Pachc, on the other hand,
sits sleekheaded, frugal; the wonder of his own alley, and even
of neighbouring ones, for humility of mind, and a thought deeper
than most men's: sit there, Tartuffe, till wanted! Ye Italian
Dufournys, Flemish Prolys, flit hither all ye bipeds of prey!
Come whosesoever head is hot; thou of mind ungoverned, be it
chaos as of undevelopment or chaos as of ruin; the man who cannot
get known, the man who is too well known; if thou have any
vendible faculty, nay if thou have but edacity and loquacity,
come! They come; with hot unutterabilities in their heart; as
Pilgrims towards a miraculous shrine. Nay how many come as vacant
Strollers, aimless, of whom Europe is full merely towards
something! For benighted fowls, when you beat their bushes, rush
towards any light. Thus Frederick Baron Trenck too is here;
mazed, purblind, from the cells of Magdeburg; Minotauric cells,
and his Ariadne lost! Singular to say, Trenck, in these years,
sells wine; not indeed in bottle, but in wood.
Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her
live-saving Needham; to whom was solemnly presented a 'civic
sword,'—long since rusted into nothingness. Her Paine: rebellious
Staymaker; unkempt; who feels that he, a single Needleman, did by
his 'Common Sense' Pamphlet, free America;—that he can and will
free all this World; perhaps even the other. Price-Stanhope
Constitutional Association sends over to congratulate;
(_Moniteur, 10 Novembre, 7 Decembre, 1789._) welcomed by National
Assembly, though they are but a London Club; whom Burke and
Toryism eye askance.
On thee too, for country's sake, O Chevalier John Paul, be a word
spent, or misspent! In faded naval uniform, Paul Jones lingers
visible here; like a wine-skin from which the wine is all drawn.
Like the ghost of himself! Low is his once loud bruit; scarcely
audible, save, with extreme tedium in ministerial ante-chambers;
in this or the other charitable dining-room, mindful of the past.
What changes; culminatings and declinings! Not now, poor Paul,
thou lookest wistful over the Solway brine, by the foot of native
Criffel, into blue mountainous Cumberland, into blue Infinitude;
environed with thrift, with humble friendliness; thyself, young
fool, longing to be aloft from it, or even to be away from it.
Yes, beyond that sapphire Promontory, which men name St. Bees,
which is not sapphire either, but dull sandstone, when one gets
close to it, there is a world. Which world thou too shalt taste
of!—From yonder White Haven rise his smoke-clouds; ominous though
ineffectual. Proud Forth quakes at his bellying sails; had not
the wind suddenly shifted. Flamborough reapers, homegoing, pause
on the hill-side: for what sulphur-cloud is that that defaces the
sleek sea; sulphur-cloud spitting streaks of fire? A sea
cockfight it is, and of the hottest; where British Serapis and
French-American Bon Homme Richard do lash and throttle each
other, in their fashion; and lo the desperate valour has
suffocated the deliberate, and Paul Jones too is of the Kings of
the Sea!
The Euxine, the Meotian waters felt thee next, and long-skirted
Turks, O Paul; and thy fiery soul has wasted itself in thousand
contradictions;—to no purpose. For, in far lands, with scarlet
Nassau-Siegens, with sinful Imperial Catherines, is not the
heart-broken, even as at home with the mean? Poor Paul! hunger
and dispiritment track thy sinking footsteps: once or at most
twice, in this Revolution-tumult the figure of thee emerges;
mute, ghost-like, as 'with stars dim-twinkling through.' And
then, when the light is gone quite out, a National Legislature
grants 'ceremonial funeral!' As good had been the natural
Presbyterian Kirk-bell, and six feet of Scottish earth, among the
dust of thy loved ones.—Such world lay beyond the Promontory of
St. Bees. Such is the life of sinful mankind here below.
But of all strangers, far the notablest for us is Baron Jean
Baptiste de Clootz;—or, dropping baptisms and feudalisms,
World-Citizen Anacharsis Clootz, from Cleves. Him mark, judicious
Reader. Thou hast known his Uncle, sharp-sighted thorough-going
Cornelius de Pauw, who mercilessly cuts down cherished illusions;
and of the finest antique Spartans, will make mere modern
cutthroat Mainots. (_De Pauw, Recherches sur les Grecs, &c._) The
like stuff is in Anacharsis: hot metal; full of scoriae, which
should and could have been smelted out, but which will not. He
has wandered over this terraqueous Planet; seeking, one may say,
the Paradise we lost long ago. He has seen English Burke; has
been seen of the Portugal Inquisition; has roamed, and fought,
and written; is writing, among other things, 'Evidences of the
Mahometan Religion.' But now, like his Scythian adoptive
godfather, he finds himself in the Paris Athens; surely, at last,
the haven of his soul. A dashing man, beloved at Patriotic
dinner-tables; with gaiety, nay with humour; headlong, trenchant,
of free purse; in suitable costume; though what mortal ever more
despised costumes? Under all costumes Anacharsis seeks the man;
not Stylites Marat will more freely trample costumes, if they
hold no man. This is the faith of Anacharsis: That there is a
Paradise discoverable; that all costumes ought to hold men. O
Anacharsis, it is a headlong, swift-going faith. Mounted thereon,
meseems, thou art bound hastily for the City of Nowhere; and wilt
arrive! At best, we may say, arrive in good riding attitude;
which indeed is something.
So many new persons, and new things, have come to occupy this
France. Her old Speech and Thought, and Activity which springs
from those, are all changing; fermenting towards unknown issues.
To the dullest peasant, as he sits sluggish, overtoiled, by his
evening hearth, one idea has come: that of Chateaus burnt; of
Chateaus combustible. How altered all Coffeehouses, in Province
or Capital! The Antre de Procope has now other questions than the
Three Stagyrite Unities to settle; not theatre-controversies, but
a world-controversy: there, in the ancient pigtail mode, or with
modern Brutus' heads, do well-frizzed logicians hold hubbub, and
Chaos umpire sits. The ever-enduring Melody of Paris Saloons has
got a new ground-tone: ever-enduring; which has been heard, and
by the listening Heaven too, since Julian the Apostate's time and
earlier; mad now as formerly.
Ex-Censor Suard, Ex-Censor, for we have freedom of the Press; he
may be seen there; impartial, even neutral. Tyrant Grimm rolls
large eyes, over a questionable coming Time. Atheist Naigeon,
beloved disciple of Diderot, crows, in his small difficult way,
heralding glad dawn. (_Naigeon: Addresse a l'Assemblee Nationale
(_Paris, 1790_) sur la liberte des opinions._) But, on the other
hand, how many Morellets, Marmontels, who had sat all their life
hatching Philosophe eggs, cackle now, in a state bordering on
distraction, at the brood they have brought out! (_See Marmontel,
Memoires, passim; Morellet, Memoires, &c._) It was so delightful
to have one's Philosophe Theorem demonstrated, crowned in the
saloons: and now an infatuated people will not continue
speculative, but have Practice?
There also observe Preceptress Genlis, or Sillery, or
Sillery-Genlis,—for our husband is both Count and Marquis, and we
have more than one title. Pretentious, frothy; a puritan yet
creedless; darkening counsel by words without wisdom! For, it is
in that thin element of the Sentimentalist and
Distinguished-Female that Sillery-Genlis works; she would gladly
be sincere, yet can grow no sincerer than sincere-cant:
sincere-cant of many forms, ending in the devotional form. For
the present, on a neck still of moderate whiteness, she wears as
jewel a miniature Bastille, cut on mere sandstone, but then
actual Bastille sandstone. M. le Marquis is one of d'Orleans's
errandmen; in National Assembly, and elsewhere. Madame, for her
part, trains up a youthful d'Orleans generation in what
superfinest morality one can; gives meanwhile rather enigmatic
account of fair Mademoiselle Pamela, the Daughter whom she has
adopted. Thus she, in Palais Royal saloon;—whither, we remark,
d'Orleans himself, spite of Lafayette, has returned from that
English 'mission' of his: surely no pleasant mission: for the
English would not speak to him; and Saint Hannah More of England,
so unlike Saint Sillery-Genlis of France, saw him shunned, in
Vauxhall Gardens, like one pest-struck, (_Hannah More's Life and
Correspondence, ii. c. 5._) and his red-blue impassive visage
waxing hardly a shade bluer.
Chapter 2.1.IV.
Journalism.
As for Constitutionalism, with its National Guards, it is doing
what it can; and has enough to do: it must, as ever, with one
hand wave persuasively, repressing Patriotism; and keep the other
clenched to menace Royalty plotters. A most delicate task;
requiring tact.
Thus, if People's-friend Marat has to-day his writ of 'prise de
corps, or seizure of body,' served on him, and dives out of
sight, tomorrow he is left at large; or is even encouraged, as a
sort of bandog whose baying may be useful. President Danton, in
open Hall, with reverberating voice, declares that, in a case
like Marat's, "force may be resisted by force." Whereupon the
Chatelet serves Danton also with a writ;—which, however, as the
whole Cordeliers District responds to it, what Constable will be
prompt to execute? Twice more, on new occasions, does the
Chatelet launch its writ; and twice more in vain: the body of
Danton cannot be seized by Chatelet; he unseized, should he even
fly for a season, shall behold the Chatelet itself flung into
limbo.
Municipality and Brissot, meanwhile, are far on with their
Municipal Constitution. The Sixty Districts shall become
Forty-eight Sections; much shall be adjusted, and Paris have its
Constitution. A Constitution wholly Elective; as indeed all
French Government shall and must be. And yet, one fatal element
has been introduced: that of citoyen actif. No man who does not
pay the marc d'argent, or yearly tax equal to three days' labour,
shall be other than a passive citizen: not the slightest vote for
him; were he acting, all the year round, with sledge hammer, with
forest-levelling axe! Unheard of! cry Patriot Journals. Yes
truly, my Patriot Friends, if Liberty, the passion and prayer of
all men's souls, means Liberty to send your fifty-thousandth part
of a new Tongue-fencer into National Debating-club, then, be the
gods witness, ye are hardly entreated. Oh, if in National Palaver
(_as the Africans name it_), such blessedness is verily found,
what tyrant would deny it to Son of Adam! Nay, might there not be
a Female Parliament too, with 'screams from the Opposition
benches,' and 'the honourable Member borne out in hysterics?' To
a Children's Parliament would I gladly consent; or even lower if
ye wished it. Beloved Brothers! Liberty, one might fear, is
actually, as the ancient wise men said, of Heaven. On this Earth,
where, thinks the enlightened public, did a brave little Dame de
Staal (_not Necker's Daughter, but a far shrewder than she_) find
the nearest approach to Liberty? After mature computation, cool
as Dilworth's, her answer is, In the Bastille. (_See De Staal:
Memoires (_Paris, 1821_), i. 169-280._) "Of Heaven?" answer many,
asking. Wo that they should ask; for that is the very misery! "Of
Heaven" means much; share in the National Palaver it may, or may
as probably not mean.
One Sansculottic bough that cannot fail to flourish is
Journalism. The voice of the People being the voice of God, shall
not such divine voice make itself heard? To the ends of France;
and in as many dialects as when the first great Babel was to be
built! Some loud as the lion; some small as the sucking dove.
Mirabeau himself has his instructive Journal or Journals, with
Geneva hodmen working in them; and withal has quarrels enough
with Dame le Jay, his Female Bookseller, so ultra-compliant
otherwise. (_See Dumont: Souvenirs, 6._)
King's-friend Royou still prints himself. Barrere sheds tears of
loyal sensibility in Break of Day Journal, though with declining
sale. But why is Freron so hot, democratic; Freron, the
King's-friend's Nephew? He has it by kind, that heat of his: wasp
Freron begot him; Voltaire's Frelon; who fought stinging, while
sting and poison-bag were left, were it only as Reviewer, and
over Printed Waste-paper. Constant, illuminative, as the nightly
lamplighter, issues the useful Moniteur, for it is now become
diurnal: with facts and few commentaries; official, safe in the
middle:—its able Editors sunk long since, recoverably or
irrecoverably, in deep darkness. Acid Loustalot, with his
'vigour,' as of young sloes, shall never ripen, but die untimely:
his Prudhomme, however, will not let that Revolutions de Paris
die; but edit it himself, with much else,—dull-blustering Printer
though he be.
Of Cassandra-Marat we have spoken often; yet the most surprising
truth remains to be spoken: that he actually does not want sense;
but, with croaking gelid throat, croaks out masses of the truth,
on several things. Nay sometimes, one might almost fancy he had a
perception of humour, and were laughing a little, far down in his
inner man. Camille is wittier than ever, and more outspoken,
cynical; yet sunny as ever. A light melodious creature; 'born,'
as he shall yet say with bitter tears, 'to write verses;' light
Apollo, so clear, soft-lucent, in this war of the Titans, wherein
he shall not conquer!
Folded and hawked Newspapers exist in all countries; but, in such
a Journalistic element as this of France, other and stranger
sorts are to be anticipated. What says the English reader to a
Journal-Affiche, Placard Journal; legible to him that has no
halfpenny; in bright prismatic colours, calling the eye from
afar? Such, in the coming months, as Patriot Associations, public
and private, advance, and can subscribe funds, shall plenteously
hang themselves out: leaves, limed leaves, to catch what they
can! The very Government shall have its Pasted Journal; Louvet,
busy yet with a new 'charming romance,' shall write Sentinelles,
and post them with effect; nay Bertrand de Moleville, in his
extremity, shall still more cunningly try it. (_See
Bertrand-Moleville: Memoires, ii. 100, &c._) Great is Journalism.
Is not every Able Editor a Ruler of the World, being a persuader
of it; though self-elected, yet sanctioned, by the sale of his
Numbers? Whom indeed the world has the readiest method of
deposing, should need be: that of merely doing nothing to him;
which ends in starvation!
Nor esteem it small what those Bill-stickers had to do in Paris:
above Three Score of them: all with their crosspoles, haversacks,
pastepots; nay with leaden badges, for the Municipality licenses
them. A Sacred College, properly of World-rulers' Heralds, though
not respected as such, in an Era still incipient and raw. They
made the walls of Paris didactic, suasive, with an ever fresh
Periodical Literature, wherein he that ran might read: Placard
Journals, Placard Lampoons, Municipal Ordinances, Royal
Proclamations; the whole other or vulgar Placard-department
super-added,—or omitted from contempt! What unutterable things
the stone-walls spoke, during these five years! But it is all
gone; To-day swallowing Yesterday, and then being in its turn
swallowed of To-morrow, even as Speech ever is. Nay what, O thou
immortal Man of Letters, is Writing itself but Speech conserved
for a time? The Placard Journal conserved it for one day; some
Books conserve it for the matter of ten years; nay some for three
thousand: but what then? Why, then, the years being all run, it
also dies, and the world is rid of it. Oh, were there not a
spirit in the word of man, as in man himself, that survived the
audible bodied word, and tended either Godward, or else Devilward
for evermore, why should he trouble himself much with the truth
of it, or the falsehood of it, except for commercial purposes?
His immortality indeed, and whether it shall last half a
lifetime, or a lifetime and half; is not that a very considerable
thing? As mortality, was to the runaway, whom Great Fritz bullied
back into the battle with a: "R—, wollt ihr ewig leben,
Unprintable Off-scouring of Scoundrels, would ye live for ever!"
This is the Communication of Thought: how happy when there is any
Thought to communicate! Neither let the simpler old methods be
neglected, in their sphere. The Palais-Royal Tent, a tyrannous
Patrollotism has removed; but can it remove the lungs of man?
Anaxagoras Chaumette we saw mounted on bourne-stones, while
Tallien worked sedentary at the subeditorial desk. In any corner
of the civilised world, a tub can be inverted, and an
articulate-speaking biped mount thereon. Nay, with contrivance, a
portable trestle, or folding-stool, can be procured, for love or
money; this the peripatetic Orator can take in his hand, and,
driven out here, set it up again there; saying mildly, with a
Sage Bias, Omnia mea mecum porto.
Such is Journalism, hawked, pasted, spoken. How changed since One
old Metra walked this same Tuileries Garden, in gilt cocked hat,
with Journal at his nose, or held loose-folded behind his back;
and was a notability of Paris, 'Metra the Newsman;' (_Dulaure,
Histoire de Paris, viii. 483; Mercier, Nouveau Paris, &c._) and
Louis himself was wont to say: Qu'en dit Metra? Since the first
Venetian News-sheet was sold for a gazza, or farthing, and named
Gazette! We live in a fertile world.
Chapter 2.1.V.
Clubbism.
Where the heart is full, it seeks, for a thousand reasons, in a
thousand ways, to impart itself. How sweet, indispensable, in
such cases, is fellowship; soul mystically strengthening soul!
The meditative Germans, some think, have been of opinion that
Enthusiasm in the general means simply excessive
Congregating—Schwarmerey, or Swarming. At any rate, do we not see
glimmering half-red embers, if laid together, get into the
brightest white glow?
In such a France, gregarious Reunions will needs multiply,
intensify; French Life will step out of doors, and, from
domestic, become a public Club Life. Old Clubs, which already
germinated, grow and flourish; new every where bud forth. It is
the sure symptom of Social Unrest: in such way, most infallibly
of all, does Social Unrest exhibit itself; find solacement, and
also nutriment. In every French head there hangs now, whether for
terror or for hope, some prophetic picture of a New France:
prophecy which brings, nay which almost is, its own fulfilment;
and in all ways, consciously and unconsciously, works towards
that.
Observe, moreover, how the Aggregative Principle, let it be but
deep enough, goes on aggregating, and this even in a geometrical
progression: how when the whole world, in such a plastic time, is
forming itself into Clubs, some One Club, the strongest or
luckiest, shall, by friendly attracting, by victorious
compelling, grow ever stronger, till it become immeasurably
strong; and all the others, with their strength, be either
lovingly absorbed into it, or hostilely abolished by it! This if
the Club-spirit is universal; if the time is plastic. Plastic
enough is the time, universal the Club-spirit: such an all
absorbing, paramount One Club cannot be wanting.
What a progress, since the first salient-point of the Breton
Committee! It worked long in secret, not languidly; it has come
with the National Assembly to Paris; calls itself Club; calls
itself in imitation, as is thought, of those generous
Price-Stanhope English, French Revolution Club; but soon, with
more originality, Club of Friends of the Constitution. Moreover
it has leased, for itself, at a fair rent, the Hall of the
Jacobin's Convent, one of our 'superfluous edifices;' and does
therefrom now, in these spring months, begin shining out on an
admiring Paris. And so, by degrees, under the shorter popular
title of Jacobins' Club, it shall become memorable to all times
and lands. Glance into the interior: strongly yet modestly
benched and seated; as many as Thirteen Hundred chosen Patriots;
Assembly Members not a few. Barnave, the two Lameths are seen
there; occasionally Mirabeau, perpetually Robespierre; also the
ferret-visage of Fouquier-Tinville with other attorneys;
Anacharsis of Prussian Scythia, and miscellaneous
Patriots,—though all is yet in the most perfectly clean-washed
state; decent, nay dignified. President on platform, President's
bell are not wanting; oratorical Tribune high-raised; nor
strangers' galleries, wherein also sit women. Has any French
Antiquarian Society preserved that written Lease of the Jacobins
Convent Hall? Or was it, unluckier even than Magna Charta, clipt
by sacrilegious Tailors? Universal History is not indifferent to
it.
These Friends of the Constitution have met mainly, as their name
may foreshadow, to look after Elections when an Election comes,
and procure fit men; but likewise to consult generally that the
Commonweal take no damage; one as yet sees not how. For indeed
let two or three gather together any where, if it be not in
Church, where all are bound to the passive state; no mortal can
say accurately, themselves as little as any, for what they are
gathered. How often has the broached barrel proved not to be for
joy and heart effusion, but for duel and head-breakage; and the
promised feast become a Feast of the Lapithae! This Jacobins
Club, which at first shone resplendent, and was thought to be a
new celestial Sun for enlightening the Nations, had, as things
all have, to work through its appointed phases: it burned
unfortunately more and more lurid, more sulphurous,
distracted;—and swam at last, through the astonished Heaven, like
a Tartarean Portent, and lurid-burning Prison of Spirits in Pain.
Its style of eloquence? Rejoice, Reader, that thou knowest it
not, that thou canst never perfectly know. The Jacobins published
a Journal of Debates, where they that have the heart may examine:
Impassioned, full-droning Patriotic-eloquence; implacable,
unfertile—save for Destruction, which was indeed its work: most
wearisome, though most deadly. Be thankful that Oblivion covers
so much; that all carrion is by and by buried in the green
Earth's bosom, and even makes her grow the greener. The Jacobins
are buried; but their work is not; it continues 'making the tour
of the world,' as it can. It might be seen lately, for instance,
with bared bosom and death-defiant eye, as far on as Greek
Missolonghi; and, strange enough, old slumbering Hellas was
resuscitated, into somnambulism which will become clear
wakefulness, by a voice from the Rue St. Honore! All dies, as we
often say; except the spirit of man, of what man does. Thus has
not the very House of the Jacobins vanished; scarcely lingering
in a few old men's memories? The St. Honore Market has brushed it
away, and now where dull-droning eloquence, like a Trump of Doom,
once shook the world, there is pacific chaffering for poultry and
greens. The sacred National Assembly Hall itself has become
common ground; President's platform permeable to wain and
dustcart; for the Rue de Rivoli runs there. Verily, at Cockcrow
(_of this Cock or the other_), all Apparitions do melt and
dissolve in space.
The Paris Jacobins became 'the Mother-Society, Societe-Mere;' and
had as many as 'three hundred' shrill-tongued daughters in
'direct correspondence' with her. Of indirectly corresponding,
what we may call grand-daughters and minute progeny, she counted
'forty-four thousand!'—But for the present we note only two
things: the first of them a mere anecdote. One night, a couple of
brother Jacobins are doorkeepers; for the members take this post
of duty and honour in rotation, and admit none that have not
tickets: one doorkeeper was the worthy Sieur Lais, a patriotic
Opera-singer, stricken in years, whose windpipe is long since
closed without result; the other, young, and named Louis
Philippe, d'Orleans's firstborn, has in this latter time, after
unheard-of destinies, become Citizen-King, and struggles to rule
for a season. All-flesh is grass; higher reedgrass or creeping
herb.
The second thing we have to note is historical: that the
Mother-Society, even in this its effulgent period, cannot content
all Patriots. Already it must throw off, so to speak, two
dissatisfied swarms; a swarm to the right, a swarm to the left.
One party, which thinks the Jacobins lukewarm, constitutes itself
into Club of the Cordeliers; a hotter Club: it is Danton's
element: with whom goes Desmoulins. The other party, again, which
thinks the Jacobins scalding-hot, flies off to the right, and
becomes 'Club of 1789, Friends of the Monarchic Constitution.'
They are afterwards named 'Feuillans Club;' their place of
meeting being the Feuillans Convent. Lafayette is, or becomes,
their chief-man; supported by the respectable Patriot everywhere,
by the mass of Property and Intelligence,—with the most
flourishing prospects. They, in these June days of 1790, do, in
the Palais Royal, dine solemnly with open windows; to the cheers
of the people; with toasts, with inspiriting songs,—with one song
at least, among the feeblest ever sung. (_Hist. Parl. vi. 334._)
They shall, in due time be hooted forth, over the borders, into
Cimmerian Night.
Another expressly Monarchic or Royalist Club, 'Club des
Monarchiens,' though a Club of ample funds, and all sitting in
damask sofas, cannot realise the smallest momentary cheer;
realises only scoffs and groans;—till, ere long, certain Patriots
in disorderly sufficient number, proceed thither, for a night or
for nights, and groan it out of pain. Vivacious alone shall the
Mother-Society and her family be. The very Cordeliers may, as it
were, return into her bosom, which will have grown warm enough.
Fatal-looking! Are not such Societies an incipient New Order of
Society itself? The Aggregative Principle anew at work in a
Society grown obsolete, cracked asunder, dissolving into rubbish
and primary atoms?
Chapter 2.1.VI.
Je le jure.
With these signs of the times, is it not surprising that the
dominant feeling all over France was still continually Hope? O
blessed Hope, sole boon of man; whereby, on his strait prison
walls, are painted beautiful far-stretching landscapes; and into
the night of very Death is shed holiest dawn! Thou art to all an
indefeasible possession in this God's-world: to the wise a sacred
Constantine's-banner, written on the eternal skies; under which
they shall conquer, for the battle itself is victory: to the
foolish some secular mirage, or shadow of still waters, painted
on the parched Earth; whereby at least their dusty pilgrimage, if
devious, becomes cheerfuller, becomes possible.
In the death-tumults of a sinking Society, French Hope sees only
the birth-struggles of a new unspeakably better Society; and
sings, with full assurance of faith, her brisk Melody, which some
inspired fiddler has in these very days composed for her,—the
world-famous ca-ira. Yes; 'that will go:' and then there will
come—? All men hope: even Marat hopes—that Patriotism will take
muff and dirk. King Louis is not without hope: in the chapter of
chances; in a flight to some Bouille; in getting popularized at
Paris. But what a hoping People he had, judge by the fact, and
series of facts, now to be noted.
Poor Louis, meaning the best, with little insight and even less
determination of his own, has to follow, in that dim wayfaring of
his, such signal as may be given him; by backstairs Royalism, by
official or backstairs Constitutionalism, whichever for the month
may have convinced the royal mind. If flight to Bouille, and
(_horrible to think!_) a drawing of the civil sword do hang as
theory, portentous in the background, much nearer is this fact of
these Twelve Hundred Kings, who sit in the Salle de Manege. Kings
uncontrollable by him, not yet irreverent to him. Could kind
management of these but prosper, how much better were it than
armed Emigrants, Turin-intrigues, and the help of Austria! Nay,
are the two hopes inconsistent? Rides in the suburbs, we have
found, cost little; yet they always brought vivats. (_See
Bertrand-Moleville, i. 241, &c._) Still cheaper is a soft word;
such as has many times turned away wrath. In these rapid days,
while France is all getting divided into Departments, Clergy
about to be remodelled, Popular Societies rising, and Feudalism
and so much ever is ready to be hurled into the
melting-pot,—might one not try?
On the 4th of February, accordingly, M. le President reads to his
National Assembly a short autograph, announcing that his Majesty
will step over, quite in an unceremonious way, probably about
noon. Think, therefore, Messieurs, what it may mean; especially,
how ye will get the Hall decorated a little. The Secretaries'
Bureau can be shifted down from the platform; on the President's
chair be slipped this cover of velvet, 'of a violet colour
sprigged with gold fleur-de-lys;'—for indeed M. le President has
had previous notice underhand, and taken counsel with Doctor
Guillotin. Then some fraction of 'velvet carpet,' of like texture
and colour, cannot that be spread in front of the chair, where
the Secretaries usually sit? So has judicious Guillotin advised:
and the effect is found satisfactory. Moreover, as it is probable
that his Majesty, in spite of the fleur-de-lys-velvet, will stand
and not sit at all, the President himself, in the interim,
presides standing. And so, while some honourable Member is
discussing, say, the division of a Department, Ushers announce:
"His Majesty!" In person, with small suite, enter Majesty: the
honourable Member stops short; the Assembly starts to its feet;
the Twelve Hundred Kings 'almost all,' and the Galleries no less,
do welcome the Restorer of French Liberty with loyal shouts. His
Majesty's Speech, in diluted conventional phraseology, expresses
this mainly: That he, most of all Frenchmen, rejoices to see
France getting regenerated; is sure, at the same time, that they
will deal gently with her in the process, and not regenerate her
roughly. Such was his Majesty's Speech: the feat he performed was
coming to speak it, and going back again.
Surely, except to a very hoping People, there was not much here
to build upon. Yet what did they not build! The fact that the
King has spoken, that he has voluntarily come to speak, how
inexpressibly encouraging! Did not the glance of his royal
countenance, like concentrated sunbeams, kindle all hearts in an
august Assembly; nay thereby in an inflammable enthusiastic
France? To move 'Deputation of thanks' can be the happy lot of
but one man; to go in such Deputation the lot of not many. The
Deputed have gone, and returned with what highest-flown
compliment they could; whom also the Queen met, Dauphin in hand.
And still do not our hearts burn with insatiable gratitude; and
to one other man a still higher blessedness suggests itself: To
move that we all renew the National Oath.
Happiest honourable Member, with his word so in season as word
seldom was; magic Fugleman of a whole National Assembly, which
sat there bursting to do somewhat; Fugleman of a whole onlooking
France! The President swears; declares that every one shall
swear, in distinct je le jure. Nay the very Gallery sends him
down a written slip signed, with their Oath on it; and as the
Assembly now casts an eye that way, the Gallery all stands up and
swears again. And then out of doors, consider at the
Hotel-de-Ville how Bailly, the great Tennis-Court swearer, again
swears, towards nightful, with all the Municipals, and Heads of
Districts assembled there. And 'M. Danton suggests that the
public would like to partake:' whereupon Bailly, with escort of
Twelve, steps forth to the great outer staircase; sways the
ebullient multitude with stretched hand: takes their oath, with a
thunder of 'rolling drums,' with shouts that rend the welkin. And
on all streets the glad people, with moisture and fire in their
eyes, 'spontaneously formed groups, and swore one another,'
(_Newspapers in Hist. Parl. iv. 445._)—and the whole City was
illuminated. This was the Fourth of February 1790: a day to be
marked white in Constitutional annals.
Nor is the illumination for a night only, but partially or
totally it lasts a series of nights. For each District, the
Electors of each District, will swear specially; and always as
the District swears; it illuminates itself. Behold them, District
after District, in some open square, where the Non-Electing
People can all see and join: with their uplifted right hands, and
je le jure: with rolling drums, with embracings, and that
infinite hurrah of the enfranchised,—which any tyrant that there
may be can consider! Faithful to the King, to the Law, to the
Constitution which the National Assembly shall make.
Fancy, for example, the Professors of Universities parading the
streets with their young France, and swearing, in an enthusiastic
manner, not without tumult. By a larger exercise of fancy, expand
duly this little word: The like was repeated in every Town and
District of France! Nay one Patriot Mother, in Lagnon of
Brittany, assembles her ten children; and, with her own aged
hand, swears them all herself, the highsouled venerable woman. Of
all which, moreover, a National Assembly must be eloquently
apprised. Such three weeks of swearing! Saw the sun ever such a
swearing people? Have they been bit by a swearing tarantula? No:
but they are men and Frenchmen; they have Hope; and, singular to
say, they have Faith, were it only in the Gospel according to
Jean Jacques. O my Brothers! would to Heaven it were even as ye
think and have sworn! But there are Lovers' Oaths, which, had
they been true as love itself, cannot be kept; not to speak of
Dicers' Oaths, also a known sort.
Chapter 2.1.VII.
Prodigies.
To such length had the Contrat Social brought it, in believing
hearts. Man, as is well said, lives by faith; each generation has
its own faith, more or less; and laughs at the faith of its
predecessor,—most unwisely. Grant indeed that this faith in the
Social Contract belongs to the stranger sorts; that an unborn
generation may very wisely, if not laugh, yet stare at it, and
piously consider. For, alas, what is Contrat? If all men were
such that a mere spoken or sworn Contract would bind them, all
men were then true men, and Government a superfluity. Not what
thou and I have promised to each other, but what the balance of
our forces can make us perform to each other: that, in so sinful
a world as ours, is the thing to be counted on. But above all, a
People and a Sovereign promising to one another; as if a whole
People, changing from generation to generation, nay from hour to
hour, could ever by any method be made to speak or promise; and
to speak mere solecisms: "We, be the Heavens witness, which
Heavens however do no miracles now; we, ever-changing Millions,
will allow thee, changeful Unit, to force us or govern us!" The
world has perhaps seen few faiths comparable to that.
So nevertheless had the world then construed the matter. Had they
not so construed it, how different had their hopes been, their
attempts, their results! But so and not otherwise did the Upper
Powers will it to be. Freedom by Social Contract: such was verily
the Gospel of that Era. And all men had believed in it, as in a
Heaven's Glad-tidings men should; and with overflowing heart and
uplifted voice clave to it, and stood fronting Time and Eternity
on it. Nay smile not; or only with a smile sadder than tears!
This too was a better faith than the one it had replaced: than
faith merely in the Everlasting Nothing and man's Digestive
Power; lower than which no faith can go.
Not that such universally prevalent, universally jurant, feeling
of Hope, could be a unanimous one. Far from that! The time was
ominous: social dissolution near and certain; social renovation
still a problem, difficult and distant even though sure. But if
ominous to some clearest onlooker, whose faith stood not with one
side or with the other, nor in the ever-vexed jarring of Greek
with Greek at all,—how unspeakably ominous to dim Royalist
participators; for whom Royalism was Mankind's palladium; for
whom, with the abolition of Most-Christian Kingship and
Most-Talleyrand Bishopship, all loyal obedience, all religious
faith was to expire, and final Night envelope the Destinies of
Man! On serious hearts, of that persuasion, the matter sinks down
deep; prompting, as we have seen, to backstairs Plots, to
Emigration with pledge of war, to Monarchic Clubs; nay to still
madder things.
The Spirit of Prophecy, for instance, had been considered extinct
for some centuries: nevertheless these last-times, as indeed is
the tendency of last-times, do revive it; that so, of French mad
things, we might have sample also of the maddest. In remote rural
districts, whither Philosophism has not yet radiated, where a
heterodox Constitution of the Clergy is bringing strife round the
altar itself, and the very Church-bells are getting melted into
small money-coin, it appears probable that the End of the World
cannot be far off. Deep-musing atrabiliar old men, especially old
women, hint in an obscure way that they know what they know. The
Holy Virgin, silent so long, has not gone dumb;—and truly now, if
ever more in this world, were the time for her to speak. One
Prophetess, though careless Historians have omitted her name,
condition, and whereabout, becomes audible to the general ear;
credible to not a few: credible to Friar Gerle, poor Patriot
Chartreux, in the National Assembly itself! She, in Pythoness'
recitative, with wildstaring eye, sings that there shall be a
Sign; that the heavenly Sun himself will hang out a Sign, or
Mock-Sun,—which, many say, shall be stamped with the Head of
hanged Favras. List, Dom Gerle, with that poor addled poll of
thine; list, O list;—and hear nothing. (_Deux Amis, v. c. 7._)
Notable however was that 'magnetic vellum, velin magnetique,' of
the
Sieurs d'Hozier and Petit-Jean, Parlementeers of Rouen. Sweet
young d'Hozier, 'bred in the faith of his Missal, and of
parchment genealogies,' and of parchment generally: adust,
melancholic, middle-aged Petit-Jean: why came these two to
Saint-Cloud, where his Majesty was hunting, on the festival of
St. Peter and St. Paul; and waited there, in antechambers, a
wonder to whispering Swiss, the livelong day; and even waited
without the Grates, when turned out; and had dismissed their
valets to Paris, as with purpose of endless waiting? They have a
magnetic vellum, these two; whereon the Virgin, wonderfully
clothing herself in Mesmerean Cagliostric Occult-Philosophy, has
inspired them to jot down instructions and predictions for a
much-straitened King. To whom, by Higher Order, they will this
day present it; and save the Monarchy and World. Unaccountable
pair of visual-objects! Ye should be men, and of the Eighteenth
Century; but your magnetic vellum forbids us so to interpret.
Say, are ye aught? Thus ask the Guardhouse Captains, the Mayor of
St. Cloud; nay, at great length, thus asks the Committee of
Researches, and not the Municipal, but the National Assembly one.
No distinct answer, for weeks. At last it becomes plain that the
right answer is negative. Go, ye Chimeras, with your magnetic
vellum; sweet young Chimera, adust middle-aged one! The
Prison-doors are open. Hardly again shall ye preside the Rouen
Chamber of Accounts; but vanish obscurely into Limbo. (_See Deux
Amis, v. 199._)
Chapter 2.1.VIII.
Solemn League and Covenant.
Such dim masses, and specks of even deepest black, work in that
white-hot glow of the French mind, now wholly in fusion, and
confusion. Old women here swearing their ten children on the new
Evangel of Jean Jacques; old women there looking up for Favras'
Heads in the celestial Luminary: these are preternatural signs,
prefiguring somewhat.
In fact, to the Patriot children of Hope themselves, it is
undeniable that difficulties exist: emigrating Seigneurs;
Parlements in sneaking but most malicious mutiny (_though the
rope is round their neck_); above all, the most decided
'deficiency of grains.' Sorrowful: but, to a Nation that hopes,
not irremediable. To a Nation which is in fusion and ardent
communion of thought; which, for example, on signal of one
Fugleman, will lift its right hand like a drilled regiment, and
swear and illuminate, till every village from Ardennes to the
Pyrenees has rolled its village-drum, and sent up its little
oath, and glimmer of tallow-illumination some fathoms into the
reign of Night!
If grains are defective, the fault is not of Nature or National
Assembly, but of Art and Antinational Intriguers. Such malign
individuals, of the scoundrel species, have power to vex us,
while the Constitution is a-making. Endure it, ye heroic
Patriots: nay rather, why not cure it? Grains do grow, they lie
extant there in sheaf or sack; only that regraters and Royalist
plotters, to provoke the people into illegality, obstruct the
transport of grains. Quick, ye organised Patriot Authorities,
armed National Guards, meet together; unite your goodwill; in
union is tenfold strength: let the concentred flash of your
Patriotism strike stealthy Scoundrelism blind, paralytic, as with
a coup de soleil.
Under which hat or nightcap of the Twenty-five millions, this
pregnant Idea first rose, for in some one head it did rise, no
man can now say. A most small idea, near at hand for the whole
world: but a living one, fit; and which waxed, whether into
greatness or not, into immeasurable size. When a Nation is in
this state that the Fugleman can operate on it, what will the
word in season, the act in season, not do! It will grow verily,
like the Boy's Bean in the Fairy-Tale, heaven-high, with
habitations and adventures on it, in one night. It is
nevertheless unfortunately still a Bean (_for your long-lived Oak
grows not so_); and, the next night, it may lie felled,
horizontal, trodden into common mud.—But remark, at least, how
natural to any agitated Nation, which has Faith, this business of
Covenanting is. The Scotch, believing in a righteous Heaven above
them, and also in a Gospel, far other than the Jean-Jacques one,
swore, in their extreme need, a Solemn League and Covenant,—as
Brothers on the forlorn-hope, and imminence of battle, who
embrace looking Godward; and got the whole Isle to swear it; and
even, in their tough Old-Saxon Hebrew-Presbyterian way, to keep
it more or less;—for the thing, as such things are, was heard in
Heaven, and partially ratified there; neither is it yet dead, if
thou wilt look, nor like to die. The French too, with their
Gallic-Ethnic excitability and effervescence, have, as we have
seen, real Faith, of a sort; they are hard bestead, though in the
middle of Hope: a National Solemn League and Covenant there may
be in France too; under how different conditions; with how
different developement and issue!
Note, accordingly, the small commencement; first spark of a
mighty firework: for if the particular hat cannot be fixed upon,
the particular District can. On the 29th day of last November,
were National Guards by the thousand seen filing, from far and
near, with military music, with Municipal officers in tricolor
sashes, towards and along the Rhone-stream, to the little town of
Etoile. There with ceremonial evolution and manoeuvre, with
fanfaronading, musketry-salvoes, and what else the Patriot genius
could devise, they made oath and obtestation to stand faithfully
by one another, under Law and King; in particular, to have all
manner of grains, while grains there were, freely circulated, in
spite both of robber and regrater. This was the meeting of
Etoile, in the mild end of November 1789.
But now, if a mere empty Review, followed by Review-dinner, ball,
and such gesticulation and flirtation as there may be, interests
the happy County-town, and makes it the envy of surrounding
County-towns, how much more might this! In a fortnight, larger
Montelimart, half ashamed of itself, will do as good, and better.
On the Plain of Montelimart, or what is equally sonorous, 'under
the Walls of Montelimart,' the thirteenth of December sees new
gathering and obtestation; six thousand strong; and now indeed,
with these three remarkable improvements, as unanimously resolved
on there. First that the men of Montelimart do federate with the
already federated men of Etoile. Second, that, implying not
expressing the circulation of grain, they 'swear in the face of
God and their Country' with much more emphasis and
comprehensiveness, 'to obey all decrees of the National Assembly,
and see them obeyed, till death, jusqu'a la mort.' Third, and
most important, that official record of all this be solemnly
delivered in to the National Assembly, to M. de Lafayette, and
'to the Restorer of French Liberty;' who shall all take what
comfort from it they can. Thus does larger Montelimart vindicate
its Patriot importance, and maintain its rank in the municipal
scale. (_Hist. Parl. vii. 4._)
And so, with the New-year, the signal is hoisted; for is not a
National Assembly, and solemn deliverance there, at lowest a
National Telegraph? Not only grain shall circulate, while there
is grain, on highways or the Rhone-waters, over all that
South-Eastern region,—where also if Monseigneur d'Artois saw good
to break in from Turin, hot welcome might wait him; but
whatsoever Province of France is straitened for grain, or vexed
with a mutinous Parlement, unconstitutional plotters, Monarchic
Clubs, or any other Patriot ailment,—can go and do likewise, or
even do better. And now, especially, when the February swearing
has set them all agog! From Brittany to Burgundy, on most plains
of France, under most City-walls, it is a blaring of trumpets,
waving of banners, a constitutional manoeuvring: under the vernal
skies, while Nature too is putting forth her green Hopes, under
bright sunshine defaced by the stormful East; like Patriotism
victorious, though with difficulty, over Aristocracy and defect
of grain! There march and constitutionally wheel, to the
ca-ira-ing mood of fife and drum, under their tricolor
Municipals, our clear-gleaming Phalanxes; or halt, with uplifted
right-hand, and artillery-salvoes that imitate Jove's thunder;
and all the Country, and metaphorically all 'the Universe,' is
looking on. Wholly, in their best apparel, brave men, and
beautifully dizened women, most of whom have lovers there;
swearing, by the eternal Heavens and this green-growing
all-nutritive Earth, that France is free!
Sweetest days, when (_astonishing to say_) mortals have actually
met together in communion and fellowship; and man, were it only
once through long despicable centuries, is for moments verily the
brother of man!—And then the Deputations to the National
Assembly, with highflown descriptive harangue; to M. de
Lafayette, and the Restorer; very frequently moreover to the
Mother of Patriotism sitting on her stout benches in that Hall of
the Jacobins! The general ear is filled with Federation. New
names of Patriots emerge, which shall one day become familiar:
Boyer-Fonfrede eloquent denunciator of a rebellious Bourdeaux
Parlement; Max Isnard eloquent reporter of the Federation of
Draguignan; eloquent pair, separated by the whole breadth of
France, who are nevertheless to meet. Ever wider burns the flame
of Federation; ever wider and also brighter. Thus the Brittany
and Anjou brethren mention a Fraternity of all true Frenchmen;
and go the length of invoking 'perdition and death' on any
renegade: moreover, if in their National-Assembly harangue, they
glance plaintively at the marc d'argent which makes so many
citizens passive, they, over in the Mother-Society, ask, being
henceforth themselves 'neither Bretons nor Angevins but French,'
Why all France has not one Federation, and universal Oath of
Brotherhood, once for all? (_Reports, &c. (_in Hist. Parl. ix.
122-147_)._) A most pertinent suggestion; dating from the end of
March. Which pertinent suggestion the whole Patriot world cannot
but catch, and reverberate and agitate till it become
loud;—which, in that case, the Townhall Municipals had better
take up, and meditate.
Some universal Federation seems inevitable: the Where is given;
clearly Paris: only the When, the How? These also productive Time
will give; is already giving. For always as the Federative work
goes on, it perfects itself, and Patriot genius adds contribution
after contribution. Thus, at Lyons, in the end of the May month,
we behold as many as fifty, or some say sixty thousand, met to
federate; and a multitude looking on, which it would be difficult
to number. From dawn to dusk! For our Lyons Guardsmen took rank,
at five in the bright dewy morning; came pouring in,
bright-gleaming, to the Quai de Rhone, to march thence to the
Federation-field; amid wavings of hats and lady-handkerchiefs;
glad shoutings of some two hundred thousand Patriot voices and
hearts; the beautiful and brave! Among whom, courting no notice,
and yet the notablest of all, what queenlike Figure is this; with
her escort of house-friends and Champagneux the Patriot Editor;
come abroad with the earliest? Radiant with enthusiasm are those
dark eyes, is that strong Minerva-face, looking dignity and
earnest joy; joyfullest she where all are joyful. It is Roland de
la Platriere's Wife! (_Madame Roland, Memoires, i. (_Discours
Preliminaire, p. 23_)._) Strict elderly Roland, King's Inspector
of Manufactures here; and now likewise, by popular choice, the
strictest of our new Lyons Municipals: a man who has gained much,
if worth and faculty be gain; but above all things, has gained to
wife Phlipon the Paris Engraver's daughter. Reader, mark that
queenlike burgher-woman: beautiful, Amazonian-graceful to the
eye; more so to the mind. Unconscious of her worth (_as all worth
is_), of her greatness, of her crystal clearness; genuine, the
creature of Sincerity and Nature, in an age of Artificiality,
Pollution and Cant; there, in her still completeness, in her
still invincibility, she, if thou knew it, is the noblest of all
living Frenchwomen,—and will be seen, one day. O blessed rather
while unseen, even of herself! For the present she gazes, nothing
doubting, into this grand theatricality; and thinks her young
dreams are to be fulfilled.
From dawn to dusk, as we said, it lasts; and truly a sight like
few. Flourishes of drums and trumpets are something: but think of
an 'artificial Rock fifty feet high,' all cut into crag-steps,
not without the similitude of 'shrubs!' The interior cavity, for
in sooth it is made of deal,—stands solemn, a 'Temple of
Concord:' on the outer summit rises 'a Statue of Liberty,'
colossal, seen for miles, with her Pike and Phrygian Cap, and
civic column; at her feet a Country's Altar, 'Autel de la
Patrie:'—on all which neither deal-timber nor lath and plaster,
with paint of various colours, have been spared. But fancy then
the banners all placed on the steps of the Rock; high-mass
chaunted; and the civic oath of fifty thousand: with what
volcanic outburst of sound from iron and other throats, enough to
frighten back the very Saone and Rhone; and how the brightest
fireworks, and balls, and even repasts closed in that night of
the gods! (_Hist. Parl. xii. 274._) And so the Lyons Federation
vanishes too, swallowed of darkness;—and yet not wholly, for our
brave fair Roland was there; also she, though in the deepest
privacy, writes her Narrative of it in Champagneux's Courier de
Lyons; a piece which 'circulates to the extent of sixty
thousand;' which one would like now to read.
But on the whole, Paris, we may see, will have little to devise;
will only have to borrow and apply. And then as to the day, what
day of all the calendar is fit, if the Bastille Anniversary be
not? The particular spot too, it is easy to see, must be the
Champ-de-Mars; where many a Julian the Apostate has been lifted
on bucklers, to France's or the world's sovereignty; and iron
Franks, loud-clanging, have responded to the voice of a
Charlemagne; and from of old mere sublimities have been familiar.
Chapter 2.1.IX.
Symbolic.
How natural, in all decisive circumstances, is Symbolic
Representation to all kinds of men! Nay, what is man's whole
terrestrial Life but a Symbolic Representation, and making
visible, of the Celestial invisible Force that is in him? By act
and word he strives to do it; with sincerity, if possible;
failing that, with theatricality, which latter also may have its
meaning. An Almack's Masquerade is not nothing; in more genial
ages, your Christmas Guisings, Feasts of the Ass, Abbots of
Unreason, were a considerable something: since sport they were;
as Almacks may still be sincere wish for sport. But what, on the
other hand, must not sincere earnest have been: say, a Hebrew
Feast of Tabernacles have been! A whole Nation gathered, in the
name of the Highest, under the eye of the Highest; imagination
herself flagging under the reality; and all noblest Ceremony as
yet not grown ceremonial, but solemn, significant to the outmost
fringe! Neither, in modern private life, are theatrical scenes,
of tearful women wetting whole ells of cambric in concert, of
impassioned bushy-whiskered youth threatening suicide, and such
like, to be so entirely detested: drop thou a tear over them
thyself rather.
At any rate, one can remark that no Nation will throw-by its
work, and deliberately go out to make a scene, without meaning
something thereby. For indeed no scenic individual, with knavish
hypocritical views, will take the trouble to soliloquise a scene:
and now consider, is not a scenic Nation placed precisely in that
predicament of soliloquising; for its own behoof alone; to solace
its own sensibilities, maudlin or other?—Yet in this respect, of
readiness for scenes, the difference of Nations, as of men, is
very great. If our Saxon-Puritanic friends, for example, swore
and signed their National Covenant, without discharge of
gunpowder, or the beating of any drum, in a dingy Covenant-Close
of the Edinburgh High-street, in a mean room, where men now drink
mean liquor, it was consistent with their ways so to swear it.
Our Gallic-Encyclopedic friends, again, must have a
Champ-de-Mars, seen of all the world, or universe; and such a
Scenic Exhibition, to which the Coliseum Amphitheatre was but a
stroller's barn, as this old Globe of ours had never or hardly
ever beheld. Which method also we reckon natural, then and there.
Nor perhaps was the respective keeping of these two Oaths far out
of due proportion to such respective display in taking them:
inverse proportion, namely. For the theatricality of a People
goes in a compound-ratio: ratio indeed of their trustfulness,
sociability, fervency; but then also of their excitability, of
their porosity, not continent; or say, of their explosiveness,
hot-flashing, but which does not last.
How true also, once more, is it that no man or Nation of men,
conscious of doing a great thing, was ever, in that thing, doing
other than a small one! O Champ-de-Mars Federation, with three
hundred drummers, twelve hundred wind-musicians, and artillery
planted on height after height to boom the tidings of it all over
France, in few minutes! Could no Atheist-Naigeon contrive to
discern, eighteen centuries off, those Thirteen most poor
mean-dressed men, at frugal Supper, in a mean Jewish dwelling,
with no symbol but hearts god-initiated into the 'Divine depth of
Sorrow,' and a Do this in remembrance of me;—and so cease that
small difficult crowing of his, if he were not doomed to it?
Chapter 2.1.X.
Mankind.
Pardonable are human theatricalities; nay perhaps touching, like
the passionate utterance of a tongue which with sincerity
stammers; of a head which with insincerity babbles,—having gone
distracted. Yet, in comparison with unpremeditated outbursts of
Nature, such as an Insurrection of Women, how foisonless,
unedifying, undelightful; like small ale palled, like an
effervescence that has effervesced! Such scenes, coming of
forethought, were they world-great, and never so cunningly
devised, are at bottom mainly pasteboard and paint. But the
others are original; emitted from the great everliving heart of
Nature herself: what figure they will assume is unspeakably
significant. To us, therefore, let the French National Solemn
League, and Federation, be the highest recorded triumph of the
Thespian Art; triumphant surely, since the whole Pit, which was
of Twenty-five Millions, not only claps hands, but does itself
spring on the boards and passionately set to playing there. And
being such, be it treated as such: with sincere cursory
admiration; with wonder from afar. A whole Nation gone mumming
deserves so much; but deserves not that loving minuteness a
Menadic Insurrection did. Much more let prior, and as it were,
rehearsal scenes of Federation come and go, henceforward, as they
list; and, on Plains and under City-walls, innumerable regimental
bands blare off into the Inane, without note from us.
One scene, however, the hastiest reader will momentarily pause
on: that of Anacharsis Clootz and the Collective sinful Posterity
of Adam.—For a Patriot Municipality has now, on the 4th of June,
got its plan concocted, and got it sanctioned by National
Assembly; a Patriot King assenting; to whom, were he even free to
dissent, Federative harangues, overflowing with loyalty, have
doubtless a transient sweetness. There shall come Deputed
National Guards, so many in the hundred, from each of the
Eighty-three Departments of France. Likewise from all Naval and
Military King's Forces, shall Deputed quotas come; such
Federation of National with Royal Soldier has, taking place
spontaneously, been already seen and sanctioned. For the rest, it
is hoped, as many as forty thousand may arrive: expenses to be
borne by the Deputing District; of all which let District and
Department take thought, and elect fit men,—whom the Paris
brethren will fly to meet and welcome.
Now, therefore, judge if our Patriot Artists are busy; taking
deep counsel how to make the Scene worthy of a look from the
Universe! As many as fifteen thousand men, spade-men, barrow-men,
stone-builders, rammers, with their engineers, are at work on the
Champ-de-Mars; hollowing it out into a natural Amphitheatre, fit
for such solemnity. For one may hope it will be annual and
perennial; a 'Feast of Pikes, Fete des Piques,' notablest among
the high-tides of the year: in any case ought not a Scenic free
Nation to have some permanent National Amphitheatre? The
Champ-de-Mars is getting hollowed out; and the daily talk and the
nightly dream in most Parisian heads is of Federation, and that
only. Federate Deputies are already under way. National Assembly,
what with its natural work, what with hearing and answering
harangues of Federates, of this Federation, will have enough to
do! Harangue of 'American Committee,' among whom is that faint
figure of Paul Jones 'as with the stars dim-twinkling through
it,'—come to congratulate us on the prospect of such auspicious
day. Harangue of Bastille Conquerors, come to 'renounce' any
special recompense, any peculiar place at the solemnity;—since
the Centre Grenadiers rather grumble. Harangue of 'Tennis-Court
Club,' who enter with far-gleaming Brass-plate, aloft on a pole,
and the Tennis-Court Oath engraved thereon; which far gleaming
Brass-plate they purpose to affix solemnly in the Versailles
original locality, on the 20th of this month, which is the
anniversary, as a deathless memorial, for some years: they will
then dine, as they come back, in the Bois de Boulogne; (_See Deux
Amis, v. 122; Hist. Parl. &c._)—cannot, however, do it without
apprising the world. To such things does the august National
Assembly ever and anon cheerfully listen, suspending its
regenerative labours; and with some touch of impromptu eloquence,
make friendly reply;—as indeed the wont has long been; for it is
a gesticulating, sympathetic People, and has a heart, and wears
it on its sleeve.
In which circumstances, it occurred to the mind of Anacharsis
Clootz that while so much was embodying itself into Club or
Committee, and perorating applauded, there yet remained a greater
and greatest; of which, if it also took body and perorated, what
might not the effect be: Humankind namely, le Genre Humain
itself! In what rapt creative moment the Thought rose in
Anacharsis's soul; all his throes, while he went about giving
shape and birth to it; how he was sneered at by cold worldlings;
but did sneer again, being a man of polished sarcasm; and moved
to and fro persuasive in coffeehouse and soiree, and dived down
assiduous-obscure in the great deep of Paris, making his Thought
a Fact: of all this the spiritual biographies of that period say
nothing. Enough that on the 19th evening of June 1790, the Sun's
slant rays lighted a spectacle such as our foolish little Planet
has not often had to show: Anacharsis Clootz entering the august
Salle de Manege, with the Human Species at his heels. Swedes,
Spaniards, Polacks; Turks, Chaldeans, Greeks, dwellers in
Mesopotamia: behold them all; they have come to claim place in
the grand Federation, having an undoubted interest in it.
"Our ambassador titles," said the fervid Clootz, "are not written
on parchment, but on the living hearts of all men." These
whiskered Polacks, long-flowing turbaned Ishmaelites,
astrological Chaldeans, who stand so mute here, let them plead
with you, august Senators, more eloquently than eloquence could.
They are the mute representatives of their tongue-tied,
befettered, heavy-laden Nations; who from out of that dark
bewilderment gaze wistful, amazed, with half-incredulous hope,
towards you, and this your bright light of a French Federation:
bright particular day-star, the herald of universal day. We claim
to stand there, as mute monuments, pathetically adumbrative of
much.—From bench and gallery comes 'repeated applause;' for what
august Senator but is flattered even by the very shadow of Human
Species depending on him? From President Sieyes, who presides
this remarkable fortnight, in spite of his small voice, there
comes eloquent though shrill reply. Anacharsis and the
'Foreigners Committee' shall have place at the Federation; on
condition of telling their respective Peoples what they see
there. In the mean time, we invite them to the 'honours of the
sitting, honneur de la seance.' A long-flowing Turk, for
rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity, and utters articulate
sounds: but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the French
dialect, (_Moniteur, &c. (_in Hist. Parl. xii. 283_)._) his words
are like spilt water; the thought he had in him remains
conjectural to this day.
Anacharsis and Mankind accept the honours of the sitting; and
have forthwith, as the old Newspapers still testify, the
satisfaction to see several things. First and chief, on the
motion of Lameth, Lafayette, Saint-Fargeau and other Patriot
Nobles, let the others repugn as they will: all Titles of
Nobility, from Duke to Esquire, or lower, are henceforth
abolished. Then, in like manner, Livery Servants, or rather the
Livery of Servants. Neither, for the future, shall any man or
woman, self-styled noble, be 'incensed,'—foolishly fumigated with
incense, in Church; as the wont has been. In a word, Feudalism
being dead these ten months, why should her empty trappings and
scutcheons survive? The very Coats-of-arms will require to be
obliterated;—and yet Cassandra Marat on this and the other
coach-panel notices that they 'are but painted-over,' and
threaten to peer through again.
So that henceforth de Lafayette is but the Sieur Motier, and
Saint-Fargeau is plain Michel Lepelletier; and Mirabeau soon
after has to say huffingly, "With your Riquetti you have set
Europe at cross-purposes for three days." For his Counthood is
not indifferent to this man; which indeed the admiring People
treat him with to the last. But let extreme Patriotism rejoice,
and chiefly Anacharsis and Mankind; for now it seems to be taken
for granted that one Adam is Father of us all!—
Such was, in historical accuracy, the famed feat of Anacharsis.
Thus did the most extensive of Public Bodies find a sort of
spokesman. Whereby at least we may judge of one thing: what a
humour the once sniffing mocking City of Paris and Baron Clootz
had got into; when such exhibition could appear a propriety, next
door to a sublimity. It is true, Envy did in after times, pervert
this success of Anacharsis; making him, from incidental 'Speaker
of the Foreign-Nations Committee,' claim to be official permanent
'Speaker, Orateur, of the Human Species,' which he only deserved
to be; and alleging, calumniously, that his astrological
Chaldeans, and the rest, were a mere French tag-rag-and-bobtail
disguised for the nonce; and, in short, sneering and fleering at
him in her cold barren way; all which, however, he, the man he
was, could receive on thick enough panoply, or even rebound
therefrom, and also go his way.
Most extensive of Public Bodies, we may call it; and also the
most unexpected: for who could have thought to see All Nations in
the Tuileries Riding-Hall? But so it is; and truly as strange
things may happen when a whole People goes mumming and miming.
Hast not thou thyself perchance seen diademed Cleopatra, daughter
of the Ptolemies, pleading, almost with bended knee, in unheroic
tea-parlour, or dimlit retail-shop, to inflexible gross Burghal
Dignitary, for leave to reign and die; being dressed for it, and
moneyless, with small children;—while suddenly Constables have
shut the Thespian barn, and her Antony pleaded in vain? Such
visual spectra flit across this Earth, if the Thespian Stage be
rudely interfered with: but much more, when, as was said, Pit
jumps on Stage, then is it verily, as in Herr Tieck's Drama, a
Verkehrte Welt, of World Topsyturvied!
Having seen the Human Species itself, to have seen the 'Dean of
the Human Species,' ceased now to be a miracle. Such 'Doyen du
Genre Humain, Eldest of Men,' had shewn himself there, in these
weeks: Jean Claude Jacob, a born Serf, deputed from his native
Jura Mountains to thank the National Assembly for enfranchising
them. On his bleached worn face are ploughed the furrowings of
one hundred and twenty years. He has heard dim patois-talk, of
immortal Grand-Monarch victories; of a burnt Palatinate, as he
toiled and moiled to make a little speck of this Earth greener;
of Cevennes Dragoonings; of Marlborough going to the war. Four
generations have bloomed out, and loved and hated, and rustled
off: he was forty-six when Louis Fourteenth died. The Assembly,
as one man, spontaneously rose, and did reverence to the Eldest
of the World; old Jean is to take seance among them, honourably,
with covered head. He gazes feebly there, with his old eyes, on
that new wonder-scene; dreamlike to him, and uncertain, wavering
amid fragments of old memories and dreams. For Time is all
growing unsubstantial, dreamlike; Jean's eyes and mind are weary,
and about to close,—and open on a far other wonder-scene, which
shall be real. Patriot Subscription, Royal Pension was got for
him, and he returned home glad; but in two months more he left it
all, and went on his unknown way. (_Deux Amis, iv. iii._)
Chapter 2.1.XI.
As in the Age of Gold.
Meanwhile to Paris, ever going and returning, day after day, and
all day long, towards that Field of Mars, it becomes painfully
apparent that the spadework there cannot be got done in time.
There is such an area of it; three hundred thousand square feet:
for from the Ecole militaire (_which will need to be done up in
wood with balconies and galleries_) westward to the Gate by the
river (_where also shall be wood, in triumphal arches_), we count
same thousand yards of length; and for breadth, from this
umbrageous Avenue of eight rows, on the South side, to that
corresponding one on the North, some thousand feet, more or less.
All this to be scooped out, and wheeled up in slope along the
sides; high enough; for it must be rammed down there, and shaped
stair-wise into as many as 'thirty ranges of convenient seats,'
firm-trimmed with turf, covered with enduring timber;—and then
our huge pyramidal Fatherland's-Altar, Autel de la Patrie, in the
centre, also to be raised and stair-stepped! Force-work with a
vengeance; it is a World's Amphitheatre! There are but fifteen
days good; and at this languid rate, it might take half as many
weeks. What is singular too, the spademen seem to work lazily;
they will not work double-tides, even for offer of more wages,
though their tide is but seven hours; they declare angrily that
the human tabernacle requires occasional rest!
Is it Aristocrats secretly bribing? Aristocrats were capable of
that. Only six months since, did not evidence get afloat that
subterranean Paris, for we stand over quarries and catacombs,
dangerously, as it were midway between Heaven and the Abyss, and
are hollow underground,—was charged with gunpowder, which should
make us 'leap?' Till a Cordelier's Deputation actually went to
examine, and found it—carried off again! (_23rd December, 1789
(_Newspapers in Hist. Parl. iv. 44_)._) An accursed, incurable
brood; all asking for 'passports,' in these sacred days. Trouble,
of rioting, chateau-burning, is in the Limousin and elsewhere;
for they are busy! Between the best of Peoples and the best of
Restorer-Kings, they would sow grudges; with what a fiend's-grin
would they see this Federation, looked for by the Universe, fail!
Fail for want of spadework, however, it shall not. He that has
four limbs, and a French heart, can do spadework; and will! On
the first July Monday, scarcely has the signal-cannon boomed;
scarcely have the languescent mercenary Fifteen Thousand laid
down their tools, and the eyes of onlookers turned sorrowfully of
the still high Sun; when this and the other Patriot, fire in his
eye, snatches barrow and mattock, and himself begins indignantly
wheeling. Whom scores and then hundreds follow; and soon a
volunteer Fifteen Thousand are shovelling and trundling; with the
heart of giants; and all in right order, with that extemporaneous
adroitness of theirs: whereby such a lift has been given, worth
three mercenary ones;—which may end when the late twilight
thickens, in triumph shouts, heard or heard of beyond Montmartre!
A sympathetic population will wait, next day, with eagerness,
till the tools are free. Or why wait? Spades elsewhere exist! And
so now bursts forth that effulgence of Parisian enthusiasm,
good-heartedness and brotherly love; such, if Chroniclers are
trustworthy, as was not witnessed since the Age of Gold. Paris,
male and female, precipitates itself towards its South-west
extremity, spade on shoulder. Streams of men, without order; or
in order, as ranked fellow-craftsmen, as natural or accidental
reunions, march towards the Field of Mars. Three-deep these
march; to the sound of stringed music; preceded by young girls
with green boughs, and tricolor streamers: they have shouldered,
soldier-wise, their shovels and picks; and with one throat are
singing ca-ira. Yes, pardieu ca-ira, cry the passengers on the
streets. All corporate Guilds, and public and private Bodies of
Citizens, from the highest to the lowest, march; the very
Hawkers, one finds, have ceased bawling for one day. The
neighbouring Villages turn out: their able men come marching, to
village fiddle or tambourine and triangle, under their Mayor, or
Mayor and Curate, who also walk bespaded, and in tricolor sash.
As many as one hundred and fifty thousand workers: nay at certain
seasons, as some count, two hundred and fifty thousand; for, in
the afternoon especially, what mortal but, finishing his hasty
day's work, would run! A stirring city: from the time you reach
the Place Louis Quinze, southward over the River, by all Avenues,
it is one living throng. So many workers; and no mercenary
mock-workers, but real ones that lie freely to it: each Patriot
stretches himself against the stubborn glebe; hews and wheels
with the whole weight that is in him.
Amiable infants, aimables enfans! They do the 'police des
l'atelier' too, the guidance and governance, themselves; with
that ready will of theirs, with that extemporaneous adroitness.
It is a true brethren's work; all distinctions confounded,
abolished; as it was in the beginning, when Adam himself delved.
Longfrocked tonsured Monks, with short-skirted Water-carriers,
with swallow-tailed well-frizzled Incroyables of a Patriot turn;
dark Charcoalmen, meal-white Peruke-makers; or Peruke-wearers,
for Advocate and Judge are there, and all Heads of Districts:
sober Nuns sisterlike with flaunting Nymphs of the Opera, and
females in common circumstances named unfortunate: the patriot
Rag-picker, and perfumed dweller in palaces; for Patriotism like
New-birth, and also like Death, levels all. The Printers have
come marching, Prudhomme's all in Paper-caps with Revolutions de
Paris printed on them; as Camille notes; wishing that in these
great days there should be a Pacte des Ecrivains too, or
Federation of Able Editors. (_See Newspapers, &c. (_in Hist.
Parl. vi. 381-406_)._) Beautiful to see! The snowy linen and
delicate pantaloon alternates with the soiled check-shirt and
bushel-breeches; for both have cast their coats, and under both
are four limbs and a set of Patriot muscles. There do they pick
and shovel; or bend forward, yoked in long strings to box-barrow
or overloaded tumbril; joyous, with one mind. Abbe Sieyes is seen
pulling, wiry, vehement, if too light for draught; by the side of
Beauharnais, who shall get Kings though he be none. Abbe Maury
did not pull; but the Charcoalmen brought a mummer guised like
him, so he had to pull in effigy. Let no august Senator disdain
the work: Mayor Bailly, Generalissimo Lafayette are there;—and,
alas, shall be there again another day! The King himself comes to
see: sky-rending Vive-le-Roi; 'and suddenly with shouldered
spades they form a guard of honour round him.' Whosoever can come
comes, to work, or to look, and bless the work.
Whole families have come. One whole family we see clearly, of
three generations: the father picking, the mother shovelling, the
young ones wheeling assiduous; old grandfather, hoary with
ninety-three years, holds in his arms the youngest of all:
(_Mercier. ii. 76, &c._) frisky, not helpful this one; who
nevertheless may tell it to his grandchildren; and how the Future
and the Past alike looked on, and with failing or with
half-formed voice, faltered their ca-ira. A vintner has wheeled
in, on Patriot truck, beverage of wine: "Drink not, my brothers,
if ye are not dry; that your cask may last the longer;" neither
did any drink, but men 'evidently exhausted.' A dapper Abbe looks
on, sneering. "To the barrow!" cry several; whom he, lest a worse
thing befal him, obeys: nevertheless one wiser Patriot barrowman,
arriving now, interposes his "arretez;" setting down his own
barrow, he snatches the Abbe's; trundles it fast, like an
infected thing; forth of the Champ-de-Mars circuit, and
discharges it there. Thus too a certain person (_of some quality,
or private capital, to appearance_), entering hastily, flings
down his coat, waistcoat and two watches, and is rushing to the
thick of the work: "But your watches?" cries the general
voice.—"Does one distrust his brothers?" answers he; nor were the
watches stolen. How beautiful is noble-sentiment: like gossamer
gauze, beautiful and cheap; which will stand no tear and wear!
Beautiful cheap gossamer gauze, thou film-shadow of a
raw-material of Virtue, which art not woven, nor likely to be,
into Duty; thou art better than nothing, and also worse!
Young Boarding-school Boys, College Students, shout Vive la
Nation, and regret that they have yet 'only their sweat to give.'
What say we of Boys? Beautifullest Hebes; the loveliest of Paris,
in their light air-robes, with riband-girdle of tricolor, are
there; shovelling and wheeling with the rest; their Hebe eyes
brighter with enthusiasm, and long hair in beautiful
dishevelment: hard-pressed are their small fingers; but they make
the patriot barrow go, and even force it to the summit of the
slope (_with a little tracing, which what man's arm were not too
happy to lend?_)—then bound down with it again, and go for more;
with their long locks and tricolors blown back: graceful as the
rosy Hours. O, as that evening Sun fell over the Champ-de-Mars,
and tinted with fire the thick umbrageous boscage that shelters
it on this hand and on that, and struck direct on those Domes and
two-and-forty Windows of the Ecole Militaire, and made them all
of burnished gold,—saw he on his wide zodiac road other such
sight? A living garden spotted and dotted with such flowerage;
all colours of the prism; the beautifullest blent friendly with
the usefullest; all growing and working brotherlike there, under
one warm feeling, were it but for days; once and no second time!
But Night is sinking; these Nights too, into Eternity. The
hastiest Traveller Versailles-ward has drawn bridle on the
heights of Chaillot: and looked for moments over the River;
reporting at Versailles what he saw, not without tears.
(_Mercier, ii. 81._)
Meanwhile, from all points of the compass, Federates are
arriving: fervid children of the South, 'who glory in their
Mirabeau;' considerate North-blooded Mountaineers of Jura; sharp
Bretons, with their Gaelic suddenness; Normans not to be
overreached in bargain: all now animated with one noblest fire of
Patriotism. Whom the Paris brethren march forth to receive; with
military solemnities, with fraternal embracing, and a hospitality
worthy of the heroic ages. They assist at the Assembly's Debates,
these Federates: the Galleries are reserved for them. They assist
in the toils of the Champ-de-Mars; each new troop will put its
hand to the spade; lift a hod of earth on the Altar of the
Fatherland. But the flourishes of rhetoric, for it is a
gesticulating People; the moral-sublime of those Addresses to an
august Assembly, to a Patriot Restorer! Our Breton Captain of
Federates kneels even, in a fit of enthusiasm, and gives up his
sword; he wet-eyed to a King wet-eyed. Poor Louis! These, as he
said afterwards, were among the bright days of his life.
Reviews also there must be; royal Federate-reviews, with King,
Queen and tricolor Court looking on: at lowest, if, as is too
common, it rains, our Federate Volunteers will file through the
inner gateways, Royalty standing dry. Nay there, should some stop
occur, the beautifullest fingers in France may take you softly by
the lapelle, and, in mild flute-voice, ask: "Monsieur, of what
Province are you?" Happy he who can reply, chivalrously lowering
his sword's point, "Madame, from the Province your ancestors
reigned over." He that happy 'Provincial Advocate,' now
Provincial Federate, shall be rewarded by a sun-smile, and such
melodious glad words addressed to a King: "Sire, these are your
faithful Lorrainers." Cheerier verily, in these holidays, is this
'skyblue faced with red' of a National Guardsman, than the dull
black and gray of a Provincial Advocate, which in workdays one
was used to. For the same thrice-blessed Lorrainer shall, this
evening, stand sentry at a Queen's door; and feel that he could
die a thousand deaths for her: then again, at the outer gate, and
even a third time, she shall see him; nay he will make her do it;
presenting arms with emphasis, 'making his musket jingle again':
and in her salute there shall again be a sun-smile, and that
little blonde-locked too hasty Dauphin shall be admonished,
"Salute then, Monsieur, don't be unpolite;" and therewith she,
like a bright Sky-wanderer or Planet with her little Moon, issues
forth peculiar. (_Narrative by a Lorraine Federate (_given in
Hist. Parl. vi. 389-91_)._)
But at night, when Patriot spadework is over, figure the sacred
rights of hospitality! Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, a mere private
senator, but with great possessions, has daily his 'hundred
dinner-guests;' the table of Generalissimo Lafayette may double
that number. In lowly parlour, as in lofty saloon, the wine-cup
passes round; crowned by the smiles of Beauty; be it of
lightly-tripping Grisette, or of high-sailing Dame, for both
equally have beauty, and smiles precious to the brave.
Chapter 2.1.XII.
Sound and Smoke.
And so now, in spite of plotting Aristocrats, lazy hired
spademen, and almost of Destiny itself (_for there has been much
rain_), the Champ-de-Mars, on the 13th of the month is fairly
ready; trimmed, rammed, buttressed with firm masonry; and
Patriotism can stroll over it admiring; and as it were
rehearsing, for in every head is some unutterable image of the
morrow. Pray Heaven there be not clouds. Nay what far worse cloud
is this, of a misguided Municipality that talks of admitting
Patriotism, to the solemnity, by tickets! Was it by tickets we
were admitted to the work; and to what brought the work? Did we
take the Bastille by tickets? A misguided Municipality sees the
error; at late midnight, rolling drums announce to Patriotism
starting half out of its bed-clothes, that it is to be
ticketless. Pull down thy night-cap therefore; and, with
demi-articulate grumble, significant of several things, go
pacified to sleep again. Tomorrow is Wednesday morning;
unforgetable among the fasti of the world.
The morning comes, cold for a July one; but such a festivity
would make Greenland smile. Through every inlet of that National
Amphitheatre (_for it is a league in circuit, cut with openings
at due intervals_), floods-in the living throng; covers without
tumult space after space. The Ecole Militaire has galleries and
overvaulting canopies, where Carpentry and Painting have vied,
for the upper Authorities; triumphal arches, at the Gate by the
River, bear inscriptions, if weak, yet well-meant, and orthodox.
Far aloft, over the Altar of the Fatherland, on their tall crane
standards of iron, swing pensile our antique Cassolettes or pans
of incense; dispensing sweet incense-fumes,—unless for the
Heathen Mythology, one sees not for whom. Two hundred thousand
Patriotic Men; and, twice as good, one hundred thousand Patriotic
Women, all decked and glorified as one can fancy, sit waiting in
this Champ-de-Mars.
What a picture: that circle of bright-eyed Life, spread up there,
on its thirty-seated Slope; leaning, one would say, on the thick
umbrage of those Avenue-Trees, for the stems of them are hidden
by the height; and all beyond it mere greenness of Summer Earth,
with the gleams of waters, or white sparklings of stone-edifices:
little circular enamel-picture in the centre of such a vase—of
emerald! A vase not empty: the Invalides Cupolas want not their
population, nor the distant Windmills of Montmartre; on remotest
steeple and invisible village belfry, stand men with spy-glasses.
On the heights of Chaillot are many-coloured undulating groups;
round and far on, over all the circling heights that embosom
Paris, it is as one more or less peopled Amphitheatre; which the
eye grows dim with measuring. Nay heights, as was before hinted,
have cannon; and a floating-battery of cannon is on the Seine.
When eye fails, ear shall serve; and all France properly is but
one Amphitheatre: for in paved town and unpaved hamlet, men walk
listening; till the muffled thunder sound audible on their
horizon, that they too may begin swearing and firing! (_Deux
Amis, v. 168._) But now, to streams of music, come Federates
enough,—for they have assembled on the Boulevard Saint-Antoine or
thereby, and come marching through the City, with their
Eighty-three Department Banners, and blessings not loud but deep;
comes National Assembly, and takes seat under its Canopy; comes
Royalty, and takes seat on a throne beside it. And Lafayette, on
white charger, is here, and all the civic Functionaries; and the
Federates form dances, till their strictly military evolutions
and manoeuvres can begin.
Evolutions and manoeuvres? Task not the pen of mortal to describe
them: truant imagination droops;—declares that it is not worth
while. There is wheeling and sweeping, to slow, to quick, and
double quick-time: Sieur Motier, or Generalissimo Lafayette, for
they are one and the same, and he is General of France, in the
King's stead, for four-and-twenty hours; Sieur Motier must step
forth, with that sublime chivalrous gait of his; solemnly ascend
the steps of the Fatherland's Altar, in sight of Heaven and of
the scarcely breathing Earth; and, under the creak of those
swinging Cassolettes, 'pressing his sword's point firmly there,'
pronounce the Oath, To King, to Law, and Nation (_not to mention
'grains' with their circulating_), in his own name and that of
armed France. Whereat there is waving of banners and acclaim
sufficient. The National Assembly must swear, standing in its
place; the King himself audibly. The King swears; and now be the
welkin split with vivats; let citizens enfranchised embrace, each
smiting heartily his palm into his fellow's; and armed Federates
clang their arms; above all, that floating battery speak! It has
spoken,—to the four corners of France. From eminence to eminence,
bursts the thunder; faint-heard, loud-repeated. What a stone,
cast into what a lake; in circles that do not grow fainter. From
Arras to Avignon; from Metz to Bayonne! Over Orleans and Blois it
rolls, in cannon-recitative; Puy bellows of it amid his granite
mountains; Pau where is the shell-cradle of Great Henri. At far
Marseilles, one can think, the ruddy evening witnesses it; over
the deep-blue Mediterranean waters, the Castle of If ruddy-tinted
darts forth, from every cannon's mouth, its tongue of fire; and
all the people shout: Yes, France is free. O glorious France that
has burst out so; into universal sound and smoke; and
attained—the Phrygian Cap of Liberty! In all Towns, Trees of
Liberty also may be planted; with or without advantage. Said we
not, it is the highest stretch attained by the Thespian Art on
this Planet, or perhaps attainable?
The Thespian Art, unfortunately, one must still call it; for
behold there, on this Field of Mars, the National Banners, before
there could be any swearing, were to be all blessed. A most
proper operation; since surely without Heaven's blessing
bestowed, say even, audibly or inaudibly sought, no Earthly
banner or contrivance can prove victorious: but now the means of
doing it? By what thrice-divine Franklin thunder-rod shall
miraculous fire be drawn out of Heaven; and descend gently,
life-giving, with health to the souls of men? Alas, by the
simplest: by Two Hundred shaven-crowned Individuals, 'in
snow-white albs, with tricolor girdles,' arranged on the steps of
Fatherland's Altar; and, at their head for spokesman, Soul's
Overseer Talleyrand-Perigord! These shall act as miraculous
thunder-rod,—to such length as they can. O ye deep azure Heavens,
and thou green all-nursing Earth; ye Streams ever-flowing;
deciduous Forests that die and are born again, continually, like
the sons of men; stone Mountains that die daily with every
rain-shower, yet are not dead and levelled for ages of ages, nor
born again (_it seems_) but with new world-explosions, and such
tumultuous seething and tumbling, steam half way to the Moon; O
thou unfathomable mystic All, garment and dwellingplace of the
UNNAMED; O spirit, lastly, of Man, who mouldest and modellest
that Unfathomable Unnameable even as we see,—is not there a
miracle: That some French mortal should, we say not have
believed, but pretended to imagine that he believed that
Talleyrand and Two Hundred pieces of white Calico could do it!
Here, however, we are to remark with the sorrowing Historians of
that day, that suddenly, while Episcopus Talleyrand, long-stoled,
with mitre and tricolor belt, was yet but hitching up the
Altar-steps, to do his miracle, the material Heaven grew black; a
north-wind, moaning cold moisture, began to sing; and there
descended a very deluge of rain. Sad to see! The thirty-staired
Seats, all round our Amphitheatre, get instantaneously slated
with mere umbrellas, fallacious when so thick set: our antique
Cassolettes become Water-pots; their incense-smoke gone hissing,
in a whiff of muddy vapour. Alas, instead of vivats, there is
nothing now but the furious peppering and rattling. From three to
four hundred thousand human individuals feel that they have a
skin; happily impervious. The General's sash runs water: how all
military banners droop; and will not wave, but lazily flap, as if
metamorphosed into painted tin-banners! Worse, far worse, these
hundred thousand, such is the Historian's testimony, of the
fairest of France! Their snowy muslins all splashed and draggled;
the ostrich feather shrunk shamefully to the backbone of a
feather: all caps are ruined; innermost pasteboard molten into
its original pap: Beauty no longer swims decorated in her
garniture, like Love-goddess hidden-revealed in her Paphian
clouds, but struggles in disastrous imprisonment in it, for 'the
shape was noticeable;' and now only sympathetic interjections,
titterings, teeheeings, and resolute good-humour will avail. A
deluge; an incessant sheet or fluid-column of rain;—such that our
Overseer's very mitre must be filled; not a mitre, but a filled
and leaky fire-bucket on his reverend head!—Regardless of which,
Overseer Talleyrand performs his miracle: the Blessing of
Talleyrand, another than that of Jacob, is on all the
Eighty-three departmental flags of France; which wave or flap,
with such thankfulness as needs. Towards three o'clock, the sun
beams out again: the remaining evolutions can be transacted under
bright heavens, though with decorations much damaged. (_Deux
Amis, v. 143-179._)
On Wednesday our Federation is consummated: but the festivities
last out the week, and over into the next. Festivities such as no
Bagdad Caliph, or Aladdin with the Lamp, could have equalled.
There is a Jousting on the River; with its water-somersets,
splashing and haha-ing: Abbe Fauchet, Te-Deum Fauchet, preaches,
for his part, in 'the rotunda of the Corn-market,' a Harangue on
Franklin; for whom the National Assembly has lately gone three
days in black. The Motier and Lepelletier tables still groan with
viands; roofs ringing with patriotic toasts. On the fifth
evening, which is the Christian Sabbath, there is a universal
Ball. Paris, out of doors and in, man, woman and child, is
jigging it, to the sound of harp and four-stringed fiddle. The
hoariest-headed man will tread one other measure, under this
nether Moon; speechless nurselings, infants as we call them,
(íÞðéá ôÝêõá,), crow in arms; and sprawl out numb-plump little
limbs,—impatient for muscularity, they know not why. The stiffest
balk bends more or less; all joists creak.
Or out, on the Earth's breast itself, behold the Ruins of the
Bastille. All lamplit, allegorically decorated: a Tree of Liberty
sixty feet high; and Phrygian Cap on it, of size enormous, under
which King Arthur and his round-table might have dined! In the
depths of the background, is a single lugubrious lamp, rendering
dim-visible one of your iron cages, half-buried, and some Prison
stones,—Tyranny vanishing downwards, all gone but the skirt: the
rest wholly lamp-festoons, trees real or of pasteboard; in the
similitude of a fairy grove; with this inscription, readable to
runner: 'Ici l'on danse, Dancing Here.' As indeed had been
obscurely foreshadowed by Cagliostro (_See his Lettre au Peuple
Francais, London, 1786._) prophetic Quack of Quacks, when he,
four years ago, quitted the grim durance;—to fall into a grimmer,
of the Roman Inquisition, and not quit it.
But, after all, what is this Bastille business to that of the
Champs Elysees! Thither, to these Fields well named Elysian, all
feet tend. It is radiant as day with festooned lamps; little
oil-cups, like variegated fire-flies, daintily illumine the
highest leaves: trees there are all sheeted with variegated fire,
shedding far a glimmer into the dubious wood. There, under the
free sky, do tight-limbed Federates, with fairest newfound
sweethearts, elastic as Diana, and not of that coyness and tart
humour of Diana, thread their jocund mazes, all through the
ambrosial night; and hearts were touched and fired; and seldom
surely had our old Planet, in that huge conic Shadow of hers
'which goes beyond the Moon, and is named Night,' curtained such
a Ball-room. O if, according to Seneca, the very gods look down
on a good man struggling with adversity, and smile; what must
they think of Five-and-twenty million indifferent ones victorious
over it,—for eight days and more?
In this way, and in such ways, however, has the Feast of Pikes
danced itself off; gallant Federates wending homewards, towards
every point of the compass, with feverish nerves, heart and head
much heated; some of them, indeed, as Dampmartin's elderly
respectable friend, from Strasbourg, quite 'burnt out with
liquors,' and flickering towards extinction. (_Dampmartin,
Evenemens, i. 144-184._) The Feast of Pikes has danced itself
off, and become defunct, and the ghost of a Feast;—nothing of it
now remaining but this vision in men's memory; and the place that
knew it (_for the slope of that Champ-de-Mars is crumbled to half
the original height (_Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, viii. 25_)._)
now knowing it no more. Undoubtedly one of the memorablest
National Hightides. Never or hardly ever, as we said, was Oath
sworn with such heart-effusion, emphasis and expenditure of
joyance; and then it was broken irremediably within year and day.
Ah, why? When the swearing of it was so heavenly-joyful, bosom
clasped to bosom, and Five-and-twenty million hearts all burning
together: O ye inexorable Destinies, why?—Partly because it was
sworn with such over-joyance; but chiefly, indeed, for an older
reason: that Sin had come into the world and Misery by Sin! These
Five-and-twenty millions, if we will consider it, have now
henceforth, with that Phrygian Cap of theirs, no force over them,
to bind and guide; neither in them, more than heretofore, is
guiding force, or rule of just living: how then, while they all
go rushing at such a pace, on unknown ways, with no bridle,
towards no aim, can hurlyburly unutterable fail? For verily not
Federation-rosepink is the colour of this Earth and her work: not
by outbursts of noble-sentiment, but with far other ammunition,
shall a man front the world.
But how wise, in all cases, to 'husband your fire;' to keep it
deep down, rather, as genial radical-heat! Explosions, the
forciblest, and never so well directed, are questionable; far
oftenest futile, always frightfully wasteful: but think of a man,
of a Nation of men, spending its whole stock of fire in one
artificial Firework! So have we seen fond weddings (_for
individuals, like Nations, have their Hightides_) celebrated with
an outburst of triumph and deray, at which the elderly shook
their heads. Better had a serious cheerfulness been; for the
enterprise was great. Fond pair! the more triumphant ye feel, and
victorious over terrestrial evil, which seems all abolished, the
wider-eyed will your disappointment be to find terrestrial evil
still extant. "And why extant?" will each of you cry: "Because my
false mate has played the traitor: evil was abolished; I meant
faithfully, and did, or would have done." Whereby the oversweet
moon of honey changes itself into long years of vinegar; perhaps
divulsive vinegar, like Hannibal's.
Shall we say then, the French Nation has led Royalty, or wooed
and teased poor Royalty to lead her, to the hymeneal Fatherland's
Altar, in such oversweet manner; and has, most thoughtlessly, to
celebrate the nuptials with due shine and demonstration,—burnt
her bed?
BOOK 2.II.
NANCI
Chapter 2.2.I.
Bouille.
Dimly visible, at Metz on the North-Eastern frontier, a certain
brave Bouille, last refuge of Royalty in all straits and
meditations of flight, has for many months hovered occasionally
in our eye; some name or shadow of a brave Bouille: let us now,
for a little, look fixedly at him, till he become a substance and
person for us. The man himself is worth a glance; his position
and procedure there, in these days, will throw light on many
things.
For it is with Bouille as with all French Commanding Officers;
only in a more emphatic degree. The grand National Federation, we
already guess, was but empty sound, or worse: a last loudest
universal Hep-hep-hurrah, with full bumpers, in that National
Lapithae-feast of Constitution-making; as in loud denial of the
palpably existing; as if, with hurrahings, you would shut out
notice of the inevitable already knocking at the gates! Which new
National bumper, one may say, can but deepen the drunkenness; and
so, the louder it swears Brotherhood, will the sooner and the
more surely lead to Cannibalism. Ah, under that fraternal shine
and clangour, what a deep world of irreconcileable discords lie
momentarily assuaged, damped down for one moment! Respectable
military Federates have barely got home to their quarters; and
the inflammablest, 'dying, burnt up with liquors, and kindness,'
has not yet got extinct; the shine is hardly out of men's eyes,
and still blazes filling all men's memories,—when your discords
burst forth again very considerably darker than ever. Let us look
at Bouille, and see how.
Bouille for the present commands in the Garrison of Metz, and far
and wide over the East and North; being indeed, by a late act of
Government with sanction of National Assembly, appointed one of
our Four supreme Generals. Rochambeau and Mailly, men and
Marshals of note in these days, though to us of small moment, are
two of his colleagues; tough old babbling Luckner, also of small
moment for us, will probably be the third. Marquis de Bouille is
a determined Loyalist; not indeed disinclined to moderate reform,
but resolute against immoderate. A man long suspect to
Patriotism; who has more than once given the august Assembly
trouble; who would not, for example, take the National Oath, as
he was bound to do, but always put it off on this or the other
pretext, till an autograph of Majesty requested him to do it as a
favour. There, in this post if not of honour, yet of eminence and
danger, he waits, in a silent concentered manner; very dubious of
the future. 'Alone,' as he says, or almost alone, of all the old
military Notabilities, he has not emigrated; but thinks always,
in atrabiliar moments, that there will be nothing for him too but
to cross the marches. He might cross, say, to Treves or Coblentz
where Exiled Princes will be one day ranking; or say, over into
Luxemburg where old Broglie loiters and languishes. Or is there
not the great dim Deep of European Diplomacy; where your
Calonnes, your Breteuils are beginning to hover, dimly
discernible?
With immeasurable confused outlooks and purposes, with no clear
purpose but this of still trying to do His Majesty a service,
Bouille waits; struggling what he can to keep his district loyal,
his troops faithful, his garrisons furnished. He maintains, as
yet, with his Cousin Lafayette, some thin diplomatic
correspondence, by letter and messenger; chivalrous
constitutional professions on the one side, military gravity and
brevity on the other; which thin correspondence one can see
growing ever the thinner and hollower, towards the verge of
entire vacuity. (_Bouille, Memoires (_London, 1797_), i. c. 8._)
A quick, choleric, sharply discerning, stubbornly endeavouring
man; with suppressed-explosive resolution, with valour, nay
headlong audacity: a man who was more in his place, lionlike
defending those Windward Isles, or, as with military
tiger-spring, clutching Nevis and Montserrat from the
English,—than here in this suppressed condition, muzzled and
fettered by diplomatic packthreads; looking out for a civil war,
which may never arrive. Few years ago Bouille was to have led a
French East-Indian Expedition, and reconquered or conquered
Pondicherri and the Kingdoms of the Sun: but the whole world is
suddenly changed, and he with it; Destiny willed it not in that
way but in this.
Chapter 2.2.II.
Arrears and Aristocrats.
Indeed, as to the general outlook of things, Bouille himself
augurs not well of it. The French Army, ever since those old
Bastille days, and earlier, has been universally in the
questionablest state, and growing daily worse. Discipline, which
is at all times a kind of miracle, and works by faith, broke down
then; one sees not with that near prospect of recovering itself.
The Gardes Francaises played a deadly game; but how they won it,
and wear the prizes of it, all men know. In that general
overturn, we saw the Hired Fighters refuse to fight. The very
Swiss of Chateau-Vieux, which indeed is a kind of French Swiss,
from Geneva and the Pays de Vaud, are understood to have
declined. Deserters glided over; Royal-Allemand itself looked
disconsolate, though stanch of purpose. In a word, we there saw
Military Rule, in the shape of poor Besenval with that convulsive
unmanageable Camp of his, pass two martyr days on the
Champ-de-Mars; and then, veiling itself, so to speak, 'under the
cloud of night,' depart 'down the left bank of the Seine,' to
seek refuge elsewhere; this ground having clearly become too hot
for it.
But what new ground to seek, what remedy to try? Quarters that
were 'uninfected:' this doubtless, with judicious strictness of
drilling, were the plan. Alas, in all quarters and places, from
Paris onward to the remotest hamlet, is infection, is seditious
contagion: inhaled, propagated by contact and converse, till the
dullest soldier catch it! There is speech of men in uniform with
men not in uniform; men in uniform read journals, and even write
in them. (_See Newspapers of July, 1789 (_in Hist. Parl. ii.
35_), &c._) There are public petitions or remonstrances, private
emissaries and associations; there is discontent, jealousy,
uncertainty, sullen suspicious humour. The whole French Army,
fermenting in dark heat, glooms ominous, boding good to no one.
So that, in the general social dissolution and revolt, we are to
have this deepest and dismallest kind of it, a revolting
soldiery? Barren, desolate to look upon is this same business of
revolt under all its aspects; but how infinitely more so, when it
takes the aspect of military mutiny! The very implement of rule
and restraint, whereby all the rest was managed and held in
order, has become precisely the frightfullest immeasurable
implement of misrule; like the element of Fire, our indispensable
all-ministering servant, when it gets the mastery, and becomes
conflagration. Discipline we called a kind of miracle: in fact,
is it not miraculous how one man moves hundreds of thousands;
each unit of whom it may be loves him not, and singly fears him
not, yet has to obey him, to go hither or go thither, to march
and halt, to give death, and even to receive it, as if a Fate had
spoken; and the word-of-command becomes, almost in the literal
sense, a magic-word?
Which magic-word, again, if it be once forgotten; the spell of it
once broken! The legions of assiduous ministering spirits rise on
you now as menacing fiends; your free orderly arena becomes a
tumult-place of the Nether Pit, and the hapless magician is rent
limb from limb. Military mobs are mobs with muskets in their
hands; and also with death hanging over their heads, for death is
the penalty of disobedience and they have disobeyed. And now if
all mobs are properly frenzies, and work frenetically with mad
fits of hot and of cold, fierce rage alternating so incoherently
with panic terror, consider what your military mob will be, with
such a conflict of duties and penalties, whirled between remorse
and fury, and, for the hot fit, loaded fire-arms in its hand! To
the soldier himself, revolt is frightful, and oftenest perhaps
pitiable; and yet so dangerous, it can only be hated, cannot be
pitied. An anomalous class of mortals these poor Hired Killers!
With a frankness, which to the Moralist in these times seems
surprising, they have sworn to become machines; and nevertheless
they are still partly men. Let no prudent person in authority
remind them of this latter fact; but always let force, let
injustice above all, stop short clearly on this side of the
rebounding-point! Soldiers, as we often say, do revolt: were it
not so, several things which are transient in this world might be
perennial.
Over and above the general quarrel which all sons of Adam
maintain with their lot here below, the grievances of the French
soldiery reduce themselves to two, First that their Officers are
Aristocrats; secondly that they cheat them of their Pay. Two
grievances; or rather we might say one, capable of becoming a
hundred; for in that single first proposition, that the Officers
are Aristocrats, what a multitude of corollaries lie ready! It is
a bottomless ever-flowing fountain of grievances this; what you
may call a general raw-material of grievance, wherefrom
individual grievance after grievance will daily body itself
forth. Nay there will even be a kind of comfort in getting it,
from time to time, so embodied. Peculation of one's Pay! It is
embodied; made tangible, made denounceable; exhalable, if only in
angry words.
For unluckily that grand fountain of grievances does exist:
Aristocrats almost all our Officers necessarily are; they have it
in the blood and bone. By the law of the case, no man can pretend
to be the pitifullest lieutenant of militia, till he have first
verified, to the satisfaction of the Lion-King, a Nobility of
four generations. Not Nobility only, but four generations of it:
this latter is the improvement hit upon, in comparatively late
years, by a certain War-minister much pressed for commissions.
(_Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 89._) An improvement which did
relieve the over-pressed War-minister, but which split France
still further into yawning contrasts of Commonalty and Nobility,
nay of new Nobility and old; as if already with your new and old,
and then with your old, older and oldest, there were not
contrasts and discrepancies enough;—the general clash whereof men
now see and hear, and in the singular whirlpool, all contrasts
gone together to the bottom! Gone to the bottom or going; with
uproar, without return; going every where save in the Military
section of things; and there, it may be asked, can they hope to
continue always at the top? Apparently, not.
It is true, in a time of external Peace, when there is no
fighting but only drilling, this question, How you rise from the
ranks, may seem theoretical rather. But in reference to the
Rights of Man it is continually practical. The soldier has sworn
to be faithful not to the King only, but to the Law and the
Nation. Do our commanders love the Revolution? ask all soldiers.
Unhappily no, they hate it, and love the Counter-Revolution.
Young epauletted men, with quality-blood in them, poisoned with
quality-pride, do sniff openly, with indignation struggling to
become contempt, at our Rights of Man, as at some newfangled
cobweb, which shall be brushed down again. Old officers, more
cautious, keep silent, with closed uncurled lips; but one guesses
what is passing within. Nay who knows, how, under the plausiblest
word of command, might lie Counter-Revolution itself, sale to
Exiled Princes and the Austrian Kaiser: treacherous Aristocrats
hoodwinking the small insight of us common men?—In such manner
works that general raw-material of grievance; disastrous; instead
of trust and reverence, breeding hate, endless suspicion, the
impossibility of commanding and obeying. And now when this second
more tangible grievance has articulated itself universally in the
mind of the common man: Peculation of his Pay! Peculation of the
despicablest sort does exist, and has long existed; but, unless
the new-declared Rights of Man, and all rights whatsoever, be a
cobweb, it shall no longer exist.
The French Military System seems dying a sorrowful suicidal
death. Nay more, citizen, as is natural, ranks himself against
citizen in this cause. The soldier finds audience, of numbers and
sympathy unlimited, among the Patriot lower-classes. Nor are the
higher wanting to the officer. The officer still dresses and
perfumes himself for such sad unemigrated soiree as there may
still be; and speaks his woes,—which woes, are they not Majesty's
and Nature's? Speaks, at the same time, his gay defiance, his
firm-set resolution. Citizens, still more Citizenesses, see the
right and the wrong; not the Military System alone will die by
suicide, but much along with it. As was said, there is yet
possible a deepest overturn than any yet witnessed: that deepest
upturn of the black-burning sulphurous stratum whereon all rests
and grows!
But how these things may act on the rude soldier-mind, with its
military pedantries, its inexperience of all that lies off the
parade-ground; inexperience as of a child, yet fierceness of a
man and vehemence of a Frenchman! It is long that secret
communings in mess-room and guard-room, sour looks, thousandfold
petty vexations between commander and commanded, measure every
where the weary military day. Ask Captain Dampmartin; an
authentic, ingenious literary officer of horse; who loves the
Reign of Liberty, after a sort; yet has had his heart grieved to
the quick many times, in the hot South-Western region and
elsewhere; and has seen riot, civil battle by daylight and by
torchlight, and anarchy hatefuller than death. How insubordinate
Troopers, with drink in their heads, meet Captain Dampmartin and
another on the ramparts, where there is no escape or side-path;
and make military salute punctually, for we look calm on them;
yet make it in a snappish, almost insulting manner: how one
morning they 'leave all their chamois shirts' and superfluous
buffs, which they are tired of, laid in piles at the Captain's
doors; whereat 'we laugh,' as the ass does, eating thistles: nay
how they 'knot two forage-cords together,' with universal noisy
cursing, with evident intent to hang the Quarter-master:—all this
the worthy Captain, looking on it through the ruddy-and-sable of
fond regretful memory, has flowingly written down. (_Dampmartin,
Evenemens, i. 122-146._) Men growl in vague discontent; officers
fling up their commissions, and emigrate in disgust.
Or let us ask another literary Officer; not yet Captain;
Sublieutenant only, in the Artillery Regiment La Fere: a young
man of twenty-one; not unentitled to speak; the name of him is
Napoleon Buonaparte. To such height of Sublieutenancy has he now
got promoted, from Brienne School, five years ago; 'being found
qualified in mathematics by La Place.' He is lying at Auxonne, in
the West, in these months; not sumptuously lodged—'in the house
of a Barber, to whose wife he did not pay the customary degree of
respect;' or even over at the Pavilion, in a chamber with bare
walls; the only furniture an indifferent 'bed without curtains,
two chairs, and in the recess of a window a table covered with
books and papers: his Brother Louis sleeps on a coarse mattrass
in an adjoining room.' However, he is doing something great:
writing his first Book or Pamphlet,—eloquent vehement Letter to
M. Matteo Buttafuoco, our Corsican Deputy, who is not a Patriot
but an Aristocrat, unworthy of Deputyship. Joly of Dole is
Publisher. The literary Sublieutenant corrects the proofs; 'sets
out on foot from Auxonne, every morning at four o'clock, for
Dole: after looking over the proofs, he partakes of an extremely
frugal breakfast with Joly, and immediately prepares for
returning to his Garrison; where he arrives before noon, having
thus walked above twenty miles in the course of the morning.'
This Sublieutenant can remark that, in drawing-rooms, on streets,
on highways, at inns, every where men's minds are ready to kindle
into a flame. That a Patriot, if he appear in the drawing-room,
or amid a group of officers, is liable enough to be discouraged,
so great is the majority against him: but no sooner does he get
into the street, or among the soldiers, than he feels again as if
the whole Nation were with him. That after the famous Oath, To
the King, to the Nation and Law, there was a great change; that
before this, if ordered to fire on the people, he for one would
have done it in the King's name; but that after this, in the
Nation's name, he would not have done it. Likewise that the
Patriot officers, more numerous too in the Artillery and
Engineers than elsewhere, were few in number; yet that having the
soldiers on their side, they ruled the regiment; and did often
deliver the Aristocrat brother officer out of peril and strait.
One day, for example, 'a member of our own mess roused the mob,
by singing, from the windows of our dining-room, O Richard, O my
King; and I had to snatch him from their fury.' (_Norvins,
Histoire de Napoleon, i. 47; Las Cases, Memoires translated into
Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon, i. 23-31._)
All which let the reader multiply by ten thousand; and spread it
with slight variations over all the camps and garrisons of
France. The French Army seems on the verge of universal mutiny.
Universal mutiny! There is in that what may well make Patriot
Constitutionalism and an august Assembly shudder. Something
behoves to be done; yet what to do no man can tell. Mirabeau
proposes even that the Soldiery, having come to such a pass, be
forthwith disbanded, the whole Two Hundred and Eighty Thousands
of them; and organised anew. (_Moniteur, 1790. No. 233._)
Impossible this, in so sudden a manner! cry all men. And yet
literally, answer we, it is inevitable, in one manner or another.
Such an Army, with its four-generation Nobles, its Peculated Pay,
and men knotting forage cords to hang their quartermaster, cannot
subsist beside such a Revolution. Your alternative is a
slow-pining chronic dissolution and new organization; or a swift
decisive one; the agonies spread over years, or concentrated into
an hour. With a Mirabeau for Minister or Governor the latter had
been the choice; with no Mirabeau for Governor it will naturally
be the former.
Chapter 2.2.III.
Bouille at Metz.
To Bouille, in his North-Eastern circle, none of these things are
altogether hid. Many times flight over the marches gleams out on
him as a last guidance in such bewilderment: nevertheless he
continues here: struggling always to hope the best, not from new
organisation but from happy Counter-Revolution and return to the
old. For the rest it is clear to him that this same National
Federation, and universal swearing and fraternising of People and
Soldiers, has done 'incalculable mischief.' So much that
fermented secretly has hereby got vent and become open: National
Guards and Soldiers of the line, solemnly embracing one another
on all parade-fields, drinking, swearing patriotic oaths, fall
into disorderly street-processions, constitutional unmilitary
exclamations and hurrahings. On which account the Regiment
Picardie, for one, has to be drawn out in the square of the
barracks, here at Metz, and sharply harangued by the General
himself; but expresses penitence. (_Bouille, Memoires, i. 113._)
Far and near, as accounts testify, insubordination has begun
grumbling louder and louder. Officers have been seen shut up in
their mess-rooms; assaulted with clamorous demands, not without
menaces. The insubordinate ringleader is dismissed with 'yellow
furlough,' yellow infamous thing they call cartouche jaune: but
ten new ringleaders rise in his stead, and the yellow cartouche
ceases to be thought disgraceful. 'Within a fortnight,' or at
furthest a month, of that sublime Feast of Pikes, the whole
French Army, demanding Arrears, forming Reading Clubs,
frequenting Popular Societies, is in a state which Bouille can
call by no name but that of mutiny. Bouille knows it as few do;
and speaks by dire experience. Take one instance instead of many.
It is still an early day of August, the precise date now
undiscoverable, when Bouille, about to set out for the waters of
Aix la Chapelle, is once more suddenly summoned to the barracks
of Metz. The soldiers stand ranked in fighting order, muskets
loaded, the officers all there on compulsion; and require, with
many-voiced emphasis, to have their arrears paid. Picardie was
penitent; but we see it has relapsed: the wide space bristles and
lours with mere mutinous armed men. Brave Bouille advances to the
nearest Regiment, opens his commanding lips to harangue; obtains
nothing but querulous-indignant discordance, and the sound of so
many thousand livres legally due. The moment is trying; there are
some ten thousand soldiers now in Metz, and one spirit seems to
have spread among them.
Bouille is firm as the adamant; but what shall he do? A German
Regiment, named of Salm, is thought to be of better temper:
nevertheless Salm too may have heard of the precept, Thou shalt
not steal; Salm too may know that money is money. Bouille walks
trustfully towards the Regiment de Salm, speaks trustful words;
but here again is answered by the cry of forty-four thousand
livres odd sous. A cry waxing more and more vociferous, as Salm's
humour mounts; which cry, as it will produce no cash or promise
of cash, ends in the wide simultaneous whirr of shouldered
muskets, and a determined quick-time march on the part of
Salm—towards its Colonel's house, in the next street, there to
seize the colours and military chest. Thus does Salm, for its
part; strong in the faith that meum is not tuum, that fair
speeches are not forty-four thousand livres odd sous.
Unrestrainable! Salm tramps to military time, quick consuming the
way. Bouille and the officers, drawing sword, have to dash into
double quick pas-de-charge, or unmilitary running; to get the
start; to station themselves on the outer staircase, and stand
there with what of death-defiance and sharp steel they have; Salm
truculently coiling itself up, rank after rank, opposite them, in
such humour as we can fancy, which happily has not yet mounted to
the murder-pitch. There will Bouille stand, certain at least of
one man's purpose; in grim calmness, awaiting the issue. What the
intrepidest of men and generals can do is done. Bouille, though
there is a barricading picket at each end of the street, and
death under his eyes, contrives to send for a Dragoon Regiment
with orders to charge: the dragoon officers mount; the dragoon
men will not: hope is none there for him. The street, as we say,
barricaded; the Earth all shut out, only the indifferent heavenly
Vault overhead: perhaps here or there a timorous householder
peering out of window, with prayer for Bouille; copious
Rascality, on the pavement, with prayer for Salm: there do the
two parties stand;—like chariots locked in a narrow thoroughfare;
like locked wrestlers at a dead-grip! For two hours they stand;
Bouille's sword glittering in his hand, adamantine resolution
clouding his brows: for two hours by the clocks of Metz.
Moody-silent stands Salm, with occasional clangour; but does not
fire. Rascality from time to time urges some grenadier to level
his musket at the General; who looks on it as a bronze General
would; and always some corporal or other strikes it up.
In such remarkable attitude, standing on that staircase for two
hours, does brave Bouille, long a shadow, dawn on us visibly out
of the dimness, and become a person. For the rest, since Salm has
not shot him at the first instant, and since in himself there is
no variableness, the danger will diminish. The Mayor, 'a man
infinitely respectable,' with his Municipals and tricolor sashes,
finally gains entrance; remonstrates, perorates, promises; gets
Salm persuaded home to its barracks. Next day, our respectable
Mayor lending the money, the officers pay down the half of the
demand in ready cash. With which liquidation Salm pacifies
itself, and for the present all is hushed up, as much as may be.
(_Bouille, i. 140-5._)
Such scenes as this of Metz, or preparations and demonstrations
towards such, are universal over France: Dampmartin, with his
knotted forage-cords and piled chamois jackets, is at Strasburg
in the South-East; in these same days or rather nights, Royal
Champagne is 'shouting Vive la Nation, au diable les
Aristocrates, with some thirty lit candles,' at Hesdin, on the
far North-West. "The garrison of Bitche," Deputy Rewbell is sorry
to state, "went out of the town, with drums beating; deposed its
officers; and then returned into the town, sabre in hand."
(_Moniteur (_in Hist. Parl. vii. 29_)._) Ought not a National
Assembly to occupy itself with these objects? Military France is
everywhere full of sour inflammatory humour, which exhales itself
fuliginously, this way or that: a whole continent of smoking
flax; which, blown on here or there by any angry wind, might so
easily start into a blaze, into a continent of fire!
Constitutional Patriotism is in deep natural alarm at these
things. The august Assembly sits diligently deliberating; dare
nowise resolve, with Mirabeau, on an instantaneous disbandment
and extinction; finds that a course of palliatives is easier. But
at least and lowest, this grievance of the Arrears shall be
rectified. A plan, much noised of in those days, under the name
'Decree of the Sixth of August,' has been devised for that.
Inspectors shall visit all armies; and, with certain elected
corporals and 'soldiers able to write,' verify what arrears and
peculations do lie due, and make them good. Well, if in this way
the smoky heat be cooled down; if it be not, as we say,
ventilated over-much, or, by sparks and collision somewhere, sent
up!
Chapter 2.2.IV.
Arrears at Nanci.
We are to remark, however, that of all districts, this of
Bouille's seems the inflammablest. It was always to Bouille and
Metz that Royalty would fly: Austria lies near; here more than
elsewhere must the disunited People look over the borders, into a
dim sea of Foreign Politics and Diplomacies, with hope or
apprehension, with mutual exasperation.
It was but in these days that certain Austrian troops, marching
peaceably across an angle of this region, seemed an Invasion
realised; and there rushed towards Stenai, with musket on
shoulder, from all the winds, some thirty thousand National
Guards, to inquire what the matter was. (_Moniteur, Seance du 9
Aout 1790._) A matter of mere diplomacy it proved; the Austrian
Kaiser, in haste to get to Belgium, had bargained for this short
cut. The infinite dim movement of European Politics waved a skirt
over these spaces, passing on its way; like the passing shadow of
a condor; and such a winged flight of thirty thousand, with mixed
cackling and crowing, rose in consequence! For, in addition to
all, this people, as we said, is much divided: Aristocrats
abound; Patriotism has both Aristocrats and Austrians to watch.
It is Lorraine, this region; not so illuminated as old France: it
remembers ancient Feudalisms; nay, within man's memory, it had a
Court and King of its own, or indeed the splendour of a Court and
King, without the burden. Then, contrariwise, the Mother Society,
which sits in the Jacobins Church at Paris, has Daughters in the
Towns here; shrill-tongued, driven acrid: consider how the memory
of good King Stanislaus, and ages of Imperial Feudalism, may
comport with this New acrid Evangel, and what a virulence of
discord there may be! In all which, the Soldiery, officers on one
side, private men on the other, takes part, and now indeed
principal part; a Soldiery, moreover, all the hotter here as it
lies the denser, the frontier Province requiring more of it.
So stands Lorraine: but the capital City, more especially so. The
pleasant City of Nanci, which faded Feudalism loves, where King
Stanislaus personally dwelt and shone, has an Aristocrat
Municipality, and then also a Daughter Society: it has some forty
thousand divided souls of population; and three large Regiments,
one of which is Swiss Chateau-Vieux, dear to Patriotism ever
since it refused fighting, or was thought to refuse, in the
Bastille days. Here unhappily all evil influences seem to meet
concentered; here, of all places, may jealousy and heat evolve
itself. These many months, accordingly, man has been set against
man, Washed against Unwashed; Patriot Soldier against Aristocrat
Captain, ever the more bitterly; and a long score of grudges has
been running up.
Nameable grudges, and likewise unnameable: for there is a
punctual nature in Wrath; and daily, were there but glances of
the eye, tones of the voice, and minutest commissions or
omissions, it will jot down somewhat, to account, under the head
of sundries, which always swells the sum-total. For example, in
April last, in those times of preliminary Federation, when
National Guards and Soldiers were every where swearing
brotherhood, and all France was locally federating, preparing for
the grand National Feast of Pikes, it was observed that these
Nanci Officers threw cold water on the whole brotherly business;
that they first hung back from appearing at the Nanci Federation;
then did appear, but in mere redingote and undress, with scarcely
a clean shirt on; nay that one of them, as the National Colours
flaunted by in that solemn moment, did, without visible
necessity, take occasion to spit. (_Deux Amis, v. 217._)
Small 'sundries as per journal,' but then incessant ones! The
Aristocrat Municipality, pretending to be Constitutional, keeps
mostly quiet; not so the Daughter Society, the five thousand
adult male Patriots of the place, still less the five thousand
female: not so the young, whiskered or whiskerless,
four-generation Noblesse in epaulettes; the grim Patriot Swiss of
Chateau-Vieux, effervescent infantry of Regiment du Roi, hot
troopers of Mestre-de-Camp! Walled Nanci, which stands so bright
and trim, with its straight streets, spacious squares, and
Stanislaus' Architecture, on the fruitful alluvium of the
Meurthe; so bright, amid the yellow cornfields in these
Reaper-Months,—is inwardly but a den of discord, anxiety,
inflammability, not far from exploding. Let Bouille look to it.
If that universal military heat, which we liken to a vast
continent of smoking flax, do any where take fire, his beard,
here in Lorraine and Nanci, may the most readily of all get
singed by it.
Bouille, for his part, is busy enough, but only with the general
superintendence; getting his pacified Salm, and all other still
tolerable Regiments, marched out of Metz, to southward towns and
villages; to rural Cantonments as at Vic, Marsal and thereabout,
by the still waters; where is plenty of horse-forage, sequestered
parade-ground, and the soldier's speculative faculty can be
stilled by drilling. Salm, as we said, received only half payment
of arrears; naturally not without grumbling. Nevertheless that
scene of the drawn sword may, after all, have raised Bouille in
the mind of Salm; for men and soldiers love intrepidity and swift
inflexible decision, even when they suffer by it. As indeed is
not this fundamentally the quality of qualities for a man? A
quality which by itself is next to nothing, since inferior
animals, asses, dogs, even mules have it; yet, in due
combination, it is the indispensable basis of all.
Of Nanci and its heats, Bouille, commander of the whole, knows
nothing special; understands generally that the troops in that
City are perhaps the worst. (_Bouille, i. c. 9._) The Officers
there have it all, as they have long had it, to themselves; and
unhappily seem to manage it ill. 'Fifty yellow furloughs,' given
out in one batch, do surely betoken difficulties. But what was
Patriotism to think of certain light-fencing Fusileers 'set on,'
or supposed to be set on, 'to insult the Grenadier-club,'
considerate speculative Grenadiers, and that reading-room of
theirs? With shoutings, with hootings; till the speculative
Grenadier drew his side-arms too; and there ensued battery and
duels! Nay more, are not swashbucklers of the same stamp 'sent
out' visibly, or sent out presumably, now in the dress of
Soldiers to pick quarrels with the Citizens; now, disguised as
Citizens, to pick quarrels with the Soldiers? For a certain
Roussiere, expert in fence, was taken in the very fact; four
Officers (_presumably of tender years_) hounding him on, who
thereupon fled precipitately! Fence-master Roussiere, haled to
the guardhouse, had sentence of three months' imprisonment: but
his comrades demanded 'yellow furlough' for him of all persons;
nay, thereafter they produced him on parade; capped him in
paper-helmet inscribed, Iscariot; marched him to the gate of
City; and there sternly commanded him to vanish for evermore.
On all which suspicions, accusations and noisy procedure, and on
enough of the like continually accumulating, the Officer could
not but look with disdainful indignation; perhaps disdainfully
express the same in words, and 'soon after fly over to the
Austrians.'
So that when it here as elsewhere comes to the question of
Arrears, the humour and procedure is of the bitterest: Regiment
Mestre-de-Camp getting, amid loud clamour, some three gold louis
a-man,—which have, as usual, to be borrowed from the
Municipality; Swiss Chateau-Vieux applying for the like, but
getting instead instantaneous courrois, or cat-o'-nine-tails,
with subsequent unsufferable hisses from the women and children;
Regiment du Roi, sick of hope deferred, at length seizing its
military chest, and marching it to quarters, but next day
marching it back again, through streets all struck
silent:—unordered paradings and clamours, not without strong
liquor; objurgation, insubordination; your military ranked
Arrangement going all (_as the Typographers say of set types, in
a similar case_) rapidly to pie! (_Deux Amis, v. c. 8._) Such is
Nanci in these early days of August; the sublime Feast of Pikes
not yet a month old.
Constitutional Patriotism, at Paris and elsewhere, may well quake
at the news. War-Minister Latour du Pin runs breathless to the
National Assembly, with a written message that 'all is burning,
tout brule, tout presse.' The National Assembly, on spur of the
instant, renders such Decret, and 'order to submit and repent,'
as he requires; if it will avail any thing. On the other hand,
Journalism, through all its throats, gives hoarse outcry,
condemnatory, elegiac-applausive. The Forty-eight Sections, lift
up voices; sonorous Brewer, or call him now Colonel Santerre, is
not silent, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. For, meanwhile, the
Nanci Soldiers have sent a Deputation of Ten, furnished with
documents and proofs; who will tell another story than the
'all-is-burning' one. Which deputed Ten, before ever they reach
the Assembly Hall, assiduous Latour du Pin picks up, and on
warrant of Mayor Bailly, claps in prison! Most
unconstitutionally; for they had officers' furloughs. Whereupon
Saint-Antoine, in indignant uncertainty of the future, closes its
shops. Is Bouille a traitor then, sold to Austria? In that case,
these poor private sentinels have revolted mainly out of
Patriotism?
New Deputation, Deputation of National Guardsmen now, sets forth
from Nanci to enlighten the Assembly. It meets the old deputed
Ten returning, quite unexpectedly unhanged; and proceeds
thereupon with better prospects; but effects nothing.
Deputations, Government Messengers, Orderlies at hand-gallops,
Alarms, thousand-voiced Rumours, go vibrating continually;
backwards and forwards,—scattering distraction. Not till the last
week of August does M. de Malseigne, selected as Inspector, get
down to the scene of mutiny; with Authority, with cash, and
'Decree of the Sixth of August.' He now shall see these Arrears
liquidated, justice done, or at least tumult quashed.
Chapter 2.2.V.
Inspector Malseigne.
Of Inspector Malseigne we discern, by direct light, that he is
'of Herculean stature;' and infer, with probability, that he is
of truculent moustachioed aspect,—for Royalist Officers now leave
the upper lip unshaven; that he is of indomitable bull-heart; and
also, unfortunately, of thick bull-head.
On Tuesday the 24th of August, 1790, he opens session as
Inspecting Commissioner; meets those 'elected corporals, and
soldiers that can write.' He finds the accounts of Chateau-Vieux
to be complex; to require delay and reference: he takes to
haranguing, to reprimanding; ends amid audible grumbling. Next
morning, he resumes session, not at the Townhall as prudent
Municipals counselled, but once more at the barracks.
Unfortunately Chateau-Vieux, grumbling all night, will now hear
of no delay or reference; from reprimanding on his part, it goes
to bullying,—answered with continual cries of "Jugez tout de
suite, Judge it at once;" whereupon M. de Malseigne will off in a
huff. But lo, Chateau Vieux, swarming all about the
barrack-court, has sentries at every gate; M. de Malseigne,
demanding egress, cannot get it, though Commandant Denoue backs
him; can get only "Jugez tout de suite." Here is a nodus!
Bull-hearted M. de Malseigne draws his sword; and will force
egress. Confused splutter. M. de Malseigne's sword breaks; he
snatches Commandant Denoue's: the sentry is wounded. M. de
Malseigne, whom one is loath to kill, does force egress,—followed
by Chateau-Vieux all in disarray; a spectacle to Nanci. M. de
Malseigne walks at a sharp pace, yet never runs; wheeling from
time to time, with menaces and movements of fence; and so reaches
Denoue's house, unhurt; which house Chateau-Vieux, in an agitated
manner, invests,—hindered as yet from entering, by a crowd of
officers formed on the staircase. M. de Malseigne retreats by
back ways to the Townhall, flustered though undaunted; amid an
escort of National Guards. From the Townhall he, on the morrow,
emits fresh orders, fresh plans of settlement with Chateau-Vieux;
to none of which will Chateau-Vieux listen: whereupon finally he,
amid noise enough, emits order that Chateau-Vieux shall march on
the morrow morning, and quarter at Sarre Louis. Chateau-Vieux
flatly refuses marching; M. de Malseigne 'takes act,' due
notarial protest, of such refusal,—if happily that may avail him.
This is end of Thursday; and, indeed, of M. de Malseigne's
Inspectorship, which has lasted some fifty hours. To such length,
in fifty hours, has he unfortunately brought it. Mestre-de-Camp
and Regiment du Roi hang, as it were, fluttering: Chateau-Vieux
is clean gone, in what way we see. Over night, an Aide-de-Camp of
Lafayette's, stationed here for such emergency, sends swift
emissaries far and wide, to summon National Guards. The slumber
of the country is broken by clattering hoofs, by loud fraternal
knockings; every where the Constitutional Patriot must clutch his
fighting-gear, and take the road for Nanci.
And thus the Herculean Inspector has sat all Thursday, among
terror-struck Municipals, a centre of confused noise: all
Thursday, Friday, and till Saturday towards noon. Chateau-Vieux,
in spite of the notarial protest, will not march a step. As many
as four thousand National Guards are dropping or pouring in;
uncertain what is expected of them, still more uncertain what
will be obtained of them. For all is uncertainty, commotion, and
suspicion: there goes a word that Bouille, beginning to bestir
himself in the rural Cantonments eastward, is but a Royalist
traitor; that Chateau-Vieux and Patriotism are sold to Austria,
of which latter M. de Malseigne is probably some agent.
Mestre-de-Camp and Roi flutter still more questionably:
Chateau-Vieux, far from marching, 'waves red flags out of two
carriages,' in a passionate manner, along the streets; and next
morning answers its Officers: "Pay us, then; and we will march
with you to the world's end!"
Under which circumstances, towards noon on Saturday, M. de
Malseigne thinks it were good perhaps to inspect the ramparts,—on
horseback. He mounts, accordingly, with escort of three troopers.
At the gate of the city, he bids two of them wait for his return;
and with the third, a trooper to be depended upon, he—gallops off
for Luneville; where lies a certain Carabineer Regiment not yet
in a mutinous state! The two left troopers soon get uneasy;
discover how it is, and give the alarm. Mestre-de-Camp, to the
number of a hundred, saddles in frantic haste, as if sold to
Austria; gallops out pellmell in chase of its Inspector. And so
they spur, and the Inspector spurs; careering, with noise and
jingle, up the valley of the River Meurthe, towards Luneville and
the midday sun: through an astonished country; indeed almost
their own astonishment.
What a hunt, Actaeon-like;—which Actaeon de Malseigne happily
gains! To arms, ye Carabineers of Luneville: to chastise mutinous
men, insulting your General Officer, insulting your own
quarters;—above all things, fire soon, lest there be parleying
and ye refuse to fire! The Carabineers fire soon, exploding upon
the first stragglers of Mestre-de-Camp; who shrink at the very
flash, and fall back hastily on Nanci, in a state not far from
distraction. Panic and fury: sold to Austria without an if; so
much per regiment, the very sums can be specified; and traitorous
Malseigne is fled! Help, O Heaven; help, thou Earth,—ye unwashed
Patriots; ye too are sold like us!
Effervescent Regiment du Roi primes its firelocks, Mestre-de-Camp
saddles wholly: Commandant Denoue is seized, is flung in prison
with a 'canvass shirt' (_sarreau de toile_) about him;
Chateau-Vieux bursts up the magazines; distributes 'three
thousand fusils' to a Patriot people: Austria shall have a hot
bargain. Alas, the unhappy hunting-dogs, as we said, have hunted
away their huntsman; and do now run howling and baying, on what
trail they know not; nigh rabid!
And so there is tumultuous march of men, through the night; with
halt on the heights of Flinval, whence Luneville can be seen all
illuminated. Then there is parley, at four in the morning; and
reparley; finally there is agreement: the Carabineers give in;
Malseigne is surrendered, with apologies on all sides. After
weary confused hours, he is even got under way; the Lunevillers
all turning out, in the idle Sunday, to see such departure:
home-going of mutinous Mestre-de-Camp with its Inspector captive.
Mestre-de-Camp accordingly marches; the Lunevillers look. See! at
the corner of the first street, our Inspector bounds off again,
bull-hearted as he is; amid the slash of sabres, the crackle of
musketry; and escapes, full gallop, with only a ball lodged in
his buff-jerkin. The Herculean man! And yet it is an escape to no
purpose. For the Carabineers, to whom after the hardest Sunday's
ride on record, he has come circling back, 'stand deliberating by
their nocturnal watch-fires;' deliberating of Austria, of
traitors, and the rage of Mestre-de-Camp. So that, on the whole,
the next sight we have is that of M. de Malseigne, on the Monday
afternoon, faring bull-hearted through the streets of Nanci; in
open carriage, a soldier standing over him with drawn sword; amid
the 'furies of the women,' hedges of National Guards, and
confusion of Babel: to the Prison beside Commandant Denoue! That
finally is the lodging of Inspector Malseigne. (_Deux Amis, v.
206-251; Newspapers and Documents in Hist. Parl. vii. 59-162._)
Surely it is time Bouille were drawing near. The Country all
round, alarmed with watchfires, illuminated towns, and marching
and rout, has been sleepless these several nights. Nanci, with
its uncertain National Guards, with its distributed fusils,
mutinous soldiers, black panic and redhot ire, is not a City but
a Bedlam.
Chapter 2.2.VI.
Bouille at Nanci.
Haste with help, thou brave Bouille: if swift help come not, all
is now verily 'burning;' and may burn,—to what lengths and
breadths! Much, in these hours, depends on Bouille; as it shall
now fare with him, the whole Future may be this way or be that.
If, for example, he were to loiter dubitating, and not come: if
he were to come, and fail: the whole Soldiery of France to blaze
into mutiny, National Guards going some this way, some that; and
Royalism to draw its rapier, and Sansculottism to snatch its
pike; and the Spirit if Jacobinism, as yet young, girt with
sun-rays, to grow instantaneously mature, girt with hell-fire,—as
mortals, in one night of deadly crisis, have had their heads
turned gray!
Brave Bouille is advancing fast, with the old inflexibility;
gathering himself, unhappily 'in small affluences,' from East,
from West and North; and now on Tuesday morning, the last day of
the month, he stands all concentred, unhappily still in small
force, at the village of Frouarde, within some few miles. Son of
Adam with a more dubious task before him is not in the world this
Tuesday morning. A weltering inflammable sea of doubt and peril,
and Bouille sure of simply one thing, his own determination.
Which one thing, indeed, may be worth many. He puts a most firm
face on the matter: 'Submission, or unsparing battle and
destruction; twenty-four hours to make your choice:' this was the
tenor of his Proclamation; thirty copies of which he sent
yesterday to Nanci:—all which, we find, were intercepted and not
posted. (_Compare Bouille, Memoires, i. 153-176; Deux Amis, v.
251-271; Hist. Parl. ubi supra._)
Nevertheless, at half-past eleven, this morning, seemingly by way
of answer, there does wait on him at Frouarde, some Deputation
from the mutinous Regiments, from the Nanci Municipals, to see
what can be done. Bouille receives this Deputation, 'in a large
open court adjoining his lodging:' pacified Salm, and the rest,
attend also, being invited to do it,—all happily still in the
right humour. The Mutineers pronounce themselves with a
decisiveness, which to Bouille seems insolence; and happily to
Salm also. Salm, forgetful of the Metz staircase and sabre,
demands that the scoundrels 'be hanged' there and then. Bouille
represses the hanging; but answers that mutinous Soldiers have
one course, and not more than one: To liberate, with heartfelt
contrition, Messieurs Denoue and de Malseigne; to get ready
forthwith for marching off, whither he shall order; and 'submit
and repent,' as the National Assembly has decreed, as he
yesterday did in thirty printed Placards proclaim. These are his
terms, unalterable as the decrees of Destiny. Which terms as
they, the Mutineer deputies, seemingly do not accept, it were
good for them to vanish from this spot, and even promptly; with
him too, in few instants, the word will be, Forward! The Mutineer
deputies vanish, not unpromptly; the Municipal ones, anxious
beyond right for their own individualities, prefer abiding with
Bouille.
Brave Bouille, though he puts a most firm face on the matter,
knows his position full well: how at Nanci, what with rebellious
soldiers, with uncertain National Guards, and so many distributed
fusils, there rage and roar some ten thousand fighting men; while
with himself is scarcely the third part of that number, in
National Guards also uncertain, in mere pacified Regiments,—for
the present full of rage, and clamour to march; but whose rage
and clamour may next moment take such a fatal new figure. On the
top of one uncertain billow, therewith to calm billows! Bouille
must 'abandon himself to Fortune;' who is said sometimes to
favour the brave. At half-past twelve, the Mutineer deputies
having vanished, our drums beat; we march: for Nanci! Let Nanci
bethink itself, then; for Bouille has thought and determined.
And yet how shall Nanci think: not a City but a Bedlam! Grim
Chateau-Vieux is for defence to the death; forces the
Municipality to order, by tap of drum, all citizens acquainted
with artillery to turn out, and assist in managing the cannon. On
the other hand, effervescent Regiment du Roi, is drawn up in its
barracks; quite disconsolate, hearing the humour Salm is in; and
ejaculates dolefully from its thousand throats: "La loi, la loi,
Law, law!" Mestre-de-Camp blusters, with profane swearing, in
mixed terror and furor; National Guards look this way and that,
not knowing what to do. What a Bedlam-City: as many plans as
heads; all ordering, none obeying: quiet none,—except the Dead,
who sleep underground, having done their fighting!
And, behold, Bouille proves as good as his word: 'at half-past
two' scouts report that he is within half a league of the gates;
rattling along, with cannon, and array; breathing nothing but
destruction. A new Deputation, Municipals, Mutineers, Officers,
goes out to meet him; with passionate entreaty for yet one other
hour. Bouille grants an hour. Then, at the end thereof, no Denoue
or Malseigne appearing as promised, he rolls his drums, and again
takes the road. Towards four o'clock, the terror-struck Townsmen
may see him face to face. His cannons rattle there, in their
carriages; his vanguard is within thirty paces of the Gate
Stanislaus. Onward like a Planet, by appointed times, by law of
Nature! What next? Lo, flag of truce and chamade; conjuration to
halt: Malseigne and Denoue are on the street, coming hither; the
soldiers all repentant, ready to submit and march! Adamantine
Bouille's look alters not; yet the word Halt is given: gladder
moment he never saw. Joy of joys! Malseigne and Denoue do verily
issue; escorted by National Guards; from streets all frantic,
with sale to Austria and so forth: they salute Bouille,
unscathed. Bouille steps aside to speak with them, and with other
heads of the Town there; having already ordered by what Gates and
Routes the mutineer Regiments shall file out.
Such colloquy with these two General Officers and other principal
Townsmen, was natural enough; nevertheless one wishes Bouille had
postponed it, and not stepped aside. Such tumultuous inflammable
masses, tumbling along, making way for each other; this of keen
nitrous oxide, that of sulphurous fire-damp,—were it not well to
stand between them, keeping them well separate, till the space be
cleared? Numerous stragglers of Chateau-Vieux and the rest have
not marched with their main columns, which are filing out by the
appointed Gates, taking station in the open meadows. National
Guards are in a state of nearly distracted uncertainty; the
populace, armed and unharmed, roll openly delirious,—betrayed,
sold to the Austrians, sold to the Aristocrats. There are loaded
cannon with lit matches among them, and Bouille's vanguard is
halted within thirty paces of the Gate. Command dwells not in
that mad inflammable mass; which smoulders and tumbles there, in
blind smoky rage; which will not open the Gate when summoned;
says it will open the cannon's throat sooner!—Cannonade not, O
Friends, or be it through my body! cries heroic young Desilles,
young Captain of Roi, clasping the murderous engine in his arms,
and holding it. Chateau-Vieux Swiss, by main force, with oaths
and menaces, wrench off the heroic youth; who undaunted, amid
still louder oaths seats himself on the touch-hole. Amid still
louder oaths; with ever louder clangour,—and, alas, with the loud
crackle of first one, and then three other muskets; which explode
into his body; which roll it in the dust,—and do also, in the
loud madness of such moment, bring lit cannon-match to ready
priming; and so, with one thunderous belch of grapeshot, blast
some fifty of Bouille's vanguard into air!
Fatal! That sputter of the first musket-shot has kindled such a
cannon-shot, such a death-blaze; and all is now redhot madness,
conflagration as of Tophet. With demoniac rage, the Bouille
vanguard storms through that Gate Stanislaus; with fiery sweep,
sweeps Mutiny clear away, to death, or into shelters and cellars;
from which latter, again, Mutiny continues firing. The ranked
Regiments hear it in their meadow; they rush back again through
the nearest Gates; Bouille gallops in, distracted, inaudible;—and
now has begun, in Nanci, as in that doomed Hall of the
Nibelungen, 'a murder grim and great.'
Miserable: such scene of dismal aimless madness as the anger of
Heaven but rarely permits among men! From cellar or from garret,
from open street in front, from successive corners of
cross-streets on each hand, Chateau-Vieux and Patriotism keep up
the murderous rolling-fire, on murderous not Unpatriotic fires.
Your blue National Captain, riddled with balls, one hardly knows
on whose side fighting, requests to be laid on the colours to
die: the patriotic Woman (_name not given, deed surviving_)
screams to Chateau-Vieux that it must not fire the other cannon;
and even flings a pail of water on it, since screaming avails
not. (_Deux Amis, v. 268._) Thou shalt fight; thou shalt not
fight; and with whom shalt thou fight! Could tumult awaken the
old Dead, Burgundian Charles the Bold might stir from under that
Rotunda of his: never since he, raging, sank in the ditches, and
lost Life and Diamond, was such a noise heard here.
Three thousand, as some count, lie mangled, gory; the half of
Chateau-Vieux has been shot, without need of Court Martial.
Cavalry, of Mestre-de-Camp or their foes, can do little. Regiment
du Roi was persuaded to its barracks; stands there palpitating.
Bouille, armed with the terrors of the Law, and favoured of
Fortune, finally triumphs. In two murderous hours he has
penetrated to the grand Squares, dauntless, though with loss of
forty officers and five hundred men: the shattered remnants of
Chateau-Vieux are seeking covert. Regiment du Roi, not
effervescent now, alas no, but having effervesced, will offer to
ground its arms; will 'march in a quarter of an hour.' Nay these
poor effervesced require 'escort' to march with, and get it;
though they are thousands strong, and have thirty ball-cartridges
a man! The Sun is not yet down, when Peace, which might have come
bloodless, has come bloody: the mutinous Regiments are on march,
doleful, on their three Routes; and from Nanci rises wail of
women and men, the voice of weeping and desolation; the City
weeping for its slain who awaken not. These streets are empty but
for victorious patrols.
Thus has Fortune, favouring the brave, dragged Bouille, as
himself says, out of such a frightful peril, 'by the hair of the
head.' An intrepid adamantine man this Bouille:—had he stood in
old Broglie's place, in those Bastille days, it might have been
all different! He has extinguished mutiny, and immeasurable civil
war. Not for nothing, as we see; yet at a rate which he and
Constitutional Patriotism considers cheap. Nay, as for Bouille,
he, urged by subsequent contradiction which arose, declares
coldly, it was rather against his own private mind, and more by
public military rule of duty, that he did extinguish it,
(_Bouille, i. 175._)—immeasurable civil war being now the only
chance. Urged, we say, by subsequent contradiction! Civil war,
indeed, is Chaos; and in all vital Chaos, there is new Order
shaping itself free: but what a faith this, that of all new
Orders out of Chaos and Possibility of Man and his Universe,
Louis Sixteenth and Two-Chamber Monarchy were precisely the one
that would shape itself! It is like undertaking to throw
deuce-ace, say only five hundred successive times, and any other
throw to be fatal—for Bouille. Rather thank Fortune, and Heaven,
always, thou intrepid Bouille; and let contradiction of its way!
Civil war, conflagrating universally over France at this moment,
might have led to one thing or to another thing: meanwhile, to
quench conflagration, wheresoever one finds it, wheresoever one
can; this, in all times, is the rule for man and General Officer.
But at Paris, so agitated and divided, fancy how it went, when
the continually vibrating Orderlies vibrated thither at hand
gallop, with such questionable news! High is the gratulation; and
also deep the indignation. An august Assembly, by overwhelming
majorities, passionately thanks Bouille; a King's autograph, the
voices of all Loyal, all Constitutional men run to the same
tenor. A solemn National funeral-service, for the Law-defenders
slain at Nanci; is said and sung in the Champ de Mars; Bailly,
Lafayette and National Guards, all except the few that protested,
assist. With pomp and circumstance, with episcopal Calicoes in
tricolor girdles, Altar of Fatherland smoking with cassolettes,
or incense-kettles; the vast Champ-de-Mars wholly hung round with
black mortcloth,—which mortcloth and expenditure Marat thinks had
better have been laid out in bread, in these dear days, and given
to the hungry living Patriot. (_Ami du Peuple in Hist. Parl., ubi
supra._) On the other hand, living Patriotism, and Saint-Antoine,
which we have seen noisily closing its shops and such like,
assembles now 'to the number of forty thousand;' and, with loud
cries, under the very windows of the thanking National Assembly,
demands revenge for murdered Brothers, judgment on Bouille, and
instant dismissal of War-Minister Latour du Pin.
At sound and sight of which things, if not War-Minister Latour,
yet 'Adored Minister' Necker, sees good on the 3d of September
1790, to withdraw softly almost privily,—with an eye to the
'recovery of his health.' Home to native Switzerland; not as he
last came; lucky to reach it alive! Fifteen months ago, we saw
him coming, with escort of horse, with sound of clarion and
trumpet: and now at Arcis-sur-Aube, while he departs unescorted
soundless, the Populace and Municipals stop him as a fugitive,
are not unlike massacring him as a traitor; the National
Assembly, consulted on the matter, gives him free egress as a
nullity. Such an unstable 'drift-mould of Accident' is the
substance of this lower world, for them that dwell in houses of
clay; so, especially in hot regions and times, do the proudest
palaces we build of it take wings, and become Sahara
sand-palaces, spinning many pillared in the whirlwind, and bury
us under their sand!—
In spite of the forty thousand, the National Assembly persists in
its thanks; and Royalist Latour du Pin continues Minister. The
forty thousand assemble next day, as loud as ever; roll towards
Latour's Hotel; find cannon on the porch-steps with flambeau lit;
and have to retire elsewhither, and digest their spleen, or
re-absorb it into the blood.
Over in Lorraine, meanwhile, they of the distributed fusils,
ringleaders of Mestre-de-Camp, of Roi, have got marked out for
judgment;—yet shall never get judged. Briefer is the doom of
Chateau-Vieux. Chateau-Vieux is, by Swiss law, given up for
instant trial in Court-Martial of its own officers. Which
Court-Martial, with all brevity (_in not many hours_), has hanged
some Twenty-three, on conspicuous gibbets; marched some
Three-score in chains to the Galleys; and so, to appearance,
finished the matter off. Hanged men do cease for ever from this
Earth; but out of chains and the Galleys there may be
resuscitation in triumph. Resuscitation for the chained Hero; and
even for the chained Scoundrel, or Semi-scoundrel! Scottish John
Knox, such World-Hero, as we know, sat once nevertheless pulling
grim-taciturn at the oar of French Galley, 'in the Water of
Lore;' and even flung their Virgin-Mary over, instead of kissing
her,—as 'a pented bredd,' or timber Virgin, who could naturally
swim. (_Knox's History of the Reformation, b. i._) So, ye of
Chateau-Vieux, tug patiently, not without hope!
But indeed at Nanci generally, Aristocracy rides triumphant,
rough. Bouille is gone again, the second day; an Aristocrat
Municipality, with free course, is as cruel as it had before been
cowardly. The Daughter Society, as the mother of the whole
mischief, lies ignominiously suppressed; the Prisons can hold no
more; bereaved down-beaten Patriotism murmurs, not loud but deep.
Here and in the neighbouring Towns, 'flattened balls' picked from
the streets of Nanci are worn at buttonholes: balls flattened in
carrying death to Patriotism; men wear them there, in perpetual
memento of revenge. Mutineer Deserters roam the woods; have to
demand charity at the musket's end. All is dissolution, mutual
rancour, gloom and despair:—till National-Assembly Commissioners
arrive, with a steady gentle flame of Constitutionalism in their
hearts; who gently lift up the down-trodden, gently pull down the
too uplifted; reinstate the Daughter Society, recall the Mutineer
Deserter; gradually levelling, strive in all wise ways to smooth
and soothe. With such gradual mild levelling on the one side; as
with solemn funeral-service, Cassolettes, Courts-Martial,
National thanks,—all that Officiality can do is done. The
buttonhole will drop its flat ball; the black ashes, so far as
may be, get green again.
This is the 'Affair of Nanci;' by some called the 'Massacre of
Nanci;'—properly speaking, the unsightly wrong-side of that
thrice glorious Feast of Pikes, the right-side of which formed a
spectacle for the very gods. Right-side and wrong lie always so
near: the one was in July, in August the other! Theatres, the
theatres over in London, are bright with their pasteboard
simulacrum of that 'Federation of the French People,' brought out
as Drama: this of Nanci, we may say, though not played in any
pasteboard Theatre, did for many months enact itself, and even
walk spectrally—in all French heads. For the news of it fly
pealing through all France; awakening, in town and village, in
clubroom, messroom, to the utmost borders, some mimic reflex or
imaginative repetition of the business; always with the angry
questionable assertion: It was right; It was wrong. Whereby come
controversies, duels, embitterment, vain jargon; the hastening
forward, the augmenting and intensifying of whatever new
explosions lie in store for us.
Meanwhile, at this cost or at that, the mutiny, as we say, is
stilled. The French Army has neither burst up in universal
simultaneous delirium; nor been at once disbanded, put an end to,
and made new again. It must die in the chronic manner, through
years, by inches; with partial revolts, as of Brest Sailors or
the like, which dare not spread; with men unhappy, insubordinate;
officers unhappier, in Royalist moustachioes, taking horse,
singly or in bodies, across the Rhine: (_See Dampmartin, i. 249,
&c. &c._) sick dissatisfaction, sick disgust on both sides; the
Army moribund, fit for no duty:—till it do, in that unexpected
manner, Phoenix-like, with long throes, get both dead and
newborn; then start forth strong, nay stronger and even
strongest.
Thus much was the brave Bouille hitherto fated to do. Wherewith
let him again fade into dimness; and at Metz or the rural
Cantonments, assiduously drilling, mysteriously diplomatising, in
scheme within scheme, hover as formerly a faint shadow, the hope
of Royalty.
BOOK 2.III.
THE TUILERIES
Chapter 2.3.I.
Epimenides.
How true that there is nothing dead in this Universe; that what
we call dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse
order! 'The leaf that lies rotting in moist winds,' says one,
'has still force; else how could it rot?' Our whole Universe is
but an infinite Complex of Forces; thousandfold, from Gravitation
up to Thought and Will; man's Freedom environed with Necessity of
Nature: in all which nothing at any moment slumbers, but all is
for ever awake and busy. The thing that lies isolated inactive
thou shalt nowhere discover; seek every where from the granite
mountain, slow-mouldering since Creation, to the passing
cloud-vapour, to the living man; to the action, to the spoken
word of man. The word that is spoken, as we know,
flies-irrevocable: not less, but more, the action that is done.
'The gods themselves,' sings Pindar, 'cannot annihilate the
action that is done.' No: this, once done, is done always; cast
forth into endless Time; and, long conspicuous or soon hidden,
must verily work and grow for ever there, an indestructible new
element in the Infinite of Things. Or, indeed, what is this
Infinite of Things itself, which men name Universe, but an
action, a sum-total of Actions and Activities? The living
ready-made sum-total of these three,—which Calculation cannot
add, cannot bring on its tablets; yet the sum, we say, is written
visible: All that has been done, All that is doing, All that will
be done! Understand it well, the Thing thou beholdest, that Thing
is an Action, the product and expression of exerted Force: the
All of Things is an infinite conjugation of the verb To do.
Shoreless Fountain-Ocean of Force, of power to do; wherein Force
rolls and circles, billowing, many-streamed, harmonious; wide as
Immensity, deep as Eternity; beautiful and terrible, not to be
comprehended: this is what man names Existence and Universe; this
thousand-tinted Flame-image, at once veil and revelation, reflex
such as he, in his poor brain and heart, can paint, of One
Unnameable dwelling in inaccessible light! From beyond the
Star-galaxies, from before the Beginning of Days, it billows and
rolls,—round thee, nay thyself art of it, in this point of Space
where thou now standest, in this moment which thy clock measures.
Or apart from all Transcendentalism, is it not a plain truth of
sense, which the duller mind can even consider as a truism, that
human things wholly are in continual movement, and action and
reaction; working continually forward, phasis after phasis, by
unalterable laws, towards prescribed issues? How often must we
say, and yet not rightly lay to heart: The seed that is sown, it
will spring! Given the summer's blossoming, then there is also
given the autumnal withering: so is it ordered not with
seedfields only, but with transactions, arrangements,
philosophies, societies, French Revolutions, whatsoever man works
with in this lower world. The Beginning holds in it the End, and
all that leads thereto; as the acorn does the oak and its
fortunes. Solemn enough, did we think of it,—which unhappily and
also happily we do not very much! Thou there canst begin; the
Beginning is for thee, and there: but where, and of what sort,
and for whom will the End be? All grows, and seeks and endures
its destinies: consider likewise how much grows, as the trees do,
whether we think of it or not. So that when your Epimenides, your
somnolent Peter Klaus, since named Rip van Winkle, awakens again,
he finds it a changed world. In that seven-years' sleep of his,
so much has changed! All that is without us will change while we
think not of it; much even that is within us. The truth that was
yesterday a restless Problem, has to-day grown a Belief burning
to be uttered: on the morrow, contradiction has exasperated it
into mad Fanaticism; obstruction has dulled it into sick
Inertness; it is sinking towards silence, of satisfaction or of
resignation. To-day is not Yesterday, for man or for thing.
Yesterday there was the oath of Love; today has come the curse of
Hate. Not willingly: ah, no; but it could not help coming. The
golden radiance of youth, would it willingly have tarnished
itself into the dimness of old age?—Fearful: how we stand
enveloped, deep-sunk, in that Mystery of TIME; and are Sons of
Time; fashioned and woven out of Time; and on us, and on all that
we have, or see, or do, is written: Rest not, Continue not,
Forward to thy doom!
But in seasons of Revolution, which indeed distinguish themselves
from common seasons by their velocity mainly, your miraculous
Seven-sleeper might, with miracle enough, wake sooner: not by the
century, or seven years, need he sleep; often not by the seven
months. Fancy, for example, some new Peter Klaus, sated with the
jubilee of that Federation day, had lain down, say directly after
the Blessing of Talleyrand; and, reckoning it all safe now, had
fallen composedly asleep under the timber-work of the
Fatherland's Altar; to sleep there, not twenty-one years, but as
it were year and day. The cannonading of Nanci, so far off, does
not disturb him; nor does the black mortcloth, close at hand, nor
the requiems chanted, and minute guns, incense-pans and concourse
right over his head: none of these; but Peter sleeps through them
all. Through one circling year, as we say; from July 14th of
1790, till July the 17th of 1791: but on that latter day, no
Klaus, nor most leaden Epimenides, only the Dead could continue
sleeping; and so our miraculous Peter Klaus awakens. With what
eyes, O Peter! Earth and sky have still their joyous July look,
and the Champ-de-Mars is multitudinous with men: but the
jubilee-huzzahing has become Bedlam-shrieking, of terror and
revenge; not blessing of Talleyrand, or any blessing, but
cursing, imprecation and shrill wail; our cannon-salvoes are
turned to sharp shot; for swinging of incense-pans and
Eighty-three Departmental Banners, we have waving of the one
sanguinous Drapeau-Rouge.—Thou foolish Klaus! The one lay in the
other, the one was the other minus Time; even as Hannibal's
rock-rending vinegar lay in the sweet new wine. That sweet
Federation was of last year; this sour Divulsion is the self-same
substance, only older by the appointed days.
No miraculous Klaus or Epimenides sleeps in these times: and yet,
may not many a man, if of due opacity and levity, act the same
miracle in a natural way; we mean, with his eyes open? Eyes has
he, but he sees not, except what is under his nose. With a
sparkling briskness of glance, as if he not only saw but saw
through, such a one goes whisking, assiduous, in his circle of
officialities; not dreaming but that it is the whole world: as,
indeed, where your vision terminates, does not inanity begin
there, and the world's end clearly declares itself—to you?
Whereby our brisk sparkling assiduous official person (_call him,
for instance, Lafayette_), suddenly startled, after year and day,
by huge grape-shot tumult, stares not less astonished at it than
Peter Klaus would have done. Such natural-miracle Lafayette can
perform; and indeed not he only but most other officials,
non-officials, and generally the whole French People can perform
it; and do bounce up, ever and anon, like amazed Seven-sleepers
awakening; awakening amazed at the noise they themselves make. So
strangely is Freedom, as we say, environed in Necessity; such a
singular Somnambulism, of Conscious and Unconscious, of Voluntary
and Involuntary, is this life of man. If any where in the world
there was astonishment that the Federation Oath went into
grape-shot, surely of all persons the French, first swearers and
then shooters, felt astonished the most.
Alas, offences must come. The sublime Feast of Pikes, with its
effulgence of brotherly love, unknown since the Age of Gold, has
changed nothing. That prurient heat in Twenty-five millions of
hearts is not cooled thereby; but is still hot, nay hotter. Lift
off the pressure of command from so many millions; all pressure
or binding rule, except such melodramatic Federation Oath as they
have bound themselves with! For 'Thou shalt' was from of old the
condition of man's being, and his weal and blessedness was in
obeying that. Wo for him when, were it on hest of the clearest
necessity, rebellion, disloyal isolation, and mere 'I will',
becomes his rule! But the Gospel of Jean-Jacques has come, and
the first Sacrament of it has been celebrated: all things, as we
say, are got into hot and hotter prurience; and must go on
pruriently fermenting, in continual change noted or unnoted.
'Worn out with disgusts,' Captain after Captain, in Royalist
moustachioes, mounts his warhorse, or his Rozinante war-garron,
and rides minatory across the Rhine; till all have ridden.
Neither does civic Emigration cease: Seigneur after Seigneur
must, in like manner, ride or roll; impelled to it, and even
compelled. For the very Peasants despise him in that he dare not
join his order and fight. (_Dampmartin, passim._) Can he bear to
have a Distaff, a Quenouille sent to him; say in copper-plate
shadow, by post; or fixed up in wooden reality over his
gate-lintel: as if he were no Hercules but an Omphale? Such
scutcheon they forward to him diligently from behind the Rhine;
till he too bestir himself and march, and in sour humour, another
Lord of Land is gone, not taking the Land with him. Nay, what of
Captains and emigrating Seigneurs? There is not an angry word on
any of those Twenty-five million French tongues, and indeed not
an angry thought in their hearts, but is some fraction of the
great Battle. Add many successions of angry words together, you
have the manual brawl; add brawls together, with the festering
sorrows they leave, and they rise to riots and revolts. One
reverend thing after another ceases to meet reverence: in visible
material combustion, chateau after chateau mounts up; in
spiritual invisible combustion, one authority after another. With
noise and glare, or noisily and unnoted, a whole Old System of
things is vanishing piecemeal: on the morrow thou shalt look and
it is not.
Chapter 2.3.II.
The Wakeful.
Sleep who will, cradled in hope and short vision, like Lafayette,
'who always in the danger done sees the last danger that will
threaten him,'—Time is not sleeping, nor Time's seedfield.
That sacred Herald's-College of a new Dynasty; we mean the Sixty
and odd Billstickers with their leaden badges, are not sleeping.
Daily they, with pastepot and cross-staff, new clothe the walls
of Paris in colours of the rainbow: authoritative heraldic, as we
say, or indeed almost magical thaumaturgic; for no
Placard-Journal that they paste but will convince some soul or
souls of man. The Hawkers bawl; and the Balladsingers: great
Journalism blows and blusters, through all its throats, forth
from Paris towards all corners of France, like an Aeolus' Cave;
keeping alive all manner of fires.
Throats or Journals there are, as men count, (_Mercier, iii.
163._) to the number of some hundred and thirty-three. Of various
calibre; from your Cheniers, Gorsases, Camilles, down to your
Marat, down now to your incipient Hebert of the Pere Duchesne;
these blow, with fierce weight of argument or quick light banter,
for the Rights of man: Durosoys, Royous, Peltiers, Sulleaus,
equally with mixed tactics, inclusive, singular to say, of much
profane Parody, (_See Hist. Parl. vii. 51._) are blowing for
Altar and Throne. As for Marat the People's-Friend, his voice is
as that of the bullfrog, or bittern by the solitary pools; he,
unseen of men, croaks harsh thunder, and that alone
continually,—of indignation, suspicion, incurable sorrow. The
People are sinking towards ruin, near starvation itself: 'My dear
friends,' cries he, 'your indigence is not the fruit of vices nor
of idleness, you have a right to life, as good as Louis XVI., or
the happiest of the century. What man can say he has a right to
dine, when you have no bread?' (_Ami du Peuple, No. 306. See
other Excerpts in Hist. Parl. viii. 139-149, 428-433; ix. 85-93,
&c._) The People sinking on the one hand: on the other hand,
nothing but wretched Sieur Motiers, treasonous Riquetti
Mirabeaus; traitors, or else shadows, and simulacra of Quacks, to
be seen in high places, look where you will! Men that go mincing,
grimacing, with plausible speech and brushed raiment; hollow
within: Quacks Political; Quacks scientific, Academical; all with
a fellow-feeling for each other, and kind of Quack public-spirit!
Not great Lavoisier himself, or any of the Forty can escape this
rough tongue; which wants not fanatic sincerity, nor, strangest
of all, a certain rough caustic sense. And then the 'three
thousand gaming-houses' that are in Paris; cesspools for the
scoundrelism of the world; sinks of iniquity and
debauchery,—whereas without good morals Liberty is impossible!
There, in these Dens of Satan, which one knows, and perseveringly
denounces, do Sieur Motier's mouchards consort and colleague;
battening vampyre-like on a People next-door to starvation. 'O
Peuple!' cries he oftimes, with heart-rending accent. Treason,
delusion, vampyrism, scoundrelism, from Dan to Beersheba! The
soul of Marat is sick with the sight: but what remedy? To erect
'Eight Hundred gibbets,' in convenient rows, and proceed to
hoisting; 'Riquetti on the first of them!' Such is the brief
recipe of Marat, Friend of the People.
So blow and bluster the Hundred and thirty-three: nor, as would
seem, are these sufficient; for there are benighted nooks in
France, to which Newspapers do not reach; and every where is
'such an appetite for news as was never seen in any country.' Let
an expeditious Dampmartin, on furlough, set out to return home
from Paris, (_Dampmartin, i. 184._) he cannot get along for
'peasants stopping him on the highway; overwhelming him with
questions:' the Maitre de Poste will not send out the horses till
you have well nigh quarrelled with him, but asks always, What
news? At Autun, 'in spite of the rigorous frost' for it is now
January, 1791, nothing will serve but you must gather your
wayworn limbs, and thoughts, and 'speak to the multitudes from a
window opening into the market-place.' It is the shortest method:
This, good Christian people, is verily what an August Assembly
seemed to me to be doing; this and no other is the news;
'Now my weary lips I close;
Leave me, leave me to repose.'
The good Dampmartin!—But, on the whole, are not Nations
astonishingly true to their National character; which indeed runs
in the blood? Nineteen hundred years ago, Julius Caesar, with his
quick sure eye, took note how the Gauls waylaid men. 'It is a
habit of theirs,' says he, 'to stop travellers, were it even by
constraint, and inquire whatsoever each of them may have heard or
known about any sort of matter: in their towns, the common people
beset the passing trader; demanding to hear from what regions he
came, what things he got acquainted with there. Excited by which
rumours and hearsays they will decide about the weightiest
matters; and necessarily repent next moment that they did it, on
such guidance of uncertain reports, and many a traveller
answering with mere fictions to please them, and get off.' (_De
Bello Gallico, iv. 5._) Nineteen hundred years; and good
Dampmartin, wayworn, in winter frost, probably with scant light
of stars and fish-oil, still perorates from the Inn-window! This
People is no longer called Gaulish; and it has wholly become
braccatus, has got breeches, and suffered change enough: certain
fierce German Franken came storming over; and, so to speak,
vaulted on the back of it; and always after, in their grim
tenacious way, have ridden it bridled; for German is, by his very
name, Guerre-man, or man that wars and gars. And so the People,
as we say, is now called French or Frankish: nevertheless, does
not the old Gaulish and Gaelic Celthood, with its vehemence,
effervescent promptitude, and what good and ill it had, still
vindicate itself little adulterated?—
For the rest, that in such prurient confusion, Clubbism thrives
and spreads, need not be said. Already the Mother of Patriotism,
sitting in the Jacobins, shines supreme over all; and has paled
the poor lunar light of that Monarchic Club near to final
extinction. She, we say, shines supreme, girt with sun-light, not
yet with infernal lightning; reverenced, not without fear, by
Municipal Authorities; counting her Barnaves, Lameths, Petions,
of a National Assembly; most gladly of all, her Robespierre.
Cordeliers, again, your Hebert, Vincent, Bibliopolist Momoro,
groan audibly that a tyrannous Mayor and Sieur Motier harrow them
with the sharp tribula of Law, intent apparently to suppress them
by tribulation. How the Jacobin Mother-Society, as hinted
formerly, sheds forth Cordeliers on this hand, and then Feuillans
on that; the Cordeliers on this hand, and then Feuillans on that;
the Cordeliers 'an elixir or double-distillation of Jacobin
Patriotism;' the other a wide-spread weak dilution thereof; how
she will re-absorb the former into her Mother-bosom, and
stormfully dissipate the latter into Nonentity: how she breeds
and brings forth Three Hundred Daughter-Societies; her rearing of
them, her correspondence, her endeavourings and continual
travail: how, under an old figure, Jacobinism shoots forth
organic filaments to the utmost corners of confused dissolved
France; organising it anew:—this properly is the grand fact of
the Time.
To passionate Constitutionalism, still more to Royalism, which
see all their own Clubs fail and die, Clubbism will naturally
grow to seem the root of all evil. Nevertheless Clubbism is not
death, but rather new organisation, and life out of death:
destructive, indeed, of the remnants of the Old; but to the New
important, indispensable. That man can co-operate and hold
communion with man, herein lies his miraculous strength. In hut
or hamlet, Patriotism mourns not now like voice in the desert: it
can walk to the nearest Town; and there, in the Daughter-Society,
make its ejaculation into an articulate oration, into an action,
guided forward by the Mother of Patriotism herself. All Clubs of
Constitutionalists, and such like, fail, one after another, as
shallow fountains: Jacobinism alone has gone down to the deep
subterranean lake of waters; and may, unless filled in, flow
there, copious, continual, like an Artesian well. Till the Great
Deep have drained itself up: and all be flooded and submerged,
and Noah's Deluge out-deluged!
On the other hand, Claude Fauchet, preparing mankind for a Golden
Age now apparently just at hand, has opened his Cercle Social,
with clerks, corresponding boards, and so forth; in the precincts
of the Palais Royal. It is Te-Deum Fauchet; the same who preached
on Franklin's Death, in that huge Medicean rotunda of the Halle
aux bleds. He here, this winter, by Printing-press and melodious
Colloquy, spreads bruit of himself to the utmost City-barriers.
'Ten thousand persons' of respectability attend there; and listen
to this 'Procureur-General de la Verite, Attorney-General of
Truth,' so has he dubbed himself; to his sage Condorcet, or other
eloquent coadjutor. Eloquent Attorney-General! He blows out from
him, better or worse, what crude or ripe thing he holds: not
without result to himself; for it leads to a Bishoprick, though
only a Constitutional one. Fauchet approves himself a
glib-tongued, strong-lunged, whole-hearted human individual: much
flowing matter there is, and really of the better sort, about
Right, Nature, Benevolence, Progress; which flowing matter,
whether 'it is pantheistic,' or is pot-theistic, only the greener
mind, in these days, need read. Busy Brissot was long ago of
purpose to establish precisely some such regenerative Social
Circle: nay he had tried it, in 'Newman-street Oxford-street,' of
the Fog Babylon; and failed,—as some say, surreptitiously
pocketing the cash. Fauchet, not Brissot, was fated to be the
happy man; whereat, however, generous Brissot will with sincere
heart sing a timber-toned Nunc Domine. (_See Brissot,
Patriote-Francais Newspaper; Fauchet, Bouche-de-Fer, &c.
(_excerpted in Hist. Parl. viii., ix., et seqq._)._) But 'ten
thousand persons of respectability:' what a bulk have many things
in proportion to their magnitude! This Cercle Social, for which
Brissot chants in sincere timber-tones such Nunc Domine, what is
it? Unfortunately wind and shadow. The main reality one finds in
it now, is perhaps this: that an 'Attorney-General of Truth' did
once take shape of a body, as Son of Adam, on our Earth, though
but for months or moments; and ten thousand persons of
respectability attended, ere yet Chaos and Nox had reabsorbed
him.
Hundred and thirty-three Paris Journals; regenerative Social
Circle; oratory, in Mother and Daughter Societies, from the
balconies of Inns, by chimney-nook, at dinner-table,—polemical,
ending many times in duel! Add ever, like a constant growling
accompaniment of bass Discord: scarcity of work, scarcity of
food. The winter is hard and cold; ragged Bakers'-queues, like a
black tattered flag-of-distress, wave out ever and anon. It is
the third of our Hunger-years this new year of a glorious
Revolution. The rich man when invited to dinner, in such
distress-seasons, feels bound in politeness to carry his own
bread in his pocket: how the poor dine? And your glorious
Revolution has done it, cries one. And our glorious Revolution is
subtilety, by black traitors worthy of the Lamp-iron, perverted
to do it, cries another! Who will paint the huge whirlpool
wherein France, all shivered into wild incoherence, whirls? The
jarring that went on under every French roof, in every French
heart; the diseased things that were spoken, done, the sum-total
whereof is the French Revolution, tongue of man cannot tell. Nor
the laws of action that work unseen in the depths of that huge
blind Incoherence! With amazement, not with measurement, men look
on the Immeasurable; not knowing its laws; seeing, with all
different degrees of knowledge, what new phases, and results of
event, its laws bring forth. France is as a monstrous Galvanic
Mass, wherein all sorts of far stranger than chemical galvanic or
electric forces and substances are at work; electrifying one
another, positive and negative; filling with electricity your
Leyden-jars,—Twenty-five millions in number! As the jars get
full, there will, from time to time, be, on slight hint, an
explosion.
Chapter 2.3.III.
Sword in Hand.
On such wonderful basis, however, has Law, Royalty, Authority,
and whatever yet exists of visible Order, to maintain itself,
while it can. Here, as in that Commixture of the Four Elements
did the Anarch Old, has an august Assembly spread its pavilion;
curtained by the dark infinite of discords; founded on the
wavering bottomless of the Abyss; and keeps continual hubbub.
Time is around it, and Eternity, and the Inane; and it does what
it can, what is given it to do.
Glancing reluctantly in, once more, we discern little that is
edifying: a Constitutional Theory of Defective Verbs struggling
forward, with perseverance, amid endless interruptions: Mirabeau,
from his tribune, with the weight of his name and genius, awing
down much Jacobin violence; which in return vents itself the
louder over in its Jacobins Hall, and even reads him sharp
lectures there. (_Camille's Journal (_in Hist. Parl. ix.
366-85_)._) This man's path is mysterious, questionable;
difficult, and he walks without companion in it. Pure Patriotism
does not now count him among her chosen; pure Royalism abhors
him: yet his weight with the world is overwhelming. Let him
travel on, companionless, unwavering, whither he is bound,—while
it is yet day with him, and the night has not come.
But the chosen band of pure Patriot brothers is small; counting
only some Thirty, seated now on the extreme tip of the Left,
separate from the world. A virtuous Petion; an incorruptible
Robespierre, most consistent, incorruptible of thin acrid men;
Triumvirs Barnave, Duport, Lameth, great in speech, thought,
action, each according to his kind; a lean old Goupil de Prefeln:
on these and what will follow them has pure Patriotism to depend.
There too, conspicuous among the Thirty, if seldom audible,
Philippe d'Orleans may be seen sitting: in dim fuliginous
bewilderment; having, one might say, arrived at Chaos! Gleams
there are, at once of a Lieutenancy and Regency; debates in the
Assembly itself, of succession to the Throne 'in case the present
Branch should fail;' and Philippe, they say, walked anxiously, in
silence, through the corridors, till such high argument were
done: but it came all to nothing; Mirabeau, glaring into the man,
and through him, had to ejaculate in strong untranslatable
language: Ce j—f—ne vaut pas la peine qu'on se donne pour lui. It
came all to nothing; and in the meanwhile Philippe's money, they
say, is gone! Could he refuse a little cash to the gifted
Patriot, in want only of that; he himself in want of all but
that? Not a pamphlet can be printed without cash; or indeed
written, without food purchasable by cash. Without cash your
hopefullest Projector cannot stir from the spot: individual
patriotic or other Projects require cash: how much more do
wide-spread Intrigues, which live and exist by cash; lying
widespread, with dragon-appetite for cash; fit to swallow
Princedoms! And so Prince Philippe, amid his Sillerys, Lacloses,
and confused Sons of Night, has rolled along: the centre of the
strangest cloudy coil; out of which has visibly come, as we often
say, an Epic Preternatural Machinery of SUSPICION; and within
which there has dwelt and worked,—what specialties of treason,
stratagem, aimed or aimless endeavour towards mischief, no party
living (_if it be not the Presiding Genius of it, Prince of the
Power of the Air_) has now any chance to know. Camille's
conjecture is the likeliest: that poor Philippe did mount up, a
little way, in treasonable speculation, as he mounted formerly in
one of the earliest Balloons; but, frightened at the new position
he was getting into, had soon turned the cock again, and come
down. More fool than he rose! To create Preternatural Suspicion,
this was his function in the Revolutionary Epos. But now if he
have lost his cornucopia of ready-money, what else had he to
lose? In thick darkness, inward and outward, he must welter and
flounder on, in that piteous death-element, the hapless man.
Once, or even twice, we shall still behold him emerged;
struggling out of the thick death-element: in vain. For one
moment, it is the last moment, he starts aloft, or is flung
aloft, even into clearness and a kind of memorability,—to sink
then for evermore!
The Cote Droit persists no less; nay with more animation than
ever, though hope has now well nigh fled. Tough Abbe Maury, when
the obscure country Royalist grasps his hand with transport of
thanks, answers, rolling his indomitable brazen head: "Helas,
Monsieur, all that I do here is as good as simply nothing."
Gallant Faussigny, visible this one time in History, advances
frantic, into the middle of the Hall, exclaiming: "There is but
one way of dealing with it, and that is to fall sword in hand on
those gentry there, sabre a la main sur ces gaillards la,"
(_Moniteur, Seance du 21 Aout, 1790._) franticly indicating our
chosen Thirty on the extreme tip of the Left! Whereupon is
clangour and clamour, debate, repentance,—evaporation. Things
ripen towards downright incompatibility, and what is called
'scission:' that fierce theoretic onslaught of Faussigny's was in
August, 1790; next August will not have come, till a famed Two
Hundred and Ninety-two, the chosen of Royalism, make solemn final
'scission' from an Assembly given up to faction; and depart,
shaking the dust off their feet.
Connected with this matter of sword in hand, there is yet another
thing to be noted. Of duels we have sometimes spoken: how, in all
parts of France, innumerable duels were fought; and argumentative
men and messmates, flinging down the wine-cup and weapons of
reason and repartee, met in the measured field; to part bleeding;
or perhaps not to part, but to fall mutually skewered through
with iron, their wrath and life alike ending,—and die as fools
die. Long has this lasted, and still lasts. But now it would seem
as if in an august Assembly itself, traitorous Royalism, in its
despair, had taken to a new course: that of cutting off
Patriotism by systematic duel! Bully-swordsmen, 'Spadassins' of
that party, go swaggering; or indeed they can be had for a trifle
of money. 'Twelve Spadassins' were seen, by the yellow eye of
Journalism, 'arriving recently out of Switzerland;' also 'a
considerable number of Assassins, nombre considerable
d'assassins, exercising in fencing-schools and at
pistol-targets.' Any Patriot Deputy of mark can be called out;
let him escape one time, or ten times, a time there necessarily
is when he must fall, and France mourn. How many cartels has
Mirabeau had; especially while he was the People's champion!
Cartels by the hundred: which he, since the Constitution must be
made first, and his time is precious, answers now always with a
kind of stereotype formula: "Monsieur, you are put upon my List;
but I warn you that it is long, and I grant no preferences."
Then, in Autumn, had we not the Duel of Cazales and Barnave; the
two chief masters of tongue-shot meeting now to exchange
pistol-shot? For Cazales, chief of the Royalists, whom we call
'Blacks or Noirs,' said, in a moment of passion, "the Patriots
were sheer Brigands," nay in so speaking, he darted or seemed to
dart, a fire-glance specially at Barnave; who thereupon could not
but reply by fire-glances,—by adjournment to the
Bois-de-Boulogne. Barnave's second shot took effect: on Cazales's
hat. The 'front nook' of a triangular Felt, such as mortals then
wore, deadened the ball; and saved that fine brow from more than
temporary injury. But how easily might the lot have fallen the
other way, and Barnave's hat not been so good! Patriotism raises
its loud denunciation of Duelling in general; petitions an august
Assembly to stop such Feudal barbarism by law. Barbarism and
solecism: for will it convince or convict any man to blow half an
ounce of lead through the head of him? Surely not.—Barnave was
received at the Jacobins with embraces, yet with rebukes.
Mindful of which, and also that his repetition in America was
that of headlong foolhardiness rather, and want of brain not of
heart, Charles Lameth does, on the eleventh day of November, with
little emotion, decline attending some hot young Gentleman from
Artois, come expressly to challenge him: nay indeed he first
coldly engages to attend; then coldly permits two Friends to
attend instead of him, and shame the young Gentleman out of it,
which they successfully do. A cold procedure; satisfactory to the
two Friends, to Lameth and the hot young Gentleman; whereby, one
might have fancied, the whole matter was cooled down.
Not so, however: Lameth, proceeding to his senatorial duties, in
the decline of the day, is met in those Assembly corridors by
nothing but Royalist brocards; sniffs, huffs, and open insults.
Human patience has its limits: "Monsieur," said Lameth, breaking
silence to one Lautrec, a man with hunchback, or natural
deformity, but sharp of tongue, and a Black of the deepest tint,
"Monsieur, if you were a man to be fought with!"—"I am one,"
cries the young Duke de Castries. Fast as fire-flash Lameth
replies, "Tout a l'heure, On the instant, then!" And so, as the
shades of dusk thicken in that Bois-de-Boulogne, we behold two
men with lion-look, with alert attitude, side foremost, right
foot advanced; flourishing and thrusting, stoccado and passado,
in tierce and quart; intent to skewer one another. See, with most
skewering purpose, headlong Lameth, with his whole weight, makes
a furious lunge; but deft Castries whisks aside: Lameth skewers
only the air,—and slits deep and far, on Castries' sword's-point,
his own extended left arm! Whereupon with bleeding, pallor,
surgeon's-lint, and formalities, the Duel is considered
satisfactorily done.
But will there be no end, then? Beloved Lameth lies deep-slit,
not out of danger. Black traitorous Aristocrats kill the People's
defenders, cut up not with arguments, but with rapier-slits. And
the Twelve Spadassins out of Switzerland, and the considerable
number of Assassins exercising at the pistol-target? So meditates
and ejaculates hurt Patriotism, with ever-deepening ever-widening
fervour, for the space of six and thirty hours.
The thirty-six hours past, on Saturday the 13th, one beholds a
new spectacle: The Rue de Varennes, and neighbouring Boulevard
des Invalides, covered with a mixed flowing multitude: the
Castries Hotel gone distracted, devil-ridden, belching from every
window, 'beds with clothes and curtains,' plate of silver and
gold with filigree, mirrors, pictures, images, commodes,
chiffoniers, and endless crockery and jingle: amid steady popular
cheers, absolutely without theft; for there goes a cry, "He shall
be hanged that steals a nail!" It is a Plebiscitum, or informal
iconoclastic Decree of the Common People, in the course of being
executed!—The Municipality sit tremulous; deliberating whether
they will hang out the Drapeau Rouge and Martial Law: National
Assembly, part in loud wail, part in hardly suppressed applause:
Abbe Maury unable to decide whether the iconoclastic Plebs amount
to forty thousand or to two hundred thousand.
Deputations, swift messengers, for it is at a distance over the
River, come and go. Lafayette and National Guardes, though
without Drapeau Rouge, get under way; apparently in no hot haste.
Nay, arrived on the scene, Lafayette salutes with doffed hat,
before ordering to fix bayonets. What avails it? The Plebeian
"Court of Cassation," as Camille might punningly name it, has
done its work; steps forth, with unbuttoned vest, with pockets
turned inside out: sack, and just ravage, not plunder! With
inexhaustible patience, the Hero of two Worlds remonstrates;
persuasively, with a kind of sweet constraint, though also with
fixed bayonets, dissipates, hushes down: on the morrow it is once
more all as usual.
Considering which things, however, Duke Castries may justly
'write to the President,' justly transport himself across the
Marches; to raise a corps, or do what else is in him. Royalism
totally abandons that Bobadilian method of contest, and the
Twelve Spadassins return to Switzerland,—or even to Dreamland
through the Horn-gate, whichsoever their home is. Nay Editor
Prudhomme is authorised to publish a curious thing: 'We are
authorised to publish,' says he, dull-blustering Publisher, that
M. Boyer, champion of good Patriots, is at the head of Fifty
Spadassinicides or Bully-killers. His address is: Passage du
Bois-de-Boulonge, Faubourg St. Denis.' (_Revolutions de Paris
(_in Hist. Parl. viii. 440_)._) One of the strangest Institutes,
this of Champion Boyer and the Bully-killers! Whose services,
however, are not wanted; Royalism having abandoned the
rapier-method as plainly impracticable.
Chapter 2.3.IV.
To fly or not to fly.
The truth is Royalism sees itself verging towards sad
extremities; nearer and nearer daily. From over the Rhine it
comes asserted that the King in his Tuileries is not free: this
the poor King may contradict, with the official mouth, but in his
heart feels often to be undeniable. Civil Constitution of the
Clergy; Decree of ejectment against Dissidents from it: not even
to this latter, though almost his conscience rebels, can he say
'Nay; but, after two months' hesitating, signs this also. It was
on January 21st,' of this 1790, that he signed it; to the sorrow
of his poor heart yet, on another Twenty-first of January!
Whereby come Dissident ejected Priests; unconquerable Martyrs
according to some, incurable chicaning Traitors according to
others. And so there has arrived what we once foreshadowed: with
Religion, or with the Cant and Echo of Religion, all France is
rent asunder in a new rupture of continuity; complicating,
embittering all the older;—to be cured only, by stern surgery, in
La Vendee!
Unhappy Royalty, unhappy Majesty, Hereditary (_Representative_),
Representant Hereditaire, or however they can name him; of whom
much is expected, to whom little is given! Blue National Guards
encircle that Tuileries; a Lafayette, thin constitutional Pedant;
clear, thin, inflexible, as water, turned to thin ice; whom no
Queen's heart can love. National Assembly, its pavilion spread
where we know, sits near by, keeping continual hubbub. From
without nothing but Nanci Revolts, sack of Castries Hotels, riots
and seditions; riots, North and South, at Aix, at Douai, at
Befort, Usez, Perpignan, at Nismes, and that incurable Avignon of
the Pope's: a continual crackling and sputtering of riots from
the whole face of France;—testifying how electric it grows. Add
only the hard winter, the famished strikes of operatives; that
continual running-bass of Scarcity, ground-tone and basis of all
other Discords!
The plan of Royalty, so far as it can be said to have any fixed
plan, is still, as ever, that of flying towards the frontiers. In
very truth, the only plan of the smallest promise for it! Fly to
Bouille; bristle yourself round with cannon, served by your
'forty-thousand undebauched Germans:' summon the National
Assembly to follow you, summon what of it is Royalist,
Constitutional, gainable by money; dissolve the rest, by
grapeshot if need be. Let Jacobinism and Revolt, with one wild
wail, fly into Infinite Space; driven by grapeshot. Thunder over
France with the cannon's mouth; commanding, not entreating, that
this riot cease. And then to rule afterwards with utmost possible
Constitutionality; doing justice, loving mercy; being Shepherd of
this indigent People, not Shearer merely, and
Shepherd's-similitude! All this, if ye dare. If ye dare not, then
in Heaven's name go to sleep: other handsome alternative seems
none.
Nay, it were perhaps possible; with a man to do it. For if such
inexpressible whirlpool of Babylonish confusions (_which our Era
is_) cannot be stilled by man, but only by Time and men, a man
may moderate its paroxysms, may balance and sway, and keep
himself unswallowed on the top of it,—as several men and Kings in
these days do. Much is possible for a man; men will obey a man
that kens and cans, and name him reverently their Ken-ning or
King. Did not Charlemagne rule? Consider too whether he had
smooth times of it; hanging 'thirty-thousand Saxons over the
Weser-Bridge,' at one dread swoop! So likewise, who knows but, in
this same distracted fanatic France, the right man may verily
exist? An olive-complexioned taciturn man; for the present,
Lieutenant in the Artillery-service, who once sat studying
Mathematics at Brienne? The same who walked in the morning to
correct proof-sheets at Dole, and enjoyed a frugal breakfast with
M. Joly? Such a one is gone, whither also famed General Paoli his
friend is gone, in these very days, to see old scenes in native
Corsica, and what Democratic good can be done there.
Royalty never executes the evasion-plan, yet never abandons it;
living in variable hope; undecisive, till fortune shall decide.
In utmost secrecy, a brisk Correspondence goes on with Bouille;
there is also a plot, which emerges more than once, for carrying
the King to Rouen: (_See Hist. Parl. vii. 316;
Bertrand-Moleville, &c._) plot after plot, emerging and
submerging, like 'ignes fatui in foul weather, which lead no
whither. About 'ten o'clock at night,' the Hereditary
Representative, in partie quarree, with the Queen, with Brother
Monsieur, and Madame, sits playing 'wisk,' or whist. Usher Campan
enters mysteriously, with a message he only half comprehends: How
a certain Compte d'Inisdal waits anxious in the outer
antechamber; National Colonel, Captain of the watch for this
night, is gained over; post-horses ready all the way; party of
Noblesse sitting armed, determined; will His Majesty, before
midnight, consent to go? Profound silence; Campan waiting with
upturned ear. "Did your Majesty hear what Campan said?" asks the
Queen. "Yes, I heard," answers Majesty, and plays on. "'Twas a
pretty couplet, that of Campan's," hints Monsieur, who at times
showed a pleasant wit: Majesty, still unresponsive, plays wisk.
"After all, one must say something to Campan," remarks the Queen.
"Tell M. d'Inisdal," said the King, and the Queen puts an
emphasis on it, "that the King cannot consent to be forced
away."—"I see!" said d'Inisdal, whisking round, peaking himself
into flame of irritancy: "we have the risk; we are to have all
the blame if it fail," (_Campan, ii. 105._)—and vanishes, he and
his plot, as will-o'-wisps do. The Queen sat till far in the
night, packing jewels: but it came to nothing; in that peaked
frame of irritancy the Will-o'-wisp had gone out.
Little hope there is in all this. Alas, with whom to fly? Our
loyal Gardes-du-Corps, ever since the Insurrection of Women, are
disbanded; gone to their homes; gone, many of them, across the
Rhine towards Coblentz and Exiled Princes: brave Miomandre and
brave Tardivet, these faithful Two, have received, in nocturnal
interview with both Majesties, their viaticum of gold louis, of
heartfelt thanks from a Queen's lips, though unluckily 'his
Majesty stood, back to fire, not speaking;' (_Campan, ii.
109-11._) and do now dine through the Provinces; recounting
hairsbreadth escapes, insurrectionary horrors. Great horrors; to
be swallowed yet of greater. But on the whole what a falling off
from the old splendour of Versailles! Here in this poor
Tuileries, a National Brewer-Colonel, sonorous Santerre, parades
officially behind her Majesty's chair. Our high dignitaries, all
fled over the Rhine: nothing now to be gained at Court; but
hopes, for which life itself must be risked! Obscure busy men
frequent the back stairs; with hearsays, wind projects,
unfruitful fanfaronades. Young Royalists, at the Theatre de
Vaudeville, 'sing couplets;' if that could do any thing.
Royalists enough, Captains on furlough, burnt-out Seigneurs, may
likewise be met with, 'in the Cafe de Valois, and at Meot the
Restaurateur's.' There they fan one another into high loyal glow;
drink, in such wine as can be procured, confusion to
Sansculottism; shew purchased dirks, of an improved structure,
made to order; and, greatly daring, dine. (_Dampmartin, ii.
129._) It is in these places, in these months, that the epithet
Sansculotte first gets applied to indigent Patriotism; in the
last age we had Gilbert Sansculotte, the indigent Poet.
(_Mercier, Nouveau Paris, iii. 204._) Destitute-of-Breeches: a
mournful Destitution; which however, if Twenty millions share it,
may become more effective than most Possessions!
Meanwhile, amid this vague dim whirl of fanfaronades,
wind-projects, poniards made to order, there does disclose itself
one punctum-saliens of life and feasibility: the finger of
Mirabeau! Mirabeau and the Queen of France have met; have parted
with mutual trust! It is strange; secret as the Mysteries; but it
is indubitable. Mirabeau took horse, one evening; and rode
westward, unattended,—to see Friend Claviere in that country
house of his? Before getting to Claviere's, the much-musing
horseman struck aside to a back gate of the Garden of
Saint-Cloud: some Duke d'Aremberg, or the like, was there to
introduce him; the Queen was not far: on a 'round knoll, rond
point, the highest of the Garden of Saint-Cloud,' he beheld the
Queen's face; spake with her, alone, under the void canopy of
Night. What an interview; fateful secret for us, after all
searching; like the colloquies of the gods! (_Campan, ii. c.
17._) She called him 'a Mirabeau:' elsewhere we read that she
'was charmed with him,' the wild submitted Titan; as indeed it is
among the honourable tokens of this high ill-fated heart that no
mind of any endowment, no Mirabeau, nay no Barnave, no Dumouriez,
ever came face to face with her but, in spite of all
prepossessions, she was forced to recognise it, to draw nigh to
it, with trust. High imperial heart; with the instinctive
attraction towards all that had any height! "You know not the
Queen," said Mirabeau once in confidence; "her force of mind is
prodigious; she is a man for courage." (_Dumont, p. 211._)—And
so, under the void Night, on the crown of that knoll, she has
spoken with a Mirabeau: he has kissed loyally the queenly hand,
and said with enthusiasm: "Madame, the Monarchy is
saved!"—Possible? The Foreign Powers, mysteriously sounded, gave
favourable guarded response; (_Correspondence Secrete (_in Hist.
Parl. viii. 169-73_)._) Bouille is at Metz, and could find
forty-thousand sure Germans. With a Mirabeau for head, and a
Bouille for hand, something verily is possible,—if Fate intervene
not.
But figure under what thousandfold wrappages, and cloaks of
darkness, Royalty, meditating these things, must involve itself.
There are men with 'Tickets of Entrance;' there are chivalrous
consultings, mysterious plottings. Consider also whether, involve
as it like, plotting Royalty can escape the glance of Patriotism;
lynx-eyes, by the ten thousand fixed on it, which see in the
dark! Patriotism knows much: know the dirks made to order, and
can specify the shops; knows Sieur Motier's legions of mouchards;
the Tickets of Entree, and men in black; and how plan of evasion
succeeds plan,—or may be supposed to succeed it. Then conceive
the couplets chanted at the Theatre de Vaudeville; or worse, the
whispers, significant nods of traitors in moustaches. Conceive,
on the other hand, the loud cry of alarm that came through the
Hundred-and-Thirty Journals; the Dionysius'-Ear of each of the
Forty-eight Sections, wakeful night and day.
Patriotism is patient of much; not patient of all. The Cafe de
Procope has sent, visibly along the streets, a Deputation of
Patriots, 'to expostulate with bad Editors,' by trustful word of
mouth: singular to see and hear. The bad Editors promise to
amend, but do not. Deputations for change of Ministry were many;
Mayor Bailly joining even with Cordelier Danton in such: and they
have prevailed. With what profit? Of Quacks, willing or
constrained to be Quacks, the race is everlasting: Ministers
Duportail and Dutertre will have to manage much as Ministers
Latour-du-Pin and Cice did. So welters the confused world.
But now, beaten on for ever by such inextricable contradictory
influences and evidences, what is the indigent French Patriot, in
these unhappy days, to believe, and walk by? Uncertainty all;
except that he is wretched, indigent; that a glorious Revolution,
the wonder of the Universe, has hitherto brought neither Bread
nor Peace; being marred by traitors, difficult to discover.
Traitors that dwell in the dark, invisible there;—or seen for
moments, in pallid dubious twilight, stealthily vanishing
thither! Preternatural Suspicion once more rules the minds of
men.
'Nobody here,' writes Carra of the Annales Patriotiques, so early
as the first of February, 'can entertain a doubt of the constant
obstinate project these people have on foot to get the King away;
or of the perpetual succession of manoeuvres they employ for
that.' Nobody: the watchful Mother of Patriotism deputed two
Members to her Daughter at Versailles, to examine how the matter
looked there. Well, and there? Patriotic Carra continues: 'The
Report of these two deputies we all heard with our own ears last
Saturday. They went with others of Versailles, to inspect the
King's Stables, also the stables of the whilom Gardes du Corps;
they found there from seven to eight hundred horses standing
always saddled and bridled, ready for the road at a moment's
notice. The same deputies, moreover, saw with their own two eyes
several Royal Carriages, which men were even then busy loading
with large well-stuffed luggage-bags,' leather cows, as we call
them, 'vaches de cuir; the Royal Arms on the panels almost
entirely effaced.' Momentous enough! Also, 'on the same day the
whole Marechaussee, or Cavalry Police, did assemble with arms,
horses and baggage,'—and disperse again. They want the King over
the marches, that so Emperor Leopold and the German Princes,
whose troops are ready, may have a pretext for beginning: 'this,'
adds Carra, 'is the word of the riddle: this is the reason why
our fugitive Aristocrats are now making levies of men on the
frontiers; expecting that, one of these mornings, the Executive
Chief Magistrate will be brought over to them, and the civil war
commence.' (_Carra's Newspaper, 1st Feb. 1791 (_in Hist. Parl.
ix. 39_)._)
If indeed the Executive Chief Magistrate, bagged, say in one of
these leather cows, were once brought safe over to them! But the
strangest thing of all is that Patriotism, whether barking at a
venture, or guided by some instinct of preternatural sagacity, is
actually barking aright this time; at something, not at nothing.
Bouille's Secret Correspondence, since made public, testifies as
much.
Nay, it is undeniable, visible to all, that Mesdames the King's
Aunts are taking steps for departure: asking passports of the
Ministry, safe-conducts of the Municipality; which Marat warns
all men to beware of. They will carry gold with them, 'these old
Beguines;' nay they will carry the little Dauphin, 'having nursed
a changeling, for some time, to leave in his stead!' Besides,
they are as some light substance flung up, to shew how the wind
sits; a kind of proof-kite you fly off to ascertain whether the
grand paper-kite, Evasion of the King, may mount!
In these alarming circumstances, Patriotism is not wanting to
itself. Municipality deputes to the King; Sections depute to the
Municipality; a National Assembly will soon stir. Meanwhile,
behold, on the 19th of February 1791, Mesdames, quitting Bellevue
and Versailles with all privacy, are off! Towards Rome,
seemingly; or one knows not whither. They are not without King's
passports, countersigned; and what is more to the purpose, a
serviceable Escort. The Patriotic Mayor or Mayorlet of the
Village of Moret tried to detain them; but brisk Louis de
Narbonne, of the Escort, dashed off at hand-gallop; returned soon
with thirty dragoons, and victoriously cut them out. And so the
poor ancient women go their way; to the terror of France and
Paris, whose nervous excitability is become extreme. Who else
would hinder poor Loque and Graille, now grown so old, and fallen
into such unexpected circumstances, when gossip itself turning
only on terrors and horrors is no longer pleasant to the mind,
and you cannot get so much as an orthodox confessor in
peace,—from going what way soever the hope of any solacement
might lead them?
They go, poor ancient dames,—whom the heart were hard that does
not pity: they go; with palpitations, with unmelodious suppressed
screechings; all France, screeching and cackling, in loud
unsuppressed terror, behind and on both hands of them: such
mutual suspicion is among men. At Arnay le Duc, above halfway to
the frontiers, a Patriotic Municipality and Populace again takes
courage to stop them: Louis Narbonne must now back to Paris, must
consult the National Assembly. National Assembly answers, not
without an effort, that Mesdames may go. Whereupon Paris rises
worse than ever, screeching half-distracted. Tuileries and
precincts are filled with women and men, while the National
Assembly debates this question of questions; Lafayette is needed
at night for dispersing them, and the streets are to be
illuminated. Commandant Berthier, a Berthier before whom are
great things unknown, lies for the present under blockade at
Bellevue in Versailles. By no tactics could he get Mesdames'
Luggage stirred from the Courts there; frantic Versaillese women
came screaming about him; his very troops cut the waggon-traces;
he retired to the interior, waiting better times. (_Campan, ii.
132._)
Nay, in these same hours, while Mesdames hardly cut out from
Moret by the sabre's edge, are driving rapidly, to foreign parts,
and not yet stopped at Arnay, their august nephew poor Monsieur,
at Paris has dived deep into his cellars of the Luxembourg for
shelter; and according to Montgaillard can hardly be persuaded up
again. Screeching multitudes environ that Luxembourg of his:
drawn thither by report of his departure: but, at sight and sound
of Monsieur, they become crowing multitudes; and escort Madame
and him to the Tuileries with vivats. (_Montgaillard, ii. 282;
Deux Amis, vi. c. 1._) It is a state of nervous excitability such
as few Nations know.
Chapter 2.3.V.
The Day of Poniards.
Or, again, what means this visible reparation of the Castle of
Vincennes? Other Jails being all crowded with prisoners, new
space is wanted here: that is the Municipal account. For in such
changing of Judicatures, Parlements being abolished, and New
Courts but just set up, prisoners have accumulated. Not to say
that in these times of discord and club-law, offences and
committals are, at any rate, more numerous. Which Municipal
account, does it not sufficiently explain the phenomenon? Surely,
to repair the Castle of Vincennes was of all enterprises that an
enlightened Municipality could undertake, the most innocent.
Not so however does neighbouring Saint-Antoine look on it:
Saint-Antoine to whom these peaked turrets and grim donjons,
all-too near her own dark dwelling, are of themselves an offence.
Was not Vincennes a kind of minor Bastille? Great Diderot and
Philosophes have lain in durance here; great Mirabeau, in
disastrous eclipse, for forty-two months. And now when the old
Bastille has become a dancing-ground (_had any one the mirth to
dance_), and its stones are getting built into the Pont
Louis-Seize, does this minor, comparative insignificance of a
Bastille flank itself with fresh-hewn mullions, spread out
tyrannous wings; menacing Patriotism? New space for prisoners:
and what prisoners? A d'Orleans, with the chief Patriots on the
tip of the Left? It is said, there runs 'a subterranean passage'
all the way from the Tuileries hither. Who knows? Paris, mined
with quarries and catacombs, does hang wondrous over the abyss;
Paris was once to be blown up,—though the powder, when we went to
look, had got withdrawn. A Tuileries, sold to Austria and
Coblentz, should have no subterranean passage. Out of which might
not Coblentz or Austria issue, some morning; and, with cannon of
long range, 'foudroyer,' bethunder a patriotic Saint-Antoine into
smoulder and ruin!
So meditates the benighted soul of Saint-Antoine, as it sees the
aproned workmen, in early spring, busy on these towers. An
official-speaking Municipality, a Sieur Motier with his legions
of mouchards, deserve no trust at all. Were Patriot Santerre,
indeed, Commander! But the sonorous Brewer commands only our own
Battalion: of such secrets he can explain nothing, knows nothing,
perhaps suspects much. And so the work goes on; and afflicted
benighted Saint-Antoine hears rattle of hammers, sees stones
suspended in air. (_Montgaillard, ii. 285._)
Saint-Antoine prostrated the first great Bastille: will it falter
over this comparative insignificance of a Bastille? Friends, what
if we took pikes, firelocks, sledgehammers; and helped
ourselves!—Speedier is no remedy; nor so certain. On the 28th day
of February, Saint-Antoine turns out, as it has now often done;
and, apparently with little superfluous tumult, moves eastward to
that eye-sorrow of Vincennes. With grave voice of authority, no
need of bullying and shouting, Saint-Antoine signifies to parties
concerned there that its purpose is, To have this suspicious
Stronghold razed level with the general soil of the country.
Remonstrance may be proffered, with zeal: but it avails not. The
outer gate goes up, drawbridges tumble; iron window-stanchions,
smitten out with sledgehammers, become iron-crowbars: it rains
furniture, stone-masses, slates: with chaotic clatter and rattle,
Demolition clatters down. And now hasty expresses rush through
the agitated streets, to warn Lafayette, and the Municipal and
Departmental Authorities; Rumour warns a National Assembly, a
Royal Tuileries, and all men who care to hear it: That
Saint-Antoine is up; that Vincennes, and probably the last
remaining Institution of the Country, is coming down. (_Deux
Amis, vi. 11-15; Newspapers (_in Hist. Parl. ix. 111-17_)._)
Quick, then! Let Lafayette roll his drums and fly eastward; for
to all Constitutional Patriots this is again bad news. And you,
ye Friends of Royalty, snatch your poniards of improved
structure, made to order; your sword-canes, secret arms, and
tickets of entry; quick, by backstairs passages, rally round the
Son of Sixty Kings. An effervescence probably got up by d'Orleans
and Company, for the overthrow of Throne and Altar: it is said
her Majesty shall be put in prison, put out of the way; what then
will his Majesty be? Clay for the Sansculottic Potter! Or were it
impossible to fly this day; a brave Noblesse suddenly all
rallying? Peril threatens, hope invites: Dukes de Villequier, de
Duras, Gentlemen of the Chamber give tickets and admittance; a
brave Noblesse is suddenly all rallying. Now were the time to
'fall sword in hand on those gentry there,' could it be done with
effect.
The Hero of two Worlds is on his white charger; blue Nationals,
horse and foot, hurrying eastward: Santerre, with the
Saint-Antoine Battalion, is already there,—apparently indisposed
to act. Heavy-laden Hero of two Worlds, what tasks are these! The
jeerings, provocative gambollings of that Patriot Suburb, which
is all out on the streets now, are hard to endure; unwashed
Patriots jeering in sulky sport; one unwashed Patriot 'seizing
the General by the boot' to unhorse him. Santerre, ordered to
fire, makes answer obliquely, "These are the men that took the
Bastille;" and not a trigger stirs! Neither dare the Vincennes
Magistracy give warrant of arrestment, or the smallest
countenance: wherefore the General 'will take it on himself' to
arrest. By promptitude, by cheerful adroitness, patience and
brisk valour without limits, the riot may be again bloodlessly
appeased.
Meanwhile, the rest of Paris, with more or less unconcern, may
mind the rest of its business: for what is this but an
effervescence, of which there are now so many? The National
Assembly, in one of its stormiest moods, is debating a Law
against Emigration; Mirabeau declaring aloud, "I swear beforehand
that I will not obey it." Mirabeau is often at the Tribune this
day; with endless impediments from without; with the old unabated
energy from within. What can murmurs and clamours, from Left or
from Right, do to this man; like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved?
With clear thought; with strong bass-voice, though at first low,
uncertain, he claims audience, sways the storm of men: anon the
sound of him waxes, softens; he rises into far-sounding melody of
strength, triumphant, which subdues all hearts; his rude-seamed
face, desolate fire-scathed, becomes fire-lit, and radiates: once
again men feel, in these beggarly ages, what is the potency and
omnipotency of man's word on the souls of men. "I will triumph or
be torn in fragments," he was once heard to say. "Silence," he
cries now, in strong word of command, in imperial consciousness
of strength, "Silence, the thirty voices, Silence aux trente
voix!"—and Robespierre and the Thirty Voices die into mutterings;
and the Law is once more as Mirabeau would have it.
How different, at the same instant, is General Lafayette's street
eloquence; wrangling with sonorous Brewers, with an ungrammatical
Saint-Antoine! Most different, again, from both is the
Cafe-de-Valois eloquence, and suppressed fanfaronade, of this
multitude of men with Tickets of Entry; who are now inundating
the Corridors of the Tuileries. Such things can go on
simultaneously in one City. How much more in one Country; in one
Planet with its discrepancies, every Day a mere crackling
infinitude of discrepancies—which nevertheless do yield some
coherent net-product, though an infinitesimally small one!
Be this as it may. Lafayette has saved Vincennes; and is marching
homewards with some dozen of arrested demolitionists. Royalty is
not yet saved;—nor indeed specially endangered. But to the King's
Constitutional Guard, to these old Gardes Francaises, or Centre
Grenadiers, as it chanced to be, this affluence of men with
Tickets of Entry is becoming more and more unintelligible. Is his
Majesty verily for Metz, then; to be carried off by these men, on
the spur of the instant? That revolt of Saint-Antoine got up by
traitor Royalists for a stalking-horse? Keep a sharp outlook, ye
Centre Grenadiers on duty here: good never came from the 'men in
black.' Nay they have cloaks, redingotes; some of them
leather-breeches, boots,—as if for instant riding! Or what is
this that sticks visible from the lapelle of Chevalier de Court?
(_Weber, ii. 286._) Too like the handle of some cutting or
stabbing instrument! He glides and goes; and still the dudgeon
sticks from his left lapelle. "Hold, Monsieur!"—a Centre
Grenadier clutches him; clutches the protrusive dudgeon, whisks
it out in the face of the world: by Heaven, a very dagger;
hunting-knife, or whatsoever you call it; fit to drink the life
of Patriotism!
So fared it with Chevalier de Court, early in the day; not
without noise; not without commentaries. And now this continually
increasing multitude at nightfall? Have they daggers too? Alas,
with them too, after angry parleyings, there has begun a groping
and a rummaging; all men in black, spite of their Tickets of
Entry, are clutched by the collar, and groped. Scandalous to
think of; for always, as the dirk, sword-cane, pistol, or were it
but tailor's bodkin, is found on him, and with loud scorn drawn
forth from him, he, the hapless man in black, is flung all too
rapidly down stairs. Flung; and ignominiously descends, head
foremost; accelerated by ignominious shovings from sentry after
sentry; nay, as is written, by smitings, twitchings,—spurnings, a
posteriori, not to be named. In this accelerated way, emerges,
uncertain which end uppermost, man after man in black, through
all issues, into the Tuileries Garden. Emerges, alas, into the
arms of an indignant multitude, now gathered and gathering there,
in the hour of dusk, to see what is toward, and whether the
Hereditary Representative is carried off or not. Hapless men in
black; at last convicted of poniards made to order; convicted
'Chevaliers of the Poniard!' Within is as the burning ship;
without is as the deep sea. Within is no help; his Majesty,
looking forth, one moment, from his interior sanctuaries, coldly
bids all visitors 'give up their weapons;' and shuts the door
again. The weapons given up form a heap: the convicted Chevaliers
of the poniard keep descending pellmell, with impetuous velocity;
and at the bottom of all staircases, the mixed multitude receives
them, hustles, buffets, chases and disperses them. (_Hist. Parl.
ix. 139-48._)
Such sight meets Lafayette, in the dusk of the evening, as he
returns, successful with difficulty at Vincennes: Sansculotte
Scylla hardly weathered, here is Aristocrat Charybdis gurgling
under his lee! The patient Hero of two Worlds almost loses
temper. He accelerates, does not retard, the flying Chevaliers;
delivers, indeed, this or the other hunted Loyalist of quality,
but rates him in bitter words, such as the hour suggested; such
as no saloon could pardon. Hero ill-bested; hanging, so to speak,
in mid-air; hateful to Rich divinities above; hateful to Indigent
mortals below! Duke de Villequier, Gentleman of the Chamber, gets
such contumelious rating, in presence of all people there, that
he may see good first to exculpate himself in the Newspapers;
then, that not prospering, to retire over the Frontiers, and
begin plotting at Brussels. (_Montgaillard, ii. 286._) His
Apartment will stand vacant; usefuller, as we may find, than when
it stood occupied.
So fly the Chevaliers of the Poniard; hunted of Patriotic men,
shamefully in the thickening dusk. A dim miserable business; born
of darkness; dying away there in the thickening dusk and dimness!
In the midst of which, however, let the reader discern clearly
one figure running for its life: Crispin-Cataline
d'Espremenil,—for the last time, or the last but one. It is not
yet three years since these same Centre Grenadiers, Gardes
Francaises then, marched him towards the Calypso Isles, in the
gray of the May morning; and he and they have got thus far.
Buffeted, beaten down, delivered by popular Petion, he might well
answer bitterly: "And I too, Monsieur, have been carried on the
People's shoulders." (_See Mercier, ii. 40, 202._) A fact which
popular Petion, if he like, can meditate.
But happily, one way and another, the speedy night covers up this
ignominious Day of Poniards; and the Chevaliers escape, though
maltreated, with torn coat-skirts and heavy hearts, to their
respective dwelling-houses. Riot twofold is quelled; and little
blood shed, if it be not insignificant blood from the nose:
Vincennes stands undemolished, reparable; and the Hereditary
Representative has not been stolen, nor the Queen smuggled into
Prison. A Day long remembered: commented on with loud hahas and
deep grumblings; with bitter scornfulness of triumph, bitter
rancour of defeat. Royalism, as usual, imputes it to d'Orleans
and the Anarchists intent on insulting Majesty: Patriotism, as
usual, to Royalists, and even Constitutionalists, intent on
stealing Majesty to Metz: we, also as usual, to Preternatural
Suspicion, and Phoebus Apollo having made himself like the Night.
Thus however has the reader seen, in an unexpected arena, on this
last day of February 1791, the Three long-contending elements of
French Society, dashed forth into singular comico-tragical
collision; acting and reacting openly to the eye.
Constitutionalism, at once quelling Sansculottic riot at
Vincennes, and Royalist treachery from the Tuileries, is great,
this day, and prevails. As for poor Royalism, tossed to and fro
in that manner, its daggers all left in a heap, what can one
think of it? Every dog, the Adage says, has its day: has it; has
had it; or will have it. For the present, the day is Lafayette's
and the Constitution's. Nevertheless Hunger and Jacobinism, fast
growing fanatical, still work; their-day, were they once
fanatical, will come. Hitherto, in all tempests, Lafayette, like
some divine Sea-ruler, raises his serene head: the upper Aeolus's
blasts fly back to their caves, like foolish unbidden winds: the
under sea-billows they had vexed into froth allay themselves. But
if, as we often write, the submarine Titanic Fire-powers came
into play, the Ocean bed from beneath being burst? If they hurled
Poseidon Lafayette and his Constitution out of Space; and, in the
Titanic melee, sea were mixed with sky?
Chapter 2.3.VI.
Mirabeau.
The spirit of France waxes ever more acrid, fever-sick: towards
the final outburst of dissolution and delirium. Suspicion rules
all minds: contending parties cannot now commingle; stand
separated sheer asunder, eying one another, in most aguish mood,
of cold terror or hot rage. Counter-Revolution, Days of Poniards,
Castries Duels; Flight of Mesdames, of Monsieur and Royalty!
Journalism shrills ever louder its cry of alarm. The sleepless
Dionysius's Ear of the Forty-eight Sections, how feverishly quick
has it grown; convulsing with strange pangs the whole sick Body,
as in such sleeplessness and sickness, the ear will do!
Since Royalists get Poniards made to order, and a Sieur Motier is
no better than he should be, shall not Patriotism too, even of
the indigent sort, have Pikes, secondhand Firelocks, in readiness
for the worst? The anvils ring, during this March month, with
hammering of Pikes. A Constitutional Municipality promulgated its
Placard, that no citizen except the 'active or cash-citizen' was
entitled to have arms; but there rose, instantly responsive, such
a tempest of astonishment from Club and Section, that the
Constitutional Placard, almost next morning, had to cover itself
up, and die away into inanity, in a second improved edition.
(_Ordonnance du 17 Mars 1791 (_Hist. Parl. ix. 257_)._) So the
hammering continues; as all that it betokens does.
Mark, again, how the extreme tip of the Left is mounting in
favour, if not in its own National Hall, yet with the Nation,
especially with Paris. For in such universal panic of doubt, the
opinion that is sure of itself, as the meagrest opinion may the
soonest be, is the one to which all men will rally. Great is
Belief, were it never so meagre; and leads captive the doubting
heart! Incorruptible Robespierre has been elected Public Accuser
in our new Courts of Judicature; virtuous Petion, it is thought,
may rise to be Mayor. Cordelier Danton, called also by triumphant
majorities, sits at the Departmental Council-table; colleague
there of Mirabeau. Of incorruptible Robespierre it was long ago
predicted that he might go far, mean meagre mortal though he was;
for Doubt dwelt not in him.
Under which circumstances ought not Royalty likewise to cease
doubting, and begin deciding and acting? Royalty has always that
sure trump-card in its hand: Flight out of Paris. Which sure
trump-card, Royalty, as we see, keeps ever and anon clutching at,
grasping; and swashes it forth tentatively; yet never tables it,
still puts it back again. Play it, O Royalty! If there be a
chance left, this seems it, and verily the last chance; and now
every hour is rendering this a doubtfuller. Alas, one would so
fain both fly and not fly; play one's card and have it to play.
Royalty, in all human likelihood, will not play its trump-card
till the honours, one after one, be mainly lost; and such
trumping of it prove to be the sudden finish of the game!
Here accordingly a question always arises; of the prophetic sort;
which cannot now be answered. Suppose Mirabeau, with whom Royalty
takes deep counsel, as with a Prime Minister that cannot yet
legally avow himself as such, had got his arrangements completed?
Arrangements he has; far-stretching plans that dawn fitfully on
us, by fragments, in the confused darkness. Thirty Departments
ready to sign loyal Addresses, of prescribed tenor: King carried
out of Paris, but only to Compiegne and Rouen, hardly to Metz,
since, once for all, no Emigrant rabble shall take the lead in
it: National Assembly consenting, by dint of loyal Addresses, by
management, by force of Bouille, to hear reason, and follow
thither! (_See Fils Adoptif, vii. 1. 6; Dumont, c. 11, 12, 14._)
Was it so, on these terms, that Jacobinism and Mirabeau were then
to grapple, in their Hercules-and-Typhon duel; death inevitable
for the one or the other? The duel itself is determined on, and
sure: but on what terms; much more, with what issue, we in vain
guess. It is vague darkness all: unknown what is to be; unknown
even what has already been. The giant Mirabeau walks in darkness,
as we said; companionless, on wild ways: what his thoughts during
these months were, no record of Biographer, not vague Fils
Adoptif, will now ever disclose.
To us, endeavouring to cast his horoscope, it of course remains
doubly vague. There is one Herculean man, in internecine duel
with him, there is Monster after Monster. Emigrant Noblesse
return, sword on thigh, vaunting of their Loyalty never sullied;
descending from the air, like Harpy-swarms with ferocity, with
obscene greed. Earthward there is the Typhon of Anarchy,
Political, Religious; sprawling hundred-headed, say with
Twenty-five million heads; wide as the area of France; fierce as
Frenzy; strong in very Hunger. With these shall the
Serpent-queller do battle continually, and expect no rest.
As for the King, he as usual will go wavering chameleonlike;
changing colour and purpose with the colour of his
environment;—good for no Kingly use. On one royal person, on the
Queen only, can Mirabeau perhaps place dependance. It is
possible, the greatness of this man, not unskilled too in
blandishments, courtiership, and graceful adroitness, might, with
most legitimate sorcery, fascinate the volatile Queen, and fix
her to him. She has courage for all noble daring; an eye and a
heart: the soul of Theresa's Daughter. 'Faut il-donc, Is it fated
then,' she passionately writes to her Brother, 'that I with the
blood I am come of, with the sentiments I have, must live and die
among such mortals?' (_Fils Adoptif, ubi supra._) Alas, poor
Princess, Yes. 'She is the only man,' as Mirabeau observes, 'whom
his Majesty has about him.' Of one other man Mirabeau is still
surer: of himself. There lies his resources; sufficient or
insufficient.
Dim and great to the eye of Prophecy looks the future! A
perpetual life-and-death battle; confusion from above and from
below;—mere confused darkness for us; with here and there some
streak of faint lurid light. We see King perhaps laid aside; not
tonsured, tonsuring is out of fashion now; but say, sent away any
whither, with handsome annual allowance, and stock of
smith-tools. We see a Queen and Dauphin, Regent and Minor; a
Queen 'mounted on horseback,' in the din of battles, with
Moriamur pro rege nostro! 'Such a day,' Mirabeau writes, 'may
come.'
Din of battles, wars more than civil, confusion from above and
from below: in such environment the eye of Prophecy sees Comte de
Mirabeau, like some Cardinal de Retz, stormfully maintain
himself; with head all-devising, heart all-daring, if not
victorious, yet unvanquished, while life is left him. The
specialties and issues of it, no eye of Prophecy can guess at: it
is clouds, we repeat, and tempestuous night; and in the middle of
it, now visible, far darting, now labouring in eclipse, is
Mirabeau indomitably struggling to be Cloud-Compeller!—One can
say that, had Mirabeau lived, the History of France and of the
World had been different. Further, that the man would have
needed, as few men ever did, the whole compass of that same 'Art
of Daring, Art d'Oser,' which he so prized; and likewise that he,
above all men then living, would have practised and manifested
it. Finally, that some substantiality, and no empty simulacrum of
a formula, would have been the result realised by him: a result
you could have loved, a result you could have hated; by no
likelihood, a result you could only have rejected with closed
lips, and swept into quick forgetfulness for ever. Had Mirabeau
lived one other year!
Chapter 2.3.VII.
Death of Mirabeau.
But Mirabeau could not live another year, any more than he could
live another thousand years. Men's years are numbered, and the
tale of Mirabeau's was now complete. Important, or unimportant;
to be mentioned in World-History for some centuries, or not to be
mentioned there beyond a day or two,—it matters not to peremptory
Fate. From amid the press of ruddy busy Life, the Pale Messenger
beckons silently: wide-spreading interests, projects, salvation
of French Monarchies, what thing soever man has on hand, he must
suddenly quit it all, and go. Wert thou saving French Monarchies;
wert thou blacking shoes on the Pont Neuf! The most important of
men cannot stay; did the World's History depend on an hour, that
hour is not to be given. Whereby, indeed, it comes that these
same would-have-beens are mostly a vanity; and the World's
History could never in the least be what it would, or might, or
should, by any manner of potentiality, but simply and altogether
what it is.
The fierce wear and tear of such an existence has wasted out the
giant oaken strength of Mirabeau. A fret and fever that keeps
heart and brain on fire: excess of effort, of excitement; excess
of all kinds: labour incessant, almost beyond credibility! 'If I
had not lived with him,' says Dumont, 'I should never have known
what a man can make of one day; what things may be placed within
the interval of twelve hours. A day for this man was more than a
week or a month is for others: the mass of things he guided on
together was prodigious; from the scheming to the executing not a
moment lost.' "Monsieur le Comte," said his Secretary to him
once, "what you require is impossible."—"Impossible!" answered he
starting from his chair, "Ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot,
Never name to me that blockhead of a word." (_Dumont, p. 311._)
And then the social repasts; the dinner which he gives as
Commandant of National Guards, which 'costs five hundred pounds;'
alas, and 'the Sirens of the Opera;' and all the ginger that is
hot in the mouth:—down what a course is this man hurled! Cannot
Mirabeau stop; cannot he fly, and save himself alive? No! There
is a Nessus' Shirt on this Hercules; he must storm and burn
there, without rest, till he be consumed. Human strength, never
so Herculean, has its measure. Herald shadows flit pale across
the fire-brain of Mirabeau; heralds of the pale repose. While he
tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of ambition
and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for
him the issue of it will be swift death.
In January last, you might see him as President of the Assembly;
'his neck wrapt in linen cloths, at the evening session:' there
was sick heat of the blood, alternate darkening and flashing in
the eye-sight; he had to apply leeches, after the morning labour,
and preside bandaged. 'At parting he embraced me,' says Dumont,
'with an emotion I had never seen in him: "I am dying, my friend;
dying as by slow fire; we shall perhaps not meet again. When I am
gone, they will know what the value of me was. The miseries I
have held back will burst from all sides on France."' (_Dumont,
p. 267._) Sickness gives louder warning; but cannot be listened
to. On the 27th day of March, proceeding towards the Assembly, he
had to seek rest and help in Friend de Lamarck's, by the road;
and lay there, for an hour, half-fainted, stretched on a sofa. To
the Assembly nevertheless he went, as if in spite of Destiny
itself; spoke, loud and eager, five several times; then quitted
the Tribune—for ever. He steps out, utterly exhausted, into the
Tuileries Gardens; many people press round him, as usual, with
applications, memorials; he says to the Friend who was with him:
Take me out of this!
And so, on the last day of March 1791, endless anxious multitudes
beset the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin; incessantly inquiring:
within doors there, in that House numbered in our time '42,' the
over wearied giant has fallen down, to die. (_Fils Adoptif, viii.
420-79._) Crowds, of all parties and kinds; of all ranks from the
King to the meanest man! The King sends publicly twice a-day to
inquire; privately besides: from the world at large there is no
end of inquiring. 'A written bulletin is handed out every three
hours,' is copied and circulated; in the end, it is printed. The
People spontaneously keep silence; no carriage shall enter with
its noise: there is crowding pressure; but the Sister of Mirabeau
is reverently recognised, and has free way made for her. The
People stand mute, heart-stricken; to all it seems as if a great
calamity were nigh: as if the last man of France, who could have
swayed these coming troubles, lay there at hand-grips with the
unearthly Power.
The silence of a whole People, the wakeful toil of Cabanis,
Friend and Physician, skills not: on Saturday, the second day of
April, Mirabeau feels that the last of the Days has risen for
him; that, on this day, he has to depart and be no more. His
death is Titanic, as his life has been. Lit up, for the last
time, in the glare of coming dissolution, the mind of the man is
all glowing and burning; utters itself in sayings, such as men
long remember. He longs to live, yet acquiesces in death, argues
not with the inexorable. His speech is wild and wondrous:
unearthly Phantasms dancing now their torch-dance round his soul;
the soul itself looking out, fire-radiant, motionless, girt
together for that great hour! At times comes a beam of light from
him on the world he is quitting. "I carry in my heart the
death-dirge of the French Monarchy; the dead remains of it will
now be the spoil of the factious." Or again, when he heard the
cannon fire, what is characteristic too: "Have we the Achilles'
Funeral already?" So likewise, while some friend is supporting
him: "Yes, support that head; would I could bequeath it thee!"
For the man dies as he has lived; self-conscious, conscious of a
world looking on. He gazes forth on the young Spring, which for
him will never be Summer. The Sun has risen; he says: "Si ce
n'est pas la Dieu, c'est du moins son cousin germain." (_Fils
Adoptif, viii. 450; Journal de la maladie et de la mort de
Mirabeau, par P.J.G. Cabanis (_Paris, 1803_)._)—Death has
mastered the outworks; power of speech is gone; the citadel of
the heart still holding out: the moribund giant, passionately, by
sign, demands paper and pen; writes his passionate demand for
opium, to end these agonies. The sorrowful Doctor shakes his
head: Dormir 'To sleep,' writes the other, passionately pointing
at it! So dies a gigantic Heathen and Titan; stumbling blindly,
undismayed, down to his rest. At half-past eight in the morning,
Dr. Petit, standing at the foot of the bed, says "Il ne souffre
plus." His suffering and his working are now ended.
Even so, ye silent Patriot multitudes, all ye men of France; this
man is rapt away from you. He has fallen suddenly, without
bending till he broke; as a tower falls, smitten by sudden
lightning. His word ye shall hear no more, his guidance follow no
more.—The multitudes depart, heartstruck; spread the sad tidings.
How touching is the loyalty of men to their Sovereign Man! All
theatres, public amusements close; no joyful meeting can be held
in these nights, joy is not for them: the People break in upon
private dancing-parties, and sullenly command that they cease. Of
such dancing-parties apparently but two came to light; and these
also have gone out. The gloom is universal: never in this City
was such sorrow for one death; never since that old night when
Louis XII. departed, 'and the Crieurs des Corps went sounding
their bells, and crying along the streets: Le bon roi Louis, pere
du peuple, est mort, The good King Louis, Father of the People,
is dead!' (_Henault, Abrege Chronologique, p. 429._) King
Mirabeau is now the lost King; and one may say with little
exaggeration, all the People mourns for him.
For three days there is low wide moan: weeping in the National
Assembly itself. The streets are all mournful; orators mounted on
the bournes, with large silent audience, preaching the funeral
sermon of the dead. Let no coachman whip fast, distractively with
his rolling wheels, or almost at all, through these groups! His
traces may be cut; himself and his fare, as incurable
Aristocrats, hurled sulkily into the kennels. The bourne-stone
orators speak as it is given them; the Sansculottic People, with
its rude soul, listens eager,—as men will to any Sermon, or
Sermo, when it is a spoken Word meaning a Thing, and not a
Babblement meaning No-thing. In the Restaurateur's of the Palais
Royal, the waiter remarks, "Fine weather, Monsieur:"—"Yes, my
friend," answers the ancient Man of Letters, "very fine; but
Mirabeau is dead." Hoarse rhythmic threnodies comes also from the
throats of balladsingers; are sold on gray-white paper at a sou
each. (_Fils Adoptif, viii. l. 19; Newspapers and Excerpts (_in
Hist. Parl. ix. 366-402_)._) But of Portraits, engraved, painted,
hewn, and written; of Eulogies, Reminiscences, Biographies, nay
Vaudevilles, Dramas and Melodramas, in all Provinces of France,
there will, through these coming months, be the due immeasurable
crop; thick as the leaves of Spring. Nor, that a tincture of
burlesque might be in it, is Gobel's Episcopal Mandement wanting;
goose Gobel, who has just been made Constitutional Bishop of
Paris. A Mandement wherein ca ira alternates very strangely with
Nomine Domini, and you are, with a grave countenance, invited to
'rejoice at possessing in the midst of you a body of Prelates
created by Mirabeau, zealous followers of his doctrine, faithful
imitators of his virtues.' (_Hist. Parl. ix. 405._) So speaks,
and cackles manifold, the Sorrow of France; wailing articulately,
inarticulately, as it can, that a Sovereign Man is snatched away.
In the National Assembly, when difficult questions are astir, all
eyes will 'turn mechanically to the place where Mirabeau
sat,'—and Mirabeau is absent now.
On the third evening of the lamentation, the fourth of April,
there is solemn Public Funeral; such as deceased mortal seldom
had. Procession of a league in length; of mourners reckoned
loosely at a hundred thousand! All roofs are thronged with
onlookers, all windows, lamp-irons, branches of trees. 'Sadness
is painted on every countenance; many persons weep.' There is
double hedge of National Guards; there is National Assembly in a
body; Jacobin Society, and Societies; King's Ministers,
Municipals, and all Notabilities, Patriot or Aristocrat. Bouille
is noticeable there, 'with his hat on;' say, hat drawn over his
brow, hiding many thoughts! Slow-wending, in religious silence,
the Procession of a league in length, under the level sun-rays,
for it is five o'clock, moves and marches: with its sable plumes;
itself in a religious silence; but, by fits, with the muffled
roll of drums, by fits with some long-drawn wail of music, and
strange new clangour of trombones, and metallic dirge-voice; amid
the infinite hum of men. In the Church of Saint-Eustache, there
is funeral oration by Cerutti; and discharge of fire-arms, which
'brings down pieces of the plaster.' Thence, forward again to the
Church of Sainte-Genevieve; which has been consecrated, by
supreme decree, on the spur of this time, into a Pantheon for the
Great Men of the Fatherland, Aux Grands Hommes la Patrie
reconnaissante. Hardly at midnight is the business done; and
Mirabeau left in his dark dwelling: first tenant of that
Fatherland's Pantheon.
Tenant, alas, who inhabits but at will, and shall be cast out!
For, in these days of convulsion and disjection, not even the
dust of the dead is permitted to rest. Voltaire's bones are, by
and by, to be carried from their stolen grave in the Abbey of
Scellieres, to an eager stealing grave, in Paris his birth-city:
all mortals processioning and perorating there; cars drawn by
eight white horses, goadsters in classical costume, with fillets
and wheat-ears enough;—though the weather is of the wettest.
(_Moniteur, du 13 Juillet 1791._) Evangelist Jean Jacques, too,
as is most proper, must be dug up from Ermenonville, and
processioned, with pomp, with sensibility, to the Pantheon of the
Fatherland. (_Ibid. du 18 Septembre, 1794. See also du 30 Aout,
&c. 1791._) He and others: while again Mirabeau, we say, is cast
forth from it, happily incapable of being replaced; and rests
now, irrecognisable, reburied hastily at dead of night, in the
central 'part of the Churchyard Sainte-Catherine, in the Suburb
Saint-Marceau,' to be disturbed no further.
So blazes out, farseen, a Man's Life, and becomes ashes and a
caput mortuum, in this World-Pyre, which we name French
Revolution: not the first that consumed itself there; nor, by
thousands and many millions, the last! A man who 'had swallowed
all formulas;' who, in these strange times and circumstances,
felt called to live Titanically, and also to die so. As he, for
his part had swallowed all formulas, what Formula is there, never
so comprehensive, that will express truly the plus and the minus,
give us the accurate net-result of him? There is hitherto none
such. Moralities not a few must shriek condemnatory over this
Mirabeau; the Morality by which he could be judged has not yet
got uttered in the speech of men. We shall say this of him,
again: That he is a Reality, and no Simulacrum: a living son of
Nature our general Mother; not a hollow Artfice, and mechanism of
Conventionalities, son of nothing, brother to nothing. In which
little word, let the earnest man, walking sorrowful in a world
mostly of 'Stuffed Clothes-suits,' that chatter and grin
meaningless on him, quite ghastly to the earnest soul,—think what
significance there is!
Of men who, in such sense, are alive, and see with eyes, the
number is now not great: it may be well, if in this huge French
Revolution itself, with its all-developing fury, we find some
Three. Mortals driven rabid we find; sputtering the acridest
logic; baring their breast to the battle-hail, their neck to the
guillotine; of whom it is so painful to say that they too are
still, in good part, manufactured Formalities, not Facts but
Hearsays!
Honour to the strong man, in these ages, who has shaken himself
loose of shams, and is something. For in the way of being worthy,
the first condition surely is that one be. Let Cant cease, at all
risks and at all costs: till Cant cease, nothing else can begin.
Of human Criminals, in these centuries, writes the Moralist, I
find but one unforgivable: the Quack. 'Hateful to God,' as divine
Dante sings, 'and to the Enemies of God,
'A Dio spiacente ed a' nemici sui!'
But whoever will, with sympathy, which is the first essential
towards insight, look at this questionable Mirabeau, may find
that there lay verily in him, as the basis of all, a Sincerity, a
great free Earnestness; nay call it Honesty, for the man did
before all things see, with that clear flashing vision, into what
was, into what existed as fact; and did, with his wild heart,
follow that and no other. Whereby on what ways soever he travels
and struggles, often enough falling, he is still a brother man.
Hate him not; thou canst not hate him! Shining through such soil
and tarnish, and now victorious effulgent, and oftenest
struggling eclipsed, the light of genius itself is in this man;
which was never yet base and hateful: but at worst was
lamentable, loveable with pity. They say that he was ambitious,
that he wanted to be Minister. It is most true; and was he not
simply the one man in France who could have done any good as
Minister? Not vanity alone, not pride alone; far from that! Wild
burstings of affection were in this great heart; of fierce
lightning, and soft dew of pity. So sunk, bemired in wretchedest
defacements, it may be said of him, like the Magdalen of old,
that he loved much: his Father the harshest of old crabbed men he
loved with warmth, with veneration.
Be it that his falls and follies are manifold,—as himself often
lamented even with tears. (_Dumont, p. 287._) Alas, is not the
Life of every such man already a poetic Tragedy; made up 'of Fate
and of one's own Deservings,' of Schicksal und eigene Schuld;
full of the elements of Pity and Fear? This brother man, if not
Epic for us, is Tragic; if not great, is large; large in his
qualities, world-large in his destinies. Whom other men,
recognising him as such, may, through long times, remember, and
draw nigh to examine and consider: these, in their several
dialects, will say of him and sing of him,—till the right thing
be said; and so the Formula that can judge him be no longer an
undiscovered one.
Here then the wild Gabriel Honore drops from the tissue of our
History; not without a tragic farewell. He is gone: the flower of
the wild Riquetti or Arrighetti kindred; which seems as if in
him, with one last effort, it had done its best, and then
expired, or sunk down to the undistinguished level. Crabbed old
Marquis Mirabeau, the Friend of Men, sleeps sound. The Bailli
Mirabeau, worthy uncle, will soon die forlorn, alone.
Barrel-Mirabeau, already gone across the Rhine, his Regiment of
Emigrants will drive nigh desperate. 'Barrel-Mirabeau,' says a
biographer of his, 'went indignantly across the Rhine, and
drilled Emigrant Regiments. But as he sat one morning in his
tent, sour of stomach doubtless and of heart, meditating in
Tartarean humour on the turn things took, a certain Captain or
Subaltern demanded admittance on business. Such Captain is
refused; he again demands, with refusal; and then again, till
Colonel Viscount Barrel-Mirabeau, blazing up into a mere burning
brandy barrel, clutches his sword, and tumbles out on this
canaille of an intruder,—alas, on the canaille of an intruder's
sword's point, who had drawn with swift dexterity; and dies, and
the Newspapers name it apoplexy and alarming accident.' So die
the Mirabeaus.
New Mirabeaus one hears not of: the wild kindred, as we said, is
gone out with this its greatest. As families and kindreds
sometimes do; producing, after long ages of unnoted notability,
some living quintescence of all the qualities they had, to flame
forth as a man world-noted; after whom they rest as if exhausted;
the sceptre passing to others. The chosen Last of the Mirabeaus
is gone; the chosen man of France is gone. It was he who shook
old France from its basis; and, as if with his single hand, has
held it toppling there, still unfallen. What things depended on
that one man! He is as a ship suddenly shivered on sunk rocks:
much swims on the waste waters, far from help.
BOOK 2.IV.
VARENNES
Chapter 2.4.I.
Easter at Saint-Cloud.
The French Monarchy may now therefore be considered as, in all
human probability, lost; as struggling henceforth in blindness as
well as weakness, the last light of reasonable guidance having
gone out. What remains of resources their poor Majesties will
waste still further, in uncertain loitering and wavering.
Mirabeau himself had to complain that they only gave him half
confidence, and always had some plan within his plan. Had they
fled frankly with him, to Rouen or anywhither, long ago! They may
fly now with chance immeasurably lessened; which will go on
lessening towards absolute zero. Decide, O Queen; poor Louis can
decide nothing: execute this Flight-project, or at least abandon
it. Correspondence with Bouille there has been enough; what
profits consulting, and hypothesis, while all around is in fierce
activity of practice? The Rustic sits waiting till the river run
dry: alas with you it is not a common river, but a Nile
Inundation; snow melting in the unseen mountains; till all, and
you where you sit, be submerged.
Many things invite to flight. The voice Journals invites;
Royalist Journals proudly hinting it as a threat, Patriot
Journals rabidly denouncing it as a terror. Mother Society,
waxing more and more emphatic, invites;—so emphatic that, as was
prophesied, Lafayette and your limited Patriots have ere long to
branch off from her, and form themselves into Feuillans; with
infinite public controversy; the victory in which, doubtful
though it look, will remain with the unlimited Mother. Moreover,
ever since the Day of Poniards, we have seen unlimited Patriotism
openly equipping itself with arms. Citizens denied 'activity,'
which is facetiously made to signify a certain weight of purse,
cannot buy blue uniforms, and be Guardsmen; but man is greater
than blue cloth; man can fight, if need be, in multiform cloth,
or even almost without cloth—as Sansculotte. So Pikes continued
to be hammered, whether those Dirks of improved structure with
barbs be 'meant for the West-India market,' or not meant. Men
beat, the wrong way, their ploughshares into swords. Is there not
what we may call an 'Austrian Committee,' Comite Autrichein,
sitting daily and nightly in the Tuileries? Patriotism, by vision
and suspicion, knows it too well! If the King fly, will there not
be Aristocrat-Austrian Invasion; butchery, replacement of
Feudalism; wars more than civil? The hearts of men are saddened
and maddened.
Dissident Priests likewise give trouble enough. Expelled from
their Parish Churches, where Constitutional Priests, elected by
the Public, have replaced them, these unhappy persons resort to
Convents of Nuns, or other such receptacles; and there, on
Sabbath, collecting assemblages of Anti-Constitutional
individuals, who have grown devout all on a sudden, (_Toulongeon,
i. 262._) they worship or pretend to worship in their
strait-laced contumacious manner; to the scandal of Patriotism.
Dissident Priests, passing along with their sacred wafer for the
dying, seem wishful to be massacred in the streets; wherein
Patriotism will not gratify them. Slighter palm of martyrdom,
however, shall not be denied: martyrdom not of massacre, yet of
fustigation. At the refractory places of worship, Patriot men
appear; Patriot women with strong hazel wands, which they apply.
Shut thy eyes, O Reader; see not this misery, peculiar to these
later times,—of martyrdom without sincerity, with only cant and
contumacy! A dead Catholic Church is not allowed to lie dead; no,
it is galvanised into the detestablest death-life; whereat
Humanity, we say, shuts its eyes. For the Patriot women take
their hazel wands, and fustigate, amid laughter of bystanders,
with alacrity: broad bottom of Priests; alas, Nuns too reversed,
and cotillons retrousses! The National Guard does what it can:
Municipality 'invokes the Principles of Toleration;' grants
Dissident worshippers the Church of the Theatins; promising
protection. But it is to no purpose: at the door of that Theatins
Church, appears a Placard, and suspended atop, like Plebeian
Consular fasces,—a Bundle of Rods! The Principles of Toleration
must do the best they may: but no Dissident man shall worship
contumaciously; there is a Plebiscitum to that effect; which,
though unspoken, is like the laws of the Medes and Persians.
Dissident contumacious Priests ought not to be harboured, even in
private, by any man: the Club of the Cordeliers openly denounces
Majesty himself as doing it. (_Newspapers of April and June, 1791
(_in Hist. Parl. ix. 449; x, 217_)._)
Many things invite to flight: but probably this thing above all
others, that it has become impossible! On the 15th of April,
notice is given that his Majesty, who has suffered much from
catarrh lately, will enjoy the Spring weather, for a few days, at
Saint-Cloud. Out at Saint-Cloud? Wishing to celebrate his Easter,
his Paques, or Pasch, there; with refractory Anti-Constitutional
Dissidents?—Wishing rather to make off for Compiegne, and thence
to the Frontiers? As were, in good sooth, perhaps feasible, or
would once have been; nothing but some two chasseurs attending
you; chasseurs easily corrupted! It is a pleasant possibility,
execute it or not. Men say there are thirty thousand Chevaliers
of the Poniard lurking in the woods there: lurking in the woods,
and thirty thousand,—for the human Imagination is not fettered.
But now, how easily might these, dashing out on Lafayette, snatch
off the Hereditary Representative; and roll away with him, after
the manner of a whirlblast, whither they listed!—Enough, it were
well the King did not go. Lafayette is forewarned and forearmed:
but, indeed, is the risk his only; or his and all France's?
Monday the eighteenth of April is come; the Easter Journey to
Saint-Cloud shall take effect. National Guard has got its orders;
a First Division, as Advanced Guard, has even marched, and
probably arrived. His Majesty's Maison-bouche, they say, is all
busy stewing and frying at Saint-Cloud; the King's Dinner not far
from ready there. About one o'clock, the Royal Carriage, with its
eight royal blacks, shoots stately into the Place du Carrousel;
draws up to receive its royal burden. But hark! From the
neighbouring Church of Saint-Roch, the tocsin begins
ding-donging. Is the King stolen then; he is going; gone?
Multitudes of persons crowd the Carrousel: the Royal Carriage
still stands there;—and, by Heaven's strength, shall stand!
Lafayette comes up, with aide-de-camps and oratory; pervading the
groups: "Taisez vous," answer the groups, "the King shall not
go." Monsieur appears, at an upper window: ten thousand voices
bray and shriek, "Nous ne voulons pas que le Roi parte." Their
Majesties have mounted. Crack go the whips; but twenty Patriot
arms have seized each of the eight bridles: there is rearing,
rocking, vociferation; not the smallest headway. In vain does
Lafayette fret, indignant; and perorate and strive: Patriots in
the passion of terror, bellow round the Royal Carriage; it is one
bellowing sea of Patriot terror run frantic. Will Royalty fly off
towards Austria; like a lit rocket, towards endless Conflagration
of Civil War? Stop it, ye Patriots, in the name of Heaven! Rude
voices passionately apostrophise Royalty itself. Usher Campan,
and other the like official persons, pressing forward with help
or advice, are clutched by the sashes, and hurled and whirled, in
a confused perilous manner; so that her Majesty has to plead
passionately from the carriage-window.
Order cannot be heard, cannot be followed; National Guards know
not how to act. Centre Grenadiers, of the Observatoire Battalion,
are there; not on duty; alas, in quasi-mutiny; speaking rude
disobedient words; threatening the mounted Guards with sharp shot
if they hurt the people. Lafayette mounts and dismounts; runs
haranguing, panting; on the verge of despair. For an hour and
three-quarters; 'seven quarters of an hour,' by the Tuileries
Clock! Desperate Lafayette will open a passage, were it by the
cannon's mouth, if his Majesty will order. Their Majesties,
counselled to it by Royalist friends, by Patriot foes, dismount;
and retire in, with heavy indignant heart; giving up the
enterprise. Maison-bouche may eat that cooked dinner themselves;
his Majesty shall not see Saint-Cloud this day,—or any day.
(_Deux Amis, vi. c. 1; Hist. Parl. ix. 407-14._)
The pathetic fable of imprisonment in one's own Palace has become
a sad fact, then? Majesty complains to Assembly; Municipality
deliberates, proposes to petition or address; Sections respond
with sullen brevity of negation. Lafayette flings down his
Commission; appears in civic pepper-and-salt frock; and cannot be
flattered back again;—not in less than three days; and by
unheard-of entreaty; National Guards kneeling to him, and
declaring that it is not sycophancy, that they are free men
kneeling here to the Statue of Liberty. For the rest, those
Centre Grenadiers of the Observatoire are disbanded,—yet indeed
are reinlisted, all but fourteen, under a new name, and with new
quarters. The King must keep his Easter in Paris: meditating much
on this singular posture of things: but as good as determined now
to fly from it, desire being whetted by difficulty.
Chapter 2.4.II.
Easter at Paris.
For above a year, ever since March 1790, it would seem, there has
hovered a project of Flight before the royal mind; and ever and
anon has been condensing itself into something like a purpose;
but this or the other difficulty always vaporised it again. It
seems so full of risks, perhaps of civil war itself; above all,
it cannot be done without effort. Somnolent laziness will not
serve: to fly, if not in a leather vache, one must verily stir
himself. Better to adopt that Constitution of theirs; execute it
so as to shew all men that it is inexecutable? Better or not so
good; surely it is easier. To all difficulties you need only say,
There is a lion in the path, behold your Constitution will not
act! For a somnolent person it requires no effort to counterfeit
death,—as Dame de Stael and Friends of Liberty can see the King's
Government long doing, faisant le mort.
Nay now, when desire whetted by difficulty has brought the matter
to a head, and the royal mind no longer halts between two, what
can come of it? Grant that poor Louis were safe with Bouille,
what on the whole could he look for there? Exasperated Tickets of
Entry answer, Much, all. But cold Reason answers, Little almost
nothing. Is not loyalty a law of Nature? ask the Tickets of
Entry. Is not love of your King, and even death for him, the
glory of all Frenchmen,—except these few Democrats? Let Democrat
Constitution-builders see what they will do without their
Keystone; and France rend its hair, having lost the Hereditary
Representative!
Thus will King Louis fly; one sees not reasonably towards what.
As a maltreated Boy, shall we say, who, having a Stepmother,
rushes sulky into the wide world; and will wring the paternal
heart?—Poor Louis escapes from known unsupportable evils, to an
unknown mixture of good and evil, coloured by Hope. He goes, as
Rabelais did when dying, to seek a great May-be: je vais chercher
un grand Peut-etre! As not only the sulky Boy but the wise grown
Man is obliged to do, so often, in emergencies.
For the rest, there is still no lack of stimulants, and stepdame
maltreatments, to keep one's resolution at the due pitch.
Factious disturbance ceases not: as indeed how can they, unless
authoritatively conjured, in a Revolt which is by nature
bottomless? If the ceasing of faction be the price of the King's
somnolence, he may awake when he will, and take wing.
Remark, in any case, what somersets and contortions a dead
Catholicism is making,—skilfully galvanised: hideous, and even
piteous, to behold! Jurant and Dissident, with their shaved
crowns, argue frothing everywhere; or are ceasing to argue, and
stripping for battle. In Paris was scourging while need
continued: contrariwise, in the Morbihan of Brittany, without
scourging, armed Peasants are up, roused by pulpit-drum, they
know not why. General Dumouriez, who has got missioned
thitherward, finds all in sour heat of darkness; finds also that
explanation and conciliation will still do much. (_Deux Amis, v.
410-21; Dumouriez, ii. c. 5._)
But again, consider this: that his Holiness, Pius Sixth, has seen
good to excommunicate Bishop Talleyrand! Surely, we will say
then, considering it, there is no living or dead Church in the
Earth that has not the indubitablest right to excommunicate
Talleyrand. Pope Pius has right and might, in his way. But truly
so likewise has Father Adam, ci-devant Marquis Saint-Huruge, in
his way. Behold, therefore, on the Fourth of May, in the
Palais-Royal, a mixed loud-sounding multitude; in the middle of
whom, Father Adam, bull-voiced Saint-Huruge, in white hat, towers
visible and audible. With him, it is said, walks Journalist
Gorsas, walk many others of the washed sort; for no authority
will interfere. Pius Sixth, with his plush and tiara, and power
of the Keys, they bear aloft: of natural size,—made of lath and
combustible gum. Royou, the King's Friend, is borne too in
effigy; with a pile of Newspaper King's-Friends, condemned
numbers of the Ami-du-Roi; fit fuel of the sacrifice. Speeches
are spoken; a judgment is held, a doom proclaimed, audible in
bull-voice, towards the four winds. And thus, amid great
shouting, the holocaust is consummated, under the summer sky; and
our lath-and-gum Holiness, with the attendant victims, mounts up
in flame, and sinks down in ashes; a decomposed Pope: and right
or might, among all the parties, has better or worse accomplished
itself, as it could. (_Hist. Parl. x. 99-102._) But, on the
whole, reckoning from Martin Luther in the Marketplace of
Wittenberg to Marquis Saint-Huruge in this Palais-Royal of Paris,
what a journey have we gone; into what strange territories has it
carried us! No Authority can now interfere. Nay Religion herself,
mourning for such things, may after all ask, What have I to do
with them?
In such extraordinary manner does dead Catholicism somerset and
caper, skilfully galvanised. For, does the reader inquire into
the subject-matter of controversy in this case; what the
difference between Orthodoxy or My-doxy and Heterodoxy or
Thy-doxy might here be? My-doxy is that an august National
Assembly can equalize the extent of Bishopricks; that an
equalized Bishop, his Creed and Formularies being left quite as
they were, can swear Fidelity to King, Law and Nation, and so
become a Constitutional Bishop. Thy-doxy, if thou be Dissident,
is that he cannot; but that he must become an accursed thing.
Human ill-nature needs but some Homoiousian iota, or even the
pretence of one; and will flow copiously through the eye of a
needle: thus always must mortals go jargoning and fuming,
And, like the ancient Stoics in their porches
With fierce dispute maintain their churches.
This Auto-da-fe of Saint-Huruge's was on the Fourth of May, 1791.
Royalty sees it; but says nothing.
Chapter 2.4.III.
Count Fersen.
Royalty, in fact, should, by this time, be far on with its
preparations. Unhappily much preparation is needful: could a
Hereditary Representative be carried in leather vache, how easy
were it! But it is not so.
New clothes are needed, as usual, in all Epic transactions, were
it in the grimmest iron ages; consider 'Queen Chrimhilde, with
her sixty semstresses,' in that iron Nibelungen Song! No Queen
can stir without new clothes. Therefore, now, Dame Campan whisks
assiduous to this mantua-maker and to that: and there is clipping
of frocks and gowns, upper clothes and under, great and small;
such a clipping and sewing, as might have been dispensed with.
Moreover, her Majesty cannot go a step anywhither without her
Necessaire; dear Necessaire, of inlaid ivory and rosewood;
cunningly devised; which holds perfumes, toilet-implements,
infinite small queenlike furnitures: Necessary to terrestrial
life. Not without a cost of some five hundred louis, of much
precious time, and difficult hoodwinking which does not blind,
can this same Necessary of life be forwarded by the Flanders
Carriers,—never to get to hand. (_Campan, ii. c. 18._) All which,
you would say, augurs ill for the prospering of the enterprise.
But the whims of women and queens must be humoured.
Bouille, on his side, is making a fortified Camp at Montmedi;
gathering Royal-Allemand, and all manner of other German and true
French Troops thither, 'to watch the Austrians.' His Majesty will
not cross the Frontiers, unless on compulsion. Neither shall the
Emigrants be much employed, hateful as they are to all people.
(_Bouille, Memoires, ii. c. 10._) Nor shall old war-god Broglie
have any hand in the business; but solely our brave Bouille; to
whom, on the day of meeting, a Marshal's Baton shall be
delivered, by a rescued King, amid the shouting of all the
troops. In the meanwhile, Paris being so suspicious, were it not
perhaps good to write your Foreign Ambassadors an ostensible
Constitutional Letter; desiring all Kings and men to take heed
that King Louis loves the Constitution, that he has voluntarily
sworn, and does again swear, to maintain the same, and will
reckon those his enemies who affect to say otherwise? Such a
Constitutional circular is despatched by Couriers, is
communicated confidentially to the Assembly, and printed in all
Newspapers; with the finest effect. (_Moniteur, Seance du 23
Avril, 1791._) Simulation and dissimulation mingle extensively in
human affairs.
We observe, however, that Count Fersen is often using his Ticket
of Entry; which surely he has clear right to do. A gallant
Soldier and Swede, devoted to this fair Queen;—as indeed the
Highest Swede now is. Has not King Gustav, famed fiery Chevalier
du Nord, sworn himself, by the old laws of chivalry, her Knight?
He will descend on fire-wings, of Swedish musketry, and deliver
her from these foul dragons,—if, alas, the assassin's pistol
intervene not!
But, in fact, Count Fersen does seem a likely young soldier, of
alert decisive ways: he circulates widely, seen, unseen; and has
business on hand. Also Colonel the Duke de Choiseul, nephew of
Choiseul the great, of Choiseul the now deceased; he and Engineer
Goguelat are passing and repassing between Metz and the
Tuileries; and Letters go in cipher,—one of them, a most
important one, hard to decipher; Fersen having ciphered it in
haste. (_Choiseul, Relation du Depart de Louis XVI. (_Paris,
1822_), p. 39._) As for Duke de Villequier, he is gone ever since
the Day of Poniards; but his Apartment is useful for her Majesty.
On the other side, poor Commandment Gouvion, watching at the
Tuileries, second in National Command, sees several things hard
to interpret. It is the same Gouvion who sat, long months ago, at
the Townhall, gazing helpless into that Insurrection of Women;
motionless, as the brave stabled steed when conflagration rises,
till Usher Maillard snatched his drum. Sincerer Patriot there is
not; but many a shiftier. He, if Dame Campan gossip credibly, is
paying some similitude of love-court to a certain false
Chambermaid of the Palace, who betrays much to him: the
Necessaire, the clothes, the packing of the jewels, (_Campan, ii.
141._)—could he understand it when betrayed. Helpless Gouvion
gazes with sincere glassy eyes into it; stirs up his sentries to
vigilence; walks restless to and fro; and hopes the best.
But, on the whole, one finds that, in the second week of June,
Colonel de Choiseul is privately in Paris; having come 'to see
his children.' Also that Fersen has got a stupendous new Coach
built, of the kind named Berline; done by the first artists;
according to a model: they bring it home to him, in Choiseul's
presence; the two friends take a proof-drive in it, along the
streets; in meditative mood; then send it up to 'Madame
Sullivan's, in the Rue de Clichy,' far North, to wait there till
wanted. Apparently a certain Russian Baroness de Korff, with
Waiting-woman, Valet, and two Children, will travel homewards
with some state: in whom these young military gentlemen take
interest? A Passport has been procured for her; and much
assistance shewn, with Coach-builders and such like;—so helpful
polite are young military men. Fersen has likewise purchased a
Chaise fit for two, at least for two waiting-maids; further,
certain necessary horses: one would say, he is himself quitting
France, not without outlay? We observe finally that their
Majesties, Heaven willing, will assist at Corpus-Christi Day,
this blessed Summer Solstice, in Assumption Church, here at
Paris, to the joy of all the world. For which same day, moreover,
brave Bouille, at Metz, as we find, has invited a party of
friends to dinner; but indeed is gone from home, in the interim,
over to Montmedi.
These are of the Phenomena, or visual Appearances, of this
wide-working terrestrial world: which truly is all phenomenal,
what they call spectral; and never rests at any moment; one never
at any moment can know why.
On Monday night, the Twentieth of June 1791, about eleven
o'clock, there is many a hackney-coach, and glass-coach
(_carrosse de remise_), still rumbling, or at rest, on the
streets of Paris. But of all Glass-coaches, we recommend this to
thee, O Reader, which stands drawn up, in the Rue de l'Echelle,
hard by the Carrousel and outgate of the Tuileries; in the Rue de
l'Echelle that then was; 'opposite Ronsin the saddler's door,' as
if waiting for a fare there! Not long does it wait: a hooded
Dame, with two hooded Children has issued from Villequier's door,
where no sentry walks, into the Tuileries Court-of-Princes; into
the Carrousel; into the Rue de l'Echelle; where the
Glass-coachman readily admits them; and again waits. Not long;
another Dame, likewise hooded or shrouded, leaning on a servant,
issues in the same manner, by the Glass-coachman, cheerfully
admitted. Whither go, so many Dames? 'Tis His Majesty's Couchee,
Majesty just gone to bed, and all the Palace-world is retiring
home. But the Glass-coachman still waits; his fare seemingly
incomplete.
By and by, we note a thickset Individual, in round hat and
peruke, arm-and-arm with some servant, seemingly of the Runner or
Courier sort; he also issues through Villequier's door; starts a
shoebuckle as he passes one of the sentries, stoops down to clasp
it again; is however, by the Glass-coachman, still more
cheerfully admitted. And now, is his fare complete? Not yet; the
Glass-coachman still waits.—Alas! and the false Chambermaid has
warned Gouvion that she thinks the Royal Family will fly this
very night; and Gouvion distrusting his own glazed eyes, has sent
express for Lafayette; and Lafayette's Carriage, flaring with
lights, rolls this moment through the inner Arch of the
Carrousel,—where a Lady shaded in broad gypsy-hat, and leaning on
the arm of a servant, also of the Runner or Courier sort, stands
aside to let it pass, and has even the whim to touch a spoke of
it with her badine,—light little magic rod which she calls
badine, such as the Beautiful then wore. The flare of Lafayette's
Carriage, rolls past: all is found quiet in the Court-of-Princes;
sentries at their post; Majesties' Apartments closed in smooth
rest. Your false Chambermaid must have been mistaken? Watch thou,
Gouvion, with Argus' vigilance; for, of a truth, treachery is
within these walls.
But where is the Lady that stood aside in gypsy hat, and touched
the wheel-spoke with her badine? O Reader, that Lady that touched
the wheel-spoke was the Queen of France! She has issued safe
through that inner Arch, into the Carrousel itself; but not into
the Rue de l'Echelle. Flurried by the rattle and rencounter, she
took the right hand not the left; neither she nor her Courier
knows Paris; he indeed is no Courier, but a loyal stupid
ci-devant Bodyguard disguised as one. They are off, quite wrong,
over the Pont Royal and River; roaming disconsolate in the Rue du
Bac; far from the Glass-coachman, who still waits. Waits, with
flutter of heart; with thoughts—which he must button close up,
under his jarvie surtout!
Midnight clangs from all the City-steeples; one precious hour has
been spent so; most mortals are asleep. The Glass-coachman waits;
and what mood! A brother jarvie drives up, enters into
conversation; is answered cheerfully in jarvie dialect: the
brothers of the whip exchange a pinch of snuff; (_Weber, ii.
340-2; Choiseul, p. 44-56._) decline drinking together; and part
with good night. Be the Heavens blest! here at length is the
Queen-lady, in gypsy-hat; safe after perils; who has had to
inquire her way. She too is admitted; her Courier jumps aloft, as
the other, who is also a disguised Bodyguard, has done: and now,
O Glass-coachman of a thousand,—Count Fersen, for the Reader sees
it is thou,—drive!
Dust shall not stick to the hoofs of Fersen: crack! crack! the
Glass-coach rattles, and every soul breathes lighter. But is
Fersen on the right road? Northeastward, to the Barrier of
Saint-Martin and Metz Highway, thither were we bound: and lo, he
drives right Northward! The royal Individual, in round hat and
peruke, sits astonished; but right or wrong, there is no remedy.
Crack, crack, we go incessant, through the slumbering City.
Seldom, since Paris rose out of mud, or the Longhaired Kings went
in Bullock-carts, was there such a drive. Mortals on each hand of
you, close by, stretched out horizontal, dormant; and we alive
and quaking! Crack, crack, through the Rue de Grammont; across
the Boulevard; up the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin,—these windows,
all silent, of Number 42, were Mirabeau's. Towards the Barrier
not of Saint-Martin, but of Clichy on the utmost North! Patience,
ye royal Individuals; Fersen understands what he is about.
Passing up the Rue de Clichy, he alights for one moment at Madame
Sullivan's: "Did Count Fersen's Coachman get the Baroness de
Korff's new Berline?"—"Gone with it an hour-and-half ago,"
grumbles responsive the drowsy Porter.—"C'est bien." Yes, it is
well;—though had not such hour-and half been lost, it were still
better. Forth therefore, O Fersen, fast, by the Barrier de
Clichy; then Eastward along the Outward Boulevard, what horses
and whipcord can do!
Thus Fersen drives, through the ambrosial night. Sleeping Paris
is now all on the right hand of him; silent except for some
snoring hum; and now he is Eastward as far as the Barrier de
Saint-Martin; looking earnestly for Baroness de Korff's Berline.
This Heaven's Berline he at length does descry, drawn up with its
six horses, his own German Coachman waiting on the box. Right,
thou good German: now haste, whither thou knowest!—And as for us
of the Glass-coach, haste too, O haste; much time is already
lost! The august Glass-coach fare, six Insides, hastily packs
itself into the new Berline; two Bodyguard Couriers behind. The
Glass-coach itself is turned adrift, its head towards the City;
to wander whither it lists,—and be found next morning tumbled in
a ditch. But Fersen is on the new box, with its brave new
hammer-cloths; flourishing his whip; he bolts forward towards
Bondy. There a third and final Bodyguard Courier of ours ought
surely to be, with post-horses ready-ordered. There likewise
ought that purchased Chaise, with the two Waiting-maids and their
bandboxes to be; whom also her Majesty could not travel without.
Swift, thou deft Fersen, and may the Heavens turn it well!
Once more, by Heaven's blessing, it is all well. Here is the
sleeping Hamlet of Bondy; Chaise with Waiting-women; horses all
ready, and postillions with their churn-boots, impatient in the
dewy dawn. Brief harnessing done, the postillions with their
churn-boots vault into the saddles; brandish circularly their
little noisy whips. Fersen, under his jarvie-surtout, bends in
lowly silent reverence of adieu; royal hands wave speechless in
expressible response; Baroness de Korff's Berline, with the
Royalty of France, bounds off: for ever, as it proved. Deft
Fersen dashes obliquely Northward, through the country, towards
Bougret; gains Bougret, finds his German Coachman and chariot
waiting there; cracks off, and drives undiscovered into unknown
space. A deft active man, we say; what he undertook to do is
nimbly and successfully done.
A so the Royalty of France is actually fled? This precious night,
the shortest of the year, it flies and drives! Baroness de Korff
is, at bottom, Dame de Tourzel, Governess of the Royal Children:
she who came hooded with the two hooded little ones; little
Dauphin; little Madame Royale, known long afterwards as Duchess
d'Angouleme. Baroness de Korff's Waiting-maid is the Queen in
gypsy-hat. The royal Individual in round hat and peruke, he is
Valet, for the time being. That other hooded Dame, styled
Travelling-companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth; she had sworn,
long since, when the Insurrection of Women was, that only death
should part her and them. And so they rush there, not too
impetuously, through the Wood of Bondy:—over a Rubicon in their
own and France's History.
Great; though the future is all vague! If we reach Bouille? If we
do not reach him? O Louis! and this all round thee is the great
slumbering Earth (_and overhead, the great watchful Heaven_); the
slumbering Wood of Bondy,—where Longhaired Childeric Donothing
was struck through with iron; (_Henault, Abrege Chronologique, p.
36._) not unreasonably. These peaked stone-towers are Raincy;
towers of wicked d'Orleans. All slumbers save the multiplex
rustle of our new Berline. Loose-skirted scarecrow of an
Herb-merchant, with his ass and early greens, toilsomely
plodding, seems the only creature we meet. But right ahead the
great North-East sends up evermore his gray brindled dawn: from
dewy branch, birds here and there, with short deep warble, salute
the coming Sun. Stars fade out, and Galaxies; Street-lamps of the
City of God. The Universe, O my brothers, is flinging wide its
portals for the Levee of the GREAT HIGH KING. Thou, poor King
Louis, farest nevertheless, as mortals do, towards Orient lands
of Hope; and the Tuileries with its Levees, and France and the
Earth itself, is but a larger kind of doghutch,—occasionally
going rabid.
Chapter 2.4.IV.
Attitude.
But in Paris, at six in the morning; when some Patriot Deputy,
warned by a billet, awoke Lafayette, and they went to the
Tuileries?—Imagination may paint, but words cannot, the surprise
of Lafayette; or with what bewilderment helpless Gouvion rolled
glassy Argus's eyes, discerning now that his false Chambermaid
told true!
However, it is to be recorded that Paris, thanks to an august
National Assembly, did, on this seeming doomsday, surpass itself.
Never, according to Historian eye-witnesses, was there seen such
an 'imposing attitude.' (_Deux Amis, vi. 67-178; Toulongeon, ii.
1-38; Camille, Prudhomme and Editors in Hist. Parl. x. 240-4._)
Sections all 'in permanence;' our Townhall, too, having first,
about ten o'clock, fired three solemn alarm-cannons: above all,
our National Assembly! National Assembly, likewise permanent,
decides what is needful; with unanimous consent, for the Cote
Droit sits dumb, afraid of the Lanterne. Decides with a calm
promptitude, which rises towards the sublime. One must needs
vote, for the thing is self-evident, that his Majesty has been
abducted, or spirited away, 'enleve,' by some person or persons
unknown: in which case, what will the Constitution have us do?
Let us return to first principles, as we always say; "revenons
aux principes."
By first or by second principles, much is promptly decided:
Ministers are sent for, instructed how to continue their
functions; Lafayette is examined; and Gouvion, who gives a most
helpless account, the best he can. Letters are found written: one
Letter, of immense magnitude; all in his Majesty's hand, and
evidently of his Majesty's own composition; addressed to the
National Assembly. It details, with earnestness, with a childlike
simplicity, what woes his Majesty has suffered. Woes great and
small: A Necker seen applauded, a Majesty not; then insurrection;
want of due cash in Civil List; general want of cash, furniture
and order; anarchy everywhere; Deficit never yet, in the
smallest, 'choked or comble:'—wherefore in brief His Majesty has
retired towards a Place of Liberty; and, leaving Sanctions,
Federation, and what Oaths there may be, to shift for themselves,
does now refer—to what, thinks an august Assembly? To that
'Declaration of the Twenty-third of June,' with its "Seul il
fera, He alone will make his People happy." As if that were not
buried, deep enough, under two irrevocable Twelvemonths, and the
wreck and rubbish of a whole Feudal World! This strange autograph
Letter the National Assembly decides on printing; on transmitting
to the Eighty-three Departments, with exegetic commentary, short
but pithy. Commissioners also shall go forth on all sides; the
People be exhorted; the Armies be increased; care taken that the
Commonweal suffer no damage.—And now, with a sublime air of
calmness, nay of indifference, we 'pass to the order of the day!'
By such sublime calmness, the terror of the People is calmed.
These gleaming Pike forests, which bristled fateful in the early
sun, disappear again; the far-sounding Street-orators cease, or
spout milder. We are to have a civil war; let us have it then.
The King is gone; but National Assembly, but France and we
remain. The People also takes a great attitude; the People also
is calm; motionless as a couchant lion. With but a few broolings,
some waggings of the tail; to shew what it will do! Cazales, for
instance, was beset by street-groups, and cries of Lanterne; but
National Patrols easily delivered him. Likewise all King's
effigies and statues, at least stucco ones, get abolished. Even
King's names; the word Roi fades suddenly out of all shop-signs;
the Royal Bengal Tiger itself, on the Boulevards, becomes the
National Bengal one, Tigre National. (_Walpoliana._)
How great is a calm couchant People! On the morrow, men will say
to one another: "We have no King, yet we slept sound enough." On
the morrow, fervent Achille de Chatelet, and Thomas Paine the
rebellious Needleman, shall have the walls of Paris profusely
plastered with their Placard; announcing that there must be a
Republic! (_Dumont, c. 16._)—Need we add that Lafayette too,
though at first menaced by Pikes, has taken a great attitude, or
indeed the greatest of all? Scouts and Aides-de-camp fly forth,
vague, in quest and pursuit; young Romoeuf towards Valenciennes,
though with small hope.
Thus Paris; sublimely calmed, in its bereavement. But from the
Messageries Royales, in all Mail-bags, radiates forth far-darting
the electric news: Our Hereditary Representative is flown. Laugh,
black Royalists: yet be it in your sleeve only; lest Patriotism
notice, and waxing frantic, lower the Lanterne! In Paris alone is
a sublime National Assembly with its calmness; truly, other
places must take it as they can: with open mouth and eyes; with
panic cackling, with wrath, with conjecture. How each one of
those dull leathern Diligences, with its leathern bag and 'The
King is fled,' furrows up smooth France as it goes; through town
and hamlet, ruffles the smooth public mind into quivering
agitation of death-terror; then lumbers on, as if nothing had
happened! Along all highways; towards the utmost borders; till
all France is ruffled,—roughened up (_metaphorically speaking_)
into one enormous, desperate-minded, red-guggling Turkey Cock!
For example, it is under cloud of night that the leathern Monster
reaches Nantes; deep sunk in sleep. The word spoken rouses all
Patriot men: General Dumouriez, enveloped in roquelaures, has to
descend from his bedroom; finds the street covered with 'four or
five thousand citizens in their shirts.' (_Dumouriez, Memoires,
ii. 109._) Here and there a faint farthing rushlight, hastily
kindled; and so many swart-featured haggard faces, with nightcaps
pushed back; and the more or less flowing drapery of night-shirt:
open-mouthed till the General say his word! And overhead, as
always, the Great Bear is turning so quiet round Bootes; steady,
indifferent as the leathern Diligence itself. Take comfort, ye
men of Nantes: Bootes and the steady Bear are turning; ancient
Atlantic still sends his brine, loud-billowing, up your
Loire-stream; brandy shall be hot in the stomach: this is not the
Last of the Days, but one before the Last.—The fools! If they
knew what was doing, in these very instants, also by
candle-light, in the far North-East!
Perhaps we may say the most terrified man in Paris or France
is—who thinks the Reader?—seagreen Robespierre. Double paleness,
with the shadow of gibbets and halters, overcasts the seagreen
features: it is too clear to him that there is to be 'a
Saint-Bartholomew of Patriots,' that in four-and-twenty hours he
will not be in life. These horrid anticipations of the soul he is
heard uttering at Petion's; by a notable witness. By Madame
Roland, namely; her whom we saw, last year, radiant at the Lyons
Federation! These four months, the Rolands have been in Paris;
arranging with Assembly Committees the Municipal affairs of
Lyons, affairs all sunk in debt;—communing, the while, as was
most natural, with the best Patriots to be found here, with our
Brissots, Petions, Buzots, Robespierres; who were wont to come to
us, says the fair Hostess, four evenings in the week. They,
running about, busier than ever this day, would fain have
comforted the seagreen man: spake of Achille du Chatelet's
Placard; of a Journal to be called The Republican; of preparing
men's minds for a Republic. "A Republic?" said the Seagreen, with
one of his dry husky unsportful laughs, "What is that?" (_Madame
Roland, ii. 70._) O seagreen Incorruptible, thou shalt see!
Chapter 2.4.V.
The New Berline.
But scouts all this while and aide-de-camps, have flown forth
faster than the leathern Diligences. Young Romoeuf, as we said,
was off early towards Valenciennes: distracted Villagers seize
him, as a traitor with a finger of his own in the plot; drag him
back to the Townhall; to the National Assembly, which speedily
grants a new passport. Nay now, that same scarecrow of an
Herb-merchant with his ass has bethought him of the grand new
Berline seen in the Wood of Bondy; and delivered evidence of it:
(_Moniteur, &c. in Hist. Parl. x. 244-313._) Romoeuf, furnished
with new passport, is sent forth with double speed on a
hopefuller track; by Bondy, Claye, and Chalons, towards Metz, to
track the new Berline; and gallops a franc etrier.
Miserable new Berline! Why could not Royalty go in some old
Berline similar to that of other men? Flying for life, one does
not stickle about his vehicle. Monsieur, in a commonplace
travelling-carriage is off Northwards; Madame, his Princess, in
another, with variation of route: they cross one another while
changing horses, without look of recognition; and reach Flanders,
no man questioning them. Precisely in the same manner, beautiful
Princess de Lamballe set off, about the same hour; and will reach
England safe:—would she had continued there! The beautiful, the
good, but the unfortunate; reserved for a frightful end!
All runs along, unmolested, speedy, except only the new Berline.
Huge leathern vehicle;—huge Argosy, let us say, or Acapulco-ship;
with its heavy stern-boat of Chaise-and-pair; with its three
yellow Pilot-boats of mounted Bodyguard Couriers, rocking aimless
round it and ahead of it, to bewilder, not to guide! It lumbers
along, lurchingly with stress, at a snail's pace; noted of all
the world. The Bodyguard Couriers, in their yellow liveries, go
prancing and clattering; loyal but stupid; unacquainted with all
things. Stoppages occur; and breakages to be repaired at Etoges.
King Louis too will dismount, will walk up hills, and enjoy the
blessed sunshine:—with eleven horses and double drink money, and
all furtherances of Nature and Art, it will be found that
Royalty, flying for life, accomplishes Sixty-nine miles in
Twenty-two incessant hours. Slow Royalty! And yet not a minute of
these hours but is precious: on minutes hang the destinies of
Royalty now.
Readers, therefore, can judge in what humour Duke de Choiseul
might stand waiting, in the Village of Pont-de-Sommevelle, some
leagues beyond Chalons, hour after hour, now when the day bends
visibly westward. Choiseul drove out of Paris, in all privity,
ten hours before their Majesties' fixed time; his Hussars, led by
Engineer Goguelat, are here duly, come 'to escort a Treasure that
is expected:' but, hour after hour, is no Baroness de Korff's
Berline. Indeed, over all that North-east Region, on the skirts
of Champagne and of Lorraine, where the Great Road runs, the
agitation is considerable. For all along, from this
Pont-de-Sommevelle Northeastward as far as Montmedi, at
Post-villages and Towns, escorts of Hussars and Dragoons do
lounge waiting: a train or chain of Military Escorts; at the
Montmedi end of it our brave Bouille: an electric thunder-chain;
which the invisible Bouille, like a Father Jove, holds in his
hand—for wise purposes! Brave Bouille has done what man could;
has spread out his electric thunder-chain of Military Escorts,
onwards to the threshold of Chalons: it waits but for the new
Korff Berline; to receive it, escort it, and, if need be, bear it
off in whirlwind of military fire. They lie and lounge there, we
say, these fierce Troopers; from Montmedi and Stenai, through
Clermont, Sainte-Menehould to utmost Pont-de-Sommevelle, in all
Post-villages; for the route shall avoid Verdun and great Towns:
they loiter impatient 'till the Treasure arrive.'
Judge what a day this is for brave Bouille: perhaps the first day
of a new glorious life; surely the last day of the old! Also, and
indeed still more, what a day, beautiful and terrible, for your
young full-blooded Captains: your Dandoins, Comte de Damas, Duke
de Choiseul, Engineer Goguelat, and the like; entrusted with the
secret!—Alas, the day bends ever more westward; and no Korff
Berline comes to sight. It is four hours beyond the time, and
still no Berline. In all Village-streets, Royalist Captains go
lounging, looking often Paris-ward; with face of unconcern, with
heart full of black care: rigorous Quartermasters can hardly keep
the private dragoons from cafes and dramshops. (_Declaration du
Sieur La Gache du Regiment Royal-Dragoons in Choiseul, pp.
125-39._) Dawn on our bewilderment, thou new Berline; dawn on us,
thou Sun-chariot of a new Berline, with the destinies of France!
It was of His Majesty's ordering, this military array of Escorts:
a thing solacing the Royal imagination with a look of security
and rescue; yet, in reality, creating only alarm, and where there
was otherwise no danger, danger without end. For each Patriot, in
these Post-villages, asks naturally: This clatter of cavalry, and
marching and lounging of troops, what means it? To escort a
Treasure? Why escort, when no Patriot will steal from the Nation;
or where is your Treasure?—There has been such marching and
counter-marching: for it is another fatality, that certain of
these Military Escorts came out so early as yesterday; the
Nineteenth not the Twentieth of the month being the day first
appointed, which her Majesty, for some necessity or other, saw
good to alter. And now consider the suspicious nature of
Patriotism; suspicious, above all, of Bouille the Aristocrat; and
how the sour doubting humour has had leave to accumulate and
exacerbate for four-and-twenty hours!
At Pont-de-Sommevelle, these Forty foreign Hussars of Goguelat
and Duke Choiseul are becoming an unspeakable mystery to all men.
They lounged long enough, already, at Sainte-Menehould; lounged
and loitered till our National Volunteers there, all risen into
hot wrath of doubt, 'demanded three hundred fusils of their
Townhall,' and got them. At which same moment too, as it chanced,
our Captain Dandoins was just coming in, from Clermont with his
troop, at the other end of the Village. A fresh troop; alarming
enough; though happily they are only Dragoons and French! So that
Goguelat with his Hussars had to ride, and even to do it fast;
till here at Pont-de-Sommevelle, where Choiseul lay waiting, he
found resting-place. Resting-place, as on burning marle. For the
rumour of him flies abroad; and men run to and fro in fright and
anger: Chalons sends forth exploratory pickets, coming from
Sainte-Menehould, on that. What is it, ye whiskered Hussars, men
of foreign guttural speech; in the name of Heaven, what is it
that brings you? A Treasure?—exploratory pickets shake their
heads. The hungry Peasants, however, know too well what Treasure
it is: Military seizure for rents, feudalities; which no Bailiff
could make us pay! This they know;—and set to jingling their
Parish-bell by way of tocsin; with rapid effect! Choiseul and
Goguelat, if the whole country is not to take fire, must needs,
be there Berline, be there no Berline, saddle and ride.
They mount; and this Parish tocsin happily ceases. They ride
slowly Eastward, towards Sainte-Menehould; still hoping the
Sun-Chariot of a Berline may overtake them. Ah me, no Berline!
And near now is that Sainte-Menehould, which expelled us in the
morning, with its 'three hundred National fusils;' which looks,
belike, not too lovingly on Captain Dandoins and his fresh
Dragoons, though only French;—which, in a word, one dare not
enter the second time, under pain of explosion! With rather heavy
heart, our Hussar Party strikes off to the left; through byways,
through pathless hills and woods, they, avoiding Sainte-Menehould
and all places which have seen them heretofore, will make direct
for the distant Village of Varennes. It is probable they will
have a rough evening-ride.
This first military post, therefore, in the long thunder-chain,
has gone off with no effect; or with worse, and your chain
threatens to entangle itself!—The Great Road, however, is got
hushed again into a kind of quietude, though one of the
wakefullest. Indolent Dragoons cannot, by any Quartermaster, be
kept altogether from the dramshop; where Patriots drink, and will
even treat, eager enough for news. Captains, in a state near
distraction, beat the dusky highway, with a face of indifference;
and no Sun-Chariot appears. Why lingers it? Incredible, that with
eleven horses and such yellow Couriers and furtherances, its rate
should be under the weightiest dray-rate, some three miles an
hour! Alas, one knows not whether it ever even got out of
Paris;—and yet also one knows not whether, this very moment, it
is not at the Village-end! One's heart flutters on the verge of
unutterabilities.
Chapter 2.4.VI.
Old-Dragoon Drouet.
In this manner, however, has the Day bent downwards. Wearied
mortals are creeping home from their field-labour; the
village-artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has
strolled forth to the village-street for a sweet mouthful of air
and human news. Still summer-eventide everywhere! The great Sun
hangs flaming on the utmost North-West; for it is his longest day
this year. The hill-tops rejoicing will ere long be at their
ruddiest, and blush Good-night. The thrush, in green dells, on
long-shadowed leafy spray, pours gushing his glad serenade, to
the babble of brooks grown audibler; silence is stealing over the
Earth. Your dusty Mill of Valmy, as all other mills and
drudgeries, may furl its canvass, and cease swashing and
circling. The swenkt grinders in this Treadmill of an Earth have
ground out another Day; and lounge there, as we say, in
village-groups; movable, or ranked on social stone-seats;
(_Rapport de M. Remy in Choiseul, p. 143._) their children,
mischievous imps, sporting about their feet. Unnotable hum of
sweet human gossip rises from this Village of Sainte-Menehould,
as from all other villages. Gossip mostly sweet, unnotable; for
the very Dragoons are French and gallant; nor as yet has the
Paris-and-Verdun Diligence, with its leathern bag, rumbled in, to
terrify the minds of men.
One figure nevertheless we do note at the last door of the
Village: that figure in loose-flowing nightgown, of Jean Baptiste
Drouet, Master of the Post here. An acrid choleric man, rather
dangerous-looking; still in the prime of life, though he has
served, in his time as a Conde Dragoon. This day from an early
hour, Drouet got his choler stirred, and has been kept fretting.
Hussar Goguelat in the morning saw good, by way of thrift, to
bargain with his own Innkeeper, not with Drouet regular Maitre de
Poste, about some gig-horse for the sending back of his gig;
which thing Drouet perceiving came over in red ire, menacing the
Inn-keeper, and would not be appeased. Wholly an unsatisfactory
day. For Drouet is an acrid Patriot too, was at the Paris Feast
of Pikes: and what do these Bouille Soldiers mean? Hussars, with
their gig, and a vengeance to it!—have hardly been thrust out,
when Dandoins and his fresh Dragoons arrive from Clermont, and
stroll. For what purpose? Choleric Drouet steps out and steps in,
with long-flowing nightgown; looking abroad, with that sharpness
of faculty which stirred choler gives to man.
On the other hand, mark Captain Dandoins on the street of that
same Village; sauntering with a face of indifference, a heart
eaten of black care! For no Korff Berline makes its appearance.
The great Sun flames broader towards setting: one's heart
flutters on the verge of dread unutterabilities.
By Heaven! Here is the yellow Bodyguard Courier; spurring fast,
in the ruddy evening light! Steady, O Dandoins, stand with
inscrutable indifferent face; though the yellow blockhead spurs
past the Post-house; inquires to find it; and stirs the Village,
all delighted with his fine livery.—Lumbering along with its
mountains of bandboxes, and Chaise behind, the Korff Berline
rolls in; huge Acapulco-ship with its Cockboat, having got thus
far. The eyes of the Villagers look enlightened, as such eyes do
when a coach-transit, which is an event, occurs for them.
Strolling Dragoons respectfully, so fine are the yellow liveries,
bring hand to helmet; and a lady in gipsy-hat responds with a
grace peculiar to her. (_Declaration de la Gache in Choiseul ubi
supra._) Dandoins stands with folded arms, and what look of
indifference and disdainful garrison-air a man can, while the
heart is like leaping out of him. Curled disdainful moustachio;
careless glance,—which however surveys the Village-groups, and
does not like them. With his eye he bespeaks the yellow Courier.
Be quick, be quick! Thick-headed Yellow cannot understand the
eye; comes up mumbling, to ask in words: seen of the Village!
Nor is Post-master Drouet unobservant, all this while; but steps
out and steps in, with his long-flowing nightgown, in the level
sunlight; prying into several things. When a man's faculties, at
the right time, are sharpened by choler, it may lead to much.
That Lady in slouched gypsy-hat, though sitting back in the
Carriage, does she not resemble some one we have seen, some
time;—at the Feast of Pikes, or elsewhere? And this Grosse-Tete
in round hat and peruke, which, looking rearward, pokes itself
out from time to time, methinks there are features in it—? Quick,
Sieur Guillaume, Clerk of the Directoire, bring me a new
Assignat! Drouet scans the new Assignat; compares the Paper-money
Picture with the Gross-Head in round hat there: by Day and Night!
you might say the one was an attempted Engraving of the other.
And this march of Troops; this sauntering and whispering,—I see
it!
Drouet Post-master of this Village, hot Patriot, Old Dragoon of
Conde, consider, therefore, what thou wilt do. And fast: for
behold the new Berline, expeditiously yoked, cracks whipcord, and
rolls away!—Drouet dare not, on the spur of the instant, clutch
the bridles in his own two hands; Dandoins, with broadsword,
might hew you off. Our poor Nationals, not one of them here, have
three hundred fusils but then no powder; besides one is not sure,
only morally-certain. Drouet, as an adroit Old-Dragoon of Conde
does what is advisablest: privily bespeaks Clerk Guillaume,
Old-Dragoon of Conde he too; privily, while Clerk Guillaume is
saddling two of the fleetest horses, slips over to the Townhall
to whisper a word; then mounts with Clerk Guillaume; and the two
bound eastward in pursuit, to see what can be done.
They bound eastward, in sharp trot; their moral-certainty
permeating the Village, from the Townhall outwards, in busy
whispers. Alas! Captain Dandoins orders his Dragoons to mount;
but they, complaining of long fast, demand bread-and-cheese
first;—before which brief repast can be eaten, the whole Village
is permeated; not whispering now, but blustering and shrieking!
National Volunteers, in hurried muster, shriek for gunpowder;
Dragoons halt between Patriotism and Rule of the Service, between
bread and cheese and fixed bayonets: Dandoins hands secretly his
Pocket-book, with its secret despatches, to the rigorous
Quartermaster: the very Ostlers have stable-forks and flails. The
rigorous Quartermaster, half-saddled, cuts out his way with the
sword's edge, amid levelled bayonets, amid Patriot vociferations,
adjurations, flail-strokes; and rides frantic; (_Declaration de
La Gache in Choiseul, p. 134._)—few or even none following him;
the rest, so sweetly constrained consenting to stay there.
And thus the new Berline rolls; and Drouet and Guillaume gallop
after it, and Dandoins's Troopers or Trooper gallops after them;
and Sainte-Menehould, with some leagues of the King's Highway, is
in explosion;—and your Military thunder-chain has gone off in a
self-destructive manner; one may fear with the frightfullest
issues!
Chapter 2.4.VII.
The Night of Spurs.
This comes of mysterious Escorts, and a new Berline with eleven
horses: 'he that has a secret should not only hide it, but hide
that he has it to hide.' Your first Military Escort has exploded
self-destructive; and all Military Escorts, and a suspicious
Country will now be up, explosive; comparable not to victorious
thunder. Comparable, say rather, to the first stirring of an
Alpine Avalanche; which, once stir it, as here at
Sainte-Menehould, will spread,—all round, and on and on, as far
as Stenai; thundering with wild ruin, till Patriot Villagers,
Peasantry, Military Escorts, new Berline and Royalty are
down,—jumbling in the Abyss!
The thick shades of Night are falling. Postillions crack the
whip: the Royal Berline is through Clermont, where Colonel Comte
de Damas got a word whispered to it; is safe through, towards
Varennes; rushing at the rate of double drink-money: an Unknown
'Inconnu on horseback' shrieks earnestly some hoarse whisper, not
audible, into the rushing Carriage-window, and vanishes, left in
the night. (_Campan, ii. 159._) August Travellers palpitate;
nevertheless overwearied Nature sinks every one of them into a
kind of sleep. Alas, and Drouet and Clerk Guillaume spur; taking
side-roads, for shortness, for safety; scattering abroad that
moral-certainty of theirs; which flies, a bird of the air
carrying it!
And your rigorous Quartermaster spurs; awakening hoarse
trumpet-tone, as here at Clermont, calling out Dragoons gone to
bed. Brave Colonel de Damas has them mounted, in part, these
Clermont men; young Cornet Remy dashes off with a few. But the
Patriot Magistracy is out here at Clermont too; National Guards
shrieking for ball-cartridges; and the Village 'illuminates
itself;'—deft Patriots springing out of bed; alertly, in shirt or
shift, striking a light; sticking up each his farthing candle, or
penurious oil-cruise, till all glitters and glimmers; so deft are
they! A camisado, or shirt-tumult, every where: stormbell set
a-ringing; village-drum beating furious generale, as here at
Clermont, under illumination; distracted Patriots pleading and
menacing! Brave young Colonel de Damas, in that uproar of
distracted Patriotism, speaks some fire-sentences to what
Troopers he has: "Comrades insulted at Sainte-Menehould; King and
Country calling on the brave;" then gives the fire-word, Draw
swords. Whereupon, alas, the Troopers only smite their
sword-handles, driving them further home! "To me, whoever is for
the King!" cries Damas in despair; and gallops, he with some poor
loyal Two, of the subaltern sort, into the bosom of the Night.
(_Proces-verbal du Directoire de Clermont in Choiseul, p.
189-95._)
Night unexampled in the Clermontais; shortest of the year;
remarkablest of the century: Night deserving to be named of
Spurs! Cornet Remy, and those Few he dashed off with, has missed
his road; is galloping for hours towards Verdun; then, for hours,
across hedged country, through roused hamlets, towards Varennes.
Unlucky Cornet Remy; unluckier Colonel Damas, with whom there
ride desperate only some loyal Two! More ride not of that
Clermont Escort: of other Escorts, in other Villages, not even
Two may ride; but only all curvet and prance,—impeded by
stormbell and your Village illuminating itself.
And Drouet rides and Clerk Guillaume; and the Country
runs.—Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are plunging through morasses,
over cliffs, over stock and stone, in the shaggy woods of the
Clermontais; by tracks; or trackless, with guides; Hussars
tumbling into pitfalls, and lying 'swooned three quarters of an
hour,' the rest refusing to march without them. What an
evening-ride from Pont-de-Sommerville; what a thirty hours, since
Choiseul quitted Paris, with Queen's-valet Leonard in the chaise
by him! Black Care sits behind the rider. Thus go they plunging;
rustle the owlet from his branchy nest; champ the sweet-scented
forest-herb, queen-of-the-meadows spilling her spikenard; and
frighten the ear of Night. But hark! towards twelve o'clock, as
one guesses, for the very stars are gone out: sound of the tocsin
from Varennes? Checking bridle, the Hussar Officer listens: "Some
fire undoubtedly!"—yet rides on, with double breathlessness, to
verify.
Yes, gallant friends that do your utmost, it is a certain sort of
fire: difficult to quench.—The Korff Berline, fairly ahead of all
this riding Avalanche, reached the little paltry Village of
Varennes about eleven o'clock; hopeful, in spite of that
horse-whispering Unknown. Do not all towns now lie behind us;
Verdun avoided, on our right? Within wind of Bouille himself, in
a manner; and the darkest of midsummer nights favouring us! And
so we halt on the hill-top at the South end of the Village;
expecting our relay; which young Bouille, Bouille's own son, with
his Escort of Hussars, was to have ready; for in this Village is
no Post. Distracting to think of: neither horse nor Hussar is
here! Ah, and stout horses, a proper relay belonging to Duke
Choiseul, do stand at hay, but in the Upper Village over the
Bridge; and we know not of them. Hussars likewise do wait, but
drinking in the taverns. For indeed it is six hours beyond the
time; young Bouille, silly stripling, thinking the matter over
for this night, has retired to bed. And so our yellow Couriers,
inexperienced, must rove, groping, bungling, through a Village
mostly asleep: Postillions will not, for any money, go on with
the tired horses; not at least without refreshment; not they, let
the Valet in round hat argue as he likes.
Miserable! 'For five-and-thirty minutes' by the King's watch, the
Berline is at a dead stand; Round-hat arguing with Churnboots;
tired horses slobbering their meal-and-water; yellow Couriers
groping, bungling;—young Bouille asleep, all the while, in the
Upper Village, and Choiseul's fine team standing there at hay. No
help for it; not with a King's ransom: the horses deliberately
slobber, Round-hat argues, Bouille sleeps. And mark now, in the
thick night, do not two Horsemen, with jaded trot, come
clank-clanking; and start with half-pause, if one noticed them,
at sight of this dim mass of a Berline, and its dull slobbering
and arguing; then prick off faster, into the Village? It is
Drouet, he and Clerk Guillaume! Still ahead, they two, of the
whole riding hurlyburly; unshot, though some brag of having
chased them. Perilous is Drouet's errand also; but he is an
Old-Dragoon, with his wits shaken thoroughly awake.
The Village of Varennes lies dark and slumberous; a most unlevel
Village, of inverse saddle-shape, as men write. It sleeps; the
rushing of the River Aire singing lullaby to it. Nevertheless
from the Golden Arms, Bras d'Or Tavern, across that sloping
marketplace, there still comes shine of social light; comes voice
of rude drovers, or the like, who have not yet taken the
stirrup-cup; Boniface Le Blanc, in white apron, serving them:
cheerful to behold. To this Bras d'Or, Drouet enters, alacrity
looking through his eyes: he nudges Boniface, in all privacy,
"Camarade, es tu bon Patriote, Art thou a good Patriot?"—"Si je
suis!" answers Boniface.—"In that case," eagerly whispers
Drouet—what whisper is needful, heard of Boniface alone. (_Deux
Amis, vi. 139-78._)
And now see Boniface Le Blanc bustling, as he never did for the
jolliest toper. See Drouet and Guillaume, dexterous Old-Dragoons,
instantly down blocking the Bridge, with a 'furniture waggon they
find there,' with whatever waggons, tumbrils, barrels, barrows
their hands can lay hold of;—till no carriage can pass. Then
swiftly, the Bridge once blocked, see them take station hard by,
under Varennes Archway: joined by Le Blanc, Le Blanc's Brother,
and one or two alert Patriots he has roused. Some half-dozen in
all, with National Muskets, they stand close, waiting under the
Archway, till that same Korff Berline rumble up.
It rumbles up: Alte la! lanterns flash out from under
coat-skirts, bridles chuck in strong fists, two National Muskets
level themselves fore and aft through the two Coach-doors:
"Mesdames, your Passports?"—Alas! Alas! Sieur Sausse, Procureur
of the Township, Tallow-chandler also and Grocer is there, with
official grocer-politeness; Drouet with fierce logic and ready
wit:—The respected Travelling Party, be it Baroness de Korff's,
or persons of still higher consequence, will perhaps please to
rest itself in M. Sausse's till the dawn strike up!
O Louis; O hapless Marie-Antoinette, fated to pass thy life with
such men! Phlegmatic Louis, art thou but lazy semi-animate phlegm
then, to the centre of thee? King, Captain-General, Sovereign
Frank! If thy heart ever formed, since it began beating under the
name of heart, any resolution at all, be it now then, or never in
this world: "Violent nocturnal individuals, and if it were
persons of high consequence? And if it were the King himself? Has
the King not the power, which all beggars have, of travelling
unmolested on his own Highway? Yes: it is the King; and tremble
ye to know it! The King has said, in this one small matter; and
in France, or under God's Throne, is no power that shall gainsay.
Not the King shall ye stop here under this your miserable
Archway; but his dead body only, and answer it to Heaven and
Earth. To me, Bodyguards: Postillions, en avant!"—One fancies in
that case the pale paralysis of these two Le Blanc musketeers;
the drooping of Drouet's under-jaw; and how Procureur Sausse had
melted like tallow in furnace-heat: Louis faring on; in some few
steps awakening Young Bouille, awakening relays and hussars:
triumphant entry, with cavalcading high-brandishing Escort, and
Escorts, into Montmedi; and the whole course of French History
different!
Alas, it was not in the poor phlegmatic man. Had it been in him,
French History had never come under this Varennes Archway to
decide itself.—He steps out; all step out. Procureur Sausse gives
his grocer-arms to the Queen and Sister Elizabeth; Majesty taking
the two children by the hand. And thus they walk, coolly back,
over the Marketplace, to Procureur Sausse's; mount into his small
upper story; where straightway his Majesty 'demands
refreshments.' Demands refreshments, as is written; gets
bread-and-cheese with a bottle of Burgundy; and remarks, that it
is the best Burgundy he ever drank!
Meanwhile, the Varennes Notables, and all men, official, and
non-official, are hastily drawing on their breeches; getting
their fighting-gear. Mortals half-dressed tumble out barrels, lay
felled trees; scouts dart off to all the four winds,—the tocsin
begins clanging, 'the Village illuminates itself.' Very singular:
how these little Villages do manage, so adroit are they, when
startled in midnight alarm of war. Like little adroit municipal
rattle-snakes, suddenly awakened: for their stormbell rattles and
rings; their eyes glisten luminous (_with tallow-light_), as in
rattle-snake ire; and the Village will sting! Old-Dragoon Drouet
is our engineer and generalissimo; valiant as a Ruy Diaz:—Now or
never, ye Patriots, for the Soldiery is coming; massacre by
Austrians, by Aristocrats, wars more than civil, it all depends
on you and the hour!—National Guards rank themselves,
half-buttoned: mortals, we say, still only in breeches, in
under-petticoat, tumble out barrels and lumber, lay felled trees
for barricades: the Village will sting. Rabid Democracy, it would
seem, is not confined to Paris, then? Ah no, whatsoever Courtiers
might talk; too clearly no. This of dying for one's King is grown
into a dying for one's self, against the King, if need be.
And so our riding and running Avalanche and Hurlyburly has
reached the Abyss, Korff Berline foremost; and may pour itself
thither, and jumble: endless! For the next six hours, need we ask
if there was a clattering far and wide? Clattering and tocsining
and hot tumult, over all the Clermontais, spreading through the
Three Bishopricks: Dragoon and Hussar Troops galloping on roads
and no-roads; National Guards arming and starting in the dead of
night; tocsin after tocsin transmitting the alarm. In some forty
minutes, Goguelat and Choiseul, with their wearied Hussars, reach
Varennes. Ah, it is no fire then; or a fire difficult to quench!
They leap the tree-barricades, in spite of National serjeant;
they enter the village, Choiseul instructing his Troopers how the
matter really is; who respond interjectionally, in their guttural
dialect, "Der Konig; die Koniginn!" and seem stanch. These now,
in their stanch humour, will, for one thing, beset Procureur
Sausse's house. Most beneficial: had not Drouet stormfully
ordered otherwise; and even bellowed, in his extremity,
"Cannoneers to your guns!"—two old honey-combed Field-pieces,
empty of all but cobwebs; the rattle whereof, as the Cannoneers
with assured countenance trundled them up, did nevertheless abate
the Hussar ardour, and produce a respectfuller ranking further
back. Jugs of wine, handed over the ranks, for the German throat
too has sensibility, will complete the business. When Engineer
Goguelat, some hour or so afterwards, steps forth, the response
to him is—a hiccuping Vive la Nation!
What boots it? Goguelat, Choiseul, now also Count Damas, and all
the Varennes Officiality are with the King; and the King can give
no order, form no opinion; but sits there, as he has ever done,
like clay on potter's wheel; perhaps the absurdest of all
pitiable and pardonable clay-figures that now circle under the
Moon. He will go on, next morning, and take the National Guard
with him; Sausse permitting! Hapless Queen: with her two children
laid there on the mean bed, old Mother Sausse kneeling to Heaven,
with tears and an audible prayer, to bless them; imperial
Marie-Antoinette near kneeling to Son Sausse and Wife Sausse,
amid candle-boxes and treacle-barrels,—in vain! There are
Three-thousand National Guards got in; before long they will
count Ten-thousand; tocsins spreading like fire on dry heath, or
far faster.
Young Bouille, roused by this Varennes tocsin, has taken horse,
and—fled towards his Father. Thitherward also rides, in an almost
hysterically desperate manner, a certain Sieur Aubriot,
Choiseul's Orderly; swimming dark rivers, our Bridge being
blocked; spurring as if the Hell-hunt were at his heels.
(_Rapport de M. Aubriot Choiseul, p. 150-7._) Through the village
of Dun, he, galloping still on, scatters the alarm; at Dun, brave
Captain Deslons and his Escort of a Hundred, saddle and ride.
Deslons too gets into Varennes; leaving his Hundred outside, at
the tree-barricade; offers to cut King Louis out, if he will
order it: but unfortunately "the work will prove hot;" whereupon
King Louis has "no orders to give." (_Extrait d'un Rapport de M.
Deslons, Choiseul, p. 164-7._)
And so the tocsin clangs, and Dragoons gallop; and can do
nothing, having gallopped: National Guards stream in like the
gathering of ravens: your exploding Thunder-chain, falling
Avalanche, or what else we liken it to, does play, with a
vengeance,—up now as far as Stenai and Bouille himself.
(_Bouille, ii. 74-6._) Brave Bouille, son of the whirlwind, he
saddles Royal Allemand; speaks fire-words, kindling heart and
eyes; distributes twenty-five gold-louis a company:—Ride,
Royal-Allemand, long-famed: no Tuileries Charge and
Necker-Orleans Bust-Procession; a very King made captive, and
world all to win!—Such is the Night deserving to be named of
Spurs.
At six o'clock two things have happened. Lafayette's
Aide-de-camp, Romoeuf, riding a franc etrier, on that old
Herb-merchant's route, quickened during the last stages, has got
to Varennes; where the Ten thousand now furiously demand, with
fury of panic terror, that Royalty shall forthwith return
Paris-ward, that there be not infinite bloodshed. Also, on the
other side, 'English Tom,' Choiseul's jokei, flying with that
Choiseul relay, has met Bouille on the heights of Dun; the
adamantine brow flushed with dark thunder; thunderous rattle of
Royal Allemand at his heels. English Tom answers as he can the
brief question, How it is at Varennes?—then asks in turn what he,
English Tom, with M. de Choiseul's horses, is to do, and whither
to ride?—To the Bottomless Pool! answers a thunder-voice; then
again speaking and spurring, orders Royal Allemand to the gallop;
and vanishes, swearing (_en jurant_). (_Declaration du Sieur
Thomas in Choiseul, p. 188._) 'Tis the last of our brave Bouille.
Within sight of Varennes, he having drawn bridle, calls a council
of officers; finds that it is in vain. King Louis has departed,
consenting: amid the clangour of universal stormbell; amid the
tramp of Ten thousand armed men, already arrived; and say, of
Sixty thousand flocking thither. Brave Deslons, even without
'orders,' darted at the River Aire with his Hundred! (_Weber, ii.
386._) swam one branch of it, could not the other; and stood
there, dripping and panting, with inflated nostril; the Ten
thousand answering him with a shout of mockery, the new Berline
lumbering Paris-ward its weary inevitable way. No help, then in
Earth; nor in an age, not of miracles, in Heaven!
That night, 'Marquis de Bouille and twenty-one more of us rode
over the Frontiers; the Bernardine monks at Orval in Luxemburg
gave us supper and lodging.' (_Aubriot, ut supra, p. 158._) With
little of speech, Bouille rides; with thoughts that do not brook
speech. Northward, towards uncertainty, and the Cimmerian Night:
towards West-Indian Isles, for with thin Emigrant delirium the
son of the whirlwind cannot act; towards England, towards
premature Stoical death; not towards France any more. Honour to
the Brave; who, be it in this quarrel or in that, is a substance
and articulate-speaking piece of Human Valour, not a
fanfaronading hollow Spectrum and squeaking and gibbering Shadow!
One of the few Royalist Chief-actors this Bouille, of whom so
much can be said.
The brave Bouille too, then, vanishes from the tissue of our
Story. Story and tissue, faint ineffectual Emblem of that grand
Miraculous Tissue, and Living Tapestry named French Revolution,
which did weave itself then in very fact, 'on the loud-sounding
'LOOM OF TIME!' The old Brave drop out from it, with their
strivings; and new acrid Drouets, of new strivings and colour,
come in:—as is the manner of that weaving.
Chapter 2.4.VIII.
The Return.
So then our grand Royalist Plot, of Flight to Metz, has executed
itself. Long hovering in the background, as a dread royal
ultimatum, it has rushed forward in its terrors: verily to some
purpose. How many Royalist Plots and Projects, one after another,
cunningly-devised, that were to explode like powder-mines and
thunderclaps; not one solitary Plot of which has issued
otherwise! Powder-mine of a Seance Royale on the Twenty-third of
June 1789, which exploded as we then said, 'through the
touchhole;' which next, your wargod Broglie having reloaded it,
brought a Bastille about your ears. Then came fervent
Opera-Repast, with flourishing of sabres, and O Richard, O my
King; which, aided by Hunger, produces Insurrection of Women, and
Pallas Athene in the shape of Demoiselle Theroigne. Valour
profits not; neither has fortune smiled on Fanfaronade. The
Bouille Armament ends as the Broglie one had done. Man after man
spends himself in this cause, only to work it quicker ruin; it
seems a cause doomed, forsaken of Earth and Heaven.
On the Sixth of October gone a year, King Louis, escorted by
Demoiselle Theroigne and some two hundred thousand, made a Royal
Progress and Entrance into Paris, such as man had never
witnessed: we prophesied him Two more such; and accordingly
another of them, after this Flight to Metz, is now coming to
pass. Theroigne will not escort here, neither does Mirabeau now
'sit in one of the accompanying carriages.' Mirabeau lies dead,
in the Pantheon of Great Men. Theroigne lies living, in dark
Austrian Prison; having gone to Liege, professionally, and been
seized there. Bemurmured now by the hoarse-flowing Danube; the
light of her Patriot Supper-Parties gone quite out; so lies
Theroigne: she shall speak with the Kaiser face to face, and
return. And France lies how! Fleeting Time shears down the great
and the little; and in two years alters many things.
But at all events, here, we say, is a second Ignominious Royal
Procession, though much altered; to be witnessed also by its
hundreds of thousands. Patience, ye Paris Patriots; the Royal
Berline is returning. Not till Saturday: for the Royal Berline
travels by slow stages; amid such loud-voiced confluent sea of
National Guards, sixty thousand as they count; amid such tumult
of all people. Three National-Assembly Commissioners, famed
Barnave, famed Petion, generally-respectable Latour-Maubourg,
have gone to meet it; of whom the two former ride in the Berline
itself beside Majesty, day after day. Latour, as a mere
respectability, and man of whom all men speak well, can ride in
the rear, with Dame Tourzel and the Soubrettes.
So on Saturday evening, about seven o'clock, Paris by hundreds of
thousands is again drawn up: not now dancing the tricolor
joy-dance of hope; nor as yet dancing in fury-dance of hate and
revenge; but in silence, with vague look of conjecture and
curiosity mostly scientific. A Sainte-Antoine Placard has given
notice this morning that 'whosoever insults Louis shall be caned,
whosoever applauds him shall be hanged.' Behold then, at last,
that wonderful New Berline; encircled by blue National sea with
fixed bayonets, which flows slowly, floating it on, through the
silent assembled hundreds of thousands. Three yellow Couriers sit
atop bound with ropes; Petion, Barnave, their Majesties, with
Sister Elizabeth, and the Children of France, are within.
Smile of embarrassment, or cloud of dull sourness, is on the
broad phlegmatic face of his Majesty: who keeps declaring to the
successive Official-persons, what is evident, "Eh bien, me voila,
Well, here you have me;" and what is not evident, "I do assure
you I did not mean to pass the frontiers;" and so forth: speeches
natural for that poor Royal man; which Decency would veil. Silent
is her Majesty, with a look of grief and scorn; natural for that
Royal Woman. Thus lumbers and creeps the ignominious Royal
Procession, through many streets, amid a silent-gazing people:
comparable, Mercier thinks, (_Nouveau Paris, iii. 22._) to some
Procession de Roi de Bazoche; or say, Procession of King Crispin,
with his Dukes of Sutor-mania and royal blazonry of Cordwainery.
Except indeed that this is not comic; ah no, it is comico-tragic;
with bound Couriers, and a Doom hanging over it; most fantastic,
yet most miserably real. Miserablest flebile ludibrium of a
Pickleherring Tragedy! It sweeps along there, in most ungorgeous
pall, through many streets, in the dusty summer evening; gets
itself at length wriggled out of sight; vanishing in the
Tuileries Palace—towards its doom, of slow torture, peine forte
et dure.
Populace, it is true, seizes the three rope-bound yellow
Couriers; will at least massacre them. But our august Assembly,
which is sitting at this great moment, sends out Deputation of
rescue; and the whole is got huddled up. Barnave, 'all dusty,' is
already there, in the National Hall; making brief discreet
address and report. As indeed, through the whole journey, this
Barnave has been most discreet, sympathetic; and has gained the
Queen's trust, whose noble instinct teaches her always who is to
be trusted. Very different from heavy Petion; who, if Campan
speak truth, ate his luncheon, comfortably filled his wine-glass,
in the Royal Berline; flung out his chicken-bones past the nose
of Royalty itself; and, on the King's saying "France cannot be a
Republic," answered "No, it is not ripe yet." Barnave is
henceforth a Queen's adviser, if advice could profit: and her
Majesty astonishes Dame Campan by signifying almost a regard for
Barnave: and that, in a day of retribution and Royal triumph,
Barnave shall not be executed. (_Campan, ii. c. 18._)
On Monday night Royalty went; on Saturday evening it returns: so
much, within one short week, has Royalty accomplished for itself.
The Pickleherring Tragedy has vanished in the Tuileries Palace,
towards 'pain strong and hard.' Watched, fettered, and humbled,
as Royalty never was. Watched even in its sleeping-apartments and
inmost recesses: for it has to sleep with door set ajar, blue
National Argus watching, his eye fixed on the Queen's curtains;
nay, on one occasion, as the Queen cannot sleep, he offers to sit
by her pillow, and converse a little! (_Ibid. ii. 149._)
Chapter 2.4.IX.
Sharp Shot.
In regard to all which, this most pressing question arises: What
is to be done with it? "Depose it!" resolutely answer Robespierre
and the thoroughgoing few. For truly, with a King who runs away,
and needs to be watched in his very bedroom that he may stay and
govern you, what other reasonable thing can be done? Had Philippe
d'Orleans not been a caput mortuum! But of him, known as one
defunct, no man now dreams. "Depose it not; say that it is
inviolable, that it was spirited away, was enleve; at any cost of
sophistry and solecism, reestablish it!" so answer with loud
vehemence all manner of Constitutional Royalists; as all your
Pure Royalists do naturally likewise, with low vehemence, and
rage compressed by fear, still more passionately answer. Nay
Barnave and the two Lameths, and what will follow them, do
likewise answer so. Answer, with their whole might: terror-struck
at the unknown Abysses on the verge of which, driven thither by
themselves mainly, all now reels, ready to plunge.
By mighty effort and combination this latter course, of
reestablish it, is the course fixed on; and it shall by the
strong arm, if not by the clearest logic, be made good. With the
sacrifice of all their hard-earned popularity, this notable
Triumvirate, says Toulongeon, 'set the Throne up again, which
they had so toiled to overturn: as one might set up an overturned
pyramid, on its vertex; to stand so long as it is held.'
Unhappy France; unhappy in King, Queen, and Constitution; one
knows not in which unhappiest! Was the meaning of our so glorious
French Revolution this, and no other, That when Shams and
Delusions, long soul-killing, had become body-killing, and got
the length of Bankruptcy and Inanition, a great People rose and,
with one voice, said, in the Name of the Highest: Shams shall be
no more? So many sorrows and bloody horrors, endured, and to be
yet endured through dismal coming centuries, were they not the
heavy price paid and payable for this same: Total Destruction of
Shams from among men? And now, O Barnave Triumvirate! is it in
such double-distilled Delusion, and Sham even of a Sham, that an
Effort of this kind will rest acquiescent? Messieurs of the
popular Triumvirate: Never! But, after all, what can poor popular
Triumvirates and fallible august Senators do? They can, when the
Truth is all too-horrible, stick their heads ostrich-like into
what sheltering Fallacy is nearest: and wait there, a posteriori!
Readers who saw the Clermontais and Three-Bishopricks gallop, in
the Night of Spurs; Diligences ruffling up all France into one
terrific terrified Cock of India; and the Town of Nantes in its
shirt,—may fancy what an affair to settle this was. Robespierre,
on the extreme Left, with perhaps Petion and lean old Goupil, for
the very Triumvirate has defalcated, are shrieking hoarse;
drowned in Constitutional clamour. But the debate and arguing of
a whole Nation; the bellowings through all Journals, for and
against; the reverberant voice of Danton; the Hyperion-shafts of
Camille; the porcupine-quills of implacable Marat:—conceive all
this.
Constitutionalists in a body, as we often predicted, do now
recede from the Mother Society, and become Feuillans; threatening
her with inanition, the rank and respectability being mostly
gone. Petition after Petition, forwarded by Post, or borne in
Deputation, comes praying for Judgment and Decheance, which is
our name for Deposition; praying, at lowest, for Reference to the
Eighty-three Departments of France. Hot Marseillese Deputation
comes declaring, among other things: "Our Phocean Ancestors flung
a Bar of Iron into the Bay at their first landing; this Bar will
float again on the Mediterranean brine before we consent to be
slaves." All this for four weeks or more, while the matter still
hangs doubtful; Emigration streaming with double violence over
the frontiers; (_Bouille, ii. 101._) France seething in fierce
agitation of this question and prize-question: What is to be done
with the fugitive Hereditary Representative?
Finally, on Friday the 15th of July 1791, the National Assembly
decides; in what negatory manner we know. Whereupon the Theatres
all close, the Bourne-stones and Portable-chairs begin spouting,
Municipal Placards flaming on the walls, and Proclamations
published by sound of trumpet, 'invite to repose;' with small
effect. And so, on Sunday the 17th, there shall be a thing seen,
worthy of remembering. Scroll of a Petition, drawn up by
Brissots, Dantons, by Cordeliers, Jacobins; for the thing was
infinitely shaken and manipulated, and many had a hand in it:
such Scroll lies now visible, on the wooden framework of the
Fatherland's Altar, for signature. Unworking Paris, male and
female, is crowding thither, all day, to sign or to see. Our fair
Roland herself the eye of History can discern there, 'in the
morning;' (_Madame Roland, ii. 74._) not without interest. In few
weeks the fair Patriot will quit Paris; yet perhaps only to
return.
But, what with sorrow of baulked Patriotism, what with closed
theatres, and Proclamations still publishing themselves by sound
of trumpet, the fervour of men's minds, this day, is great. Nay,
over and above, there has fallen out an incident, of the nature
of Farce-Tragedy and Riddle; enough to stimulate all creatures.
Early in the day, a Patriot (_or some say, it was a Patriotess,
and indeed Truth is undiscoverable_), while standing on the firm
deal-board of Fatherland's Altar, feels suddenly, with
indescribable torpedo-shock of amazement, his bootsole pricked
through from below; he clutches up suddenly this electrified
bootsole and foot; discerns next instant—the point of a gimlet or
brad-awl playing up, through the firm deal-board, and now hastily
drawing itself back! Mystery, perhaps Treason? The wooden
frame-work is impetuously broken up; and behold, verily a
mystery; never explicable fully to the end of the world! Two
human individuals, of mean aspect, one of them with a wooden leg,
lie ensconced there, gimlet in hand: they must have come in
overnight; they have a supply of provisions,—no 'barrel of
gunpowder' that one can see; they affect to be asleep; look blank
enough, and give the lamest account of themselves. "Mere
curiosity; they were boring up to get an eye-hole; to see,
perhaps 'with lubricity,' whatsoever, from that new point of
vision, could be seen:"—little that was edifying, one would
think! But indeed what stupidest thing may not human Dulness,
Pruriency, Lubricity, Chance and the Devil, choosing Two out of
Half-a-million idle human heads, tempt them to? (_Hist. Parl. xi.
104-7._)
Sure enough, the two human individuals with their gimlet are
there. Ill-starred pair of individuals! For the result of it all
is that Patriotism, fretting itself, in this state of nervous
excitability, with hypotheses, suspicions and reports, keeps
questioning these two distracted human individuals, and again
questioning them; claps them into the nearest Guardhouse,
clutches them out again; one hypothetic group snatching them from
another: till finally, in such extreme state of nervous
excitability, Patriotism hangs them as spies of Sieur Motier; and
the life and secret is choked out of them forevermore.
Forevermore, alas! Or is a day to be looked for when these two
evidently mean individuals, who are human nevertheless, will
become Historical Riddles; and, like him of the Iron Mask (_also
a human individual, and evidently nothing more_),—have their
Dissertations? To us this only is certain, that they had a
gimlet, provisions and a wooden leg; and have died there on the
Lanterne, as the unluckiest fools might die.
And so the signature goes on, in a still more excited manner. And
Chaumette, for Antiquarians possess the very Paper to this hour,
(_Ibid. xi. 113, &c._)—has signed himself 'in a flowing saucy
hand slightly leaned;' and Hebert, detestable Pere Duchene, as if
'an inked spider had dropped on the paper;' Usher Maillard also
has signed, and many Crosses, which cannot write. And Paris,
through its thousand avenues, is welling to the Champ-de-Mars and
from it, in the utmost excitability of humour; central
Fatherland's Altar quite heaped with signing Patriots and
Patriotesses; the Thirty-benches and whole internal Space crowded
with onlookers, with comers and goers; one regurgitating
whirlpool of men and women in their Sunday clothes. All which a
Constitutional Sieur Motier sees; and Bailly, looking into it
with his long visage made still longer. Auguring no good; perhaps
Decheance and Deposition after all! Stop it, ye Constitutional
Patriots; fire itself is quenchable, yet only quenchable at
first!
Stop it, truly: but how stop it? Have not the first Free People
of the Universe a right to petition?—Happily, if also unhappily,
here is one proof of riot: these two human individuals, hanged at
the Lanterne. Proof, O treacherous Sieur Motier? Were they not
two human individuals sent thither by thee to be hanged; to be a
pretext for thy bloody Drapeau Rouge? This question shall many a
Patriot, one day, ask; and answer affirmatively, strong in
Preternatural Suspicion.
Enough, towards half past seven in the evening, the mere natural
eye can behold this thing: Sieur Motier, with Municipals in
scarf, with blue National Patrollotism, rank after rank, to the
clang of drums; wending resolutely to the Champ-de-Mars; Mayor
Bailly, with elongated visage, bearing, as in sad duty bound, the
Drapeau Rouge! Howl of angry derision rises in treble and bass
from a hundred thousand throats, at the sight of Martial Law;
which nevertheless waving its Red sanguinary Flag, advances
there, from the Gros-Caillou Entrance; advances, drumming and
waving, towards Altar of Fatherland. Amid still wilder howls,
with objurgation, obtestation; with flights of pebbles and mud,
saxa et faeces; with crackle of a pistol-shot;—finally with
volley-fire of Patrollotism; levelled muskets; roll of volley on
volley! Precisely after one year and three days, our sublime
Federation Field is wetted, in this manner, with French blood.
Some 'Twelve unfortunately shot,' reports Bailly, counting by
units; but Patriotism counts by tens and even by hundreds. Not to
be forgotten, nor forgiven! Patriotism flies, shrieking,
execrating. Camille ceases Journalising, this day; great Danton
with Camille and Freron have taken wing, for their life; Marat
burrows deep in the Earth, and is silent. Once more Patrollotism
has triumphed: one other time; but it is the last.
This was the Royal Flight to Varennes. Thus was the Throne
overturned thereby; but thus also was it victoriously set up
again—on its vertex; and will stand while it can be held.
BOOK 2.V.
PARLIAMENT FIRST
Chapter 2.5.I.
Grande Acceptation.
In the last nights of September, when the autumnal equinox is
past, and grey September fades into brown October, why are the
Champs Elysees illuminated; why is Paris dancing, and flinging
fire-works? They are gala-nights, these last of September; Paris
may well dance, and the Universe: the Edifice of the Constitution
is completed! Completed; nay revised, to see that there was
nothing insufficient in it; solemnly proferred to his Majesty;
solemnly accepted by him, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, on the
fourteenth of the month. And now by such illumination, jubilee,
dancing and fire-working, do we joyously handsel the new Social
Edifice, and first raise heat and reek there, in the name of
Hope.
The Revision, especially with a throne standing on its vertex,
has been a work of difficulty, of delicacy. In the way of
propping and buttressing, so indispensable now, something could
be done; and yet, as is feared, not enough. A repentant Barnave
Triumvirate, our Rabauts, Duports, Thourets, and indeed all
Constitutional Deputies did strain every nerve: but the Extreme
Left was so noisy; the People were so suspicious, clamorous to
have the work ended: and then the loyal Right Side sat feeble
petulant all the while, and as it were, pouting and petting;
unable to help, had they even been willing; the two Hundred and
Ninety had solemnly made scission, before that: and departed,
shaking the dust off their feet. To such transcendency of fret,
and desperate hope that worsening of the bad might the sooner end
it and bring back the good, had our unfortunate loyal Right Side
now come! (_Toulongeon, ii. 56, 59._)
However, one finds that this and the other little prop has been
added, where possibility allowed. Civil-list and Privy-purse were
from of old well cared for. King's Constitutional Guard, Eighteen
hundred loyal men from the Eighty-three Departments, under a
loyal Duke de Brissac; this, with trustworthy Swiss besides, is
of itself something. The old loyal Bodyguards are indeed
dissolved, in name as well as in fact; and gone mostly towards
Coblentz. But now also those Sansculottic violent Gardes
Francaises, or Centre Grenadiers, shall have their mittimus: they
do ere long, in the Journals, not without a hoarse pathos,
publish their Farewell; 'wishing all Aristocrats the graves in
Paris which to us are denied.' (_Hist. Parl. xiii. 73._) They
depart, these first Soldiers of the Revolution; they hover very
dimly in the distance for about another year; till they can be
remodelled, new-named, and sent to fight the Austrians; and then
History beholds them no more. A most notable Corps of men; which
has its place in World-History;—though to us, so is History
written, they remain mere rubrics of men; nameless; a shaggy
Grenadier Mass, crossed with buff-belts. And yet might we not
ask: What Argonauts, what Leonidas' Spartans had done such a
work? Think of their destiny: since that May morning, some three
years ago, when they, unparticipating, trundled off d'Espremenil
to the Calypso Isles; since that July evening, some two years
ago, when they, participating and sacreing with knit brows,
poured a volley into Besenval's Prince de Lambesc! History waves
them her mute adieu.
So that the Sovereign Power, these Sansculottic Watchdogs, more
like wolves, being leashed and led away from his Tuileries,
breathes freer. The Sovereign Power is guarded henceforth by a
loyal Eighteen hundred,—whom Contrivance, under various pretexts,
may gradually swell to Six thousand; who will hinder no Journey
to Saint-Cloud. The sad Varennes business has been soldered up;
cemented, even in the blood of the Champ-de-Mars, these two
months and more; and indeed ever since, as formerly, Majesty has
had its privileges, its 'choice of residence,' though, for good
reasons, the royal mind 'prefers continuing in Paris.' Poor royal
mind, poor Paris; that have to go mumming; enveloped in
speciosities, in falsehood which knows itself false; and to enact
mutually your sorrowful farce-tragedy, being bound to it; and on
the whole, to hope always, in spite of hope!
Nay, now that his Majesty has accepted the Constitution, to the
sound of cannon-salvoes, who would not hope? Our good King was
misguided but he meant well. Lafayette has moved for an Amnesty,
for universal forgiving and forgetting of Revolutionary faults;
and now surely the glorious Revolution cleared of its rubbish, is
complete! Strange enough, and touching in several ways, the old
cry of Vive le Roi once more rises round King Louis the
Hereditary Representative. Their Majesties went to the Opera;
gave money to the Poor: the Queen herself, now when the
Constitution is accepted, hears voice of cheering. Bygone shall
be bygone; the New Era shall begin! To and fro, amid those
lamp-galaxies of the Elysian Fields, the Royal Carriage slowly
wends and rolls; every where with vivats, from a multitude
striving to be glad. Louis looks out, mainly on the variegated
lamps and gay human groups, with satisfaction enough for the
hour. In her Majesty's face, 'under that kind graceful smile a
deep sadness is legible.' (_De Stael, Considerations, i. c. 23._)
Brilliancies, of valour and of wit, stroll here observant: a Dame
de Stael, leaning most probably on the arm of her Narbonne. She
meets Deputies; who have built this Constitution; who saunter
here with vague communings,—not without thoughts whether it will
stand. But as yet melodious fiddlestrings twang and warble every
where, with the rhythm of light fantastic feet; long
lamp-galaxies fling their coloured radiance; and brass-lunged
Hawkers elbow and bawl, "Grande Acceptation, Constitution
Monarchique:" it behoves the Son of Adam to hope. Have not
Lafayette, Barnave, and all Constitutionalists set their
shoulders handsomely to the inverted pyramid of a throne?
Feuillans, including almost the whole Constitutional
Respectability of France, perorate nightly from their tribune;
correspond through all Post-offices; denouncing unquiet
Jacobinism; trusting well that its time is nigh done. Much is
uncertain, questionable: but if the Hereditary Representative be
wise and lucky, may one not, with a sanguine Gaelic temper, hope
that he will get in motion better or worse; that what is wanting
to him will gradually be gained and added?
For the rest, as we must repeat, in this building of the
Constitutional Fabric, especially in this Revision of it, nothing
that one could think of to give it new strength, especially to
steady it, to give it permanence, and even eternity, has been
forgotten. Biennial Parliament, to be called Legislative,
Assemblee Legislative; with Seven Hundred and Forty-five Members,
chosen in a judicious manner by the 'active citizens' alone, and
even by electing of electors still more active: this, with
privileges of Parliament shall meet, self-authorized if need be,
and self-dissolved; shall grant money-supplies and talk; watch
over the administration and authorities; discharge for ever the
functions of a Constitutional Great Council, Collective Wisdom,
and National Palaver,—as the Heavens will enable. Our First
biennial Parliament, which indeed has been a-choosing since early
in August, is now as good as chosen. Nay it has mostly got to
Paris: it arrived gradually;—not without pathetic greeting to its
venerable Parent, the now moribund Constituent; and sat there in
the Galleries, reverently listening; ready to begin, the instant
the ground were clear.
Then as to changes in the Constitution itself? This, impossible
for any Legislative, or common biennial Parliament, and possible
solely for some resuscitated Constituent or National
Convention,—is evidently one of the most ticklish points. The
august moribund Assembly debated it for four entire days. Some
thought a change, or at least reviewal and new approval, might be
admissible in thirty years; some even went lower, down to twenty,
nay to fifteen. The august Assembly had once decided for thirty
years; but it revoked that, on better thoughts; and did not fix
any date of time, but merely some vague outline of a posture of
circumstances, and on the whole left the matter hanging. (_Choix
de Rapports, &c. (_Paris, 1825_), vi. 239-317._) Doubtless a
National Convention can be assembled even within the thirty
years: yet one may hope, not; but that Legislatives, biennial
Parliaments of the common kind, with their limited faculty, and
perhaps quiet successive additions thereto, may suffice, for
generations, or indeed while computed Time runs.
Furthermore, be it noted that no member of this Constituent has
been, or could be, elected to the new Legislative. So
noble-minded were these Law-makers! cry some: and Solon-like
would banish themselves. So splenetic! cry more: each grudging
the other, none daring to be outdone in self-denial by the other.
So unwise in either case! answer all practical men. But consider
this other self-denying ordinance, That none of us can be King's
Minister, or accept the smallest Court Appointment, for the space
of four, or at lowest (_and on long debate and Revision_), for
the space of two years! So moves the incorruptible seagreen
Robespierre; with cheap magnanimity he; and none dare be outdone
by him. It was such a law, not so superfluous then, that sent
Mirabeau to the Gardens of Saint-Cloud, under cloak of darkness,
to that colloquy of the gods; and thwarted many things. Happily
and unhappily there is no Mirabeau now to thwart.
Welcomer meanwhile, welcome surely to all right hearts, is
Lafayette's chivalrous Amnesty. Welcome too is that hard-wrung
Union of Avignon; which has cost us, first and last, 'thirty
sessions of debate,' and so much else: may it at length prove
lucky! Rousseau's statue is decreed: virtuous Jean-Jacques,
Evangelist of the Contrat Social. Not Drouet of Varennes; nor
worthy Lataille, master of the old world-famous Tennis Court in
Versailles, is forgotten; but each has his honourable mention,
and due reward in money. (_Moniteur in Hist. Parl. xi. 473._)
Whereupon, things being all so neatly winded up, and the
Deputations, and Messages, and royal and other Ceremonials having
rustled by; and the King having now affectionately perorated
about peace and tranquilisation, and members having answered
"Oui! oui!" with effusion, even with tears,—President Thouret, he
of the Law Reforms, rises, and, with a strong voice, utters these
memorable last-words: "The National Constituent Assembly declares
that it has finished its mission; and that its sittings are all
ended." Incorruptible Robespierre, virtuous Petion are borne home
on the shoulders of the people; with vivats heaven-high. The rest
glide quietly to their respective places of abode. It is the last
afternoon of September, 1791; on the morrow morning the new
Legislative will begin.
So, amid glitter of illuminated streets and Champs Elysees, and
crackle of fireworks and glad deray, has the first National
Assembly vanished; dissolving, as they well say, into blank Time;
and is no more. National Assembly is gone, its work remaining; as
all Bodies of men go, and as man himself goes: it had its
beginning, and must likewise have its end. A Phantasm-Reality
born of Time, as the rest of us are; flitting ever backwards now
on the tide of Time: to be long remembered of men. Very strange
Assemblages, Sanhedrims, Amphictyonics, Trades Unions, Ecumenic
Councils, Parliaments and Congresses, have met together on this
Planet, and dispersed again; but a stranger Assemblage than this
august Constituent, or with a stranger mission, perhaps never met
there. Seen from the distance, this also will be a miracle.
Twelve Hundred human individuals, with the Gospel of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau in their pocket, congregating in the name of Twenty-five
Millions, with full assurance of faith, to 'make the
Constitution:' such sight, the acme and main product of the
Eighteenth Century, our World can witness once only. For Time is
rich in wonders, in monstrosities most rich; and is observed
never to repeat himself, or any of his Gospels:—surely least of
all, this Gospel according to Jean-Jacques. Once it was right and
indispensable, since such had become the Belief of men; but once
also is enough.
They have made the Constitution, these Twelve Hundred
Jean-Jacques Evangelists; not without result. Near twenty-nine
months they sat, with various fortune; in various
capacity;—always, we may say, in that capacity of carborne
Caroccio, and miraculous Standard of the Revolt of Men, as a
Thing high and lifted up; whereon whosoever looked might hope
healing. They have seen much: cannons levelled on them; then
suddenly, by interposition of the Powers, the cannons drawn back;
and a war-god Broglie vanishing, in thunder not his own, amid the
dust and downrushing of a Bastille and Old Feudal France. They
have suffered somewhat: Royal Session, with rain and Oath of the
Tennis-Court; Nights of Pentecost; Insurrections of Women. Also
have they not done somewhat? Made the Constitution, and managed
all things the while; passed, in these twenty-nine months,
'twenty-five hundred Decrees,' which on the average is some three
for each day, including Sundays! Brevity, one finds, is possible,
at times: had not Moreau de St. Mery to give three thousand
orders before rising from his seat?—There was valour (_or value_)
in these men; and a kind of faith,—were it only faith in this,
That cobwebs are not cloth; that a Constitution could be made.
Cobwebs and chimeras ought verily to disappear; for a Reality
there is. Let formulas, soul-killing, and now grown body-killing,
insupportable, begone, in the name of Heaven and Earth!—Time, as
we say, brought forth these Twelve Hundred; Eternity was before
them, Eternity behind: they worked, as we all do, in the
confluence of Two Eternities; what work was given them. Say not
that it was nothing they did. Consciously they did somewhat;
unconsciously how much! They had their giants and their dwarfs,
they accomplished their good and their evil; they are gone, and
return no more. Shall they not go with our blessing, in these
circumstances; with our mild farewell?
By post, by diligence, on saddle or sole; they are gone: towards
the four winds! Not a few over the marches, to rank at Coblentz.
Thither wended Maury, among others; but in the end towards
Rome,—to be clothed there in red Cardinal plush; in falsehood as
in a garment; pet son (_her last-born?_) of the Scarlet Woman.
Talleyrand-Perigord, excommunicated Constitutional Bishop, will
make his way to London; to be Ambassador, spite of the
Self-denying Law; brisk young Marquis Chauvelin acting as
Ambassador's-Cloak. In London too, one finds Petion the virtuous;
harangued and haranguing, pledging the wine-cup with
Constitutional Reform Clubs, in solemn tavern-dinner.
Incorruptible Robespierre retires for a little to native Arras:
seven short weeks of quiet; the last appointed him in this world.
Public Accuser in the Paris Department, acknowledged highpriest
of the Jacobins; the glass of incorruptible thin Patriotism, for
his narrow emphasis is loved of all the narrow,—this man seems to
be rising, somewhither? He sells his small heritage at Arras;
accompanied by a Brother and a Sister, he returns, scheming out
with resolute timidity a small sure destiny for himself and them,
to his old lodging, at the Cabinet-maker's, in the Rue St.
Honore:—O resolute-tremulous incorruptible seagreen man, towards
what a destiny!
Lafayette, for his part, will lay down the command. He retires
Cincinnatus-like to his hearth and farm; but soon leaves them
again. Our National Guard, however, shall henceforth have no one
Commandant; but all Colonels shall command in succession, month
about. Other Deputies we have met, or Dame de Stael has met,
'sauntering in a thoughtful manner;' perhaps uncertain what to
do. Some, as Barnave, the Lameths, and their Duport, will
continue here in Paris: watching the new biennial Legislative,
Parliament the First; teaching it to walk, if so might be; and
the Court to lead it.
Thus these: sauntering in a thoughtful manner; travelling by post
or diligence,—whither Fate beckons. Giant Mirabeau slumbers in
the Pantheon of Great Men: and France? and Europe?—The
brass-lunged Hawkers sing "Grand Acceptation, Monarchic
Constitution" through these gay crowds: the Morrow, grandson of
Yesterday, must be what it can, as To-day its father is. Our new
biennial Legislative begins to constitute itself on the first of
October, 1791.
Chapter 2.5.II.
The Book of the Law.
If the august Constituent Assembly itself, fixing the regards of
the Universe, could, at the present distance of time and place,
gain comparatively small attention from us, how much less can
this poor Legislative! It has its Right Side and its Left; the
less Patriotic and the more, for Aristocrats exist not here or
now: it spouts and speaks: listens to Reports, reads Bills and
Laws; works in its vocation, for a season: but the history of
France, one finds, is seldom or never there. Unhappy Legislative,
what can History do with it; if not drop a tear over it, almost
in silence? First of the two-year Parliaments of France, which,
if Paper Constitution and oft-repeated National Oath could avail
aught, were to follow in softly-strong indissoluble sequence
while Time ran,—it had to vanish dolefully within one year; and
there came no second like it. Alas! your biennial Parliaments in
endless indissoluble sequence; they, and all that Constitutional
Fabric, built with such explosive Federation Oaths, and its
top-stone brought out with dancing and variegated radiance, went
to pieces, like frail crockery, in the crash of things; and
already, in eleven short months, were in that Limbo near the
Moon, with the ghosts of other Chimeras. There, except for rare
specific purposes, let them rest, in melancholy peace.
On the whole, how unknown is a man to himself; or a public Body
of men to itself! Aesop's fly sat on the chariot-wheel,
exclaiming, What a dust I do raise! Great Governors, clad in
purple with fasces and insignia, are governed by their valets, by
the pouting of their women and children; or, in Constitutional
countries, by the paragraphs of their Able Editors. Say not, I am
this or that; I am doing this or that! For thou knowest it not,
thou knowest only the name it as yet goes by. A purple
Nebuchadnezzar rejoices to feel himself now verily Emperor of
this great Babylon which he has builded; and is a nondescript
biped-quadruped, on the eve of a seven-years course of grazing!
These Seven Hundred and Forty-five elected individuals doubt not
but they are the First biennial Parliament, come to govern France
by parliamentary eloquence: and they are what? And they have come
to do what? Things foolish and not wise!
It is much lamented by many that this First Biennial had no
members of the old Constituent in it, with their experience of
parties and parliamentary tactics; that such was their foolish
Self-denying Law. Most surely, old members of the Constituent had
been welcome to us here. But, on the other hand, what old or what
new members of any Constituent under the Sun could have
effectually profited? There are First biennial Parliaments so
postured as to be, in a sense, beyond wisdom; where wisdom and
folly differ only in degree, and wreckage and dissolution are the
appointed issue for both.
Old-Constituents, your Barnaves, Lameths and the like, for whom a
special Gallery has been set apart, where they may sit in honour
and listen, are in the habit of sneering at these new
Legislators; (_Dumouriez, ii. 150, &c._) but let not us! The poor
Seven Hundred and Forty-five, sent together by the active
citizens of France, are what they could be; do what is fated
them. That they are of Patriot temper we can well understand.
Aristocrat Noblesse had fled over the marches, or sat brooding
silent in their unburnt Chateaus; small prospect had they in
Primary Electoral Assemblies. What with Flights to Varennes, what
with Days of Poniards, with plot after plot, the People are left
to themselves; the People must needs choose Defenders of the
People, such as can be had. Choosing, as they also will ever do,
'if not the ablest man, yet the man ablest to be chosen!' Fervour
of character, decided Patriot-Constitutional feeling; these are
qualities: but free utterance, mastership in tongue-fence; this
is the quality of qualities. Accordingly one finds, with little
astonishment, in this First Biennial, that as many as Four
hundred Members are of the Advocate or Attorney species. Men who
can speak, if there be aught to speak: nay here are men also who
can think, and even act. Candour will say of this ill-fated First
French Parliament that it wanted not its modicum of talent, its
modicum of honesty; that it, neither in the one respect nor in
the other, sank below the average of Parliaments, but rose above
the average. Let average Parliaments, whom the world does not
guillotine, and cast forth to long infamy, be thankful not to
themselves but to their stars!
France, as we say, has once more done what it could: fervid men
have come together from wide separation; for strange issues.
Fiery Max Isnard is come, from the utmost South-East; fiery
Claude Fauchet, Te-Deum Fauchet Bishop of Calvados, from the
utmost North-West. No Mirabeau now sits here, who had swallowed
formulas: our only Mirabeau now is Danton, working as yet out of
doors; whom some call 'Mirabeau of the Sansculottes.'
Nevertheless we have our gifts,—especially of speech and logic.
An eloquent Vergniaud we have; most mellifluous yet most
impetuous of public speakers; from the region named Gironde, of
the Garonne: a man unfortunately of indolent habits; who will sit
playing with your children, when he ought to be scheming and
perorating. Sharp bustling Guadet; considerate grave Censonne;
kind-sparkling mirthful young Ducos; Valaze doomed to a sad end:
all these likewise are of that Gironde, or Bourdeaux region: men
of fervid Constitutional principles; of quick talent,
irrefragable logic, clear respectability; who will have the Reign
of Liberty establish itself, but only by respectable methods.
Round whom others of like temper will gather; known by and by as
Girondins, to the sorrowing wonder of the world. Of which sort
note Condorcet, Marquis and Philosopher; who has worked at much,
at Paris Municipal Constitution, Differential Calculus, Newspaper
Chronique de Paris, Biography, Philosophy; and now sits here as
two-years Senator: a notable Condorcet, with stoical Roman face,
and fiery heart; 'volcano hid under snow;' styled likewise, in
irreverent language, 'mouton enrage,' peaceablest of creatures
bitten rabid! Or note, lastly, Jean-Pierre Brissot; whom Destiny,
long working noisily with him, has hurled hither, say, to have
done with him. A biennial Senator he too; nay, for the present,
the king of such. Restless, scheming, scribbling Brissot; who
took to himself the style de Warville, heralds know not in the
least why;—unless it were that the father of him did, in an
unexceptionable manner, perform Cookery and Vintnery in the
Village of Ouarville? A man of the windmill species, that grinds
always, turning towards all winds; not in the steadiest manner.
In all these men there is talent, faculty to work; and they will
do it: working and shaping, not without effect, though alas not
in marble, only in quicksand!—But the highest faculty of them all
remains yet to be mentioned; or indeed has yet to unfold itself
for mention: Captain Hippolyte Carnot, sent hither from the Pas
de Calais; with his cold mathematical head, and silent
stubbornness of will: iron Carnot, far-planning, imperturbable,
unconquerable; who, in the hour of need, shall not be found
wanting. His hair is yet black; and it shall grow grey, under
many kinds of fortune, bright and troublous; and with iron aspect
this man shall face them all.
Nor is Cote Droit, and band of King's friends, wanting: Vaublanc,
Dumas, Jaucourt the honoured Chevalier; who love Liberty, yet
with Monarchy over it; and speak fearlessly according to that
faith;—whom the thick-coming hurricanes will sweep away. With
them, let a new military Theodore Lameth be named;—were it only
for his two Brothers' sake, who look down on him, approvingly
there, from the Old-Constituents' Gallery. Frothy professing
Pastorets, honey-mouthed conciliatory Lamourettes, and speechless
nameless individuals sit plentiful, as Moderates, in the middle.
Still less is a Cote Gauche wanting: extreme Left; sitting on the
topmost benches, as if aloft on its speculatory Height or
Mountain, which will become a practical fulminatory Height, and
make the name of Mountain famous-infamous to all times and lands.
Honour waits not on this Mountain; nor as yet even loud
dishonour. Gifts it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of
thinking; solely this one gift of assured faith, of audacity that
will defy the Earth and the Heavens. Foremost here are the
Cordelier Trio: hot Merlin from Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys
both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio. Lawyer
Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single epaulette, has
loud lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon, little
dreaming what he is;—whom a sad chance has paralysed in the lower
extremities. For, it seems, he sat once a whole night, not warm
in his true love's bower (_who indeed was by law another's_), but
sunken to the middle in a cold peat-bog, being hunted out;
quaking for his life, in the cold quaking morass; (_Dumouriez,
ii. 370._) and goes now on crutches to the end. Cambon likewise,
in whom slumbers undeveloped such a finance-talent for printing
of Assignats; Father of Paper-money; who, in the hour of menace,
shall utter this stern sentence, 'War to the Manorhouse, peace to
the Hut, Guerre aux Chateaux, paix aux Chaumieres!' (_Choix de
Rapports, xi. 25._) Lecointre, the intrepid Draper of Versailles,
is welcome here; known since the Opera-Repast and Insurrection of
Women. Thuriot too; Elector Thuriot, who stood in the embrasures
of the Bastille, and saw Saint-Antoine rising in mass; who has
many other things to see. Last and grimmest of all note old Ruhl,
with his brown dusky face and long white hair; of Alsatian
Lutheran breed; a man whom age and book-learning have not taught;
who, haranguing the old men of Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred
Ampulla (_Heaven-sent, wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been
anointed_) as a mere worthless oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds
on the pavement there; who, alas, shall dash much to sherds, and
finally his own wild head, by pistol-shot, and so end it.
Such lava welters redhot in the bowels of this Mountain; unknown
to the world and to itself! A mere commonplace Mountain hitherto;
distinguished from the Plain chiefly by its superior barrenness,
its baldness of look: at the utmost it may, to the most
observant, perceptibly smoke. For as yet all lies so solid,
peaceable; and doubts not, as was said, that it will endure while
Time runs. Do not all love Liberty and the Constitution? All
heartily;—and yet with degrees. Some, as Chevalier Jaucourt and
his Right Side, may love Liberty less than Royalty, were the
trial made; others, as Brissot and his Left Side, may love it
more than Royalty. Nay again of these latter some may love
Liberty more than Law itself; others not more. Parties will
unfold themselves; no mortal as yet knows how. Forces work within
these men and without: dissidence grows opposition; ever
widening; waxing into incompatibility and internecine feud: till
the strong is abolished by a stronger; himself in his turn by a
strongest! Who can help it? Jaucourt and his Monarchists,
Feuillans, or Moderates; Brissot and his Brissotins, Jacobins, or
Girondins; these, with the Cordelier Trio, and all men, must work
what is appointed them, and in the way appointed them.
And to think what fate these poor Seven Hundred and Forty-five
are assembled, most unwittingly, to meet! Let no heart be so hard
as not to pity them. Their soul's wish was to live and work as
the First of the French Parliaments: and make the Constitution
march. Did they not, at their very instalment, go through the
most affecting Constitutional ceremony, almost with tears? The
Twelve Eldest are sent solemnly to fetch the Constitution itself,
the printed book of the Law. Archivist Camus, an Old-Constituent
appointed Archivist, he and the Ancient Twelve, amid blare of
military pomp and clangour, enter, bearing the divine Book: and
President and all Legislative Senators, laying their hand on the
same, successively take the Oath, with cheers and heart-effusion,
universal three-times-three. (_Moniteur, Seance du 4 Octobre
1791._) In this manner they begin their Session. Unhappy mortals!
For, that same day, his Majesty having received their Deputation
of welcome, as seemed, rather drily, the Deputation cannot but
feel slighted, cannot but lament such slight: and thereupon our
cheering swearing First Parliament sees itself, on the morrow,
obliged to explode into fierce retaliatory sputter, of anti-royal
Enactment as to how they, for their part, will receive Majesty;
and how Majesty shall not be called Sire any more, except they
please: and then, on the following day, to recall this Enactment
of theirs, as too hasty, and a mere sputter though not
unprovoked.
An effervescent well-intentioned set of Senators; too
combustible, where continual sparks are flying! Their History is
a series of sputters and quarrels; true desire to do their
function, fatal impossibility to do it. Denunciations,
reprimandings of King's Ministers, of traitors supposed and real;
hot rage and fulmination against fulminating Emigrants; terror of
Austrian Kaiser, of 'Austrian Committee' in the Tuileries itself:
rage and haunting terror, haste and dim desperate
bewilderment!—Haste, we say; and yet the Constitution had
provided against haste. No Bill can be passed till it have been
printed, till it have been thrice read, with intervals of eight
days;—'unless the Assembly shall beforehand decree that there is
urgency.' Which, accordingly, the Assembly, scrupulous of the
Constitution, never omits to do: Considering this, and also
considering that, and then that other, the Assembly decrees
always 'qu'il y a urgence;' and thereupon 'the Assembly, having
decreed that there is urgence,' is free to decree—what
indispensable distracted thing seems best to it. Two thousand and
odd decrees, as men reckon, within Eleven months! (_Montgaillard,
iii. 1. 237._) The haste of the Constituent seemed great; but
this is treble-quick. For the time itself is rushing
treble-quick; and they have to keep pace with that. Unhappy Seven
Hundred and Forty-five: true-patriotic, but so combustible; being
fired, they must needs fling fire: Senate of touchwood and
rockets, in a world of smoke-storm, with sparks wind-driven
continually flying!
Or think, on the other hand, looking forward some months, of that
scene they call Baiser de Lamourette! The dangers of the country
are now grown imminent, immeasurable; National Assembly, hope of
France, is divided against itself. In such extreme circumstances,
honey-mouthed Abbe Lamourette, new Bishop of Lyons, rises, whose
name, l'amourette, signifies the sweetheart, or Delilah doxy,—he
rises, and, with pathetic honied eloquence, calls on all august
Senators to forget mutual griefs and grudges, to swear a new
oath, and unite as brothers. Whereupon they all, with vivats,
embrace and swear; Left Side confounding itself with Right;
barren Mountain rushing down to fruitful Plain, Pastoret into the
arms of Condorcet, injured to the breast of injurer, with tears;
and all swearing that whosoever wishes either Feuillant
Two-Chamber Monarchy or Extreme-Jacobin Republic, or any thing
but the Constitution and that only, shall be anathema maranatha.
(_Moniteur, Seance du 6 Juillet 1792._) Touching to behold! For,
literally on the morrow morning, they must again quarrel, driven
by Fate; and their sublime reconcilement is called derisively
Baiser de L'amourette, or Delilah Kiss.
Like fated Eteocles-Polynices Brothers, embracing, though in
vain; weeping that they must not love, that they must hate only,
and die by each other's hands! Or say, like doomed Familiar
Spirits; ordered, by Art Magic under penalties, to do a harder
than twist ropes of sand: 'to make the Constitution march.' If
the Constitution would but march! Alas, the Constitution will not
stir. It falls on its face; they tremblingly lift it on end
again: march, thou gold Constitution! The Constitution will not
march.—"He shall march, by—!" said kind Uncle Toby, and even
swore. The Corporal answered mournfully: "He will never march in
this world."
A constitution, as we often say, will march when it images, if
not the old Habits and Beliefs of the Constituted; then
accurately their Rights, or better indeed, their Mights;—for
these two, well-understood, are they not one and the same? The
old Habits of France are gone: her new Rights and Mights are not
yet ascertained, except in Paper-theorem; nor can be, in any
sort, till she have tried. Till she have measured herself, in
fell death-grip, and were it in utmost preternatural spasm of
madness, with Principalities and Powers, with the upper and the
under, internal and external; with the Earth and Tophet and the
very Heaven! Then will she know.—Three things bode ill for the
marching of this French Constitution: the French People; the
French King; thirdly the French Noblesse and an assembled
European World.
Chapter 2.5.III.
Avignon.
But quitting generalities, what strange Fact is this, in the far
South-West, towards which the eyes of all men do now, in the end
of October, bend themselves? A tragical combustion, long smoking
and smouldering unluminous, has now burst into flame there.
Hot is that Southern Provencal blood: alas, collisions, as was
once said, must occur in a career of Freedom; different
directions will produce such; nay different velocities in the
same direction will! To much that went on there History, busied
elsewhere, would not specially give heed: to troubles of Uzez,
troubles of Nismes, Protestant and Catholic, Patriot and
Aristocrat; to troubles of Marseilles, Montpelier, Arles; to
Aristocrat Camp of Jales, that wondrous real-imaginary Entity,
now fading pale-dim, then always again glowing forth deep-hued
(_in the Imagination mainly_);—ominous magical, 'an Aristocrat
picture of war done naturally!' All this was a tragical deadly
combustion, with plot and riot, tumult by night and by day; but a
dark combustion, not luminous, not noticed; which now, however,
one cannot help noticing.
Above all places, the unluminous combustion in Avignon and the
Comtat Venaissin was fierce. Papal Avignon, with its Castle
rising sheer over the Rhone-stream; beautifullest Town, with its
purple vines and gold-orange groves: why must foolish old rhyming
Rene, the last Sovereign of Provence, bequeath it to the Pope and
Gold Tiara, not rather to Louis Eleventh with the Leaden Virgin
in his hatband? For good and for evil! Popes, Anti-popes, with
their pomp, have dwelt in that Castle of Avignon rising sheer
over the Rhone-stream: there Laura de Sade went to hear mass; her
Petrarch twanging and singing by the Fountain of Vaucluse hard
by, surely in a most melancholy manner. This was in the old days.
And now in these new days, such issues do come from a squirt of
the pen by some foolish rhyming Rene, after centuries, this is
what we have: Jourdan Coupe-tete, leading to siege and warfare an
Army, from three to fifteen thousand strong, called the Brigands
of Avignon; which title they themselves accept, with the addition
of an epithet, 'The brave Brigands of Avignon!' It is even so.
Jourdan the Headsman fled hither from that Chatelet Inquest, from
that Insurrection of Women; and began dealing in madder; but the
scene was rife in other than dye-stuffs; so Jourdan shut his
madder shop, and has risen, for he was the man to do it. The
tile-beard of Jourdan is shaven off; his fat visage has got
coppered and studded with black carbuncles; the Silenus trunk is
swollen with drink and high living: he wears blue National
uniform with epaulettes, 'an enormous sabre, two horse-pistols
crossed in his belt, and other two smaller, sticking from his
pockets;' styles himself General, and is the tyrant of men.
(_Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 267._) Consider this one fact, O
Reader; and what sort of facts must have preceded it, must
accompany it! Such things come of old Rene; and of the question
which has risen, Whether Avignon cannot now cease wholly to be
Papal and become French and free?
For some twenty-five months the confusion has lasted. Say three
months of arguing; then seven of raging; then finally some
fifteen months now of fighting, and even of hanging. For already
in February 1790, the Papal Aristocrats had set up four gibbets,
for a sign; but the People rose in June, in retributive frenzy;
and, forcing the public Hangman to act, hanged four Aristocrats,
on each Papal gibbet a Papal Haman. Then were Avignon
Emigrations, Papal Aristocrats emigrating over the Rhone River;
demission of Papal Consul, flight, victory: re-entrance of Papal
Legate, truce, and new onslaught; and the various turns of war.
Petitions there were to National Assembly; Congresses of
Townships; three-score and odd Townships voting for French
Reunion, and the blessings of Liberty; while some twelve of the
smaller, manipulated by Aristocrats, gave vote the other way:
with shrieks and discord! Township against Township, Town against
Town: Carpentras, long jealous of Avignon, is now turned out in
open war with it;—and Jourdan Coupe-tete, your first General
being killed in mutiny, closes his dye-shop; and does there
visibly, with siege-artillery, above all with bluster and tumult,
with the 'brave Brigands of Avignon,' beleaguer the rival Town,
for two months, in the face of the world!
Feats were done, doubt it not, far-famed in Parish History; but
to Universal History unknown. Gibbets we see rise, on the one
side and on the other; and wretched carcasses swinging there, a
dozen in the row; wretched Mayor of Vaison buried before dead.
(_Barbaroux, Memoires, p. 26._) The fruitful seedfield, lie
unreaped, the vineyards trampled down; there is red cruelty,
madness of universal choler and gall. Havoc and anarchy
everywhere; a combustion most fierce, but unlucent, not to be
noticed here!—Finally, as we saw, on the 14th of September last,
the National Constituent Assembly, having sent Commissioners and
heard them; (_Lescene Desmaisons: Compte rendu a l'Assemblee
Nationale, 10 Septembre 1791 (_Choix des Rapports, vii.
273-93_)._) having heard Petitions, held Debates, month after
month ever since August 1789; and on the whole 'spent thirty
sittings' on this matter, did solemnly decree that Avignon and
the Comtat were incorporated with France, and His Holiness the
Pope should have what indemnity was reasonable.
And so hereby all is amnestied and finished? Alas, when madness
of choler has gone through the blood of men, and gibbets have
swung on this side and on that, what will a parchment Decree and
Lafayette Amnesty do? Oblivious Lethe flows not above ground!
Papal Aristocrats and Patriot Brigands are still an eye-sorrow to
each other; suspected, suspicious, in what they do and forbear.
The august Constituent Assembly is gone but a fortnight, when, on
Sunday the Sixteenth morning of October 1791, the unquenched
combustion suddenly becomes luminous! For Anti-constitutional
Placards are up, and the Statue of the Virgin is said to have
shed tears, and grown red. (_Proces-verbal de la Commune
d'Avignon, &c. in Hist. Parl. xii. 419-23._) Wherefore, on that
morning, Patriot l'Escuyer, one of our 'six leading Patriots,'
having taken counsel with his brethren and General Jourdan,
determines on going to Church, in company with a friend or two:
not to hear mass, which he values little; but to meet all the
Papalists there in a body, nay to meet that same weeping Virgin,
for it is the Cordeliers Church; and give them a word of
admonition. Adventurous errand; which has the fatallest issue!
What L'Escuyer's word of admonition might be no History records;
but the answer to it was a shrieking howl from the Aristocrat
Papal worshippers, many of them women. A thousand-voiced shriek
and menace; which as L'Escuyer did not fly, became a
thousand-handed hustle and jostle; a thousand-footed kick, with
tumblings and tramplings, with the pricking of semstresses
stilettos, scissors, and female pointed instruments. Horrible to
behold; the ancient Dead, and Petrarchan Laura, sleeping round it
there; (_Ugo Foscolo, Essay on Petrarch, p. 35._) high Altar and
burning tapers looking down on it; the Virgin quite tearless, and
of the natural stone-colour!—L'Escuyer's friend or two rush off,
like Job's Messengers, for Jourdan and the National Force. But
heavy Jourdan will seize the Town-Gates first; does not run
treble-fast, as he might: on arriving at the Cordeliers Church,
the Church is silent, vacant; L'Escuyer, all alone, lies there,
swimming in his blood, at the foot of the high Altar; pricked
with scissors; trodden, massacred;—gives one dumb sob, and gasps
out his miserable life for evermore.
Sight to stir the heart of any man; much more of many men,
self-styled Brigands of Avignon! The corpse of L'Escuyer,
stretched on a bier, the ghastly head girt with laurel, is borne
through the streets; with many-voiced unmelodious Nenia;
funeral-wail still deeper than it is loud! The copper-face of
Jourdan, of bereft Patriotism, has grown black. Patriot
Municipality despatches official Narrative and tidings to Paris;
orders numerous or innumerable arrestments for inquest and
perquisition. Aristocrats male and female are haled to the
Castle; lie crowded in subterranean dungeons there, bemoaned by
the hoarse rushing of the Rhone; cut out from help.
So lie they; waiting inquest and perquisition. Alas! with a
Jourdan Headsman for Generalissimo, with his copper-face grown
black, and armed Brigand Patriots chanting their Nenia, the
inquest is likely to be brief. On the next day and the next, let
Municipality consent or not, a Brigand Court-Martial establishes
itself in the subterranean stories of the Castle of Avignon;
Brigand Executioners, with naked sabre, waiting at the door, for
a Brigand verdict. Short judgment, no appeal! There is Brigand
wrath and vengeance; not unrefreshed by brandy. Close by is the
Dungeon of the Glaciere, or Ice-Tower: there may be deeds done—?
For which language has no name!—Darkness and the shadow of horrid
cruelty envelopes these Castle Dungeons, that Glaciere Tower:
clear only that many have entered, that few have returned.
Jourdan and the Brigands, supreme now over Municipals, over all
Authorities Patriot or Papal, reign in Avignon, waited on by
Terror and Silence.
The result of all which is that, on the 15th of November 1791, we
behold Friend Dampmartin, and subalterns beneath him, and General
Choisi above him, with Infantry and Cavalry, and proper
cannon-carriages rattling in front, with spread banners, to the
sound of fife and drum, wend, in a deliberate formidable manner,
towards that sheer Castle Rock, towards those broad Gates of
Avignon; three new National-Assembly Commissioners following at
safe distance in the rear. (_Dampmartin, i. 251-94._) Avignon,
summoned in the name of Assembly and Law, flings its Gates wide
open; Choisi with the rest, Dampmartin and the Bons Enfans, 'Good
Boys of Baufremont,' so they name these brave Constitutional
Dragoons, known to them of old,—do enter, amid shouts and
scattered flowers. To the joy of all honest persons; to the
terror only of Jourdan Headsman and the Brigands. Nay next we
behold carbuncled swollen Jourdan himself shew copper-face, with
sabre and four pistols; affecting to talk high: engaging,
meanwhile, to surrender the Castle that instant. So the Choisi
Grenadiers enter with him there. They start and stop, passing
that Glaciere, snuffing its horrible breath; with wild yell, with
cries of "Cut the Butcher down!"—and Jourdan has to whisk himself
through secret passages, and instantaneously vanish.
Be the mystery of iniquity laid bare then! A Hundred and Thirty
Corpses, of men, nay of women and even children (_for the
trembling mother, hastily seized, could not leave her infant_),
lie heaped in that Glaciere; putrid, under putridities: the
horror of the world. For three days there is mournful lifting
out, and recognition; amid the cries and movements of a
passionate Southern people, now kneeling in prayer, now storming
in wild pity and rage: lastly there is solemn sepulture, with
muffled drums, religious requiem, and all the people's wail and
tears. Their Massacred rest now in holy ground; buried in one
grave.
And Jourdan Coupe-tete? Him also we behold again, after a day or
two: in flight, through the most romantic Petrarchan
hill-country; vehemently spurring his nag; young Ligonnet, a
brisk youth of Avignon, with Choisi Dragoons, close in his rear!
With such swollen mass of a rider no nag can run to advantage.
The tired nag, spur-driven, does take the River Sorgue; but
sticks in the middle of it; firm on that chiaro fondo di Sorga;
and will proceed no further for spurring! Young Ligonnet dashes
up; the Copper-face menaces and bellows, draws pistol, perhaps
even snaps it; is nevertheless seized by the collar; is tied
firm, ancles under horse's belly, and ridden back to Avignon,
hardly to be saved from massacre on the streets there.
(_Dampmartin, ubi supra._)
Such is the combustion of Avignon and the South-West, when it
becomes luminous! Long loud debate is in the august Legislative,
in the Mother-Society as to what now shall be done with it.
Amnesty, cry eloquent Vergniaud and all Patriots: let there be
mutual pardon and repentance, restoration, pacification, and if
so might any how be, an end! Which vote ultimately prevails. So
the South-West smoulders and welters again in an 'Amnesty,' or
Non-remembrance, which alas cannot but remember, no Lethe flowing
above ground! Jourdan himself remains unchanged; gets loose again
as one not yet gallows-ripe; nay, as we transciently discern from
the distance, is 'carried in triumph through the cities of the
South.' (_Deux Amis vii. (_Paris, 1797_), pp. 59-71._) What
things men carry!
With which transient glimpse, of a Copper-faced Portent faring in
this manner through the cities of the South, we must quit these
regions;—and let them smoulder. They want not their Aristocrats;
proud old Nobles, not yet emigrated. Arles has its 'Chiffonne,'
so, in symbolical cant, they name that Aristocrat
Secret-Association; Arles has its pavements piled up, by and by,
into Aristocrat barricades. Against which Rebecqui, the hot-clear
Patriot, must lead Marseilles with cannon. The Bar of Iron has
not yet risen to the top in the Bay of Marseilles; neither have
these hot Sons of the Phoceans submitted to be slaves. By clear
management and hot instance, Rebecqui dissipates that Chiffonne,
without bloodshed; restores the pavement of Arles. He sails in
Coast-barks, this Rebecqui, scrutinising suspicious
Martello-towers, with the keen eye of Patriotism; marches
overland with despatch, singly, or in force; to City after City;
dim scouring far and wide; (_Barbaroux, p. 21; Hist. Parl. xiii.
421-4._)—argues, and if it must be, fights. For there is much to
do; Jales itself is looking suspicious. So that Legislator
Fauchet, after debate on it, has to propose Commissioners and a
Camp on the Plain of Beaucaire: with or without result.
Of all which, and much else, let us note only this small
consequence, that young Barbaroux, Advocate, Town-Clerk of
Marseilles, being charged to have these things remedied, arrived
at Paris in the month of February 1792. The beautiful and brave:
young Spartan, ripe in energy, not ripe in wisdom; over whose
black doom there shall flit nevertheless a certain ruddy fervour,
streaks of bright Southern tint, not wholly swallowed of Death!
Note also that the Rolands of Lyons are again in Paris; for the
second and final time. King's Inspectorship is abrogated at
Lyons, as elsewhere: Roland has his retiring-pension to claim, if
attainable; has Patriot friends to commune with; at lowest, has a
book to publish. That young Barbaroux and the Rolands came
together; that elderly Spartan Roland liked, or even loved the
young Spartan, and was loved by him, one can fancy: and Madame—?
Breathe not, thou poison-breath, Evil-speech! That soul is
taintless, clear, as the mirror-sea. And yet if they too did look
into each other's eyes, and each, in silence, in tragical
renunciance, did find that the other was all too lovely? Honi
soit! She calls him 'beautiful as Antinous:' he 'will speak
elsewhere of that astonishing woman.'—A Madame d'Udon (_or some
such name, for Dumont does not recollect quite clearly_) gives
copious Breakfast to the Brissotin Deputies and us Friends of
Freedom, at her house in the Place Vendome; with temporary
celebrity, with graces and wreathed smiles; not without cost.
There, amid wide babble and jingle, our plan of Legislative
Debate is settled for the day, and much counselling held. Strict
Roland is seen there, but does not go often. (_Dumont, Souvenirs,
p. 374._)
Chapter 2.5.IV.
No Sugar.
Such are our inward troubles; seen in the Cities of the South;
extant, seen or unseen, in all cities and districts, North as
well as South. For in all are Aristocrats, more or less
malignant; watched by Patriotism; which again, being of various
shades, from light Fayettist-Feuillant down to deep-sombre
Jacobin, has to watch itself!
Directories of Departments, what we call County Magistracies,
being chosen by Citizens of a too 'active' class, are found to
pull one way; Municipalities, Town Magistracies, to pull the
other way. In all places too are Dissident Priests; whom the
Legislative will have to deal with: contumacious individuals,
working on that angriest of passions; plotting, enlisting for
Coblentz; or suspected of plotting: fuel of a universal
unconstitutional heat. What to do with them? They may be
conscientious as well as contumacious: gently they should be
dealt with, and yet it must be speedily. In unilluminated La
Vendee the simple are like to be seduced by them; many a simple
peasant, a Cathelineau the wool-dealer wayfaring meditative with
his wool-packs, in these hamlets, dubiously shakes his head! Two
Assembly Commissioners went thither last Autumn; considerate
Gensonne, not yet called to be a Senator; Gallois, an editorial
man. These Two, consulting with General Dumouriez, spake and
worked, softly, with judgment; they have hushed down the
irritation, and produced a soft Report,—for the time.
The General himself doubts not in the least but he can keep peace
there; being an able man. He passes these frosty months among the
pleasant people of Niort, occupies 'tolerably handsome apartments
in the Castle of Niort,' and tempers the minds of men.
(_Dumouriez, ii. 129._) Why is there but one Dumouriez? Elsewhere
you find South or North, nothing but untempered obscure jarring;
which breaks forth ever and anon into open clangour of riot.
Southern Perpignan has its tocsin, by torch light; with rushing
and onslaught: Northern Caen not less, by daylight; with
Aristocrats ranged in arms at Places of Worship; Departmental
compromise proving impossible; breaking into musketry and a Plot
discovered! (_Hist. Parl. xii. 131, 141; xiii. 114, 417._) Add
Hunger too: for Bread, always dear, is getting dearer: not so
much as Sugar can be had; for good reasons. Poor Simoneau, Mayor
of Etampes, in this Northern region, hanging out his Red Flag in
some riot of grains, is trampled to death by a hungry exasperated
People. What a trade this of Mayor, in these times! Mayor of
Saint-Denis hung at the Lanterne, by Suspicion and Dyspepsia, as
we saw long since; Mayor of Vaison, as we saw lately, buried
before dead; and now this poor Simoneau, the Tanner, of
Etampes,—whom legal Constitutionalism will not forget.
With factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily
what they call dechire, torn asunder this poor country: France
and all that is French. For, over seas too come bad news. In
black Saint-Domingo, before that variegated Glitter in the Champs
Elysees was lit for an Accepted Constitution, there had risen,
and was burning contemporary with it, quite another variegated
Glitter and nocturnal Fulgor, had we known it: of molasses and
ardent-spirits; of sugar-boileries, plantations, furniture,
cattle and men: skyhigh; the Plain of Cap Francais one huge whirl
of smoke and flame!
What a change here, in these two years; since that first 'Box of
Tricolor Cockades' got through the Custom-house, and atrabiliar
Creoles too rejoiced that there was a levelling of Bastilles!
Levelling is comfortable, as we often say: levelling, yet only
down to oneself. Your pale-white Creoles, have their
grievances:—and your yellow Quarteroons? And your dark-yellow
Mulattoes? And your Slaves soot-black? Quarteroon Oge, Friend of
our Parisian Brissotin Friends of the Blacks, felt, for his share
too, that Insurrection was the most sacred of duties. So the
tricolor Cockades had fluttered and swashed only some three
months on the Creole hat, when Oge's signal-conflagrations went
aloft; with the voice of rage and terror. Repressed, doomed to
die, he took black powder or seedgrains in the hollow of his
hand, this Oge; sprinkled a film of white ones on the top, and
said to his Judges, "Behold they are white;"—then shook his hand,
and said "Where are the Whites, Ou sont les Blancs?"
So now, in the Autumn of 1791, looking from the sky-windows of
Cap Francais, thick clouds of smoke girdle our horizon, smoke in
the day, in the night fire; preceded by fugitive shrieking white
women, by Terror and Rumour. Black demonised squadrons are
massacring and harrying, with nameless cruelty. They fight and
fire 'from behind thickets and coverts,' for the Black man loves
the Bush; they rush to the attack, thousands strong, with
brandished cutlasses and fusils, with caperings, shoutings and
vociferation,—which, if the White Volunteer Company stands firm,
dwindle into staggerings, into quick gabblement, into panic
flight at the first volley, perhaps before it. (_Deux Amis, x.
157._) Poor Oge could be broken on the wheel; this fire-whirlwind
too can be abated, driven up into the Mountains: but
Saint-Domingo is shaken, as Oge's seedgrains were; shaking,
writhing in long horrid death-throes, it is Black without remedy;
and remains, as African Haiti, a monition to the world.
O my Parisian Friends, is not this, as well as Regraters and
Feuillant Plotters, one cause of the astonishing dearth of Sugar!
The Grocer, palpitant, with drooping lip, sees his Sugar taxe;
weighed out by Female Patriotism, in instant retail, at the
inadequate rate of twenty-five sous, or thirteen pence a pound.
"Abstain from it?" yes, ye Patriot Sections, all ye Jacobins,
abstain! Louvet and Collot-d'Herbois so advise; resolute to make
the sacrifice: though "how shall literary men do without coffee?"
Abstain, with an oath; that is the surest! (_Debats des Jacobins,
&c. Hist. Parl. xiii. 171, 92-98._)
Also, for like reason, must not Brest and the Shipping Interest
languish? Poor Brest languishes, sorrowing, not without spleen;
denounces an Aristocrat Bertrand-Moleville traitorous Aristocrat
Marine-Minister. Do not her Ships and King's Ships lie rotting
piecemeal in harbour; Naval Officers mostly fled, and on furlough
too, with pay? Little stirring there; if it be not the Brest
Gallies, whip-driven, with their Galley-Slaves,—alas, with some
Forty of our hapless Swiss Soldiers of Chateau-Vieux, among
others! These Forty Swiss, too mindful of Nanci, do now, in their
red wool caps, tug sorrowfully at the oar; looking into the
Atlantic brine, which reflects only their own sorrowful shaggy
faces; and seem forgotten of Hope.
But, on the whole, may we not say, in fugitive language, that the
French Constitution which shall march is very rheumatic, full of
shooting internal pains, in joint and muscle; and will not march
without difficulty?
Chapter 2.5.V.
Kings and Emigrants.
Extremely rheumatic Constitutions have been known to march, and
keep on their feet, though in a staggering sprawling manner, for
long periods, in virtue of one thing only: that the Head were
healthy. But this Head of the French Constitution! What King
Louis is and cannot help being, Readers already know. A King who
cannot take the Constitution, nor reject the Constitution: nor do
anything at all, but miserably ask, What shall I do? A King
environed with endless confusions; in whose own mind is no germ
of order. Haughty implacable remnants of Noblesse struggling with
humiliated repentant Barnave-Lameths: struggling in that obscure
element of fetchers and carriers, of Half-pay braggarts from the
Cafe Valois, of Chambermaids, whisperers, and subaltern officious
persons; fierce Patriotism looking on all the while, more and
more suspicious, from without: what, in such struggle, can they
do? At best, cancel one another, and produce zero. Poor King!
Barnave and your Senatorial Jaucourts speak earnestly into this
ear; Bertrand-Moleville, and Messengers from Coblentz, speak
earnestly into that: the poor Royal head turns to the one side
and to the other side; can turn itself fixedly to no side. Let
Decency drop a veil over it: sorrier misery was seldom enacted in
the world. This one small fact, does it not throw the saddest
light on much? The Queen is lamenting to Madam Campan: "What am I
to do? When they, these Barnaves, get us advised to any step
which the Noblesse do not like, then I am pouted at; nobody comes
to my card table; the King's Couchee is solitary." (_Campan, ii.
177-202._) In such a case of dubiety, what is one to do? Go
inevitably to the ground!
The King has accepted this Constitution, knowing beforehand that
it will not serve: he studies it, and executes it in the hope
mainly that it will be found inexecutable. King's Ships lie
rotting in harbour, their officers gone; the Armies disorganised;
robbers scour the highways, which wear down unrepaired; all
Public Service lies slack and waste: the Executive makes no
effort, or an effort only to throw the blame on the Constitution.
Shamming death, 'faisant le mort!' What Constitution, use it in
this manner, can march? 'Grow to disgust the Nation' it will
truly, (_Bertrand-Moleville, i. c. 4._)—unless you first grow to
disgust the Nation! It is Bertrand de Moleville's plan, and his
Majesty's; the best they can form.
Or if, after all, this best-plan proved too slow; proved a
failure? Provident of that too, the Queen, shrouded in deepest
mystery, 'writes all day, in cipher, day after day, to Coblentz;'
Engineer Goguelat, he of the Night of Spurs, whom the Lafayette
Amnesty has delivered from Prison, rides and runs. Now and then,
on fit occasion, a Royal familiar visit can be paid to that Salle
de Manege, an affecting encouraging Royal Speech (_sincere, doubt
it not, for the moment_) can be delivered there, and the Senators
all cheer and almost weep;—at the same time Mallet du Pan has
visibly ceased editing, and invisibly bears abroad a King's
Autograph, soliciting help from the Foreign Potentates.
(_Moleville, i. 370._) Unhappy Louis, do this thing or else that
other,—if thou couldst!
The thing which the King's Government did do was to stagger
distractedly from contradiction to contradiction; and wedding
Fire to Water, envelope itself in hissing, and ashy steam! Danton
and needy corruptible Patriots are sopped with presents of cash:
they accept the sop: they rise refreshed by it, and travel their
own way. (_Ibid. i. c. 17._) Nay, the King's Government did
likewise hire Hand-clappers, or claqueurs, persons to applaud.
Subterranean Rivarol has Fifteen Hundred men in King's pay, at
the rate of some ten thousand pounds sterling, per month; what he
calls 'a staff of genius:' Paragraph-writers,
Placard-Journalists; 'two hundred and eighty Applauders, at three
shillings a day:' one of the strangest Staffs ever commanded by
man. The muster-rolls and account-books of which still exist.
(_Montgaillard, iii. 41._) Bertrand-Moleville himself, in a way
he thinks very dexterous, contrives to pack the Galleries of the
Legislative; gets Sansculottes hired to go thither, and applaud
at a signal given, they fancying it was Petion that bid them: a
device which was not detected for almost a week. Dexterous
enough; as if a man finding the Day fast decline should determine
on altering the Clockhands: that is a thing possible for him.
Here too let us note an unexpected apparition of Philippe
d'Orleans at Court: his last at the Levee of any King. D'Orleans,
sometime in the winter months seemingly, has been appointed to
that old first-coveted rank of Admiral,—though only over ships
rotting in port. The wished-for comes too late! However, he waits
on Bertrand-Moleville to give thanks: nay to state that he would
willingly thank his Majesty in person; that, in spite of all the
horrible things men have said and sung, he is far from being his
Majesty's enemy; at bottom, how far! Bertrand delivers the
message, brings about the royal Interview, which does pass to the
satisfaction of his Majesty; d'Orleans seeming clearly repentant,
determined to turn over a new leaf. And yet, next Sunday, what do
we see? 'Next Sunday,' says Bertrand, 'he came to the King's
Levee; but the Courtiers ignorant of what had passed, the crowd
of Royalists who were accustomed to resort thither on that day
specially to pay their court, gave him the most humiliating
reception. They came pressing round him; managing, as if by
mistake, to tread on his toes, to elbow him towards the door, and
not let him enter again. He went downstairs to her Majesty's
Apartments, where cover was laid; so soon as he shewed face,
sounds rose on all sides, "Messieurs, take care of the dishes,"
as if he had carried poison in his pockets. The insults which his
presence every where excited forced him to retire without having
seen the Royal Family: the crowd followed him to the Queen's
Staircase; in descending, he received a spitting (_crachat_) on
the head, and some others, on his clothes. Rage and spite were
seen visibly painted on his face:' (_Bertrand-Moleville, i.
177._) as indeed how could they miss to be? He imputes it all to
the King and Queen, who know nothing of it, who are even much
grieved at it; and so descends, to his Chaos again. Bertrand was
there at the Chateau that day himself, and an eye-witness to
these things.
For the rest, Non-jurant Priests, and the repression of them,
will distract the King's conscience; Emigrant Princes and
Noblesse will force him to double-dealing: there must be veto on
veto; amid the ever-waxing indignation of men. For Patriotism, as
we said, looks on from without, more and more suspicious. Waxing
tempest, blast after blast, of Patriot indignation, from without;
dim inorganic whirl of Intrigues, Fatuities, within! Inorganic,
fatuous; from which the eye turns away. De Stael intrigues for
her so gallant Narbonne, to get him made War-Minister; and ceases
not, having got him made. The King shall fly to Rouen; shall
there, with the gallant Narbonne, properly 'modify the
Constitution.' This is the same brisk Narbonne, who, last year,
cut out from their entanglement, by force of dragoons, those poor
fugitive Royal Aunts: men say he is at bottom their Brother, or
even more, so scandalous is scandal. He drives now, with his de
Stael, rapidly to the Armies, to the Frontier Towns; produces
rose-coloured Reports, not too credible; perorates, gesticulates;
wavers poising himself on the top, for a moment, seen of men;
then tumbles, dismissed, washed away by the Time-flood.
Also the fair Princess de Lamballe intrigues, bosom friend of her
Majesty: to the angering of Patriotism. Beautiful Unfortunate,
why did she ever return from England? Her small silver-voice,
what can it profit in that piping of the black World-tornado?
Which will whirl her, poor fragile Bird of Paradise, against grim
rocks. Lamballe and de Stael intrigue visibly, apart or together:
but who shall reckon how many others, and in what infinite ways,
invisibly! Is there not what one may call an 'Austrian
Committee,' sitting invisible in the Tuileries; centre of an
invisible Anti-National Spiderweb, which, for we sleep among
mysteries, stretches its threads to the ends of the Earth?
Journalist Carra has now the clearest certainty of it: to
Brissotin Patriotism, and France generally, it is growing more
and more probable.
O Reader, hast thou no pity for this Constitution? Rheumatic
shooting pains in its members; pressure of hydrocephale and
hysteric vapours on its Brain: a Constitution divided against
itself; which will never march, hardly even stagger? Why were not
Drouet and Procureur Sausse in their beds, that unblessed
Varennes Night! Why did they not, in the name of Heaven, let the
Korff Berline go whither it listed! Nameless incoherency,
incompatibility, perhaps prodigies at which the world still
shudders, had been spared.
But now comes the third thing that bodes ill for the marching of
this French Constitution: besides the French People, and the
French King, there is thirdly—the assembled European world? it
has become necessary now to look at that also. Fair France is so
luminous: and round and round it, is troublous Cimmerian Night.
Calonnes, Breteuils hover dim, far-flown; overnetting Europe with
intrigues. From Turin to Vienna; to Berlin, and utmost Petersburg
in the frozen North! Great Burke has raised his great voice long
ago; eloquently demonstrating that the end of an Epoch is come,
to all appearance the end of Civilised Time. Him many answer:
Camille Desmoulins, Clootz Speaker of Mankind, Paine the
rebellious Needleman, and honourable Gallic Vindicators in that
country and in this: but the great Burke remains unanswerable;
'The Age of Chivalry is gone,' and could not but go, having now
produced the still more indomitable Age of Hunger. Altars enough,
of the Dubois-Rohan sort, changing to the Gobel-and-Talleyrand
sort, are faring by rapid transmutation to, shall we say, the
right Proprietor of them? French Game and French Game-Preservers
did alight on the Cliffs of Dover, with cries of distress. Who
will say that the end of much is not come? A set of mortals has
risen, who believe that Truth is not a printed Speculation, but a
practical Fact; that Freedom and Brotherhood are possible in this
Earth, supposed always to be Belial's, which 'the Supreme Quack'
was to inherit! Who will say that Church, State, Throne, Altar
are not in danger; that the sacred Strong-box itself, last
Palladium of effete Humanity, may not be blasphemously blown
upon, and its padlocks undone?
The poor Constituent Assembly might act with what delicacy and
diplomacy it would; declare that it abjured meddling with its
neighbours, foreign conquest, and so forth; but from the first
this thing was to be predicted: that old Europe and new France
could not subsist together. A Glorious Revolution, oversetting
State-Prisons and Feudalism; publishing, with outburst of
Federative Cannon, in face of all the Earth, that Appearance is
not Reality, how shall it subsist amid Governments which, if
Appearance is not Reality, are—one knows not what? In death feud,
and internecine wrestle and battle, it shall subsist with them;
not otherwise.
Rights of Man, printed on Cotton Handkerchiefs, in various
dialects of human speech, pass over to the Frankfort Fair.
(_Toulongeon, i. 256._) What say we, Frankfort Fair? They have
crossed Euphrates and the fabulous Hydaspes; wafted themselves
beyond the Ural, Altai, Himmalayah: struck off from wood
stereotypes, in angular Picture-writing, they are jabbered and
jingled of in China and Japan. Where will it stop? Kien-Lung
smells mischief; not the remotest Dalai-Lama shall now knead his
dough-pills in peace.—Hateful to us; as is the Night! Bestir
yourselves, ye Defenders of Order! They do bestir themselves: all
Kings and Kinglets, with their spiritual temporal array, are
astir; their brows clouded with menace. Diplomatic emissaries fly
swift; Conventions, privy Conclaves assemble; and wise wigs wag,
taking what counsel they can.
Also, as we said, the Pamphleteer draws pen, on this side and
that: zealous fists beat the Pulpit-drum. Not without issue! Did
not iron Birmingham, shouting 'Church and King,' itself knew not
why, burst out, last July, into rage, drunkenness, and fire; and
your Priestleys, and the like, dining there on that Bastille day,
get the maddest singeing: scandalous to consider! In which same
days, as we can remark, high Potentates, Austrian and Prussian,
with Emigrants, were faring towards Pilnitz in Saxony; there, on
the 27th of August, they, keeping to themselves what further
'secret Treaty' there might or might not be, did publish their
hopes and their threatenings, their Declaration that it was 'the
common cause of Kings.'
Where a will to quarrel is, there is a way. Our readers remember
that Pentecost-Night, Fourth of August 1789, when Feudalism fell
in a few hours? The National Assembly, in abolishing Feudalism,
promised that 'compensation' should be given; and did endeavour
to give it. Nevertheless the Austrian Kaiser answers that his
German Princes, for their part, cannot be unfeudalised; that they
have Possessions in French Alsace, and Feudal Rights secured to
them, for which no conceivable compensation will suffice. So this
of the Possessioned Princes, 'Princes Possessiones' is bandied
from Court to Court; covers acres of diplomatic paper at this
day: a weariness to the world. Kaunitz argues from Vienna;
Delessart responds from Paris, though perhaps not sharply enough.
The Kaiser and his Possessioned Princes will too evidently come
and take compensation—so much as they can get. Nay might one not
partition France, as we have done Poland, and are doing; and so
pacify it with a vengeance?
From South to North! For actually it is 'the common cause of
Kings.' Swedish Gustav, sworn Knight of the Queen of France, will
lead Coalised Armies;—had not Ankarstrom treasonously shot him;
for, indeed, there were griefs nearer home. (_30th March 1792
Annual Register, p. 11_). Austria and Prussia speak at Pilnitz;
all men intensely listening: Imperial Rescripts have gone out
from Turin; there will be secret Convention at Vienna. Catherine
of Russia beckons approvingly; will help, were she ready. Spanish
Bourbon stirs amid his pillows; from him too, even from him,
shall there come help. Lean Pitt, 'the Minister of Preparatives,'
looks out from his watch-tower in Saint-James's, in a suspicious
manner. Councillors plotting, Calonnes dim-hovering;—alas,
Serjeants rub-a-dubbing openly through all manner of German
market-towns, collecting ragged valour! (_Toulongeon, ii.
100-117._) Look where you will, immeasurable Obscurantism is
girdling this fair France; which, again, will not be girdled by
it. Europe is in travail; pang after pang; what a shriek was that
of Pilnitz! The birth will be: WAR.
Nay the worst feature of the business is this last, still to be
named; the Emigrants at Coblentz, so many thousands ranking
there, in bitter hate and menace: King's Brothers, all Princes of
the Blood except wicked d'Orleans; your duelling de Castries,
your eloquent Cazales; bull-headed Malseignes, a wargod Broglie;
Distaff Seigneurs, insulted Officers, all that have ridden across
the Rhine-stream;—d'Artois welcoming Abbe Maury with a kiss, and
clasping him publicly to his own royal heart! Emigration, flowing
over the Frontiers, now in drops, now in streams, in various
humours of fear, of petulance, rage and hope, ever since those
first Bastille days when d'Artois went, 'to shame the citizens of
Paris,'—has swollen to the size of a Phenomenon of the world.
Coblentz is become a small extra-national Versailles; a
Versailles in partibus: briguing, intriguing, favouritism,
strumpetocracy itself, they say, goes on there; all the old
activities, on a small scale, quickened by hungry Revenge.
Enthusiasm, of loyalty, of hatred and hope, has risen to a high
pitch; as, in any Coblentz tavern, you may hear, in speech, and
in singing. Maury assists in the interior Council; much is
decided on; for one thing, they keep lists of the dates of your
emigrating; a month sooner, or a month later determines your
greater or your less right to the coming Division of the Spoil.
Cazales himself, because he had occasionally spoken with a
Constitutional tone, was looked on coldly at first: so pure are
our principles. (_Montgaillard, iii. 517; Toulongeon, (_ubi
supra_)._) And arms are a-hammering at Liege; 'three thousand
horses' ambling hitherward from the Fairs of Germany: Cavalry
enrolling; likewise Foot-soldiers, 'in blue coat, red waistcoat,
and nankeen trousers!' (_See Hist. Parl. xiii. 11-38, 41-61, 358,
&c._) They have their secret domestic correspondences, as their
open foreign: with disaffected Crypto-Aristocrats, with
contumacious Priests, with Austrian Committee in the Tuileries.
Deserters are spirited over by assiduous crimps; Royal-Allemand
is gone almost wholly. Their route of march, towards France and
the Division of the Spoil, is marked out, were the Kaiser once
ready. "It is said, they mean to poison the sources; but," adds
Patriotism making Report of it, "they will not poison the source
of Liberty," whereat 'on applaudit,' we cannot but applaud. Also
they have manufactories of False Assignats; and men that
circulate in the interior distributing and disbursing the same;
one of these we denounce now to Legislative Patriotism: 'A man
Lebrun by name; about thirty years of age, with blonde hair and
in quantity; has,' only for the time being surely, 'a black-eye,
oeil poche; goes in a wiski with a black horse,' (_Moniteur,
Seance du 2 Novembre 1791 (_Hist. Parl. xii. 212_)._)—always
keeping his Gig!
Unhappy Emigrants, it was their lot, and the lot of France! They
are ignorant of much that they should know: of themselves, of
what is around them. A Political Party that knows not when it is
beaten, may become one of the fatallist of things, to itself, and
to all. Nothing will convince these men that they cannot scatter
the French Revolution at the first blast of their war-trumpet;
that the French Revolution is other than a blustering
Effervescence, of brawlers and spouters, which, at the flash of
chivalrous broadswords, at the rustle of gallows-ropes, will
burrow itself, in dens the deeper the welcomer. But, alas, what
man does know and measure himself, and the things that are round
him;—else where were the need of physical fighting at all? Never,
till they are cleft asunder, can these heads believe that a
Sansculottic arm has any vigour in it: cleft asunder, it will be
too late to believe.
One may say, without spleen against his poor erring brothers of
any side, that above all other mischiefs, this of the Emigrant
Nobles acted fatally on France. Could they have known, could they
have understood! In the beginning of 1789, a splendour and a
terror still surrounded them: the Conflagration of their
Chateaus, kindled by months of obstinacy, went out after the
Fourth of August; and might have continued out, had they at all
known what to defend, what to relinquish as indefensible. They
were still a graduated Hierarchy of Authorities, or the
accredited Similitude of such: they sat there, uniting King with
Commonalty; transmitting and translating gradually, from degree
to degree, the command of the one into the obedience of the
other; rendering command and obedience still possible. Had they
understood their place, and what to do in it, this French
Revolution, which went forth explosively in years and in months,
might have spread itself over generations; and not a
torture-death but a quiet euthanasia have been provided for many
things.
But they were proud and high, these men; they were not wise to
consider. They spurned all from them; in disdainful hate, they
drew the sword and flung away the scabbard. France has not only
no Hierarchy of Authorities, to translate command into obedience;
its Hierarchy of Authorities has fled to the enemies of France;
calls loudly on the enemies of France to interfere armed, who
want but a pretext to do that. Jealous Kings and Kaisers might
have looked on long, meditating interference, yet afraid and
ashamed to interfere: but now do not the King's Brothers, and all
French Nobles, Dignitaries and Authorities that are free to
speak, which the King himself is not,—passionately invite us, in
the name of Right and of Might? Ranked at Coblentz, from Fifteen
to Twenty thousand stand now brandishing their weapons, with the
cry: On, on! Yes, Messieurs, you shall on;—and divide the spoil
according to your dates of emigrating.
Of all which things a poor Legislative Assembly, and Patriot
France, is informed: by denunciant friend, by triumphant foe.
Sulleau's Pamphlets, of the Rivarol Staff of Genius, circulate;
heralding supreme hope. Durosoy's Placards tapestry the walls;
Chant du Coq crows day, pecked at by Tallien's Ami des Citoyens.
King's-Friend, Royou, Ami du Roi, can name, in exact arithmetical
ciphers, the contingents of the various Invading Potentates; in
all, Four hundred and nineteen thousand Foreign fighting men,
with Fifteen thousand Emigrants. Not to reckon these your daily
and hourly desertions, which an Editor must daily record, of
whole Companies, and even Regiments, crying Vive le Roi, vive la
Reine, and marching over with banners spread: (_Ami du Roi
Newspaper in Hist. Parl. xiii. 175._)—lies all, and wind; yet to
Patriotism not wind; nor, alas, one day, to Royou! Patriotism,
therefore, may brawl and babble yet a little while: but its hours
are numbered: Europe is coming with Four hundred and nineteen
thousand and the Chivalry of France; the gallows, one may hope,
will get its own.
Chapter 2.5.VI.
Brigands and Jales.
We shall have War, then; and on what terms! With an Executive
'pretending,' really with less and less deceptiveness now, 'to be
dead;' casting even a wishful eye towards the enemy: on such
terms we shall have War.
Public Functionary in vigorous action there is none; if it be not
Rivarol with his Staff of Genius and Two hundred and eighty
Applauders. The Public Service lies waste: the very tax-gatherer
has forgotten his cunning: in this and the other Provincial Board
of Management (_Directoire de Departmente_) it is found advisable
to retain what Taxes you can gather, to pay your own inevitable
expenditures. Our Revenue is Assignats; emission on emission of
Paper-money. And the Army; our Three grand Armies, of Rochambeau,
of Luckner, of Lafayette? Lean, disconsolate hover these Three
grand Armies, watching the Frontiers there; three Flights of
long-necked Cranes in moulting time;—wretched, disobedient,
disorganised; who never saw fire; the old Generals and Officers
gone across the Rhine. War-minister Narbonne, he of the
rose-coloured Reports, solicits recruitments, equipments, money,
always money; threatens, since he can get none,—to 'take his
sword,' which belongs to himself, and go serve his country with
that. (_Moniteur, Seance du 23 Janvier, 1792; Biographie des
Ministres para Narbonne._)
The question of questions is: What shall be done? Shall we, with
a desperate defiance which Fortune sometimes favours, draw the
sword at once, in the face of this in-rushing world of Emigration
and Obscurantism; or wait, and temporise and diplomatise, till,
if possible, our resources mature themselves a little? And yet
again are our resources growing towards maturity; or growing the
other way? Dubious: the ablest Patriots are divided; Brissot and
his Brissotins, or Girondins, in the Legislative, cry aloud for
the former defiant plan; Robespierre, in the Jacobins, pleads as
loud for the latter dilatory one: with responses, even with
mutual reprimands; distracting the Mother of Patriotism. Consider
also what agitated Breakfasts there may be at Madame d'Udon's in
the Place Vendome! The alarm of all men is great. Help, ye
Patriots; and O at least agree; for the hour presses. Frost was
not yet gone, when in that 'tolerably handsome apartment of the
Castle of Niort,' there arrived a Letter: General Dumouriez must
to Paris. It is War-minister Narbonne that writes; the General
shall give counsel about many things. (_Dumouriez, ii. c. 6._) In
the month of February 1792, Brissotin friends welcome their
Dumouriez Polymetis,—comparable really to an antique Ulysses in
modern costume; quick, elastic, shifty, insuppressible, a
'many-counselled man.'
Let the Reader fancy this fair France with a whole Cimmerian
Europe girdling her, rolling in on her; black, to burst in red
thunder of War; fair France herself hand-shackled and
foot-shackled in the weltering complexities of this Social
Clothing, or Constitution, which they have made for her; a France
that, in such Constitution, cannot march! And Hunger too; and
plotting Aristocrats, and excommunicating Dissident Priests: 'The
man Lebrun by name' urging his black wiski, visible to the eye:
and, still more terrible in his invisibility, Engineer Goguelat,
with Queen's cipher, riding and running!
The excommunicatory Priests give new trouble in the Maine and
Loire; La Vendee, nor Cathelineau the wool-dealer, has not ceased
grumbling and rumbling. Nay behold Jales itself once more: how
often does that real-imaginary Camp of the Fiend require to be
extinguished! For near two years now, it has waned faint and
again waxed bright, in the bewildered soul of Patriotism:
actually, if Patriotism knew it, one of the most surprising
products of Nature working with Art. Royalist Seigneurs, under
this or the other pretext, assemble the simple people of these
Cevennes Mountains; men not unused to revolt, and with heart for
fighting, could their poor heads be got persuaded. The Royalist
Seigneur harangues; harping mainly on the religious string: "True
Priests maltreated, false Priests intruded, Protestants (_once
dragooned_) now triumphing, things sacred given to the dogs;" and
so produces, from the pious Mountaineer throat, rough growlings.
"Shall we not testify, then, ye brave hearts of the Cevennes;
march to the rescue? Holy Religion; duty to God and King?" "Si
fait, si fait, Just so, just so," answer the brave hearts always:
"Mais il y a de bien bonnes choses dans la Revolution, But there
are many good things in the Revolution too!"—And so the matter,
cajole as we may, will only turn on its axis, not stir from the
spot, and remains theatrical merely. (_Dampmartin, i. 201._)
Nevertheless deepen your cajolery, harp quick and quicker, ye
Royalist Seigneurs; with a dead-lift effort you may bring it to
that. In the month of June next, this Camp of Jales will step
forth as a theatricality suddenly become real; Two thousand
strong, and with the boast that it is Seventy thousand: most
strange to see; with flags flying, bayonets fixed; with
Proclamation, and d'Artois Commission of civil war! Let some
Rebecqui, or other the like hot-clear Patriot; let some
'Lieutenant-Colonel Aubry,' if Rebecqui is busy elsewhere, raise
instantaneous National Guards, and disperse and dissolve it; and
blow the Old Castle asunder, (_Moniteur, Seance du 15 Juillet
1792._) that so, if possible, we hear of it no more!
In the Months of February and March, it is recorded, the terror,
especially of rural France, had risen even to the transcendental
pitch: not far from madness. In Town and Hamlet is rumour; of
war, massacre: that Austrians, Aristocrats, above all, that The
Brigands are close by. Men quit their houses and huts; rush
fugitive, shrieking, with wife and child, they know not whither.
Such a terror, the eye-witnesses say, never fell on a Nation; nor
shall again fall, even in Reigns of Terror expressly so-called.
The Countries of the Loire, all the Central and South-East
regions, start up distracted, 'simultaneously as by an electric
shock;'—for indeed grain too gets scarcer and scarcer. 'The
people barricade the entrances of Towns, pile stones in the upper
stories, the women prepare boiling water; from moment to moment,
expecting the attack. In the Country, the alarm-bell rings
incessant: troops of peasants, gathered by it, scour the
highways, seeking an imaginary enemy. They are armed mostly with
scythes stuck in wood; and, arriving in wild troops at the
barricaded Towns, are themselves sometimes taken for Brigands.'
(_Newspapers, &c. in Hist. Parl. xiii. 325._)
So rushes old France: old France is rushing down. What the end
will be is known to no mortal; that the end is near all mortals
may know.
Chapter 2.5.VII.
Constitution will not march.
To all which our poor Legislative, tied up by an unmarching
Constitution, can oppose nothing, by way of remedy, but mere
bursts of parliamentary eloquence! They go on, debating,
denouncing, objurgating: loud weltering Chaos, which devours
itself.
But their two thousand and odd Decrees? Reader, these happily
concern not thee, nor me. Mere Occasional Decrees, foolish and
not foolish; sufficient for that day was its own evil! Of the
whole two thousand there are not, now half a score, and these
mostly blighted in the bud by royal Veto, that will profit or
disprofit us. On the 17th of January, the Legislative, for one
thing, got its High Court, its Haute Cour, set up at Orleans. The
theory had been given by the Constituent, in May last, but this
is the reality: a Court for the trial of Political Offences; a
Court which cannot want work. To this it was decreed that there
needed no royal Acceptance, therefore that there could be no
Veto. Also Priests can now be married; ever since last October. A
patriotic adventurous Priest had made bold to marry himself then;
and not thinking this enough, came to the bar with his new
spouse; that the whole world might hold honey-moon with him, and
a Law be obtained.
Less joyful are the Laws against Refractory Priests; and yet no
less needful! Decrees on Priests and Decrees on Emigrants: these
are the two brief Series of Decrees, worked out with endless
debate, and then cancelled by Veto, which mainly concern us here.
For an august National Assembly must needs conquer these
Refractories, Clerical or Laic, and thumbscrew them into
obedience; yet, behold, always as you turn your legislative
thumbscrew, and will press and even crush till Refractories give
way,—King's Veto steps in, with magical paralysis; and your
thumbscrew, hardly squeezing, much less crushing, does not act!
Truly a melancholy Set of Decrees, a pair of Sets; paralysed by
Veto! First, under date the 28th of October 1791, we have
Legislative Proclamation, issued by herald and bill-sticker;
inviting Monsieur, the King's Brother to return within two
months, under penalties. To which invitation Monsieur replies
nothing; or indeed replies by Newspaper Parody, inviting the
august Legislative 'to return to common sense within two months,'
under penalties. Whereupon the Legislative must take stronger
measures. So, on the 9th of November, we declare all Emigrants to
be 'suspect of conspiracy;' and, in brief, to be 'outlawed,' if
they have not returned at Newyear's-day:—Will the King say Veto?
That 'triple impost' shall be levied on these men's Properties,
or even their Properties be 'put in sequestration,' one can
understand. But further, on Newyear's-day itself, not an
individual having 'returned,' we declare, and with fresh emphasis
some fortnight later again declare, That Monsieur is dechu,
forfeited of his eventual Heirship to the Crown; nay more that
Conde, Calonne, and a considerable List of others are accused of
high treason; and shall be judged by our High Court of Orleans:
Veto!—Then again as to Nonjurant Priests: it was decreed, in
November last, that they should forfeit what Pensions they had;
be 'put under inspection, under surveillance,' and, if need were,
be banished: Veto! A still sharper turn is coming; but to this
also the answer will be, Veto.
Veto after Veto; your thumbscrew paralysed! Gods and men may see
that the Legislative is in a false position. As, alas, who is in
a true one? Voices already murmur for a 'National Convention.'
(_December 1791 (_Hist. Parl. xii. 257_)._) This poor
Legislative, spurred and stung into action by a whole France and
a whole Europe, cannot act; can only objurgate and perorate; with
stormy 'motions,' and motion in which is no way: with
effervescence, with noise and fuliginous fury!
What scenes in that National Hall! President jingling his
inaudible bell; or, as utmost signal of distress, clapping on his
hat; 'the tumult subsiding in twenty minutes,' and this or the
other indiscreet Member sent to the Abbaye Prison for three days!
Suspected Persons must be summoned and questioned; old M. de
Sombreuil of the Invalides has to give account of himself, and
why he leaves his Gates open. Unusual smoke rose from the Sevres
Pottery, indicating conspiracy; the Potters explained that it was
Necklace-Lamotte's Memoirs, bought up by her Majesty, which they
were endeavouring to suppress by fire, (_Moniteur, Seance du 28
Mai 1792; Campan, ii. 196._)—which nevertheless he that runs may
still read.
Again, it would seem, Duke de Brissac and the King's
Constitutional-Guard are 'making cartridges secretly in the
cellars;' a set of Royalists, pure and impure; black cut-throats
many of them, picked out of gaming houses and sinks; in all Six
thousand instead of Eighteen hundred; who evidently gloom on us
every time we enter the Chateau. (_Dumouriez, ii. 168._)
Wherefore, with infinite debate, let Brissac and King's Guard be
disbanded. Disbanded accordingly they are; after only two months
of existence, for they did not get on foot till March of this
same year. So ends briefly the King's new Constitutional Maison
Militaire; he must now be guarded by mere Swiss and blue
Nationals again. It seems the lot of Constitutional things. New
Constitutional Maison Civile he would never even establish, much
as Barnave urged it; old resident Duchesses sniffed at it, and
held aloof; on the whole her Majesty thought it not worth while,
the Noblesse would so soon be back triumphant. (_Campan, ii. c.
19._)
Or, looking still into this National Hall and its scenes, behold
Bishop Torne, a Constitutional Prelate, not of severe morals,
demanding that 'religious costumes and such caricatures' be
abolished. Bishop Torne warms, catches fire; finishes by untying,
and indignantly flinging on the table, as if for gage or bet, his
own pontifical cross. Which cross, at any rate, is instantly
covered by the cross of Te-Deum Fauchet, then by other crosses,
and insignia, till all are stripped; this clerical Senator
clutching off his skull-cap, that other his frill-collar,—lest
Fanaticism return on us. (_Moniteur, du 7 Avril 1792; Deux Amis,
vii. 111._)
Quick is the movement here! And then so confused, unsubstantial,
you might call it almost spectral; pallid, dim, inane, like the
Kingdoms of Dis! Unruly Liguet, shrunk to a kind of spectre for
us, pleads here, some cause that he has: amid rumour and
interruption, which excel human patience; he 'tears his papers,
and withdraws,' the irascible adust little man. Nay honourable
members will tear their papers, being effervescent: Merlin of
Thionville tears his papers, crying: "So, the People cannot be
saved by you!" Nor are Deputations wanting: Deputations of
Sections; generally with complaint and denouncement, always with
Patriot fervour of sentiment: Deputation of Women, pleading that
they also may be allowed to take Pikes, and exercise in the
Champ-de-Mars. Why not, ye Amazons, if it be in you? Then
occasionally, having done our message and got answer, we 'defile
through the Hall, singing ca-ira;' or rather roll and whirl
through it, 'dancing our ronde patriotique the while,'—our new
Carmagnole, or Pyrrhic war-dance and liberty-dance. Patriot
Huguenin, Ex-Advocate, Ex-Carabineer, Ex-Clerk of the Barriers,
comes deputed, with Saint-Antoine at his heels; denouncing
Anti-patriotism, Famine, Forstalment and Man-eaters; asks an
august Legislative: "Is there not a tocsin in your hearts against
these mangeurs d'hommes!" (_See Moniteur, Seances in Hist. Parl.
xiii. xiv._)
But above all things, for this is a continual business, the
Legislative has to reprimand the King's Ministers. Of His
Majesty's Ministers we have said hitherto, and say, next to
nothing. Still more spectral these! Sorrowful; of no permanency
any of them, none at least since Montmorin vanished: the 'eldest
of the King's Council' is occasionally not ten days old!
(_Dumouriez, ii. 137._) Feuillant-Constitutional, as your
respectable Cahier de Gerville, as your respectable unfortunate
Delessarts; or Royalist-Constitutional, as Montmorin last Friend
of Necker; or Aristocrat as Bertrand-Moleville: they flit there
phantom-like, in the huge simmering confusion; poor shadows,
dashed in the racking winds; powerless, without meaning;—whom the
human memory need not charge itself with.
But how often, we say, are these poor Majesty's Ministers
summoned over; to be questioned, tutored; nay, threatened, almost
bullied! They answer what, with adroitest simulation and
casuistry, they can: of which a poor Legislative knows not what
to make. One thing only is clear, That Cimmerian Europe is
girdling us in; that France (_not actually dead, surely?_) cannot
march. Have a care, ye Ministers! Sharp Guadet transfixes you
with cross-questions, with sudden Advocate-conclusions; the
sleeping tempest that is in Vergniaud can be awakened. Restless
Brissot brings up Reports, Accusations, endless thin Logic; it is
the man's highday even now. Condorcet redacts, with his firm pen,
our 'Address of the Legislative Assembly to the French Nation.'
(_16th February 1792 (_Choix des Rapports, viii. 375-92_)._)
Fiery Max Isnard, who, for the rest, will "carry not Fire and
Sword" on those Cimmerian Enemies "but Liberty,"—is for declaring
"that we hold Ministers responsible; and that by responsibility
we mean death, nous entendons la mort."
For verily it grows serious: the time presses, and traitors there
are. Bertrand-Moleville has a smooth tongue, the known
Aristocrat; gall in his heart. How his answers and explanations
flow ready; jesuitic, plausible to the ear! But perhaps the
notablest is this, which befell once when Bertrand had done
answering and was withdrawn. Scarcely had the august Assembly
begun considering what was to be done with him, when the Hall
fills with smoke. Thick sour smoke: no oratory, only wheezing and
barking;—irremediable; so that the august Assembly has to
adjourn! (_Courrier de Paris, 14 Janvier, 1792 (_Gorsas's
Newspaper_), in Hist. Parl. xiii. 83._) A miracle? Typical
miracle? One knows not: only this one seems to know, that 'the
Keeper of the Stoves was appointed by Bertrand' or by some
underling of his!—O fuliginous confused Kingdom of Dis, with thy
Tantalus-Ixion toils, with thy angry Fire-floods, and Streams
named of Lamentation, why hast thou not thy Lethe too, that so
one might finish?
Chapter 2.5.VIII.
The Jacobins.
Nevertheless let not Patriotism despair. Have we not, in Paris at
least, a virtuous Petion, a wholly Patriotic Municipality?
Virtuous Petion, ever since November, is Mayor of Paris: in our
Municipality, the Public, for the Public is now admitted too, may
behold an energetic Danton; further, an epigrammatic slow-sure
Manuel; a resolute unrepentant Billaud-Varennes, of Jesuit
breeding; Tallien able-editor; and nothing but Patriots, better
or worse. So ran the November Elections: to the joy of most
citizens; nay the very Court supported Petion rather than
Lafayette. And so Bailly and his Feuillants, long waning like the
Moon, had to withdraw then, making some sorrowful obeisance, into
extinction;—or indeed into worse, into lurid half-light, grimmed
by the shadow of that Red Flag of theirs, and bitter memory of
the Champ-de-Mars. How swift is the progress of things and men!
Not now does Lafayette, as on that Federation-day, when his noon
was, 'press his sword firmly on the Fatherland's Altar,' and
swear in sight of France: ah no; he, waning and setting ever
since that hour, hangs now, disastrous, on the edge of the
horizon; commanding one of those Three moulting Crane-flights of
Armies, in a most suspected, unfruitful, uncomfortable manner!
But, at most, cannot Patriotism, so many thousands strong in this
Metropolis of the Universe, help itself? Has it not right-hands,
pikes? Hammering of pikes, which was not to be prohibited by
Mayor Bailly, has been sanctioned by Mayor Petion; sanctioned by
Legislative Assembly. How not, when the King's so-called
Constitutional Guard 'was making cartridges in secret?' Changes
are necessary for the National Guard itself; this whole
Feuillant-Aristocrat Staff of the Guard must be disbanded.
Likewise, citizens without uniform may surely rank in the Guard,
the pike beside the musket, in such a time: the 'active' citizen
and the passive who can fight for us, are they not both
welcome?—O my Patriot friends, indubitably Yes! Nay the truth is,
Patriotism throughout, were it never so white-frilled, logical,
respectable, must either lean itself heartily on Sansculottism,
the black, bottomless; or else vanish, in the frightfullest way,
to Limbo! Thus some, with upturned nose, will altogether sniff
and disdain Sansculottism; others will lean heartily on it; nay
others again will lean what we call heartlessly on it: three
sorts; each sort with a destiny corresponding. (_Discours de
Bailly, Reponse de Petion (_Moniteur du 20 Novembre 1791_)._)
In such point of view, however, have we not for the present a
Volunteer Ally, stronger than all the rest: namely, Hunger?
Hunger; and what rushing of Panic Terror this and the sum-total
of our other miseries may bring! For Sansculottism grows by what
all other things die of. Stupid Peter Baille almost made an
epigram, though unconsciously, and with the Patriot world
laughing not at it but at him, when he wrote 'Tout va bien ici,
le pain manque, All goes well here, victuals not to be had.'
(_Barbaroux, p. 94._)
Neither, if you knew it, is Patriotism without her Constitution
that can march; her not impotent Parliament; or call it, Ecumenic
Council, and General-Assembly of the Jean-Jacques Churches: the
MOTHER-SOCIETY, namely! Mother-Society with her three hundred
full-grown Daughters; with what we can call little Granddaughters
trying to walk, in every village of France, numerable, as Burke
thinks, by the hundred thousand. This is the true Constitution;
made not by Twelve-Hundred august Senators, but by Nature
herself; and has grown, unconsciously, out of the wants and the
efforts of these Twenty-five Millions of men. They are 'Lords of
the Articles,' our Jacobins; they originate debates for the
Legislative; discuss Peace and War; settle beforehand what the
Legislative is to do. Greatly to the scandal of philosophical
men, and of most Historians;—who do in that judge naturally, and
yet not wisely. A Governing power must exist: your other powers
here are simulacra; this power is it.
Great is the Mother-Society: She has had the honour to be
denounced by Austrian Kaunitz; (_Moniteur, Seance du 29 Mars,
1792._) and is all the dearer to Patriotism. By fortune and
valour, she has extinguished Feuillantism itself, at least the
Feuillant Club. This latter, high as it once carried its head,
she, on the 18th of February, has the satisfaction to see shut,
extinct; Patriots having gone thither, with tumult, to hiss it
out of pain. The Mother Society has enlarged her locality,
stretches now over the whole nave of the Church. Let us glance
in, with the worthy Toulongeon, our old Ex-Constituent Friend,
who happily has eyes to see: 'The nave of the Jacobins Church,'
says he, 'is changed into a vast Circus, the seats of which mount
up circularly like an amphitheatre to the very groin of the domed
roof. A high Pyramid of black marble, built against one of the
walls, which was formerly a funeral monument, has alone been left
standing: it serves now as back to the Office-bearers' Bureau.
Here on an elevated Platform sit President and Secretaries,
behind and above them the white Busts of Mirabeau, of Franklin,
and various others, nay finally of Marat. Facing this is the
Tribune, raised till it is midway between floor and groin of the
dome, so that the speaker's voice may be in the centre. From that
point, thunder the voices which shake all Europe: down below, in
silence, are forging the thunderbolts and the firebrands.
Penetrating into this huge circuit, where all is out of measure,
gigantic, the mind cannot repress some movement of terror and
wonder; the imagination recalls those dread temples which Poetry,
of old, had consecrated to the Avenging Deities.' (_Toulongeon,
ii. 124._)
Scenes too are in this Jacobin Amphitheatre,—had History time for
them. Flags of the 'Three free Peoples of the Universe,' trinal
brotherly flags of England, America, France, have been waved here
in concert; by London Deputation, of Whigs or Wighs and their
Club, on this hand, and by young French Citizenesses on that;
beautiful sweet-tongued Female Citizens, who solemnly send over
salutation and brotherhood, also Tricolor stitched by their own
needle, and finally Ears of Wheat; while the dome rebellows with
Vivent les trois peuples libres! from all throats:—a most
dramatic scene. Demoiselle Theroigne recites, from that Tribune
in mid air, her persecutions in Austria; comes leaning on the arm
of Joseph Chenier, Poet Chenier, to demand Liberty for the
hapless Swiss of Chateau-Vieux. (_Debats des Jacobins (_Hist.
Parl. xiii. 259, &c._)._) Be of hope, ye Forty Swiss; tugging
there, in the Brest waters; not forgotten!
Deputy Brissot perorates from that Tribune; Desmoulins, our
wicked Camille, interjecting audibly from below, "Coquin!" Here,
though oftener in the Cordeliers, reverberates the lion-voice of
Danton; grim Billaud-Varennes is here; Collot d'Herbois, pleading
for the Forty Swiss; tearing a passion to rags. Apophthegmatic
Manuel winds up in this pithy way: "A Minister must perish!"—to
which the Amphitheatre responds: "Tous, Tous, All, All!" But the
Chief Priest and Speaker of this place, as we said, is
Robespierre, the long-winded incorruptible man. What spirit of
Patriotism dwelt in men in those times, this one fact, it seems
to us, will evince: that fifteen hundred human creatures, not
bound to it, sat quiet under the oratory of Robespierre; nay,
listened nightly, hour after hour, applausive; and gaped as for
the word of life. More insupportable individual, one would say,
seldom opened his mouth in any Tribune. Acrid,
implacable-impotent; dull-drawling, barren as the Harmattan-wind!
He pleads, in endless earnest-shallow speech, against immediate
War, against Woollen Caps or Bonnets Rouges, against many things;
and is the Trismegistus and Dalai-Lama of Patriot men. Whom
nevertheless a shrill-voiced little man, yet with fine eyes, and
a broad beautifully sloping brow, rises respectfully to
controvert: he is, say the Newspaper Reporters, 'M. Louvet,
Author of the charming Romance of Faublas.' Steady, ye Patriots!
Pull not yet two ways; with a France rushing panic-stricken in
the rural districts, and a Cimmerian Europe storming in on you!
Chapter 2.5.IX.
Minister Roland.
About the vernal equinox, however, one unexpected gleam of hope
does burst forth on Patriotism: the appointment of a thoroughly
Patriot Ministry. This also his Majesty, among his innumerable
experiments of wedding fire to water, will try. Quod bonum sit.
Madame d'Udon's Breakfasts have jingled with a new significance;
not even Genevese Dumont but had a word in it. Finally, on the
15th and onwards to the 23d day of March, 1792, when all is
negociated,—this is the blessed issue; this Patriot Ministry that
we see.
General Dumouriez, with the Foreign Portfolio shall ply Kaunitz
and the Kaiser, in another style than did poor Delessarts; whom
indeed we have sent to our High Court of Orleans for his
sluggishness. War-minister Narbonne is washed away by the
Time-flood; poor Chevalier de Grave, chosen by the Court, is fast
washing away: then shall austere Servan, able Engineer-Officer,
mount suddenly to the War Department. Genevese Claviere sees an
old omen realized: passing the Finance Hotel, long years ago, as
a poor Genevese Exile, it was borne wondrously on his mind that
he was to be Finance Minister; and now he is it;—and his poor
Wife, given up by the Doctors, rises and walks, not the victim of
nerves but their vanquisher. (_Dumont, c. 20, 21._) And above
all, our Minister of the Interior? Roland de la Platriere, he of
Lyons! So have the Brissotins, public or private Opinion, and
Breakfasts in the Place Vendome decided it. Strict Roland,
compared to a Quaker endimanche, or Sunday Quaker, goes to kiss
hands at the Tuileries, in round hat and sleek hair, his shoes
tied with mere riband or ferrat! The Supreme Usher twitches
Dumouriez aside: "Quoi, Monsieur! No buckles to his shoes?"—"Ah,
Monsieur," answers Dumouriez, glancing towards the ferrat: "All
is lost, Tout est perdu." (_Madame Roland, ii. 80-115._)
And so our fair Roland removes from her upper floor in the Rue
Saint-Jacques, to the sumptuous saloons once occupied by Madame
Necker. Nay still earlier, it was Calonne that did all this
gilding; it was he who ground these lustres, Venetian mirrors;
who polished this inlaying, this veneering and or-moulu; and made
it, by rubbing of the proper lamp, an Aladdin's Palace:—and now
behold, he wanders dim-flitting over Europe, half-drowned in the
Rhine-stream, scarcely saving his Papers! Vos non vobis.—The fair
Roland, equal to either fortune, has her public Dinner on
Fridays, the Ministers all there in a body: she withdraws to her
desk (_the cloth once removed_), and seems busy writing;
nevertheless loses no word: if for example Deputy Brissot and
Minister Claviere get too hot in argument, she, not without
timidity, yet with a cunning gracefulness, will interpose. Deputy
Brissot's head, they say, is getting giddy, in this sudden
height: as feeble heads do.
Envious men insinuate that the Wife Roland is Minister, and not
the Husband: it is happily the worst they have to charge her
with. For the rest, let whose head soever be getting giddy, it is
not this brave woman's. Serene and queenly here, as she was of
old in her own hired garret of the Ursulines Convent! She who has
quietly shelled French-beans for her dinner; being led to that,
as a young maiden, by quiet insight and computation; and knowing
what that was, and what she was: such a one will also look
quietly on or-moulu and veneering, not ignorant of these either.
Calonne did the veneering: he gave dinners here, old Besenval
diplomatically whispering to him; and was great: yet Calonne we
saw at last 'walk with long strides.' Necker next: and where now
is Necker? Us also a swift change has brought hither; a swift
change will send us hence. Not a Palace but a Caravansera!
So wags and wavers this unrestful World, day after day, month
after month. The Streets of Paris, and all Cities, roll daily
their oscillatory flood of men; which flood does, nightly,
disappear, and lie hidden horizontal in beds and trucklebeds; and
awakes on the morrow to new perpendicularity and movement. Men go
their roads, foolish or wise;—Engineer Goguelat to and fro,
bearing Queen's cipher. A Madame de Stael is busy; cannot clutch
her Narbonne from the Time-flood: a Princess de Lamballe is busy;
cannot help her Queen. Barnave, seeing the Feuillants dispersed,
and Coblentz so brisk, begs by way of final recompence to kiss
her Majesty's hand; augurs not well of her new course; and
retires home to Grenoble, to wed an heiress there. The Cafe
Valois and Meot the Restaurateur's hear daily gasconade; loud
babble of Half-pay Royalists, with or without Poniards; remnants
of Aristocrat saloons call the new Ministry
Ministere-Sansculotte. A Louvet, of the Romance Faublas, is busy
in the Jacobins. A Cazotte, of the Romance Diable Amoureux, is
busy elsewhere: better wert thou quiet, old Cazotte; it is a
world, this, of magic become real! All men are busy; doing they
only half guess what:—flinging seeds, of tares mostly, into the
"Seed-field of TIME" this, by and by, will declare wholly what.
But Social Explosions have in them something dread, and as it
were mad and magical: which indeed Life always secretly has; thus
the dumb Earth (_says Fable_), if you pull her mandrake-roots,
will give a daemonic mad-making moan. These Explosions and
Revolts ripen, break forth like dumb dread Forces of Nature; and
yet they are Men's forces; and yet we are part of them: the
Daemonic that is in man's life has burst out on us, will sweep us
too away!—One day here is like another, and yet it is not like
but different. How much is growing, silently resistless, at all
moments! Thoughts are growing; forms of Speech are growing, and
Customs and even Costumes; still more visibly are actions and
transactions growing, and that doomed Strife, of France with
herself and with the whole world.
The word Liberty is never named now except in conjunction with
another; Liberty and Equality. In like manner, what, in a reign
of Liberty and Equality, can these words, 'Sir,' 'obedient
Servant,' 'Honour to be,' and such like, signify? Tatters and
fibres of old Feudality; which, were it only in the Grammatical
province, ought to be rooted out! The Mother Society has long
since had proposals to that effect: these she could not
entertain, not at the moment. Note too how the Jacobin Brethren
are mounting new symbolical headgear: the Woollen Cap or
Nightcap, bonnet de laine, better known as bonnet rouge, the
colour being red. A thing one wears not only by way of Phrygian
Cap-of-Liberty, but also for convenience' sake, and then also in
compliment to the Lower-class Patriots and Bastille-Heroes; for
the Red Nightcap combines all the three properties. Nay cockades
themselves begin to be made of wool, of tricolor yarn: the
riband-cockade, as a symptom of Feuillant Upper-class temper, is
becoming suspicious. Signs of the times.
Still more, note the travail-throes of Europe: or, rather, note
the birth she brings; for the successive throes and shrieks, of
Austrian and Prussian Alliance, of Kaunitz Anti-jacobin Despatch,
of French Ambassadors cast out, and so forth, were long to note.
Dumouriez corresponds with Kaunitz, Metternich, or Cobentzel, in
another style that Delessarts did. Strict becomes stricter;
categorical answer, as to this Coblentz work and much else, shall
be given. Failing which? Failing which, on the 20th day of April
1792, King and Ministers step over to the Salle de Manege;
promulgate how the matter stands; and poor Louis, 'with tears in
his eyes,' proposes that the Assembly do now decree War. After
due eloquence, War is decreed that night.
War, indeed! Paris came all crowding, full of expectancy, to the
morning, and still more to the evening session. D'Orleans with
his two sons, is there; looks on, wide-eyed, from the opposite
Gallery. (_Deux Amis, vii. 146-66._) Thou canst look, O Philippe:
it is a War big with issues, for thee and for all men. Cimmerian
Obscurantism and this thrice glorious Revolution shall wrestle
for it, then: some Four-and-twenty years; in immeasurable
Briareus' wrestle; trampling and tearing; before they can come to
any, not agreement, but compromise, and approximate ascertainment
each of what is in the other.
Let our Three Generals on the Frontiers look to it, therefore;
and poor Chevalier de Grave, the Warminister, consider what he
will do. What is in the three Generals and Armies we may guess.
As for poor Chevalier de Grave, he, in this whirl of things all
coming to a press and pinch upon him, loses head, and merely
whirls with them, in a totally distracted manner; signing himself
at last, 'De Grave, Mayor of Paris:' whereupon he demits, returns
over the Channel, to walk in Kensington Gardens; (_Dumont, c. 19,
21._) and austere Servan, the able Engineer-Officer, is elevated
in his stead. To the post of Honour? To that of Difficulty, at
least.
Chapter 2.5.X.
Petion-National-Pique.
And yet, how, on dark bottomless Cataracts there plays the
foolishest fantastic-coloured spray and shadow; hiding the Abyss
under vapoury rainbows! Alongside of this discussion as to
Austrian-Prussian War, there goes on no less but more vehemently
a discussion, Whether the Forty or Two-and-forty Swiss of
Chateau-Vieux shall be liberated from the Brest Gallies? And
then, Whether, being liberated, they shall have a public
Festival, or only private ones?
Theroigne, as we saw, spoke; and Collot took up the tale. Has not
Bouille's final display of himself, in that final Night of Spurs,
stamped your so-called 'Revolt of Nanci' into a 'Massacre of
Nanci,' for all Patriot judgments? Hateful is that massacre;
hateful the Lafayette-Feuillant 'public thanks' given for it! For
indeed, Jacobin Patriotism and dispersed Feuillantism are now at
death-grips; and do fight with all weapons, even with scenic
shows. The walls of Paris, accordingly, are covered with Placard
and Counter-Placard, on the subject of Forty Swiss blockheads.
Journal responds to Journal; Player Collot to Poetaster Roucher;
Joseph Chenier the Jacobin, squire of Theroigne, to his Brother
Andre the Feuillant; Mayor Petion to Dupont de Nemours: and for
the space of two months, there is nowhere peace for the thought
of man,—till this thing be settled.
Gloria in excelsis! The Forty Swiss are at last got 'amnestied.'
Rejoice ye Forty: doff your greasy wool Bonnets, which shall
become Caps of Liberty. The Brest Daughter-Society welcomes you
from on board, with kisses on each cheek: your iron Handcuffs are
disputed as Relics of Saints; the Brest Society indeed can have
one portion, which it will beat into Pikes, a sort of Sacred
Pikes; but the other portion must belong to Paris, and be
suspended from the dome there, along with the Flags of the Three
Free Peoples! Such a goose is man; and cackles over plush-velvet
Grand Monarques and woollen Galley-slaves; over everything and
over nothing,—and will cackle with his whole soul merely if
others cackle!
On the ninth morning of April, these Forty Swiss blockheads
arrive. From Versailles; with vivats heaven-high; with the
affluence of men and women. To the Townhall we conduct them; nay
to the Legislative itself, though not without difficulty. They
are harangued, bedinnered, begifted,—the very Court, not for
conscience' sake, contributing something; and their Public
Festival shall be next Sunday. Next Sunday accordingly it is.
(_Newspapers of February, March, April, 1792; Iambe d'Andre
Chenier sur la Fete des Suisses; &c., &c. in Hist. Parl. xiii,
xiv._) They are mounted into a 'triumphal Car resembling a ship;'
are carted over Paris, with the clang of cymbals and drums, all
mortals assisting applausive; carted to the Champ-de-Mars and
Fatherland's Altar; and finally carted, for Time always brings
deliverance,—into invisibility for evermore.
Whereupon dispersed Feuillantism, or that Party which loves
Liberty yet not more than Monarchy, will likewise have its
Festival: Festival of Simonneau, unfortunate Mayor of Etampes,
who died for the Law; most surely for the Law, though Jacobinism
disputes; being trampled down with his Red Flag in the riot about
grains. At which Festival the Public again assists, unapplausive:
not we.
On the whole, Festivals are not wanting; beautiful rainbow-spray
when all is now rushing treble-quick towards its Niagara Fall.
National repasts there are; countenanced by Mayor Petion;
Saint-Antoine, and the Strong Ones of the Halles defiling through
Jacobin Club, "their felicity," according to Santerre, "not
perfect otherwise;" singing many-voiced their ca-ira, dancing
their ronde patriotique. Among whom one is glad to discern
Saint-Huruge, expressly 'in white hat,' the Saint-Christopher of
the Carmagnole. Nay a certain Tambour or National Drummer, having
just been presented with a little daughter, determines to have
the new Frenchwoman christened on Fatherland's Altar then and
there. Repast once over, he accordingly has her christened;
Fauchet the Te-Deum Bishop acting in chief, Thuriot and
honourable persons standing gossips: by the name,
Petion-National-Pique! (_Patriote-Francais (_Brissot's
Newspaper_), in Hist. Parl. xiii. 451._) Does this remarkable
Citizeness, now past the meridian of life, still walk the Earth?
Or did she die perhaps of teething? Universal History is not
indifferent.
Chapter 2.5.XI.
The Hereditary Representative.
And yet it is not by carmagnole-dances and singing of ca-ira,
that the work can be done. Duke Brunswick is not dancing
carmagnoles, but has his drill serjeants busy.
On the Frontiers, our Armies, be it treason or not, behave in the
worst way. Troops badly commanded, shall we say? Or troops
intrinsically bad? Unappointed, undisciplined, mutinous; that, in
a thirty-years peace, have never seen fire? In any case,
Lafayette's and Rochambeau's little clutch, which they made at
Austrian Flanders, has prospered as badly as clutch need do:
soldiers starting at their own shadow; suddenly shrieking, "On
nous trahit," and flying off in wild panic, at or before the
first shot;—managing only to hang some two or three Prisoners
they had picked up, and massacre their own Commander, poor
Theobald Dillon, driven into a granary by them in the Town of
Lille.
And poor Gouvion: he who sat shiftless in that Insurrection of
Women! Gouvion quitted the Legislative Hall and Parliamentary
duties, in disgust and despair, when those Galley-slaves of
Chateau-Vieux were admitted there. He said, "Between the
Austrians and the Jacobins there is nothing but a soldier's death
for it;" (_Toulongeon, ii. 149._) and so, 'in the dark stormy
night,' he has flung himself into the throat of the Austrian
cannon, and perished in the skirmish at Maubeuge on the ninth of
June. Whom Legislative Patriotism shall mourn, with black
mortcloths and melody in the Champ-de-Mars: many a Patriot
shiftier, truer none. Lafayette himself is looking altogether
dubious; in place of beating the Austrians, is about writing to
denounce the Jacobins. Rochambeau, all disconsolate, quits the
service: there remains only Luckner, the babbling old Prussian
Grenadier.
Without Armies, without Generals! And the Cimmerian Night, has
gathered itself; Brunswick preparing his Proclamation; just about
to march! Let a Patriot Ministry and Legislative say, what in
these circumstances it will do? Suppress Internal Enemies, for
one thing, answers the Patriot Legislative; and proposes, on the
24th of May, its Decree for the Banishment of Priests. Collect
also some nucleus of determined internal friends, adds
War-minister Servan; and proposes, on the 7th of June, his Camp
of Twenty-thousand. Twenty-thousand National Volunteers; Five out
of each Canton; picked Patriots, for Roland has charge of the
Interior: they shall assemble here in Paris; and be for a
defence, cunningly devised, against foreign Austrians and
domestic Austrian Committee alike. So much can a Patriot Ministry
and Legislative do.
Reasonable and cunningly devised as such Camp may, to Servan and
Patriotism, appear, it appears not so to Feuillantism; to that
Feuillant-Aristocrat Staff of the Paris Guard; a Staff, one would
say again, which will need to be dissolved. These men see, in
this proposed Camp of Servan's, an offence; and even, as they
pretend to say, an insult. Petitions there come, in consequence,
from blue Feuillants in epaulettes; ill received. Nay, in the
end, there comes one Petition, called 'of the Eight Thousand
National Guards:' so many names are on it; including women and
children. Which famed Petition of the Eight Thousand is indeed
received: and the Petitioners, all under arms, are admitted to
the honours of the sitting,—if honours or even if sitting there
be; for the instant their bayonets appear at the one door, the
Assembly 'adjourns,' and begins to flow out at the other.
(_Moniteur, Seance du 10 Juin 1792._)
Also, in these same days, it is lamentable to see how National
Guards, escorting Fete Dieu or Corpus-Christi ceremonial, do
collar and smite down any Patriot that does not uncover as the
Hostie passes. They clap their bayonets to the breast of
Cattle-butcher Legendre, a known Patriot ever since the Bastille
days; and threaten to butcher him; though he sat quite
respectfully, he says, in his Gig, at a distance of fifty paces,
waiting till the thing were by. Nay, orthodox females were
shrieking to have down the Lanterne on him. (_Debats des Jacobins
in Hist. Parl. xiv. 429._)
To such height has Feuillantism gone in this Corps. For indeed,
are not their Officers creatures of the chief Feuillant,
Lafayette? The Court too has, very naturally, been tampering with
them; caressing them, ever since that dissolution of the
so-called Constitutional Guard. Some Battalions are altogether
'petris, kneaded full' of Feuillantism, mere Aristocrats at
bottom: for instance, the Battalion of the Filles-Saint-Thomas,
made up of your Bankers, Stockbrokers, and other Full-purses of
the Rue Vivienne. Our worthy old Friend Weber, Queen's
Foster-brother Weber, carries a musket in that Battalion,—one may
judge with what degree of Patriotic intention.
Heedless of all which, or rather heedful of all which, the
Legislative, backed by Patriot France and the feeling of
Necessity, decrees this Camp of Twenty thousand. Decisive though
conditional Banishment of malign Priests, it has already decreed.
It will now be seen, therefore, Whether the Hereditary
Representative is for us or against us? Whether or not, to all
our other woes, this intolerablest one is to be added; which
renders us not a menaced Nation in extreme jeopardy and need, but
a paralytic Solecism of a Nation; sitting wrapped as in dead
cerements, of a Constitutional-Vesture that were no other than a
winding-sheet; our right hand glued to our left: to wait there,
writhing and wriggling, unable to stir from the spot, till in
Prussian rope we mount to the gallows? Let the Hereditary
Representative consider it well: The Decree of Priests? The Camp
of Twenty Thousand?—By Heaven, he answers, Veto! Veto!—Strict
Roland hands in his Letter to the King; or rather it was Madame's
Letter, who wrote it all at a sitting; one of the plainest-spoken
Letters ever handed in to any King. This plain-spoken Letter King
Louis has the benefit of reading overnight. He reads, inwardly
digests; and next morning, the whole Patriot Ministry finds
itself turned out. It is the 13th of June 1792. (_Madame Roland,
ii. 115._)
Dumouriez the many-counselled, he, with one Duranthon, called
Minister of Justice, does indeed linger for a day or two; in
rather suspicious circumstances; speaks with the Queen, almost
weeps with her: but in the end, he too sets off for the Army;
leaving what Un-Patriot or Semi-Patriot Ministry and Ministries
can now accept the helm, to accept it. Name them not: new
quick-changing Phantasms, which shift like magic-lantern figures;
more spectral than ever!
Unhappy Queen, unhappy Louis! The two Vetos were so natural: are
not the Priests martyrs; also friends? This Camp of Twenty
Thousand, could it be other than of stormfullest Sansculottes?
Natural; and yet, to France, unendurable. Priests that co-operate
with Coblentz must go elsewhither with their martyrdom: stormful
Sansculottes, these and no other kind of creatures, will drive
back the Austrians. If thou prefer the Austrians, then for the
love of Heaven go join them. If not, join frankly with what will
oppose them to the death. Middle course is none.
Or alas, what extreme course was there left now, for a man like
Louis? Underhand Royalists, Ex-Minister Bertrand-Moleville,
Ex-Constituent Malouet, and all manner of unhelpful individuals,
advise and advise. With face of hope turned now on the
Legislative Assembly, and now on Austria and Coblentz, and round
generally on the Chapter of Chances, an ancient Kingship is
reeling and spinning, one knows not whitherward, on the flood of
things.
Chapter 2.5.XII.
Procession of the Black Breeches.
But is there a thinking man in France who, in these
circumstances, can persuade himself that the Constitution will
march? Brunswick is stirring; he, in few days now, will march.
Shall France sit still, wrapped in dead cerements and
grave-clothes, its right hand glued to its left, till the
Brunswick Saint-Bartholomew arrive; till France be as Poland, and
its Rights of Man become a Prussian Gibbet?
Verily, it is a moment frightful for all men. National Death; or
else some preternatural convulsive outburst of National
Life;—that same, daemonic outburst! Patriots whose audacity has
limits had, in truth, better retire like Barnave; court private
felicity at Grenoble. Patriots, whose audacity has no limits must
sink down into the obscure; and, daring and defying all things,
seek salvation in stratagem, in Plot of Insurrection. Roland and
young Barbaroux have spread out the Map of France before them,
Barbaroux says 'with tears:' they consider what Rivers, what
Mountain ranges are in it: they will retire behind this
Loire-stream, defend these Auvergne stone-labyrinths; save some
little sacred Territory of the Free; die at least in their last
ditch. Lafayette indites his emphatic Letter to the Legislative
against Jacobinism; (_Moniteur, Seance du 18 Juin 1792._) which
emphatic Letter will not heal the unhealable.
Forward, ye Patriots whose audacity has no limits; it is you now
that must either do or die! The sections of Paris sit in deep
counsel; send out Deputation after Deputation to the Salle de
Manege, to petition and denounce. Great is their ire against
tyrannous Veto, Austrian Committee, and the combined Cimmerian
Kings. What boots it? Legislative listens to the 'tocsin in our
hearts;' grants us honours of the sitting, sees us defile with
jingle and fanfaronade; but the Camp of Twenty Thousand, the
Priest-Decree, be-vetoed by Majesty, are become impossible for
Legislative. Fiery Isnard says, "We will have Equality, should we
descend for it to the tomb." Vergniaud utters, hypothetically,
his stern Ezekiel-visions of the fate of Anti-national Kings. But
the question is: Will hypothetic prophecies, will jingle and
fanfaronade demolish the Veto; or will the Veto, secure in its
Tuileries Chateau, remain undemolishable by these? Barbaroux,
dashing away his tears, writes to the Marseilles Municipality,
that they must send him 'Six hundred men who know how to die, qui
savent mourir.' (_Barbaroux, p. 40._) No wet-eyed message this,
but a fire-eyed one;—which will be obeyed!
Meanwhile the Twentieth of June is nigh, anniversary of that
world-famous Oath of the Tennis-Court: on which day, it is said,
certain citizens have in view to plant a Mai or Tree of Liberty,
in the Tuileries Terrace of the Feuillants; perhaps also to
petition the Legislative and Hereditary Representative about
these Vetos;—with such demonstration, jingle and evolution, as
may seem profitable and practicable. Sections have gone singly,
and jingled and evolved: but if they all went, or great part of
them, and there, planting their Mai in these alarming
circumstances, sounded the tocsin in their hearts?
Among King's Friends there can be but one opinion as to such a
step: among Nation's Friends there may be two. On the one hand,
might it not by possibility scare away these unblessed Vetos?
Private Patriots and even Legislative Deputies may have each his
own opinion, or own no-opinion: but the hardest task falls
evidently on Mayor Petion and the Municipals, at once Patriots
and Guardians of the public Tranquillity. Hushing the matter down
with the one hand; tickling it up with the other! Mayor Petion
and Municipality may lean this way; Department-Directory with
Procureur-Syndic Roederer having a Feuillant tendency, may lean
that. On the whole, each man must act according to his one
opinion or to his two opinions; and all manner of influences,
official representations cross one another in the foolishest way.
Perhaps after all, the Project, desirable and yet not desirable,
will dissipate itself, being run athwart by so many complexities;
and coming to nothing?
Not so: on the Twentieth morning of June, a large Tree of
Liberty, Lombardy Poplar by kind, lies visibly tied on its car,
in the Suburb-Antoine. Suburb Saint-Marceau too, in the uttermost
South-East, and all that remote Oriental region, Pikemen and
Pikewomen, National Guards, and the unarmed curious are
gathering,—with the peaceablest intentions in the world. A
tricolor Municipal arrives; speaks. Tush, it is all peaceable, we
tell thee, in the way of Law: are not Petitions allowable, and
the Patriotism of Mais? The tricolor Municipal returns without
effect: your Sansculottic rills continue flowing, combining into
brooks: towards noontide, led by tall Santerre in blue uniform,
by tall Saint-Huruge in white hat, it moves Westward, a
respectable river, or complication of still-swelling rivers.
What Processions have we not seen: Corpus-Christi and Legendre
waiting in Gig; Bones of Voltaire with bullock-chariots, and
goadsmen in Roman Costume; Feasts of Chateau-Vieux and Simonneau;
Gouvion Funerals, Rousseau Sham-Funerals, and the Baptism of
Petion-National-Pike! Nevertheless this Procession has a
character of its own. Tricolor ribands streaming aloft from
pike-heads; ironshod batons; and emblems not a few; among which,
see specially these two, of the tragic and the untragic sort: a
Bull's Heart transfixed with iron, bearing this epigraph, 'Coeur
d'Aristocrate, Aristocrat's Heart;' and, more striking still,
properly the standard of the host, a pair of old Black Breeches
(_silk, they say_), extended on cross-staff high overhead, with
these memorable words: 'Tremblez tyrans, voila les Sansculottes,
Tremble tyrants, here are the Sans-indispensables!' Also, the
Procession trails two cannons.
Scarfed tricolor Municipals do now again meet it, in the Quai
Saint-Bernard; and plead earnestly, having called halt.
Peaceable, ye virtuous tricolor Municipals, peaceable are we as
the sucking dove. Behold our Tennis-Court Mai. Petition is legal;
and as for arms, did not an august Legislative receive the
so-called Eight Thousand in arms, Feuillants though they were?
Our Pikes, are they not of National iron? Law is our father and
mother, whom we will not dishonour; but Patriotism is our own
soul. Peaceable, ye virtuous Municipals;—and on the whole,
limited as to time! Stop we cannot; march ye with us.—The Black
Breeches agitate themselves, impatient; the cannon-wheels
grumble: the many-footed Host tramps on.
How it reached the Salle de Manege, like an ever-waxing river;
got admittance, after debate; read its Address; and defiled,
dancing and ca-ira-ing, led by tall sonorous Santerre and tall
sonorous Saint-Huruge: how it flowed, not now a waxing river but
a shut Caspian lake, round all Precincts of the Tuileries; the
front Patriot squeezed by the rearward, against barred iron
Grates, like to have the life squeezed out of him, and looking
too into the dread throat of cannon, for National Battalions
stand ranked within: how tricolor Municipals ran assiduous, and
Royalists with Tickets of Entry; and both Majesties sat in the
interior surrounded by men in black: all this the human mind
shall fancy for itself, or read in old Newspapers, and Syndic
Roederer's Chronicle of Fifty Days. (_Roederer, &c. &c. in Hist.
Parl. xv. 98-194._)
Our Mai is planted; if not in the Feuillants Terrace, whither is
no ingate, then in the Garden of the Capuchins, as near as we
could get. National Assembly has adjourned till the Evening
Session: perhaps this shut lake, finding no ingate, will retire
to its sources again; and disappear in peace? Alas, not yet:
rearward still presses on; rearward knows little what pressure is
in the front. One would wish at all events, were it possible, to
have a word with his Majesty first!
The shadows fall longer, eastward; it is four o'clock: will his
Majesty not come out? Hardly he! In that case, Commandant
Santerre, Cattle-butcher Legendre, Patriot Huguenin with the
tocsin in his heart; they, and others of authority, will enter
in. Petition and request to wearied uncertain National Guard;
louder and louder petition; backed by the rattle of our two
cannons! The reluctant Grate opens: endless Sansculottic
multitudes flood the stairs; knock at the wooden guardian of your
privacy. Knocks, in such case, grow strokes, grow smashings: the
wooden guardian flies in shivers. And now ensues a Scene over
which the world has long wailed; and not unjustly; for a sorrier
spectacle, of Incongruity fronting Incongruity, and as it were
recognising themselves incongruous, and staring stupidly in each
other's face, the world seldom saw.
King Louis, his door being beaten on, opens it; stands with free
bosom; asking, "What do you want?" The Sansculottic flood recoils
awestruck; returns however, the rear pressing on the front, with
cries of "Veto! Patriot Ministers! Remove Veto!"—which things,
Louis valiantly answers, this is not the time to do, nor this the
way to ask him to do. Honour what virtue is in a man. Louis does
not want courage; he has even the higher kind called
moral-courage, though only the passive half of that. His few
National Grenadiers shuffle back with him, into the embrasure of
a window: there he stands, with unimpeachable passivity, amid the
shouldering and the braying; a spectacle to men. They hand him a
Red Cap of Liberty; he sets it quietly on his head, forgets it
there. He complains of thirst; half-drunk Rascality offers him a
bottle, he drinks of it. "Sire, do not fear," says one of his
Grenadiers. "Fear?" answers Louis: "feel then," putting the man's
hand on his heart. So stands Majesty in Red woollen Cap; black
Sansculottism weltering round him, far and wide, aimless, with
in-articulate dissonance, with cries of "Veto! Patriot
Ministers!"
For the space of three hours or more! The National Assembly is
adjourned; tricolor Municipals avail almost nothing: Mayor Petion
tarries absent; Authority is none. The Queen with her Children
and Sister Elizabeth, in tears and terror not for themselves
only, are sitting behind barricaded tables and Grenadiers in an
inner room. The Men in Black have all wisely disappeared. Blind
lake of Sansculottism welters stagnant through the King's
Chateau, for the space of three hours.
Nevertheless all things do end. Vergniaud arrives with
Legislative Deputation, the Evening Session having now opened.
Mayor Petion has arrived; is haranguing, 'lifted on the shoulders
of two Grenadiers.' In this uneasy attitude and in others, at
various places without and within, Mayor Petion harangues; many
men harangue: finally Commandant Santerre defiles; passes out,
with his Sansculottism, by the opposite side of the Chateau.
Passing through the room where the Queen, with an air of dignity
and sorrowful resignation, sat among the tables and Grenadiers, a
woman offers her too a Red Cap; she holds it in her hand, even
puts it on the little Prince Royal. "Madame," said Santerre,
"this People loves you more than you think." (_Toulongeon, ii.
173; Campan, ii. c. 20._)—About eight o'clock the Royal Family
fall into each other's arms amid 'torrents of tears.' Unhappy
Family! Who would not weep for it, were there not a whole world
to be wept for?
Thus has the Age of Chivalry gone, and that of Hunger come. Thus
does all-needing Sansculottism look in the face of its Roi,
Regulator, King or Ableman; and find that he has nothing to give
it. Thus do the two Parties, brought face to face after long
centuries, stare stupidly at one another, This am I; but, Good
Heaven, is that thou?—and depart, not knowing what to make of it.
And yet, Incongruities having recognised themselves to be
incongruous, something must be made of it. The Fates know what.
This is the world-famous Twentieth of June, more worthy to be
called the Procession of the Black Breeches. With which, what we
had to say of this First French biennial Parliament, and its
products and activities, may perhaps fitly enough terminate.
BOOK 2.VI.
THE MARSEILLESE
Chapter 2.6.I.
Executive that does not act.
How could your paralytic National Executive be put 'in action,'
in any measure, by such a Twentieth of June as this? Quite
contrariwise: a large sympathy for Majesty so insulted arises
every where; expresses itself in Addresses, Petitions, 'Petition
of the Twenty Thousand inhabitants of Paris,' and such like,
among all Constitutional persons; a decided rallying round the
Throne.
Of which rallying it was thought King Louis might have made
something. However, he does make nothing of it, or attempt to
make; for indeed his views are lifted beyond domestic sympathy
and rallying, over to Coblentz mainly: neither in itself is the
same sympathy worth much. It is sympathy of men who believe still
that the Constitution can march. Wherefore the old discord and
ferment, of Feuillant sympathy for Royalty, and Jacobin sympathy
for Fatherland, acting against each other from within; with
terror of Coblentz and Brunswick acting from without:—this
discord and ferment must hold on its course, till a catastrophe
do ripen and come. One would think, especially as Brunswick is
near marching, such catastrophe cannot now be distant. Busy, ye
Twenty-five French Millions; ye foreign Potentates, minatory
Emigrants, German drill-serjeants; each do what his hand findeth!
Thou, O Reader, at such safe distance, wilt see what they make of
it among them.
Consider therefore this pitiable Twentieth of June as a futility;
no catastrophe, rather a catastasis, or heightening. Do not its
Black Breeches wave there, in the Historical Imagination, like a
melancholy flag of distress; soliciting help, which no mortal can
give? Soliciting pity, which thou wert hard-hearted not to give
freely, to one and all! Other such flags, or what are called
Occurrences, and black or bright symbolic Phenomena; will flit
through the Historical Imagination: these, one after one, let us
note, with extreme brevity.
The first phenomenon is that of Lafayette at the Bar of the
Assembly; after a week and day. Promptly, on hearing of this
scandalous Twentieth of June, Lafayette has quitted his Command
on the North Frontier, in better or worse order; and got hither,
on the 28th, to repress the Jacobins: not by Letter now; but by
oral Petition, and weight of character, face to face. The august
Assembly finds the step questionable; invites him meanwhile to
the honours of the sitting. (_Moniteur, Seance du 28 Juin 1792._)
Other honour, or advantage, there unhappily came almost none; the
Galleries all growling; fiery Isnard glooming; sharp Guadet not
wanting in sarcasms.
And out of doors, when the sitting is over, Sieur Resson, keeper
of the Patriot Cafe in these regions, hears in the street a
hurly-burly; steps forth to look, he and his Patriot customers:
it is Lafayette's carriage, with a tumultuous escort of blue
Grenadiers, Cannoneers, even Officers of the Line, hurrahing and
capering round it. They make a pause opposite Sieur Resson's
door; wag their plumes at him; nay shake their fists, bellowing A
bas les Jacobins; but happily pass on without onslaught. They
pass on, to plant a Mai before the General's door, and bully
considerably. All which the Sieur Resson cannot but report with
sorrow, that night, in the Mother Society. (_Debats des Jacobins
Hist. Parl. xv. 235._) But what no Sieur Resson nor Mother
Society can do more than guess is this, That a council of rank
Feuillants, your unabolished Staff of the Guard and who else has
status and weight, is in these very moments privily deliberating
at the General's: Can we not put down the Jacobins by force? Next
day, a Review shall be held, in the Tuileries Garden, of such as
will turn out, and try. Alas, says Toulongeon, hardly a hundred
turned out. Put it off till tomorrow, then, to give better
warning. On the morrow, which is Saturday, there turn out 'some
thirty;' and depart shrugging their shoulders! (_Toulongeon, ii.
180. See also Dampmartin, ii. 161._) Lafayette promptly takes
carriage again; returns musing on many things.
The dust of Paris is hardly off his wheels, the summer Sunday is
still young, when Cordeliers in deputation pluck up that Mai of
his: before sunset, Patriots have burnt him in effigy. Louder
doubt and louder rises, in Section, in National Assembly, as to
the legality of such unbidden Anti-jacobin visit on the part of a
General: doubt swelling and spreading all over France, for six
weeks or so: with endless talk about usurping soldiers, about
English Monk, nay about Cromwell: O thou pour
Grandison-Cromwell!—What boots it? King Louis himself looked
coldly on the enterprize: colossal Hero of two Worlds, having
weighed himself in the balance, finds that he is become a
gossamer Colossus, only some thirty turning out.
In a like sense, and with a like issue, works our
Department-Directory here at Paris; who, on the 6th of July, take
upon them to suspend Mayor Petion and Procureur Manuel from all
civic functions, for their conduct, replete, as is alleged, with
omissions and commissions, on that delicate Twentieth of June.
Virtuous Petion sees himself a kind of martyr, or pseudo-martyr,
threatened with several things; drawls out due heroical
lamentation; to which Patriot Paris and Patriot Legislative duly
respond. King Louis and Mayor Petion have already had an
interview on that business of the Twentieth; an interview and
dialogue, distinguished by frankness on both sides; ending on
King Louis's side with the words, "Taisez-vous, Hold your peace."
For the rest, this of suspending our Mayor does seem a mistimed
measure. By ill chance, it came out precisely on the day of that
famous Baiser de l'amourette, or miraculous reconciliatory
Delilah-Kiss, which we spoke of long ago. Which Delilah-Kiss was
thereby quite hindered of effect. For now his Majesty has to
write, almost that same night, asking a reconciled Assembly for
advice! The reconciled Assembly will not advise; will not
interfere. The King confirms the suspension; then perhaps, but
not till then will the Assembly interfere, the noise of Patriot
Paris getting loud. Whereby your Delilah-Kiss, such was the
destiny of Parliament First, becomes a Philistine Battle!
Nay there goes a word that as many as Thirty of our chief Patriot
Senators are to be clapped in prison, by mittimus and indictment
of Feuillant Justices, Juges de Paix; who here in Paris were well
capable of such a thing. It was but in May last that Juge de Paix
Lariviere, on complaint of Bertrand-Moleville touching that
Austrian Committee, made bold to launch his mittimus against
three heads of the Mountain, Deputies Bazire, Chabot, Merlin, the
Cordelier Trio; summoning them to appear before him, and shew
where that Austrian Committee was, or else suffer the
consequences. Which mittimus the Trio, on their side, made bold
to fling in the fire: and valiantly pleaded privilege of
Parliament. So that, for his zeal without knowledge, poor Justice
Lariviere now sits in the prison of Orleans, waiting trial from
the Haute Cour there. Whose example, may it not deter other rash
Justices; and so this word of the Thirty arrestments continue a
word merely?
But on the whole, though Lafayette weighed so light, and has had
his Mai plucked up, Official Feuillantism falters not a whit; but
carries its head high, strong in the letter of the Law.
Feuillants all of these men: a Feuillant Directory; founding on
high character, and such like; with Duke de la Rochefoucault for
President,—a thing which may prove dangerous for him! Dim now is
the once bright Anglomania of these admired Noblemen. Duke de
Liancourt offers, out of Normandy where he is Lord-Lieutenant,
not only to receive his Majesty, thinking of flight thither, but
to lend him money to enormous amounts. Sire, it is not a Revolt,
it is a Revolution; and truly no rose-water one! Worthier
Noblemen were not in France nor in Europe than those two: but the
Time is crooked, quick-shifting, perverse; what straightest
course will lead to any goal, in it?
Another phasis which we note, in these early July days, is that
of certain thin streaks of Federate National Volunteers wending
from various points towards Paris, to hold a new
Federation-Festival, or Feast of Pikes, on the Fourteenth there.
So has the National Assembly wished it, so has the Nation willed
it. In this way, perhaps, may we still have our Patriot Camp in
spite of Veto. For cannot these Federes, having celebrated their
Feast of Pikes, march on to Soissons; and, there being drilled
and regimented, rush to the Frontiers, or whither we like? Thus
were the one Veto cunningly eluded!
As indeed the other Veto, about Priests, is also like to be
eluded; and without much cunning. For Provincial Assemblies, in
Calvados as one instance, are proceeding on their own strength to
judge and banish Antinational Priests. Or still worse without
Provincial Assembly, a desperate People, as at Bourdeaux, can
'hang two of them on the Lanterne,' on the way towards judgment.
(_Hist. Parl. xvi. 259._) Pity for the spoken Veto, when it
cannot become an acted one!
It is true, some ghost of a War-minister, or Home-minister, for
the time being, ghost whom we do not name, does write to
Municipalities and King's Commanders, that they shall, by all
conceivable methods, obstruct this Federation, and even turn back
the Federes by force of arms: a message which scatters mere
doubt, paralysis and confusion; irritates the poor Legislature;
reduces the Federes as we see, to thin streaks. But being
questioned, this ghost and the other ghosts, What it is then that
they propose to do for saving the country?—they answer, That they
cannot tell; that indeed they for their part have, this morning,
resigned in a body; and do now merely respectfully take leave of
the helm altogether. With which words they rapidly walk out of
the Hall, sortent brusquement de la salle, the 'Galleries
cheering loudly,' the poor Legislature sitting 'for a good while
in silence!' (_Moniteur, Seance du Juillet 1792._) Thus do
Cabinet-ministers themselves, in extreme cases, strike work; one
of the strangest omens. Other complete Cabinet-ministry there
will not be; only fragments, and these changeful, which never get
completed; spectral Apparitions that cannot so much as appear!
King Louis writes that he now views this Federation Feast with
approval; and will himself have the pleasure to take part in the
same.
And so these thin streaks of Federes wend Parisward through a
paralytic France. Thin grim streaks; not thick joyful ranks, as
of old to the first Feast of Pikes! No: these poor Federates
march now towards Austria and Austrian Committee, towards
jeopardy and forlorn hope; men of hard fortune and temper, not
rich in the world's goods. Municipalities, paralyzed by
War-ministers, are shy of affording cash: it may be, your poor
Federates cannot arm themselves, cannot march, till the
Daughter-Society of the place open her pocket, and subscribe.
There will not have arrived, at the set day, Three thousand of
them in all. And yet, thin and feeble as these streaks of
Federates seem, they are the only thing one discerns moving with
any clearness of aim, in this strange scene. Angry buzz and
simmer; uneasy tossing and moaning of a huge France, all
enchanted, spell-bound by unmarching Constitution, into frightful
conscious and unconscious Magnetic-sleep; which frightful
Magnetic-sleep must now issue soon in one of two things: Death or
Madness! The Federes carry mostly in their pocket some earnest
cry and Petition, to have the 'National Executive put in action;'
or as a step towards that, to have the King's Decheance, King's
Forfeiture, or at least his Suspension, pronounced. They shall be
welcome to the Legislative, to the Mother of Patriotism; and
Paris will provide for their lodging.
Decheance, indeed: and, what next? A France spell-free, a
Revolution saved; and any thing, and all things next! so answer
grimly Danton and the unlimited Patriots, down deep in their
subterranean region of Plot, whither they have now dived.
Decheance, answers Brissot with the limited: And if next the
little Prince Royal were crowned, and some Regency of Girondins
and recalled Patriot Ministry set over him? Alas, poor Brissot;
looking, as indeed poor man does always, on the nearest morrow as
his peaceable promised land; deciding what must reach to the
world's end, yet with an insight that reaches not beyond his own
nose! Wiser are the unlimited subterranean Patriots, who with
light for the hour itself, leave the rest to the gods.
Or were it not, as we now stand, the probablest issue of all,
that Brunswick, in Coblentz, just gathering his huge limbs
towards him to rise, might arrive first; and stop both Decheance,
and theorizing on it? Brunswick is on the eve of marching; with
Eighty Thousand, they say; fell Prussians, Hessians, feller
Emigrants: a General of the Great Frederick, with such an Army.
And our Armies? And our Generals? As for Lafayette, on whose late
visit a Committee is sitting and all France is jarring and
censuring, he seems readier to fight us than fight Brunswick.
Luckner and Lafayette pretend to be interchanging corps, and are
making movements; which Patriotism cannot understand. This only
is very clear, that their corps go marching and shuttling, in the
interior of the country; much nearer Paris than formerly! Luckner
has ordered Dumouriez down to him, down from Maulde, and the
Fortified Camp there. Which order the many-counselled Dumouriez,
with the Austrians hanging close on him, he busy meanwhile
training a few thousands to stand fire and be soldiers, declares
that, come of it what will, he cannot obey. (_Dumouriez, ii. 1,
5._) Will a poor Legislative, therefore, sanction Dumouriez; who
applies to it, 'not knowing whether there is any War-ministry?'
Or sanction Luckner and these Lafayette movements?
The poor Legislative knows not what to do. It decrees, however,
that the Staff of the Paris Guard, and indeed all such Staffs,
for they are Feuillants mostly, shall be broken and replaced. It
decrees earnestly in what manner one can declare that the Country
is in Danger. And finally, on the 11th of July, the morrow of
that day when the Ministry struck work, it decrees that the
Country be, with all despatch, declared in Danger. Whereupon let
the King sanction; let the Municipality take measures: if such
Declaration will do service, it need not fail.
In Danger, truly, if ever Country was! Arise, O Country; or be
trodden down to ignominious ruin! Nay, are not the chances a
hundred to one that no rising of the Country will save it;
Brunswick, the Emigrants, and Feudal Europe drawing nigh?
Chapter 2.6.II.
Let us march.
But to our minds the notablest of all these moving phenomena, is
that of Barbaroux's 'Six Hundred Marseillese who know how to
die.'
Prompt to the request of Barbaroux, the Marseilles Municipality
has got these men together: on the fifth morning of July, the
Townhall says, "Marchez, abatez le Tyran, March, strike down the
Tyrant;" (_Dampmartin, ii. 183._) and they, with grim appropriate
"Marchons," are marching. Long journey, doubtful errand; Enfans
de la Patrie, may a good genius guide you! Their own wild heart
and what faith it has will guide them: and is not that the
monition of some genius, better or worse? Five Hundred and
Seventeen able men, with Captains of fifties and tens; well armed
all, musket on shoulder, sabre on thigh: nay they drive three
pieces of cannon; for who knows what obstacles may occur?
Municipalities there are, paralyzed by War-minister; Commandants
with orders to stop even Federation Volunteers; good, when sound
arguments will not open a Town-gate, if you have a petard to
shiver it! They have left their sunny Phocean City and Sea-haven,
with its bustle and its bloom: the thronging Course, with
high-frondent Avenues, pitchy dockyards, almond and olive groves,
orange trees on house-tops, and white glittering bastides that
crown the hills, are all behind them. They wend on their wild
way, from the extremity of French land, through unknown cities,
toward an unknown destiny; with a purpose that they know.
Much wondering at this phenomenon, and how, in a peaceable
trading City, so many householders or hearth-holders do severally
fling down their crafts and industrial tools; gird themselves
with weapons of war, and set out on a journey of six hundred
miles to 'strike down the tyrant,'—you search in all Historical
Books, Pamphlets, and Newspapers, for some light on it: unhappily
without effect. Rumour and Terror precede this march; which still
echo on you; the march itself an unknown thing. Weber, in the
back-stairs of the Tuileries, has understood that they were
Forcats, Galley-slaves and mere scoundrels, these Marseillese;
that, as they marched through Lyons, the people shut their
shops;—also that the number of them was some Four Thousand.
Equally vague is Blanc Gilli, who likewise murmurs about Forcats
and danger of plunder. (_See Barbaroux, Memoires Note in p. 40,
41._) Forcats they were not; neither was there plunder, or danger
of it. Men of regular life, or of the best-filled purse, they
could hardly be; the one thing needful in them was that they
'knew how to die.' Friend Dampmartin saw them, with his own eyes,
march 'gradually' through his quarters at Villefranche in the
Beaujolais: but saw in the vaguest manner; being indeed
preoccupied, and himself minded for matching just then—across the
Rhine. Deep was his astonishment to think of such a march,
without appointment or arrangement, station or ration: for the
rest it was 'the same men he had seen formerly' in the troubles
of the South; 'perfectly civil;' though his soldiers could not be
kept from talking a little with them. (_Dampmartin, ubi supra._)
So vague are all these; Moniteur, Histoire Parlementaire are as
good as silent: garrulous History, as is too usual, will say
nothing where you most wish her to speak! If enlightened
Curiosity ever get sight of the Marseilles Council-Books, will it
not perhaps explore this strangest of Municipal procedures; and
feel called to fish up what of the Biographies, creditable or
discreditable, of these Five Hundred and Seventeen, the stream of
Time has not yet irrevocably swallowed?
As it is, these Marseillese remain inarticulate,
undistinguishable in feature; a blackbrowed Mass, full of grim
fire, who wend there, in the hot sultry weather: very singular to
contemplate. They wend; amid the infinitude of doubt and dim
peril; they not doubtful: Fate and Feudal Europe, having decided,
come girdling in from without: they, having also decided, do
march within. Dusty of face, with frugal refreshment, they plod
onwards; unweariable, not to be turned aside. Such march will
become famous. The Thought, which works voiceless in this
blackbrowed mass, an inspired Tyrtaean Colonel, Rouget de Lille,
whom the Earth still holds, (_A.D. 1836._) has translated into
grim melody and rhythm; into his Hymn or March of the
Marseillese: luckiest musical-composition ever promulgated. The
sound of which will make the blood tingle in men's veins; and
whole Armies and Assemblages will sing it, with eyes weeping and
burning, with hearts defiant of Death, Despot and Devil.
One sees well, these Marseillese will be too late for the
Federation Feast. In fact, it is not Champ-de-Mars Oaths that
they have in view. They have quite another feat to do: a
paralytic National Executive to set in action. They must 'strike
down' whatsoever 'Tyrant,' or Martyr-Faineant, there may be who
paralyzes it; strike and be struck; and on the whole prosper and
know how to die.
Chapter 2.6.III.
Some Consolation to Mankind.
Of the Federation Feast itself we shall say almost nothing. There
are Tents pitched in the Champ-de-Mars; tent for National
Assembly; tent for Hereditary Representative,—who indeed is there
too early, and has to wait long in it. There are Eighty-three
symbolical Departmental Trees-of-Liberty; trees and mais enough:
beautifullest of all these is one huge mai, hung round with
effete Scutcheons, Emblazonries and Genealogy-books; nay better
still, with Lawyers'-bags, 'sacs de procedure:' which shall be
burnt. The Thirty seat-rows of that famed Slope are again full;
we have a bright Sun; and all is marching, streamering and
blaring: but what avails it? Virtuous Mayor Petion, whom
Feuillantism had suspended, was reinstated only last night, by
Decree of the Assembly. Men's humour is of the sourest. Men's
hats have on them, written in chalk, 'Vive Petion;' and even,
'Petion or Death, Petion ou la Mort.'
Poor Louis, who has waited till five o'clock before the Assembly
would arrive, swears the National Oath this time, with a quilted
cuirass under his waistcoat which will turn pistol-bullets.
(_Campan, ii. c. 20; De Stael, ii. c. 7._) Madame de Stael, from
that Royal Tent, stretches out the neck in a kind of agony, lest
the waving multitudes which receive him may not render him back
alive. No cry of Vive le Roi salutes the ear; cries only of Vive
Petion; Petion ou la Mort. The National Solemnity is as it were
huddled by; each cowering off almost before the evolutions are
gone through. The very Mai with its Scutcheons and Lawyers'-bags
is forgotten, stands unburnt; till 'certain Patriot Deputies,'
called by the people, set a torch to it, by way of voluntary
after-piece. Sadder Feast of Pikes no man ever saw.
Mayor Petion, named on hats, is at his zenith in this Federation;
Lafayette again is close upon his nadir. Why does the stormbell
of Saint-Roch speak out, next Saturday; why do the citizens shut
their shops? (_Moniteur, Seance du 21 Juillet 1792._) It is
Sections defiling, it is fear of effervescence. Legislative
Committee, long deliberating on Lafayette and that Anti-jacobin
Visit of his, reports, this day, that there is 'not ground for
Accusation!' Peace, ye Patriots, nevertheless; and let that
tocsin cease: the Debate is not finished, nor the Report
accepted; but Brissot, Isnard and the Mountain will sift it, and
resift it, perhaps for some three weeks longer.
So many bells, stormbells and noises do ring;—scarcely audible;
one drowning the other. For example: in this same Lafayette
tocsin, of Saturday, was there not withal some faint bob-minor,
and Deputation of Legislative, ringing the Chevalier Paul Jones
to his long rest; tocsin or dirge now all one to him! Not ten
days hence Patriot Brissot, beshouted this day by the Patriot
Galleries, shall find himself begroaned by them, on account of
his limited Patriotism; nay pelted at while perorating, and 'hit
with two prunes.' (_Hist. Parl. xvi. 185._) It is a distracted
empty-sounding world; of bob-minors and bob-majors, of triumph
and terror, of rise and fall!
The more touching is this other Solemnity, which happens on the
morrow of the Lafayette tocsin: Proclamation that the Country is
in Danger. Not till the present Sunday could such Solemnity be.
The Legislative decreed it almost a fortnight ago; but Royalty
and the ghost of a Ministry held back as they could. Now however,
on this Sunday, 22nd day of July 1792, it will hold back no
longer; and the Solemnity in very deed is. Touching to behold!
Municipality and Mayor have on their scarfs; cannon-salvo booms
alarm from the Pont-Neuf, and single-gun at intervals all day.
Guards are mounted, scarfed Notabilities, Halberdiers, and a
Cavalcade; with streamers, emblematic flags; especially with one
huge Flag, flapping mournfully: Citoyens, la Patrie est en
Danger. They roll through the streets, with stern-sounding music,
and slow rattle of hoofs: pausing at set stations, and with
doleful blast of trumpet, singing out through Herald's throat,
what the Flag says to the eye: "Citizens, the Country is in
Danger!"
Is there a man's heart that hears it without a thrill? The
many-voiced responsive hum or bellow of these multitudes is not
of triumph; and yet it is a sound deeper than triumph. But when
the long Cavalcade and Proclamation ended; and our huge Flag was
fixed on the Pont Neuf, another like it on the Hotel-de-Ville, to
wave there till better days; and each Municipal sat in the centre
of his Section, in a Tent raised in some open square, Tent
surmounted with flags of Patrie en danger, and topmost of all a
Pike and Bonnet Rouge; and, on two drums in front of him, there
lay a plank-table, and on this an open Book, and a Clerk sat,
like recording-angel, ready to write the Lists, or as we say to
enlist! O, then, it seems, the very gods might have looked down
on it. Young Patriotism, Culottic and Sansculottic, rushes
forward emulous: That is my name; name, blood, and life, is all
my Country's; why have I nothing more! Youths of short stature
weep that they are below size. Old men come forward, a son in
each hand. Mothers themselves will grant the son of their
travail; send him, though with tears. And the multitude bellows
Vive la Patrie, far reverberating. And fire flashes in the eyes
of men;—and at eventide, your Municipal returns to the Townhall,
followed by his long train of volunteer Valour; hands in his
List: says proudly, looking round. This is my day's harvest.
(_Tableau de la Revolution, para Patrie en Danger._) They will
march, on the morrow, to Soissons; small bundle holding all their
chattels.
So, with Vive la Patrie, Vive la Liberte, stone Paris
reverberates like Ocean in his caves; day after day, Municipals
enlisting in tricolor Tent; the Flag flapping on Pont Neuf and
Townhall, Citoyens, la Patrie est en Danger. Some Ten thousand
fighters, without discipline but full of heart, are on march in
few days. The like is doing in every Town of France.—Consider
therefore whether the Country will want defenders, had we but a
National Executive? Let the Sections and Primary Assemblies, at
any rate, become Permanent, and sit continually in Paris, and
over France, by Legislative Decree dated Wednesday the 25th.
(_Moniteur, Seance du 25 Juillet 1792._)
Mark contrariwise how, in these very hours, dated the 25th,
Brunswick shakes himself 's'ebranle,' in Coblentz; and takes the
road! Shakes himself indeed; one spoken word becomes such a
shaking. Successive, simultaneous dirl of thirty thousand muskets
shouldered; prance and jingle of ten-thousand horsemen,
fanfaronading Emigrants in the van; drum, kettle-drum; noise of
weeping, swearing; and the immeasurable lumbering clank of
baggage-waggons and camp-kettles that groan into motion: all this
is Brunswick shaking himself; not without all this does the one
man march, 'covering a space of forty miles.' Still less without
his Manifesto, dated, as we say, the 25th; a State-Paper worthy
of attention!
By this Document, it would seem great things are in store for
France. The universal French People shall now have permission to
rally round Brunswick and his Emigrant Seigneurs; tyranny of a
Jacobin Faction shall oppress them no more; but they shall
return, and find favour with their own good King; who, by Royal
Declaration (_three years ago_) of the Twenty-third of June, said
that he would himself make them happy. As for National Assembly,
and other Bodies of Men invested with some temporary shadow of
authority, they are charged to maintain the King's Cities and
Strong Places intact, till Brunswick arrive to take delivery of
them. Indeed, quick submission may extenuate many things; but to
this end it must be quick. Any National Guard or other unmilitary
person found resisting in arms shall be 'treated as a traitor;'
that is to say, hanged with promptitude. For the rest, if Paris,
before Brunswick gets thither, offer any insult to the King: or,
for example, suffer a faction to carry the King away elsewhither;
in that case Paris shall be blasted asunder with cannon-shot and
'military execution.' Likewise all other Cities, which may
witness, and not resist to the uttermost, such forced-march of
his Majesty, shall be blasted asunder; and Paris and every City
of them, starting-place, course and goal of said sacrilegious
forced-march, shall, as rubbish and smoking ruin, lie there for a
sign. Such vengeance were indeed signal, 'an insigne
vengeance:'—O Brunswick, what words thou writest and blusterest!
In this Paris, as in old Nineveh, are so many score thousands
that know not the right hand from the left, and also much cattle.
Shall the very milk-cows, hard-living cadgers'-asses, and poor
little canary-birds die?
Nor is Royal and Imperial Prussian-Austrian Declaration wanting:
setting forth, in the amplest manner, their Sanssouci-Schonbrunn
version of this whole French Revolution, since the first
beginning of it; and with what grief these high heads have seen
such things done under the Sun: however, 'as some small
consolation to mankind,' (_Annual Register (_1792_), p. 236._)
they do now despatch Brunswick; regardless of expense, as one
might say, of sacrifices on their own part; for is it not the
first duty to console men?
Serene Highnesses, who sit there protocolling and manifestoing,
and consoling mankind! how were it if, for once in the thousand
years, your parchments, formularies, and reasons of state were
blown to the four winds; and Reality Sans-indispensables stared
you, even you, in the face; and Mankind said for itself what the
thing was that would console it?—
Chapter 2.6.IV.
Subterranean.
But judge if there was comfort in this to the Sections all
sitting permanent; deliberating how a National Executive could be
put in action!
High rises the response, not of cackling terror, but of crowing
counter-defiance, and Vive la Nation; young Valour streaming
towards the Frontiers; Patrie en Danger mutely beckoning on the
Pont Neuf. Sections are busy, in their permanent Deep; and down,
lower still, works unlimited Patriotism, seeking salvation in
plot. Insurrection, you would say, becomes once more the
sacredest of duties? Committee, self-chosen, is sitting at the
Sign of the Golden Sun: Journalist Carra, Camille Desmoulins,
Alsatian Westermann friend of Danton, American Fournier of
Martinique;—a Committee not unknown to Mayor Petion, who, as an
official person, must sleep with one eye open. Not unknown to
Procureur Manuel; least of all to Procureur-Substitute Danton!
He, wrapped in darkness, being also official, bears it on his
giant shoulder; cloudy invisible Atlas of the whole.
Much is invisible; the very Jacobins have their reticences.
Insurrection is to be: but when? This only we can discern, that
such Federes as are not yet gone to Soissons, as indeed are not
inclined to go yet, "for reasons," says the Jacobin President,
"which it may be interesting not to state," have got a Central
Committee sitting close by, under the roof of the Mother Society
herself. Also, what in such ferment and danger of effervescence
is surely proper, the Forty-eight Sections have got their Central
Committee; intended 'for prompt communication.' To which Central
Committee the Municipality, anxious to have it at hand, could not
refuse an Apartment in the Hotel-de-Ville.
Singular City! For overhead of all this, there is the customary
baking and brewing; Labour hammers and grinds. Frilled
promenaders saunter under the trees; white-muslin promenaderess,
in green parasol, leaning on your arm. Dogs dance, and shoeblacks
polish, on that Pont Neuf itself, where Fatherland is in danger.
So much goes its course; and yet the course of all things is nigh
altering and ending.
Look at that Tuileries and Tuileries Garden. Silent all as
Sahara; none entering save by ticket! They shut their Gates,
after the Day of the Black Breeches; a thing they had the liberty
to do. However, the National Assembly grumbled something about
Terrace of the Feuillants, how said Terrace lay contiguous to the
back entrance to their Salle, and was partly National Property;
and so now National Justice has stretched a Tricolor Riband
athwart, by way of boundary-line, respected with splenetic
strictness by all Patriots. It hangs there that Tricolor
boundary-line; carries 'satirical inscriptions on cards,'
generally in verse; and all beyond this is called Coblentz, and
remains vacant; silent, as a fateful Golgotha; sunshine and
umbrage alternating on it in vain. Fateful Circuit; what hope can
dwell in it? Mysterious Tickets of Entry introduce themselves;
speak of Insurrection very imminent. Rivarol's Staff of Genius
had better purchase blunderbusses; Grenadier bonnets, red Swiss
uniforms may be useful. Insurrection will come; but likewise will
it not be met? Staved off, one may hope, till Brunswick arrive?
But consider withal if the Bourne-stones and Portable chairs
remain silent; if the Herald's College of Bill-Stickers sleep!
Louvet's Sentinel warns gratis on all walls; Sulleau is busy:
People's-Friend Marat and King's-Friend Royou croak and
counter-croak. For the man Marat, though long hidden since that
Champ-de-Mars Massacre, is still alive. He has lain, who knows in
what Cellars; perhaps in Legendre's; fed by a steak of Legendre's
killing: but, since April, the bull-frog voice of him sounds
again; hoarsest of earthly cries. For the present, black terror
haunts him: O brave Barbaroux wilt thou not smuggle me to
Marseilles, 'disguised as a jockey?' (_Barbaroux, p. 60._) In
Palais-Royal and all public places, as we read, there is sharp
activity; private individuals haranguing that Valour may enlist;
haranguing that the Executive may be put in action. Royalist
journals ought to be solemnly burnt: argument thereupon; debates
which generally end in single-stick, coups de cannes.
(_Newspapers, Narratives and Documents Hist. Parl. xv. 240; xvi.
399._) Or think of this; the hour midnight; place Salle de
Manege; august Assembly just adjourning: 'Citizens of both sexes
enter in a rush exclaiming, Vengeance: they are poisoning our
Brothers;'—baking brayed-glass among their bread at Soissons!
Vergniaud has to speak soothing words, How Commissioners are
already sent to investigate this brayed-glass, and do what is
needful therein: till the rush of Citizens 'makes profound
silence:' and goes home to its bed.
Such is Paris; the heart of a France like to it. Preternatural
suspicion, doubt, disquietude, nameless anticipation, from shore
to shore:—and those blackbrowed Marseillese, marching, dusty,
unwearied, through the midst of it; not doubtful they. Marching
to the grim music of their hearts, they consume continually the
long road, these three weeks and more; heralded by Terror and
Rumour. The Brest Federes arrive on the 26th; through hurrahing
streets. Determined men are these also, bearing or not bearing
the Sacred Pikes of Chateau-Vieux; and on the whole decidedly
disinclined for Soissons as yet. Surely the Marseillese Brethren
do draw nigher all days.
Chapter 2.6.V.
At Dinner.
It was a bright day for Charenton, that 29th of the month, when
the Marseillese Brethren actually came in sight. Barbaroux,
Santerre and Patriots have gone out to meet the grim Wayfarers.
Patriot clasps dusty Patriot to his bosom; there is footwashing
and refection: 'dinner of twelve hundred covers at the Blue Dial,
Cadran Bleu;' and deep interior consultation, that one wots not
of. (_Deux Amis, viii. 90-101._) Consultation indeed which comes
to little; for Santerre, with an open purse, with a loud voice,
has almost no head. Here however we repose this night: on the
morrow is public entry into Paris.
On which public entry the Day-Historians, Diurnalists, or
Journalists as they call themselves, have preserved record
enough. How Saint-Antoine male and female, and Paris generally,
gave brotherly welcome, with bravo and hand-clapping, in crowded
streets; and all passed in the peaceablest manner;—except it
might be our Marseillese pointed out here and there a
riband-cockade, and beckoned that it should be snatched away, and
exchanged for a wool one; which was done. How the Mother Society
in a body has come as far as the Bastille-ground, to embrace you.
How you then wend onwards, triumphant, to the Townhall, to be
embraced by Mayor Petion; to put down your muskets in the
Barracks of Nouvelle France, not far off;—then towards the
appointed Tavern in the Champs Elysees to enjoy a frugal Patriot
repast. (_Hist. Parl. xvi. 196. See Barbaroux, p. 51-5._)
Of all which the indignant Tuileries may, by its Tickets of
Entry, have warning. Red Swiss look doubly sharp to their
Chateau-Grates;—though surely there is no danger? Blue Grenadiers
of the Filles-Saint-Thomas Section are on duty there this day:
men of Agio, as we have seen; with stuffed purses,
riband-cockades; among whom serves Weber. A party of these
latter, with Captains, with sundry Feuillant Notabilities, Moreau
de Saint-Mery of the three thousand orders, and others, have been
dining, much more respectably, in a Tavern hard by. They have
dined, and are now drinking Loyal-Patriotic toasts; while the
Marseillese, National-Patriotic merely, are about sitting down to
their frugal covers of delf. How it happened remains to this day
undemonstrable: but the external fact is, certain of these
Filles-Saint-Thomas Grenadiers do issue from their Tavern;
perhaps touched, surely not yet muddled with any liquor they have
had;—issue in the professed intention of testifying to the
Marseillese, or to the multitude of Paris Patriots who stroll in
these spaces, That they, the Filles-Saint-Thomas men, if well
seen into, are not a whit less Patriotic than any other class of
men whatever.
It was a rash errand! For how can the strolling multitudes credit
such a thing; or do other indeed than hoot at it, provoking, and
provoked;—till Grenadier sabres stir in the scabbard, and a sharp
shriek rises: "A nous Marseillais, Help Marseillese!" Quick as
lightning, for the frugal repast is not yet served, that
Marseillese Tavern flings itself open: by door, by window;
running, bounding, vault forth the Five hundred and Seventeen
undined Patriots; and, sabre flashing from thigh, are on the
scene of controversy. Will ye parley, ye Grenadier Captains and
official Persons; 'with faces grown suddenly pale,' the Deponents
say? (_Moniteur, Seances du 30, du 31 Juillet 1792 Hist. Parl.
xvi. 197-210._) Advisabler were instant moderately swift retreat!
The Filles-Saint-Thomas retreat, back foremost; then, alas, face
foremost, at treble-quick time; the Marseillese, according to a
Deponent, "clearing the fences and ditches after them like lions:
Messieurs, it was an imposing spectacle."
Thus they retreat, the Marseillese following. Swift and swifter,
towards the Tuileries: where the Drawbridge receives the bulk of
the fugitives; and, then suddenly drawn up, saves them; or else
the green mud of the Ditch does it. The bulk of them; not all;
ah, no! Moreau de Saint-Mery for example, being too fat, could
not fly fast; he got a stroke, flat-stroke only, over the
shoulder-blades, and fell prone;—and disappears there from the
History of the Revolution. Cuts also there were, pricks in the
posterior fleshy parts; much rending of skirts, and other
discrepant waste. But poor Sub-lieutenant Duhamel, innocent
Change-broker, what a lot for him! He turned on his pursuer, or
pursuers, with a pistol; he fired and missed; drew a second
pistol, and again fired and missed; then ran: unhappily in vain.
In the Rue Saint-Florentin, they clutched him; thrust him
through, in red rage: that was the end of the New Era, and of all
Eras, to poor Duhamel.
Pacific readers can fancy what sort of grace-before-meat this was
to frugal Patriotism. Also how the Battalion of the
Filles-Saint-Thomas 'drew out in arms,' luckily without further
result; how there was accusation at the Bar of the Assembly, and
counter-accusation and defence; Marseillese challenging the
sentence of free jury court,—which never got to a decision. We
ask rather, What the upshot of all these distracted wildly
accumulating things may, by probability, be? Some upshot; and the
time draws nigh! Busy are Central Committees, of Federes at the
Jacobins Church, of Sections at the Townhall; Reunion of Carra,
Camille and Company at the Golden Sun. Busy: like submarine
deities, or call them mud-gods, working there in the deep murk of
waters: till the thing be ready.
And how your National Assembly, like a ship waterlogged,
helmless, lies tumbling; the Galleries, of shrill Women, of
Federes with sabres, bellowing down on it, not unfrightful;—and
waits where the waves of chance may please to strand it;
suspicious, nay on the Left side, conscious, what submarine
Explosion is meanwhile a-charging! Petition for King's Forfeiture
rises often there: Petition from Paris Section, from Provincial
Patriot Towns; From Alencon, Briancon, and 'the Traders at the
Fair of Beaucaire.' Or what of these? On the 3rd of August, Mayor
Petion and the Municipality come petitioning for Forfeiture: they
openly, in their tricolor Municipal scarfs. Forfeiture is what
all Patriots now want and expect. All Brissotins want Forfeiture;
with the little Prince Royal for King, and us for Protector over
him. Emphatic Federes asks the legislature: "Can you save us, or
not?" Forty-seven Sections have agreed to Forfeiture; only that
of the Filles-Saint-Thomas pretending to disagree. Nay Section
Mauconseil declares Forfeiture to be, properly speaking, come;
Mauconseil for one 'does from this day,' the last of July, 'cease
allegiance to Louis,' and take minute of the same before all men.
A thing blamed aloud; but which will be praised aloud; and the
name Mauconseil, of Ill-counsel, be thenceforth changed to
Bonconseil, of Good-counsel.
President Danton, in the Cordeliers Section, does another thing:
invites all Passive Citizens to take place among the Active in
Section-business, one peril threatening all. Thus he, though an
official person; cloudy Atlas of the whole. Likewise he manages
to have that blackbrowed Battalion of Marseillese shifted to new
Barracks, in his own region of the remote South-East. Sleek
Chaumette, cruel Billaud, Deputy Chabot the Disfrocked, Huguenin
with the tocsin in his heart, will welcome them there. Wherefore,
again and again: "O Legislators, can you save us or not?" Poor
Legislators; with their Legislature waterlogged, volcanic
Explosion charging under it! Forfeiture shall be debated on the
ninth day of August; that miserable business of Lafayette may be
expected to terminate on the eighth.
Or will the humane Reader glance into the Levee-day of Sunday the
fifth? The last Levee! Not for a long time, 'never,' says
Bertrand-Moleville, had a Levee been so brilliant, at least so
crowded. A sad presaging interest sat on every face; Bertrand's
own eyes were filled with tears. For, indeed, outside of that
Tricolor Riband on the Feuillants Terrace, Legislature is
debating, Sections are defiling, all Paris is astir this very
Sunday, demanding Decheance. (_Hist. Parl. xvi. 337-9._) Here,
however, within the riband, a grand proposal is on foot, for the
hundredth time, of carrying his Majesty to Rouen and the Castle
of Gaillon. Swiss at Courbevoye are in readiness; much is ready;
Majesty himself seems almost ready. Nevertheless, for the
hundredth time, Majesty, when near the point of action, draws
back; writes, after one has waited, palpitating, an endless
summer day, that 'he has reason to believe the Insurrection is
not so ripe as you suppose.' Whereat Bertrand-Moleville breaks
forth 'into extremity at one of spleen and despair, d'humeur et
de desespoir.' (_Bertrand-Moleville, Memoires, ii. 129._)
Chapter 2.6.VI.
The Steeples at Midnight.
For, in truth, the Insurrection is just about ripe. Thursday is
the ninth of the month August: if Forfeiture be not pronounced by
the Legislature that day, we must pronounce it ourselves.
Legislature? A poor waterlogged Legislature can pronounce
nothing. On Wednesday the eighth, after endless oratory once
again, they cannot even pronounce Accusation again Lafayette; but
absolve him,—hear it, Patriotism!—by a majority of two to one.
Patriotism hears it; Patriotism, hounded on by Prussian Terror,
by Preternatural Suspicion, roars tumultuous round the Salle de
Manege, all day; insults many leading Deputies, of the absolvent
Right-side; nay chases them, collars them with loud menace:
Deputy Vaublanc, and others of the like, are glad to take refuge
in Guardhouses, and escape by the back window. And so, next day,
there is infinite complaint; Letter after Letter from insulted
Deputy; mere complaint, debate and self-cancelling jargon: the
sun of Thursday sets like the others, and no Forfeiture
pronounced. Wherefore in fine, To your tents, O Israel!
The Mother-Society ceases speaking; groups cease haranguing:
Patriots, with closed lips now, 'take one another's arm;' walk
off, in rows, two and two, at a brisk business-pace; and vanish
afar in the obscure places of the East. (_Deux Amis, viii.
129-88._) Santerre is ready; or we will make him ready.
Forty-seven of the Forty-eight Sections are ready; nay
Filles-Saint-Thomas itself turns up the Jacobin side of it, turns
down the Feuillant side of it, and is ready too. Let the
unlimited Patriot look to his weapon, be it pike, be it firelock;
and the Brest brethren, above all, the blackbrowed Marseillese
prepare themselves for the extreme hour! Syndic Roederer knows,
and laments or not as the issue may turn, that 'five thousand
ball-cartridges, within these few days, have been distributed to
Federes, at the Hotel-de-Ville.' (_Roederer a la Barre, Seance du
9 Aout in Hist. Parl. xvi. 393._)
And ye likewise, gallant gentlemen, defenders of Royalty, crowd
ye on your side to the Tuileries. Not to a Levee: no, to a
Couchee: where much will be put to bed. Your Tickets of Entry are
needful; needfuller your blunderbusses!—They come and crowd, like
gallant men who also know how to die: old Maille the Camp-Marshal
has come, his eyes gleaming once again, though dimmed by the
rheum of almost four-score years. Courage, Brothers! We have a
thousand red Swiss; men stanch of heart, steadfast as the granite
of their Alps. National Grenadiers are at least friends of Order;
Commandant Mandat breathes loyal ardour, will "answer for it on
his head." Mandat will, and his Staff; for the Staff, though
there stands a doom and Decree to that effect, is happily never
yet dissolved.
Commandant Mandat has corresponded with Mayor Petion; carries a
written Order from him these three days, to repel force by force.
A squadron on the Pont Neuf with cannon shall turn back these
Marseillese coming across the River: a squadron at the Townhall
shall cut Saint-Antoine in two, 'as it issues from the Arcade
Saint-Jean;' drive one half back to the obscure East, drive the
other half forward through 'the Wickets of the Louvre.' Squadrons
not a few, and mounted squadrons; squadrons in the Palais Royal,
in the Place Vendome: all these shall charge, at the right
moment; sweep this street, and then sweep that. Some new
Twentieth of June we shall have; only still more ineffectual? Or
probably the Insurrection will not dare to rise at all? Mandat's
Squadrons, Horse-Gendarmerie and blue Guards march, clattering,
tramping; Mandat's Cannoneers rumble. Under cloud of night; to
the sound of his generale, which begins drumming when men should
go to bed. It is the 9th night of August, 1792.
On the other hand, the Forty-eight Sections correspond by swift
messengers; are choosing each their 'three Delegates with full
powers.' Syndic Roederer, Mayor Petion are sent for to the
Tuileries: courageous Legislators, when the drum beats danger,
should repair to their Salle. Demoiselle Theroigne has on her
grenadier-bonnet, short-skirted riding-habit; two pistols garnish
her small waist, and sabre hangs in baldric by her side.
Such a game is playing in this Paris Pandemonium, or City of All
the Devils!—And yet the Night, as Mayor Petion walks here in the
Tuileries Garden, 'is beautiful and calm;' Orion and the Pleiades
glitter down quite serene. Petion has come forth, the 'heat'
inside was so oppressive. (_Roederer, Chronique de Cinquante
Jours: Recit de Petion. Townhall Records, &c. in Hist. Parl. xvi.
399-466._) Indeed, his Majesty's reception of him was of the
roughest; as it well might be. And now there is no outgate;
Mandat's blue Squadrons turn you back at every Grate; nay the
Filles-Saint-Thomas Grenadiers give themselves liberties of
tongue, How a virtuous Mayor 'shall pay for it, if there be
mischief,' and the like; though others again are full of
civility. Surely if any man in France is in straights this night,
it is Mayor Petion: bound, under pain of death, one may say, to
smile dexterously with the one side of his face, and weep with
the other;—death if he do it not dexterously enough! Not till
four in the morning does a National Assembly, hearing of his
plight, summon him over 'to give account of Paris;' of which he
knows nothing: whereby however he shall get home to bed, and only
his gilt coach be left. Scarcely less delicate is Syndic
Roederer's task; who must wait whether he will lament or not,
till he see the issue. Janus Bifrons, or Mr. Facing-both-ways, as
vernacular Bunyan has it! They walk there, in the meanwhile,
these two Januses, with others of the like double conformation;
and 'talk of indifferent matters.'
Roederer, from time to time, steps in; to listen, to speak; to
send for the Department-Directory itself, he their Procureur
Syndic not seeing how to act. The Apartments are all crowded;
some seven hundred gentlemen in black elbowing, bustling; red
Swiss standing like rocks; ghost, or partial-ghost of a Ministry,
with Roederer and advisers, hovering round their Majesties; old
Marshall Maille kneeling at the King's feet, to say, He and these
gallant gentlemen are come to die for him. List! through the
placid midnight; clang of the distant stormbell! So, in very
sooth; steeple after steeple takes up the wondrous tale. Black
Courtiers listen at the windows, opened for air; discriminate the
steeple-bells: (_Roederer, ubi supra._) this is the tocsin of
Saint-Roch; that again, is it not Saint-Jacques, named de la
Boucherie? Yes, Messieurs! Or even Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois,
hear ye it not? The same metal that rang storm, two hundred and
twenty years ago; but by a Majesty's order then; on
Saint-Bartholomew's Eve (_24th August, 1572._)—So go the
steeple-bells; which Courtiers can discriminate. Nay, meseems,
there is the Townhall itself; we know it by its sound! Yes,
Friends, that is the Townhall; discoursing so, to the Night.
Miraculously; by miraculous metal-tongue and man's arm: Marat
himself, if you knew it, is pulling at the rope there! Marat is
pulling; Robespierre lies deep, invisible for the next forty
hours; and some men have heart, and some have as good as none,
and not even frenzy will give them any.
What struggling confusion, as the issue slowly draws on; and the
doubtful Hour, with pain and blind struggle, brings forth its
Certainty, never to be abolished!—The Full-power Delegates, three
from each Section, a Hundred and forty-four in all, got gathered
at the Townhall, about midnight. Mandat's Squadron, stationed
there, did not hinder their entering: are they not the 'Central
Committee of the Sections' who sit here usually; though in
greater number tonight? They are there: presided by Confusion,
Irresolution, and the Clack of Tongues. Swift scouts fly; Rumour
buzzes, of black Courtiers, red Swiss, of Mandat and his
Squadrons that shall charge. Better put off the Insurrection?
Yes, put it off. Ha, hark! Saint-Antoine booming out eloquent
tocsin, of its own accord!—Friends, no: ye cannot put off the
Insurrection; but must put it on, and live with it, or die with
it.
Swift now, therefore: let these actual Old Municipals, on sight
of the Full-powers, and mandate of the Sovereign elective People,
lay down their functions; and this New Hundred and forty-four
take them up! Will ye nill ye, worthy Old Municipals, go ye must.
Nay is it not a happiness for many a Municipal that he can wash
his hands of such a business; and sit there paralyzed,
unaccountable, till the Hour do bring forth; or even go home to
his night's rest? (_Section Documents, Townhall Documents, Hist.
Parl. ubi supra._) Two only of the Old, or at most three, we
retain Mayor Petion, for the present walking in the Tuileries;
Procureur Manuel; Procureur Substitute Danton, invisible Atlas of
the whole. And so, with our Hundred and forty-four, among whom
are a Tocsin-Huguenin, a Billaud, a Chaumette; and
Editor-Talliens, and Fabre d'Eglantines, Sergents, Panises; and
in brief, either emergent, or else emerged and full-blown, the
entire Flower of unlimited Patriotism: have we not, as by magic,
made a New Municipality; ready to act in the unlimited manner;
and declare itself roundly, 'in a State of Insurrection!'—First
of all, then, be Commandant Mandat sent for, with that
Mayor's-Order of his; also let the New Municipals visit those
Squadrons that were to charge; and let the stormbell ring its
loudest;—and, on the whole, Forward, ye Hundred and forty-four;
retreat is now none for you!
Reader, fancy not, in thy languid way, that Insurrection is easy.
Insurrection is difficult: each individual uncertain even of his
next neighbour; totally uncertain of his distant neighbours, what
strength is with him, what strength is against him; certain only
that, in case of failure, his individual portion is the gallows!
Eight hundred thousand heads, and in each of them a separate
estimate of these uncertainties, a separate theorem of action
conformable to that: out of so many uncertainties, does the
certainty, and inevitable net-result never to be abolished, go
on, at all moments, bodying itself forth;—leading thee also
towards civic-crowns or an ignominious noose.
Could the Reader take an Asmodeus's Flight, and waving open all
roofs and privacies, look down from the Tower of Notre Dame, what
a Paris were it! Of treble-voice whimperings or vehemence, of
bass-voice growlings, dubitations; Courage screwing itself to
desperate defiance; Cowardice trembling silent within barred
doors;—and all round, Dulness calmly snoring; for much Dulness,
flung on its mattresses, always sleeps. O, between the clangour
of these high-storming tocsins and that snore of Dulness, what a
gamut: of trepidation, excitation, desperation; and above it mere
Doubt, Danger, Atropos and Nox!
Fighters of this section draw out; hear that the next Section
does not; and thereupon draw in. Saint-Antoine, on this side the
River, is uncertain of Saint-Marceau on that. Steady only is the
snore of Dulness, are the Six Hundred Marseillese that know how
to die! Mandat, twice summoned to the Townhall, has not come.
Scouts fly incessant, in distracted haste; and the
many-whispering voices of Rumour. Theroigne and unofficial
Patriots flit, dim-visible, exploratory, far and wide; like
Night-birds on the wing. Of Nationals some Three thousand have
followed Mandat and his generale; the rest follow each his own
theorem of the uncertainties: theorem, that one should march
rather with Saint-Antoine; innumerable theorems, that in such a
case the wholesomest were sleep. And so the drums beat, in made
fits, and the stormbells peal. Saint-Antoine itself does but draw
out and draw in; Commandant Santerre, over there, cannot believe
that the Marseillese and Saint Marceau will march. Thou laggard
sonorous Beer-vat, with the loud voice and timber head, is it
time now to palter? Alsatian Westermann clutches him by the
throat with drawn sabre: whereupon the Timber-headed believes. In
this manner wanes the slow night; amid fret, uncertainty and
tocsin; all men's humour rising to the hysterical pitch; and
nothing done.
However, Mandat, on the third summons does come;—come, unguarded;
astonished to find the Municipality new. They question him
straitly on that Mayor's-Order to resist force by force; on that
strategic scheme of cutting Saint-Antoine in two halves: he
answers what he can: they think it were right to send this
strategic National Commandant to the Abbaye Prison, and let a
Court of Law decide on him. Alas, a Court of Law, not Book-Law
but primeval Club-Law, crowds and jostles out of doors; all
fretted to the hysterical pitch; cruel as Fear, blind as the
Night: such Court of Law, and no other, clutches poor Mandat from
his constables; beats him down, massacres him, on the steps of
the Townhall. Look to it, ye new Municipals; ye People, in a
state of Insurrection! Blood is shed, blood must be answered
for;—alas, in such hysterical humour, more blood will flow: for
it is as with the Tiger in that; he has only to begin.
Seventeen Individuals have been seized in the Champs Elysees, by
exploratory Patriotism; they flitting dim-visible, by it flitting
dim-visible. Ye have pistols, rapiers, ye Seventeen? One of those
accursed 'false Patrols;' that go marauding, with Anti-National
intent; seeking what they can spy, what they can spill! The
Seventeen are carried to the nearest Guard-house; eleven of them
escape by back passages. "How is this?" Demoiselle Theroigne
appears at the front entrance, with sabre, pistols, and a train;
denounces treasonous connivance; demands, seizes, the remaining
six, that the justice of the People be not trifled with. Of which
six two more escape in the whirl and debate of the Club-Law
Court; the last unhappy Four are massacred, as Mandat was: Two
Ex-Bodyguards; one dissipated Abbe; one Royalist Pamphleteer,
Sulleau, known to us by name, Able Editor, and wit of all work.
Poor Sulleau: his Acts of the Apostles, and brisk
Placard-Journals (_for he was an able man_) come to Finis, in
this manner; and questionable jesting issues suddenly in horrid
earnest! Such doings usher in the dawn of the Tenth of August,
1792.
Or think what a night the poor National Assembly has had: sitting
there, 'in great paucity,' attempting to debate;—quivering and
shivering; pointing towards all the thirty-two azimuths at once,
as the magnet-needle does when thunderstorm is in the air! If the
Insurrection come? If it come, and fail? Alas, in that case, may
not black Courtiers, with blunderbusses, red Swiss with bayonets
rush over, flushed with victory, and ask us: Thou undefinable,
waterlogged, self-distractive, self-destructive Legislative, what
dost thou here unsunk?—Or figure the poor National Guards,
bivouacking 'in temporary tents' there; or standing ranked,
shifting from leg to leg, all through the weary night; New
tricolor Municipals ordering one thing, old Mandat Captains
ordering another! Procureur Manuel has ordered the cannons to be
withdrawn from the Pont Neuf; none ventured to disobey him. It
seemed certain, then, the old Staff so long doomed has finally
been dissolved, in these hours; and Mandat is not our Commandant
now, but Santerre? Yes, friends: Santerre henceforth,—surely
Mandat no more! The Squadrons that were to charge see nothing
certain, except that they are cold, hungry, worn down with
watching; that it were sad to slay French brothers; sadder to be
slain by them. Without the Tuileries Circuit, and within it, sour
uncertain humour sways these men: only the red Swiss stand
steadfast. Them their officers refresh now with a slight wetting
of brandy; wherein the Nationals, too far gone for brandy, refuse
to participate.
King Louis meanwhile had laid him down for a little sleep: his
wig when he reappeared had lost the powder on one side.
(_Roederer, ubi supra._) Old Marshal Maille and the gentlemen in
black rise always in spirits, as the Insurrection does not rise:
there goes a witty saying now, "Le tocsin ne rend pas." The
tocsin, like a dry milk-cow, does not yield. For the rest, could
one not proclaim Martial Law? Not easily; for now, it seems,
Mayor Petion is gone. On the other hand, our Interim Commandant,
poor Mandat being off, 'to the Hotel-de-Ville,' complains that so
many Courtiers in black encumber the service, are an eyesorrow to
the National Guards. To which her Majesty answers with emphasis,
That they will obey all, will suffer all, that they are sure men
these.
And so the yellow lamplight dies out in the gray of morning, in
the King's Palace, over such a scene. Scene of jostling,
elbowing, of confusion, and indeed conclusion, for the thing is
about to end. Roederer and spectral Ministers jostle in the
press; consult, in side cabinets, with one or with both
Majesties. Sister Elizabeth takes the Queen to the window:
"Sister, see what a beautiful sunrise," right over the Jacobins
church and that quarter! How happy if the tocsin did not yield!
But Mandat returns not; Petion is gone: much hangs wavering in
the invisible Balance. About five o'clock, there rises from the
Garden a kind of sound; as of a shout to which had become a howl,
and instead of Vive le Roi were ending in Vive la Nation. "Mon
Dieu!" ejaculates a spectral Minister, "what is he doing down
there?" For it is his Majesty, gone down with old Marshal Maille
to review the troops; and the nearest companies of them answer
so. Her Majesty bursts into a stream of tears. Yet on stepping
from the cabinet her eyes are dry and calm, her look is even
cheerful. 'The Austrian lip, and the aquiline nose, fuller than
usual, gave to her countenance,' says Peltier, (_in Toulongeon,
ii. 241._) 'something of Majesty, which they that did not see her
in these moments cannot well have an idea of.' O thou Theresa's
Daughter!
King Louis enters, much blown with the fatigue; but for the rest
with his old air of indifference. Of all hopes now surely the
joyfullest were, that the tocsin did not yield.
Chapter 2.6.VII.
The Swiss.
Unhappy Friends, the tocsin does yield, has yielded! Lo ye, how
with the first sun-rays its Ocean-tide, of pikes and fusils,
flows glittering from the far East;—immeasurable; born of the
Night! They march there, the grim host; Saint-Antoine on this
side of the River; Saint-Marceau on that, the blackbrowed
Marseillese in the van. With hum, and grim murmur, far-heard;
like the Ocean-tide, as we say: drawn up, as if by Luna and
Influences, from the great Deep of Waters, they roll gleaming on;
no King, Canute or Louis, can bid them roll back. Wide-eddying
side-currents, of onlookers, roll hither and thither, unarmed,
not voiceless; they, the steel host, roll on. New-Commandant
Santerre, indeed, has taken seat at the Townhall; rests there, in
his half-way-house. Alsatian Westermann, with flashing sabre,
does not rest; nor the Sections, nor the Marseillese, nor
Demoiselle Theroigne; but roll continually on.
And now, where are Mandat's Squadrons that were to charge? Not a
Squadron of them stirs: or they stir in the wrong direction, out
of the way; their officers glad that they will even do that. It
is to this hour uncertain whether the Squadron on the Pont Neuf
made the shadow of resistance, or did not make the shadow:
enough, the blackbrowed Marseillese, and Saint-Marceau following
them, do cross without let; do cross, in sure hope now of
Saint-Antoine and the rest; do billow on, towards the Tuileries,
where their errand is. The Tuileries, at sound of them, rustles
responsive: the red Swiss look to their priming; Courtiers in
black draw their blunderbusses, rapiers, poniards, some have even
fire-shovels; every man his weapon of war.
Judge if, in these circumstances, Syndic Roederer felt easy! Will
the kind Heavens open no middle-course of refuge for a poor
Syndic who halts between two? If indeed his Majesty would consent
to go over to the Assembly! His Majesty, above all her Majesty,
cannot agree to that. Did her Majesty answer the proposal with a
"Fi donc;" did she say even, she would be nailed to the walls
sooner? Apparently not. It is written also that she offered the
King a pistol; saying, Now or else never was the time to shew
himself. Close eye-witnesses did not see it, nor do we. That saw
only that she was queenlike, quiet; that she argued not,
upbraided not, with the Inexorable; but, like Caesar in the
Capitol, wrapped her mantle, as it beseems Queens and Sons of
Adam to do. But thou, O Louis! of what stuff art thou at all? Is
there no stroke in thee, then, for Life and Crown? The silliest
hunted deer dies not so. Art thou the languidest of all mortals;
or the mildest-minded? Thou art the worst-starred.
The tide advances; Syndic Roederer's and all men's straits grow
straiter and straiter. Fremescent clangor comes from the armed
Nationals in the Court; far and wide is the infinite hubbub of
tongues. What counsel? And the tide is now nigh! Messengers,
forerunners speak hastily through the outer Grates; hold parley
sitting astride the walls. Syndic Roederer goes out and comes in.
Cannoneers ask him: Are we to fire against the people? King's
Ministers ask him: Shall the King's House be forced? Syndic
Roederer has a hard game to play. He speaks to the Cannoneers
with eloquence, with fervour; such fervour as a man can, who has
to blow hot and cold in one breath. Hot and cold, O Roederer? We,
for our part, cannot live and die! The Cannoneers, by way of
answer, fling down their linstocks.—Think of this answer, O King
Louis, and King's Ministers: and take a poor Syndic's safe
middle-course, towards the Salle de Manege. King Louis sits, his
hands leant on knees, body bent forward; gazes for a space
fixedly on Syndic Roederer; then answers, looking over his
shoulder to the Queen: Marchons! They march; King Louis, Queen,
Sister Elizabeth, the two royal children and governess: these,
with Syndic Roederer, and Officials of the Department; amid a
double rank of National Guards. The men with blunderbusses, the
steady red Swiss gaze mournfully, reproachfully; but hear only
these words from Syndic Roederer: "The King is going to the
Assembly; make way." It has struck eight, on all clocks, some
minutes ago: the King has left the Tuileries—for ever.
O ye stanch Swiss, ye gallant gentlemen in black, for what a
cause are ye to spend and be spent! Look out from the western
windows, ye may see King Louis placidly hold on his way; the poor
little Prince Royal 'sportfully kicking the fallen leaves.'
Fremescent multitude on the Terrace of the Feuillants whirls
parallel to him; one man in it, very noisy, with a long pole:
will they not obstruct the outer Staircase, and back-entrance of
the Salle, when it comes to that? King's Guards can go no further
than the bottom step there. Lo, Deputation of Legislators come
out; he of the long pole is stilled by oratory; Assembly's Guards
join themselves to King's Guards, and all may mount in this case
of necessity; the outer Staircase is free, or passable. See,
Royalty ascends; a blue Grenadier lifts the poor little Prince
Royal from the press; Royalty has entered in. Royalty has
vanished for ever from your eyes.—And ye? Left standing there,
amid the yawning abysses, and earthquake of Insurrection; without
course; without command: if ye perish it must be as more than
martyrs, as martyrs who are now without a cause! The black
Courtiers disappear mostly; through such issues as they can. The
poor Swiss know not how to act: one duty only is clear to them,
that of standing by their post; and they will perform that.
But the glittering steel tide has arrived; it beats now against
the Chateau barriers, and eastern Courts; irresistible,
loud-surging far and wide;—breaks in, fills the Court of the
Carrousel, blackbrowed Marseillese in the van. King Louis gone,
say you; over to the Assembly! Well and good: but till the
Assembly pronounce Forfeiture of him, what boots it? Our post is
in that Chateau or stronghold of his; there till then must we
continue. Think, ye stanch Swiss, whether it were good that grim
murder began, and brothers blasted one another in pieces for a
stone edifice?—Poor Swiss! they know not how to act: from the
southern windows, some fling cartridges, in sign of brotherhood;
on the eastern outer staircase, and within through long stairs
and corridors, they stand firm-ranked, peaceable and yet refusing
to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian German;
Marseillese plead, in hot Provencal speech and pantomime;
stunning hubbub pleads and threatens, infinite, around. The Swiss
stand fast, peaceable and yet immovable; red granite pier in that
waste-flashing sea of steel.
Who can help the inevitable issue; Marseillese and all France, on
this side; granite Swiss on that? The pantomime grows hotter and
hotter; Marseillese sabres flourishing by way of action; the
Swiss brow also clouding itself, the Swiss thumb bringing its
firelock to the cock. And hark! high-thundering above all the
din, three Marseillese cannon from the Carrousel, pointed by a
gunner of bad aim, come rattling over the roofs! Ye Swiss,
therefore: Fire! The Swiss fire; by volley, by platoon, in
rolling-fire: Marseillese men not a few, and 'a tall man that was
louder than any,' lie silent, smashed, upon the pavement;—not a
few Marseillese, after the long dusty march, have made halt here.
The Carrousel is void; the black tide recoiling; 'fugitives
rushing as far as Saint-Antoine before they stop.' The Cannoneers
without linstock have squatted invisible, and left their cannon;
which the Swiss seize.
Think what a volley: reverberating doomful to the four corners of
Paris, and through all hearts; like the clang of Bellona's
thongs! The blackbrowed Marseillese, rallying on the instant,
have become black Demons that know how to die. Nor is Brest
behind-hand; nor Alsatian Westermann; Demoiselle Theroigne is
Sybil Theroigne: Vengeance Victoire, ou la mort! From all Patriot
artillery, great and small; from Feuillants Terrace, and all
terraces and places of the widespread Insurrectionary sea, there
roars responsive a red whirlwind. Blue Nationals, ranked in the
Garden, cannot help their muskets going off, against Foreign
murderers. For there is a sympathy in muskets, in heaped masses
of men: nay, are not Mankind, in whole, like tuned strings, and a
cunning infinite concordance and unity; you smite one string, and
all strings will begin sounding,—in soft sphere-melody, in
deafening screech of madness! Mounted Gendarmerie gallop
distracted; are fired on merely as a thing running; galloping
over the Pont Royal, or one knows not whither. The brain of
Paris, brain-fevered in the centre of it here, has gone mad; what
you call, taken fire.
Behold, the fire slackens not; nor does the Swiss rolling-fire
slacken from within. Nay they clutched cannon, as we saw: and
now, from the other side, they clutch three pieces more; alas,
cannon without linstock; nor will the steel-and-flint answer,
though they try it. (_Deux Amis, viii. 179-88._) Had it chanced
to answer! Patriot onlookers have their misgivings; one strangest
Patriot onlooker thinks that the Swiss, had they a commander,
would beat. He is a man not unqualified to judge; the name of him
is Napoleon Buonaparte. (_See Hist. Parl. (_xvii. 56_); Las
Cases, &c._) And onlookers, and women, stand gazing, and the
witty Dr. Moore of Glasgow among them, on the other side of the
River: cannon rush rumbling past them; pause on the Pont Royal;
belch out their iron entrails there, against the Tuileries; and
at every new belch, the women and onlookers shout and clap hands.
(_Moore, Journal during a Residence in France (_Dublin, 1793_),
i. 26._) City of all the Devils! In remote streets, men are
drinking breakfast-coffee; following their affairs; with a start
now and then, as some dull echo reverberates a note louder. And
here? Marseillese fall wounded; but Barbaroux has surgeons;
Barbaroux is close by, managing, though underhand, and under
cover. Marseillese fall death-struck; bequeath their firelock,
specify in which pocket are the cartridges; and die, murmuring,
"Revenge me, Revenge thy country!" Brest Federe Officers,
galloping in red coats, are shot as Swiss. Lo you, the Carrousel
has burst into flame!—Paris Pandemonium! Nay the poor City, as we
said, is in fever-fit and convulsion; such crisis has lasted for
the space of some half hour.
But what is this that, with Legislative Insignia, ventures
through the hubbub and death-hail, from the back-entrance of the
Manege? Towards the Tuileries and Swiss: written Order from his
Majesty to cease firing! O ye hapless Swiss, why was there no
order not to begin it? Gladly would the Swiss cease firing: but
who will bid mad Insurrection cease firing? To Insurrection you
cannot speak; neither can it, hydra-headed, hear. The dead and
dying, by the hundred, lie all around; are borne bleeding through
the streets, towards help; the sight of them, like a torch of the
Furies, kindling Madness. Patriot Paris roars; as the bear
bereaved of her whelps. On, ye Patriots: vengeance! victory or
death! There are men seen, who rush on, armed only with
walking-sticks. (_Hist. Parl. ubi supra. Rapport du Captaine des
Canonniers, Rapport du Commandant, &c. Ibid. xvii. 300-18._)
Terror and Fury rule the hour.
The Swiss, pressed on from without, paralyzed from within, have
ceased to shoot; but not to be shot. What shall they do?
Desperate is the moment. Shelter or instant death: yet How?
Where? One party flies out by the Rue de l'Echelle; is destroyed
utterly, 'en entier.' A second, by the other side, throws itself
into the Garden; 'hurrying across a keen fusillade:' rushes
suppliant into the National Assembly; finds pity and refuge in
the back benches there. The third, and largest, darts out in
column, three hundred strong, towards the Champs Elysees: Ah,
could we but reach Courbevoye, where other Swiss are! Wo! see, in
such fusillade the column 'soon breaks itself by diversity of
opinion,' into distracted segments, this way and that;—to escape
in holes, to die fighting from street to street. The firing and
murdering will not cease; not yet for long. The red Porters of
Hotels are shot at, be they Suisse by nature, or Suisse only in
name. The very Firemen, who pump and labour on that smoking
Carrousel, are shot at; why should the Carrousel not burn? Some
Swiss take refuge in private houses; find that mercy too does
still dwell in the heart of man. The brave Marseillese are
merciful, late so wroth; and labour to save. Journalist Gorsas
pleads hard with enfuriated groups. Clemence, the Wine-merchant,
stumbles forward to the Bar of the Assembly, a rescued Swiss in
his hand; tells passionately how he rescued him with pain and
peril, how he will henceforth support him, being childless
himself; and falls a swoon round the poor Swiss's neck: amid
plaudits. But the most are butchered, and even mangled. Fifty
(_some say Fourscore_) were marched as prisoners, by National
Guards, to the Hotel-de-Ville: the ferocious people bursts
through on them, in the Place de Greve; massacres them to the
last man. 'O Peuple, envy of the universe!' Peuple, in mad Gaelic
effervescence!
Surely few things in the history of carnage are painfuller. What
ineffaceable red streak, flickering so sad in the memory, is
that, of this poor column of red Swiss 'breaking itself in the
confusion of opinions;' dispersing, into blackness and death!
Honour to you, brave men; honourable pity, through long times!
Not martyrs were ye; and yet almost more. He was no King of
yours, this Louis; and he forsook you like a King of shreds and
patches; ye were but sold to him for some poor sixpence a-day;
yet would ye work for your wages, keep your plighted word. The
work now was to die; and ye did it. Honour to you, O Kinsmen; and
may the old Deutsch Biederheit and Tapferkeit, and Valour which
is Worth and Truth be they Swiss, be they Saxon, fail in no age!
Not bastards; true-born were these men; sons of the men of
Sempach, of Murten, who knelt, but not to thee, O Burgundy!—Let
the traveller, as he passes through Lucerne, turn aside to look a
little at their monumental Lion; not for Thorwaldsen's sake
alone. Hewn out of living rock, the Figure rests there, by the
still Lake-waters, in lullaby of distant-tinkling
rance-des-vaches, the granite Mountains dumbly keeping watch all
round; and, though inanimate, speaks.
Chapter 2.6.VIII.
Constitution burst in Pieces.
Thus is the Tenth of August won and lost. Patriotism reckons its
slain by thousand on thousand, so deadly was the Swiss fire from
these windows; but will finally reduce them to some Twelve
hundred. No child's play was it;—nor is it! Till two in the
afternoon the massacring, the breaking and the burning has not
ended; nor the loose Bedlam shut itself again.
How deluges of frantic Sansculottism roared through all passages
of this Tuileries, ruthless in vengeance, how the Valets were
butchered, hewn down; and Dame Campan saw the Marseilles sabre
flash over her head, but the Blackbrowed said, "Va-t-en, Get thee
gone," and flung her from him unstruck: (_Campan, ii. c. 21._)
how in the cellars wine-bottles were broken, wine-butts were
staved in and drunk; and, upwards to the very garrets, all
windows tumbled out their precious royal furnitures; and, with
gold mirrors, velvet curtains, down of ript feather-beds, and
dead bodies of men, the Tuileries was like no Garden of the
Earth:—all this let him who has a taste for it see amply in
Mercier, in acrid Montgaillard, or Beaulieu of the Deux Amis. A
hundred and eighty bodies of Swiss lie piled there; naked,
unremoved till the second day. Patriotism has torn their red
coats into snips; and marches with them at the Pike's point: the
ghastly bare corpses lie there, under the sun and under the
stars; the curious of both sexes crowding to look. Which let not
us do. Above a hundred carts heaped with Dead fare towards the
Cemetery of Sainte-Madeleine; bewailed, bewept; for all had
kindred, all had mothers, if not here, then there. It is one of
those Carnage-fields, such as you read of by the name 'Glorious
Victory,' brought home in this case to one's own door.
But the blackbrowed Marseillese have struck down the Tyrant of
the Chateau. He is struck down; low, and hardly to rise. What a
moment for an august Legislative was that when the Hereditary
Representative entered, under such circumstances; and the
Grenadier, carrying the little Prince Royal out of the Press, set
him down on the Assembly-table! A moment,—which one had to smooth
off with oratory; waiting what the next would bring! Louis said
few words: "He was come hither to prevent a great crime; he
believed himself safer nowhere than here." President Vergniaud
answered briefly, in vague oratory as we say, about "defence of
Constituted Authorities," about dying at our post. (_Moniteur,
Seance du 10 Aout 1792._) And so King Louis sat him down; first
here, then there; for a difficulty arose, the Constitution not
permitting us to debate while the King is present: finally he
settles himself with his Family in the 'Loge of the Logographe'
in the Reporter's-Box of a Journalist: which is beyond the
enchanted Constitutional Circuit, separated from it by a rail. To
such Lodge of the Logographe, measuring some ten feet square,
with a small closet at the entrance of it behind, is the King of
broad France now limited: here can he and his sit pent, under the
eyes of the world, or retire into their closet at intervals; for
the space of sixteen hours. Such quiet peculiar moment has the
Legislative lived to see.
But also what a moment was that other, few minutes later, when
the three Marseillese cannon went off, and the Swiss rolling-fire
and universal thunder, like the Crack of Doom, began to rattle!
Honourable Members start to their feet; stray bullets singing
epicedium even here, shivering in with window-glass and jingle.
"No, this is our post; let us die here!" They sit therefore, like
stone Legislators. But may not the Lodge of the Logographe be
forced from behind? Tear down the railing that divides it from
the enchanted Constitutional Circuit! Ushers tear and tug; his
Majesty himself aiding from within: the railing gives way;
Majesty and Legislative are united in place, unknown Destiny
hovering over both.
Rattle, and again rattle, went the thunder; one breathless
wide-eyed messenger rushing in after another: King's orders to
the Swiss went out. It was a fearful thunder; but, as we know, it
ended. Breathless messengers, fugitive Swiss, denunciatory
Patriots, trepidation; finally tripudiation!—Before four o'clock
much has come and gone.
The New Municipals have come and gone; with Three Flags, Liberte,
Egalite, Patrie, and the clang of vivats. Vergniaud, he who as
President few hours ago talked of Dying for Constituted
Authorities, has moved, as Committee-Reporter, that the
Hereditary Representative be suspended; that a NATIONAL
CONVENTION do forthwith assemble to say what further! An able
Report: which the President must have had ready in his pocket? A
President, in such cases, must have much ready, and yet not
ready; and Janus-like look before and after.
King Louis listens to all; retires about midnight 'to three
little rooms on the upper floor;' till the Luxembourg be prepared
for him, and 'the safeguard of the Nation.' Safer if Brunswick
were once here! Or, alas, not so safe? Ye hapless discrowned
heads! Crowds came, next morning, to catch a climpse of them, in
their three upper rooms. Montgaillard says the august Captives
wore an air of cheerfulness, even of gaiety; that the Queen and
Princess Lamballe, who had joined her over night, looked out of
the open window, 'shook powder from their hair on the people
below, and laughed.' (_Montgaillard. ii. 135-167._) He is an
acrid distorted man.
For the rest, one may guess that the Legislative, above all that
the New Municipality continues busy. Messengers, Municipal or
Legislative, and swift despatches rush off to all corners of
France; full of triumph, blended with indignant wail, for Twelve
hundred have fallen. France sends up its blended shout
responsive; the Tenth of August shall be as the Fourteenth of
July, only bloodier and greater. The Court has conspired? Poor
Court: the Court has been vanquished; and will have both the
scath to bear and the scorn. How the Statues of Kings do now all
fall! Bronze Henri himself, though he wore a cockade once,
jingles down from the Pont Neuf, where Patrie floats in Danger.
Much more does Louis Fourteenth, from the Place Vendome, jingle
down, and even breaks in falling. The curious can remark, written
on his horse's shoe: '12 Aout 1692;' a Century and a Day.
The Tenth of August was Friday. The week is not done, when our
old Patriot Ministry is recalled, what of it can be got: strict
Roland, Genevese Claviere; add heavy Monge the Mathematician,
once a stone-hewer; and, for Minister of Justice,—Danton 'led
hither,' as himself says, in one of his gigantic figures,
'through the breach of Patriot cannon!' These, under Legislative
Committees, must rule the wreck as they can: confusedly enough;
with an old Legislative waterlogged, with a New Municipality so
brisk. But National Convention will get itself together; and
then! Without delay, however, let a New Jury-Court and Criminal
Tribunal be set up in Paris, to try the crimes and conspiracies
of the Tenth. High Court of Orleans is distant, slow: the blood
of the Twelve hundred Patriots, whatever become of other blood,
shall be inquired after. Tremble, ye Criminals and Conspirators;
the Minister of Justice is Danton! Robespierre too, after the
victory, sits in the New Municipality; insurrectionary
'improvised Municipality,' which calls itself Council General of
the Commune.
For three days now, Louis and his Family have heard the
Legislative Debates in the Lodge of the Logographe; and retired
nightly to their small upper rooms. The Luxembourg and safeguard
of the Nation could not be got ready: nay, it seems the
Luxembourg has too many cellars and issues; no Municipality can
undertake to watch it. The compact Prison of the Temple, not so
elegant indeed, were much safer. To the Temple, therefore! On
Monday, 13th day of August 1792, in Mayor Petion's carriage,
Louis and his sad suspended Household, fare thither; all Paris
out to look at them. As they pass through the Place Vendome Louis
Fourteenth's Statue lies broken on the ground. Petion is afraid
the Queen's looks may be thought scornful, and produce
provocation; she casts down her eyes, and does not look at all.
The 'press is prodigious,' but quiet: here and there, it shouts
Vive la Nation; but for most part gazes in silence. French
Royalty vanishes within the gates of the Temple: these old peaked
Towers, like peaked Extinguisher or Bonsoir, do cover it up;—from
which same Towers, poor Jacques Molay and his Templars were burnt
out, by French Royalty, five centuries since. Such are the turns
of Fate below. Foreign Ambassadors, English Lord Gower have all
demanded passports; are driving indignantly towards their
respective homes.
So, then, the Constitution is over? For ever and a day! Gone is
that wonder of the Universe; First biennial Parliament,
waterlogged, waits only till the Convention come; and will then
sink to endless depths.
One can guess the silent rage of Old-Constituents,
Constitution-builders, extinct Feuillants, men who thought the
Constitution would march! Lafayette rises to the altitude of the
situation; at the head of his Army. Legislative Commissioners are
posting towards him and it, on the Northern Frontier, to
congratulate and perorate: he orders the Municipality of Sedan to
arrest these Commissioners, and keep them strictly in ward as
Rebels, till he say further. The Sedan Municipals obey.
The Sedan Municipals obey: but the Soldiers of the Lafayette
Army? The Soldiers of the Lafayette Army have, as all Soldiers
have, a kind of dim feeling that they themselves are Sansculottes
in buff belts; that the victory of the Tenth of August is also a
victory for them. They will not rise and follow Lafayette to
Paris; they will rise and send him thither! On the 18th, which is
but next Saturday, Lafayette, with some two or three indignant
Staff-officers, one of whom is Old-Constituent Alexandre de
Lameth, having first put his Lines in what order he could,—rides
swiftly over the Marches, towards Holland. Rides, alas, swiftly
into the claws of Austrians! He, long-wavering, trembling on the
verge of the horizon, has set, in Olmutz Dungeons; this History
knows him no more. Adieu, thou Hero of two worlds; thinnest, but
compact honour-worthy man! Through long rough night of captivity,
through other tumults, triumphs and changes, thou wilt swing
well, 'fast-anchored to the Washington Formula;' and be the Hero
and Perfect-character, were it only of one idea. The Sedan
Municipals repent and protest; the Soldiers shout Vive la Nation.
Dumouriez Polymetis, from his Camp at Maulde, sees himself made
Commander in Chief.
And, O Brunswick! what sort of 'military execution' will Paris
merit now? Forward, ye well-drilled exterminatory men; with your
artillery-waggons, and camp kettles jingling. Forward, tall
chivalrous King of Prussia; fanfaronading Emigrants and war-god
Broglie, 'for some consolation to mankind,' which verily is not
without need of some.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
VOLUME III.
THE GUILLOTINE
BOOK 3.I.
SEPTEMBER
Chapter 3.1.I.
The Improvised Commune.
Ye have roused her, then, ye Emigrants and Despots of the world;
France is roused; long have ye been lecturing and tutoring this
poor Nation, like cruel uncalled-for pedagogues, shaking over her
your ferulas of fire and steel: it is long that ye have pricked
and fillipped and affrighted her, there as she sat helpless in
her dead cerements of a Constitution, you gathering in on her
from all lands, with your armaments and plots, your invadings and
truculent bullyings;—and lo now, ye have pricked her to the
quick, and she is up, and her blood is up. The dead cerements are
rent into cobwebs, and she fronts you in that terrible strength
of Nature, which no man has measured, which goes down to Madness
and Tophet: see now how ye will deal with her!
This month of September, 1792, which has become one of the
memorable months of History, presents itself under two most
diverse aspects; all of black on the one side, all of bright on
the other. Whatsoever is cruel in the panic frenzy of Twenty-five
million men, whatsoever is great in the simultaneous
death-defiance of Twenty-five million men, stand here in abrupt
contrast, near by one another. As indeed is usual when a man, how
much more when a Nation of men, is hurled suddenly beyond the
limits. For Nature, as green as she looks, rests everywhere on
dread foundations, were we farther down; and Pan, to whose music
the Nymphs dance, has a cry in him that can drive all men
distracted.
Very frightful it is when a Nation, rending asunder its
Constitutions and Regulations which were grown dead cerements for
it, becomes transcendental; and must now seek its wild way
through the New, Chaotic,—where Force is not yet distinguished
into Bidden and Forbidden, but Crime and Virtue welter
unseparated,—in that domain of what is called the Passions; of
what we call the Miracles and the Portents! It is thus that, for
some three years to come, we are to contemplate France, in this
final Third Volume of our History. Sansculottism reigning in all
its grandeur and in all its hideousness: the Gospel (_God's
Message_) of Man's Rights, Man's mights or strengths, once more
preached irrefragably abroad; along with this, and still louder
for the time, and fearfullest Devil's-Message of Man's weaknesses
and sins;—and all on such a scale, and under such aspect: cloudy
'death-birth of a world;' huge smoke-cloud, streaked with rays as
of heaven on one side; girt on the other as with hell-fire!
History tells us many things: but for the last thousand years and
more, what thing has she told us of a sort like this? Which
therefore let us two, O Reader, dwell on willingly, for a little;
and from its endless significance endeavour to extract what may,
in present circumstances, be adapted for us.
It is unfortunate, though very natural, that the history of this
Period has so generally been written in hysterics. Exaggeration
abounds, execration, wailing; and, on the whole, darkness. But
thus too, when foul old Rome had to be swept from the Earth, and
those Northmen, and other horrid sons of Nature, came in,
'swallowing formulas' as the French now do, foul old Rome
screamed execratively her loudest; so that, the true shape of
many things is lost for us. Attila's Huns had arms of such length
that they could lift a stone without stooping. Into the body of
the poor Tatars execrative Roman History intercalated an
alphabetic letter; and so they continue Ta-r-tars, of fell
Tartarean nature, to this day. Here, in like manner, search as we
will in these multi-form innumerable French Records, darkness too
frequently covers, or sheer distraction bewilders. One finds it
difficult to imagine that the Sun shone in this September month,
as he does in others. Nevertheless it is an indisputable fact
that the Sun did shine; and there was weather and work,—nay, as
to that, very bad weather for harvest work! An unlucky Editor may
do his utmost; and after all, require allowances.
He had been a wise Frenchman, who, looking, close at hand, on
this waste aspect of a France all stirring and whirling, in ways
new, untried, had been able to discern where the cardinal
movement lay; which tendency it was that had the rule and primary
direction of it then! But at forty-four years' distance, it is
different. To all men now, two cardinal movements or grand
tendencies, in the September whirl, have become discernible
enough: that stormful effluence towards the Frontiers; that
frantic crowding towards Townhouses and Council-halls in the
interior. Wild France dashes, in desperate death-defiance,
towards the Frontiers, to defend itself from foreign Despots;
crowds towards Townhalls and Election Committee-rooms, to defend
itself from domestic Aristocrats. Let the Reader conceive well
these two cardinal movements; and what side-currents and endless
vortexes might depend on these. He shall judge too, whether, in
such sudden wreckage of all old Authorities, such a pair of
cardinal movements, half-frantic in themselves, could be of soft
nature? As in dry Sahara, when the winds waken, and lift and
winnow the immensity of sand! The air itself (_Travellers say_)
is a dim sand-air; and dim looming through it, the wonderfullest
uncertain colonnades of Sand-Pillars rush whirling from this side
and from that, like so many mad Spinning-Dervishes, of a hundred
feet in stature; and dance their huge Desert-waltz there!—
Nevertheless in all human movements, were they but a day old,
there is order, or the beginning of order. Consider two things in
this Sahara-waltz of the French Twenty-five millions; or rather
one thing, and one hope of a thing: the Commune (_Municipality_)
of Paris, which is already here; the National Convention, which
shall in few weeks be here. The Insurrectionary Commune, which
improvising itself on the eve of the Tenth of August, worked this
ever-memorable Deliverance by explosion, must needs rule over
it,—till the Convention meet. This Commune, which they may well
call a spontaneous or 'improvised' Commune, is, for the present,
sovereign of France. The Legislative, deriving its authority from
the Old, how can it now have authority when the Old is exploded
by insurrection? As a floating piece of wreck, certain things,
persons and interests may still cleave to it: volunteer
defenders, riflemen or pikemen in green uniform, or red nightcap
(_of bonnet rouge_), defile before it daily, just on the wing
towards Brunswick; with the brandishing of arms; always with some
touch of Leonidas-eloquence, often with a fire of daring that
threatens to outherod Herod,—the Galleries, 'especially the
Ladies, never done with applauding.' (_Moore's Journal, i. 85._)
Addresses of this or the like sort can be received and answered,
in the hearing of all France: the Salle de Manege is still useful
as a place of proclamation. For which use, indeed, it now chiefly
serves. Vergniaud delivers spirit-stirring orations; but always
with a prophetic sense only, looking towards the coming
Convention. "Let our memory perish," cries Vergniaud, "but let
France be free!"—whereupon they all start to their feet, shouting
responsive: "Yes, yes, perisse notre memoire, pourvu que la
France soit libre!" (_Hist. Parl. xvii. 467._) Disfrocked Chabot
abjures Heaven that at least we may "have done with Kings;" and
fast as powder under spark, we all blaze up once more, and with
waved hats shout and swear: "Yes, nous le jurons; plus de roi!"
(_Ibid. xvii. 437._) All which, as a method of proclamation, is
very convenient.
For the rest, that our busy Brissots, rigorous Rolands, men who
once had authority and now have less and less; men who love law,
and will have even an Explosion explode itself, as far as
possible, according to rule, do find this state of matters most
unofficial unsatisfactory,—is not to be denied. Complaints are
made; attempts are made: but without effect. The attempts even
recoil; and must be desisted from, for fear of worse: the sceptre
is departed from this Legislative once and always. A poor
Legislative, so hard was fate, had let itself be hand-gyved,
nailed to the rock like an Andromeda, and could only wail there
to the Earth and Heavens; miraculously a winged Perseus (_or
Improvised Commune_) has dawned out of the void Blue, and cut her
loose: but whether now is it she, with her softness and musical
speech, or is it he, with his hardness and sharp falchion and
aegis, that shall have casting vote? Melodious agreement of vote;
this were the rule! But if otherwise, and votes diverge, then
surely Andromeda's part is to weep,—if possible, tears of
gratitude alone.
Be content, O France, with this Improvised Commune, such as it
is! It has the implements, and has the hands: the time is not
long. On Sunday the twenty-sixth of August, our Primary
Assemblies shall meet, begin electing of Electors; on Sunday the
second of September (_may the day prove lucky!_) the Electors
shall begin electing Deputies; and so an all-healing National
Convention will come together. No marc d'argent, or distinction
of Active and Passive, now insults the French Patriot: but there
is universal suffrage, unlimited liberty to choose.
Old-constituents, Present-Legislators, all France is eligible.
Nay, it may be said, the flower of all the Universe (_de
l'Univers_) is eligible; for in these very days we, by act of
Assembly, 'naturalise' the chief Foreign Friends of humanity:
Priestley, burnt out for us in Birmingham; Klopstock, a genius of
all countries; Jeremy Bentham, useful Jurisconsult; distinguished
Paine, the rebellious Needleman;—some of whom may be chosen. As
is most fit; for a Convention of this kind. In a word, Seven
Hundred and Forty-five unshackled sovereigns, admired of the
universe, shall replace this hapless impotency of a
Legislative,—out of which, it is likely, the best members, and
the Mountain in mass, may be re-elected. Roland is getting ready
the Salles des Cent Suisses, as preliminary rendezvous for them;
in that void Palace of the Tuileries, now void and National, and
not a Palace, but a Caravansera.
As for the Spontaneous Commune, one may say that there never was
on Earth a stranger Town-Council. Administration, not of a great
City, but of a great Kingdom in a state of revolt and frenzy,
this is the task that has fallen to it. Enrolling, provisioning,
judging; devising, deciding, doing, endeavouring to do: one
wonders the human brain did not give way under all this, and
reel. But happily human brains have such a talent of taking up
simply what they can carry, and ignoring all the rest; leaving
all the rest, as if it were not there! Whereby somewhat is verily
shifted for; and much shifts for itself. This Improvised Commune
walks along, nothing doubting; promptly making front, without
fear or flurry, at what moment soever, to the wants of the
moment. Were the world on fire, one improvised tricolor Municipal
has but one life to lose. They are the elixir and chosen-men of
Sansculottic Patriotism; promoted to the forlorn-hope;
unspeakable victory or a high gallows, this is their meed. They
sit there, in the Townhall, these astonishing tricolor
Municipals; in Council General; in Committee of Watchfulness (_de
Surveillance, which will even become de Salut Public, of Public
Salvation_), or what other Committees and Sub-committees are
needful;—managing infinite Correspondence; passing infinite
Decrees: one hears of a Decree being 'the ninety-eighth of the
day.' Ready! is the word. They carry loaded pistols in their
pocket; also some improvised luncheon by way of meal. Or indeed,
by and by, traiteurs contract for the supply of repasts, to be
eaten on the spot,—too lavishly, as it was afterwards grumbled.
Thus they: girt in their tricolor sashes; Municipal note-paper in
the one hand, fire-arms in other. They have their Agents out all
over France; speaking in townhouses, market-places, highways and
byways; agitating, urging to arm; all hearts tingling to hear.
Great is the fire of Anti-Aristocrat eloquence: nay some, as
Bibliopolic Momoro, seem to hint afar off at something which
smells of Agrarian Law, and a surgery of the overswoln dropsical
strong-box itself;—whereat indeed the bold Bookseller runs risk
of being hanged, and Ex-Constituent Buzot has to smuggle him off.
(_Memoires de Buzot (_Paris, 1823_), p. 88._)
Governing Persons, were they never so insignificant
intrinsically, have for most part plenty of Memoir-writers; and
the curious, in after-times, can learn minutely their goings out
and comings in: which, as men always love to know their
fellow-men in singular situations, is a comfort, of its kind. Not
so, with these Governing Persons, now in the Townhall! And yet
what most original fellow-man, of the Governing sort,
high-chancellor, king, kaiser, secretary of the home or the
foreign department, ever shewed such a phasis as Clerk Tallien,
Procureur Manuel, future Procureur Chaumette, here in this
Sand-waltz of the Twenty-five millions, now do? O brother
mortals,—thou Advocate Panis, friend of Danton, kinsman of
Santerre; Engraver Sergent, since called Agate Sergent; thou
Huguenin, with the tocsin in thy heart! But, as Horace says, they
wanted the sacred memoir-writer (_sacro vate_); and we know them
not. Men bragged of August and its doings, publishing them in
high places; but of this September none now or afterwards would
brag. The September world remains dark, fuliginous, as Lapland
witch-midnight;—from which, indeed, very strange shapes will
evolve themselves.
Understand this, however: that incorruptible Robespierre is not
wanting, now when the brunt of battle is past; in a stealthy way
the seagreen man sits there, his feline eyes excellent in the
twilight. Also understand this other, a single fact worth many:
that Marat is not only there, but has a seat of honour assigned
him, a tribune particuliere. How changed for Marat; lifted from
his dark cellar into this luminous 'peculiar tribune!' All dogs
have their day; even rabid dogs. Sorrowful, incurable Philoctetes
Marat; without whom Troy cannot be taken! Hither, as a main
element of the Governing Power, has Marat been raised. Royalist
types, for we have 'suppressed' innumerable Durosoys, Royous, and
even clapt them in prison,—Royalist types replace the worn types
often snatched from a People's-Friend in old ill days. In our
'peculiar tribune' we write and redact: Placards, of due monitory
terror; Amis-du-Peuple (_now under the name of Journal de la
Republique_); and sit obeyed of men. 'Marat,' says one, 'is the
conscience of the Hotel-de-Ville.' Keeper, as some call it, of
the Sovereign's Conscience;—which surely, in such hands, will not
lie hid in a napkin!
Two great movements, as we said, agitate this distracted National
mind: a rushing against domestic Traitors, a rushing against
foreign Despots. Mad movements both, restrainable by no known
rule; strongest passions of human nature driving them on: love,
hatred; vengeful sorrow, braggart Nationality also vengeful,—and
pale Panic over all! Twelve Hundred slain Patriots, do they not,
from their dark catacombs there, in Death's dumb-shew, plead (_O
ye Legislators_) for vengeance? Such was the destructive rage of
these Aristocrats on the ever-memorable Tenth. Nay, apart from
vengeance, and with an eye to Public Salvation only, are there
not still, in this Paris (_in round numbers_) 'thirty thousand
Aristocrats,' of the most malignant humour; driven now to their
last trump-card?—Be patient, ye Patriots: our New High Court,
'Tribunal of the Seventeenth,' sits; each Section has sent Four
Jurymen; and Danton, extinguishing improper judges, improper
practices wheresoever found, is 'the same man you have known at
the Cordeliers.' With such a Minister of Justice shall not
Justice be done?—Let it be swift then, answers universal
Patriotism; swift and sure!—
One would hope, this Tribunal of the Seventeenth is swifter than
most. Already on the 21st, while our Court is but four days old,
Collenot d'Angremont, 'the Royal enlister' (_crimp, embaucheur_)
dies by torch-light. For, lo, the great Guillotine, wondrous to
behold, now stands there; the Doctor's Idea has become Oak and
Iron; the huge cyclopean axe 'falls in its grooves like the ram
of the Pile-engine,' swiftly snuffing out the light of men?'
'Mais vous, Gualches, what have you invented?' This?—Poor old
Laporte, Intendant of the Civil List, follows next; quietly, the
mild old man. Then Durosoy, Royalist Placarder, 'cashier of all
the Anti-Revolutionists of the interior:' he went rejoicing; said
that a Royalist like him ought to die, of all days on this day,
the 25th or Saint Louis's Day. All these have been tried,
cast,—the Galleries shouting approval; and handed over to the
Realised Idea, within a week. Besides those whom we have
acquitted, the Galleries murmuring, and have dismissed; or even
have personally guarded back to Prison, as the Galleries took to
howling, and even to menacing and elbowing. (_Moore's Journal, i.
159-168._) Languid this Tribunal is not.
Nor does the other movement slacken; the rushing against foreign
Despots. Strong forces shall meet in death-grip; drilled Europe
against mad undrilled France; and singular conclusions will be
tried.—Conceive therefore, in some faint degree, the tumult that
whirls in this France, in this Paris! Placards from Section, from
Commune, from Legislative, from the individual Patriot, flame
monitory on all walls. Flags of Danger to Fatherland wave at the
Hotel-de-Ville; on the Pont Neuf—over the prostrate Statues of
Kings. There is universal enlisting, urging to enlist; there is
tearful-boastful leave-taking; irregular marching on the Great
North-Eastern Road. Marseillese sing their wild To Arms, in
chorus; which now all men, all women and children have learnt,
and sing chorally, in Theatres, Boulevards, Streets; and the
heart burns in every bosom: Aux Armes! Marchons!—Or think how
your Aristocrats are skulking into covert; how Bertrand-Moleville
lies hidden in some garret 'in Aubry-le-boucher Street, with a
poor surgeon who had known me;' Dame de Stael has secreted her
Narbonne, not knowing what in the world to make of him. The
Barriers are sometimes open, oftenest shut; no passports to be
had; Townhall Emissaries, with the eyes and claws of falcons,
flitting watchful on all points of your horizon! In two words:
Tribunal of the Seventeenth, busy under howling Galleries;
Prussian Brunswick, 'over a space of forty miles,' with his
war-tumbrils, and sleeping thunders, and Briarean 'sixty-six
thousand' (_See Toulongeon, Hist. de France. ii. c. 5._)
right-hands,—coming, coming!
O Heavens, in these latter days of August, he is come! Durosoy
was not yet guillotined when news had come that the Prussians
were harrying and ravaging about Metz; in some four days more,
one hears that Longwi, our first strong-place on the borders, is
fallen 'in fifteen hours.' Quick, therefore, O ye improvised
Municipals; quick, and ever quicker!—The improvised Municipals
make front to this also. Enrolment urges itself; and clothing,
and arming. Our very officers have now 'wool epaulettes;' for it
is the reign of Equality, and also of Necessity. Neither do men
now monsieur and sir one another; citoyen (_citizen_) were
suitabler; we even say thou, as 'the free peoples of Antiquity
did:' so have Journals and the Improvised Commune suggested;
which shall be well.
Infinitely better, meantime, could we suggest, where arms are to
be found. For the present, our Citoyens chant chorally To Arms;
and have no arms! Arms are searched for; passionately; there is
joy over any musket. Moreover, entrenchments shall be made round
Paris: on the slopes of Montmartre men dig and shovel; though
even the simple suspect this to be desperate. They dig; Tricolour
sashes speak encouragement and well-speed-ye. Nay finally 'twelve
Members of the Legislative go daily,' not to encourage only, but
to bear a hand, and delve: it was decreed with acclamation. Arms
shall either be provided; or else the ingenuity of man crack
itself, and become fatuity. Lean Beaumarchais, thinking to serve
the Fatherland, and do a stroke of trade, in the old way, has
commissioned sixty thousand stand of good arms out of Holland:
would to Heaven, for Fatherland's sake and his, they were come!
Meanwhile railings are torn up; hammered into pikes: chains
themselves shall be welded together, into pikes. The very coffins
of the dead are raised; for melting into balls. All Church-bells
must down into the furnace to make cannon; all Church-plate into
the mint to make money. Also behold the fair swan-bevies of
Citoyennes that have alighted in Churches, and sit there with
swan-neck,—sewing tents and regimentals! Nor are Patriotic Gifts
wanting, from those that have aught left; nor stingily given: the
fair Villaumes, mother and daughter, Milliners in the Rue
St.-Martin, give 'a silver thimble, and a coin of fifteen sous
(_sevenpence halfpenny_),' with other similar effects; and offer,
at least the mother does, to mount guard. Men who have not even a
thimble, give a thimbleful,—were it but of invention. One Citoyen
has wrought out the scheme of a wooden cannon; which France shall
exclusively profit by, in the first instance. It is to be made of
staves, by the coopers;—of almost boundless calibre, but
uncertain as to strength! Thus they: hammering, scheming,
stitching, founding, with all their heart and with all their
soul. Two bells only are to remain in each Parish,—for tocsin and
other purposes.
But mark also, precisely while the Prussian batteries were
playing their briskest at Longwi in the North-East, and our
dastardly Lavergne saw nothing for it but
surrender,—south-westward, in remote, patriarchal La Vendee, that
sour ferment about Nonjuring Priests, after long working, is
ripe, and explodes: at the wrong moment for us! And so we have
'eight thousand Peasants at Chatillon-sur-Sevre,' who will not be
ballotted for soldiers; will not have their Curates molested. To
whom Bonchamps, Laroche-jaquelins, and Seigneurs enough, of a
Royalist turn, will join themselves; with Stofflets and
Charettes; with Heroes and Chouan Smugglers; and the loyal warmth
of a simple people, blown into flame and fury by theological and
seignorial bellows! So that there shall be fighting from behind
ditches, death-volleys bursting out of thickets and ravines of
rivers; huts burning, feet of the pitiful women hurrying to
refuge with their children on their back; seedfields fallow,
whitened with human bones;—'eighty thousand, of all ages, ranks,
sexes, flying at once across the Loire,' with wail borne far on
the winds: and, in brief, for years coming, such a suite of
scenes as glorious war has not offered in these late ages, not
since our Albigenses and Crusadings were over,—save indeed some
chance Palatinate, or so, we might have to 'burn,' by way of
exception. The 'eight thousand at Chatillon' will be got
dispelled for the moment; the fire scattered, not extinguished.
To the dints and bruises of outward battle there is to be added
henceforth a deadlier internal gangrene.
This rising in La Vendee reports itself at Paris on Wednesday the
29th of August;—just as we had got our Electors elected; and, in
spite of Brunswick's and Longwi's teeth, were hoping still to
have a National Convention, if it pleased Heaven. But indeed,
otherwise, this Wednesday is to be regarded as one of the
notablest Paris had yet seen: gloomy tidings come successively,
like Job's messengers; are met by gloomy answers. Of Sardinia
rising to invade the South-East, and Spain threatening the South,
we do not speak. But are not the Prussians masters of Longwi
(_treacherously yielded, one would say_); and preparing to
besiege Verdun? Clairfait and his Austrians are encompassing
Thionville; darkening the North. Not Metz-land now, but the
Clermontais is getting harried; flying hulans and huzzars have
been seen on the Chalons Road, almost as far as Sainte-Menehould.
Heart, ye Patriots, if ye lose heart, ye lose all!
It is not without a dramatic emotion that one reads in the
Parliamentary Debates of this Wednesday evening 'past seven
o'clock,' the scene with the military fugitives from Longwi.
Wayworn, dusty, disheartened, these poor men enter the
Legislative, about sunset or after; give the most pathetic detail
of the frightful pass they were in:—Prussians billowing round by
the myriad, volcanically spouting fire for fifteen hours: we,
scattered sparse on the ramparts, hardly a cannoneer to two guns;
our dastard Commandant Lavergne no where shewing face; the
priming would not catch; there was no powder in the bombs,—what
could we do? "Mourir! Die!" answer prompt voices; (_Hist. Parl.
xvii. 148._) and the dusty fugitives must shrink elsewhither for
comfort.—Yes, Mourir, that is now the word. Be Longwi a proverb
and a hissing among French strong-places: let it (_says the
Legislative_) be obliterated rather, from the shamed face of the
Earth;—and so there has gone forth Decree, that Longwi shall,
were the Prussians once out of it, 'be rased,' and exist only as
ploughed ground.
Nor are the Jacobins milder; as how could they, the flower of
Patriotism? Poor Dame Lavergne, wife of the poor Commandant, took
her parasol one evening, and escorted by her Father came over to
the Hall of the mighty Mother; and 'reads a memoir tending to
justify the Commandant of Longwi.' Lafarge, President, makes
answer: "Citoyenne, the Nation will judge Lavergne; the Jacobins
are bound to tell him the truth. He would have ended his course
there (_termine sa carriere_), if he had loved the honour of his
country." (_Ibid. xix. 300._)
Chapter 3.1.II.
Danton.
But better than rasing of Longwi, or rebuking poor dusty soldiers
or soldiers' wives, Danton had come over, last night, and
demanded a Decree to search for arms, since they were not yielded
voluntarily. Let 'Domiciliary visits,' with rigour of authority,
be made to this end. To search for arms; for
horses,—Aristocratism rolls in its carriage, while Patriotism
cannot trail its cannon. To search generally for munitions of
war, 'in the houses of persons suspect,'—and even, if it seem
proper, to seize and imprison the suspect persons themselves! In
the Prisons, their plots will be harmless; in the Prisons, they
will be as hostages for us, and not without use. This Decree the
energetic Minister of Justice demanded, last night, and got; and
this same night it is to be executed; it is being executed, at
the moment when these dusty soldiers get saluted with Mourir. Two
thousand stand of arms, as they count, are foraged in this way;
and some four hundred head of new Prisoners; and, on the whole,
such a terror and damp is struck through the Aristocrat heart, as
all but Patriotism, and even Patriotism were it out of this
agony, might pity. Yes, Messieurs! if Brunswick blast Paris to
ashes, he probably will blast the Prisons of Paris too: pale
Terror, if we have got it, we will also give it, and the depth of
horrors that lie in it; the same leaky bottom, in these wild
waters, bears us all.
One can judge what stir there was now among the 'thirty thousand
Royalists:' how the Plotters, or the accused of Plotting, shrank
each closer into his lurking-place,—like Bertrand Moleville,
looking eager towards Longwi, hoping the weather would keep fair.
Or how they dressed themselves in valet's clothes, like Narbonne,
and 'got to England as Dr. Bollman's famulus:' how Dame de Stael
bestirred herself, pleading with Manuel as a Sister in
Literature, pleading even with Clerk Tallien; a pray to nameless
chagrins! (_De Stael, Considerations sur la Revolution, ii.
67-81._) Royalist Peltier, the Pamphleteer, gives a touching
Narrative (_not deficient in height of colouring_) of the terrors
of that night. From five in the afternoon, a great City is struck
suddenly silent; except for the beating of drums, for the tramp
of marching feet; and ever and anon the dread thunder of the
knocker at some door, a Tricolor Commissioner with his blue
Guards (_black-guards!_) arriving. All Streets are vacant, says
Peltier; beset by Guards at each end: all Citizens are ordered to
be within doors. On the River float sentinal barges, lest we
escape by water: the Barriers hermetically closed. Frightful! The
sun shines; serenely westering, in smokeless mackerel-sky: Paris
is as if sleeping, as if dead:—Paris is holding its breath, to
see what stroke will fall on it. Poor Peltier! Acts of Apostles,
and all jocundity of Leading-Articles, are gone out, and it is
become bitter earnest instead; polished satire changed now into
coarse pike-points (_hammered out of railing_); all logic reduced
to this one primitive thesis, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth!—Peltier, dolefully aware of it, ducks low; escapes
unscathed to England; to urge there the inky war anew; to have
Trial by Jury, in due season, and deliverance by young Whig
eloquence, world-celebrated for a day.
Of 'thirty thousand,' naturally, great multitudes were left
unmolested: but, as we said, some four hundred, designated as
'persons suspect,' were seized; and an unspeakable terror fell on
all. Wo to him who is guilty of Plotting, of Anticivism,
Royalism, Feuillantism; who, guilty or not guilty, has an enemy
in his Section to call him guilty! Poor old M. de Cazotte is
seized, his young loved Daughter with him, refusing to quit him.
Why, O Cazotte, wouldst thou quit romancing, and Diable Amoureux,
for such reality as this? Poor old M. de Sombreuil, he of the
Invalides, is seized: a man seen askance, by Patriotism ever
since the Bastille days: whom also a fond Daughter will not quit.
With young tears hardly suppressed, and old wavering weakness
rousing itself once more—O my brothers, O my sisters!
The famed and named go; the nameless, if they have an accuser.
Necklace Lamotte's Husband is in these Prisons (_she long since
squelched on the London Pavements_); but gets delivered. Gross de
Morande, of the Courier de l'Europe, hobbles distractedly to and
fro there: but they let him hobble out; on right nimble
crutches;—his hour not being yet come. Advocate Maton de la
Varenne, very weak in health, is snatched off from mother and
kin; Tricolor Rossignol (_journeyman goldsmith and scoundrel
lately, a risen man now_) remembers an old Pleading of Maton's!
Jourgniac de Saint-Meard goes; the brisk frank soldier: he was in
the Mutiny of Nancy, in that 'effervescent Regiment du Roi,'—on
the wrong side. Saddest of all: Abbe Sicard goes; a Priest who
could not take the Oath, but who could teach the Deaf and Dumb:
in his Section one man, he says, had a grudge at him; one man, at
the fit hour, launches an arrest against him; which hits. In the
Arsenal quarter, there are dumb hearts making wail, with signs,
with wild gestures; he their miraculous healer and speech-bringer
is rapt away.
What with the arrestments on this night of the Twenty-ninth, what
with those that have gone on more or less, day and night, ever
since the Tenth, one may fancy what the Prisons now were.
Crowding and Confusion; jostle, hurry, vehemence and terror! Of
the poor Queen's Friends, who had followed her to the Temple and
been committed elsewhither to Prison, some, as Governess de
Tourzelle, are to be let go: one, the poor Princess de Lamballe,
is not let go; but waits in the strong-rooms of La Force there,
what will betide further.
Among so many hundreds whom the launched arrest hits, who are
rolled off to Townhall or Section-hall, to preliminary Houses of
detention, and hurled in thither, as into cattle-pens, we must
mention one other: Caron de Beaumarchais, Author of Figaro;
vanquisher of Maupeou Parlements and Goezman helldogs; once
numbered among the demigods; and now—? We left him in his
culminant state; what dreadful decline is this, when we again
catch a glimpse of him! 'At midnight' (_it was but the 12th of
August yet_), 'the servant, in his shirt,' with wide-staring
eyes, enters your room:—Monsieur, rise; all the people are come
to seek you; they are knocking, like to break in the door! 'And
they were in fact knocking in a terrible manner (_d'une facon
terrible_). I fling on my coat, forgetting even the waistcoat,
nothing on my feet but slippers; and say to him'—And he, alas,
answers mere negatory incoherences, panic interjections. And
through the shutters and crevices, in front or rearward, the dull
street-lamps disclose only streetfuls of haggard countenances;
clamorous, bristling with pikes: and you rush distracted for an
outlet, finding none;—and have to take refuge in the
crockery-press, down stairs; and stand there, palpitating in that
imperfect costume, lights dancing past your key-hole, tramp of
feet overhead, and the tumult of Satan, 'for four hours and
more!' And old ladies, of the quarter, started up (_as we hear
next morning_); rang for their Bonnes and cordial-drops, with
shrill interjections: and old gentlemen, in their shirts, 'leapt
garden-walls;' flying, while none pursued; one of whom
unfortunately broke his leg. (_Beaumarchais' Narrative, Memoires
sur les Prisons (_Paris, 1823_), i. 179-90._) Those sixty
thousand stand of Dutch arms (_which never arrive_), and the bold
stroke of trade, have turned out so ill!—
Beaumarchais escaped for this time; but not for the next time,
ten days after. On the evening of the Twenty-ninth he is still in
that chaos of the Prisons, in saddest, wrestling condition;
unable to get justice, even to get audience; 'Panis scratching
his head' when you speak to him, and making off. Nevertheless let
the lover of Figaro know that Procureur Manuel, a Brother in
Literature, found him, and delivered him once more. But how the
lean demigod, now shorn of his splendour, had to lurk in barns,
to roam over harrowed fields, panting for life; and to wait under
eavesdrops, and sit in darkness 'on the Boulevard amid
paving-stones and boulders,' longing for one word of any
Minister, or Minister's Clerk, about those accursed Dutch
muskets, and getting none,—with heart fuming in spleen, and
terror, and suppressed canine-madness: alas, how the swift sharp
hound, once fit to be Diana's, breaks his old teeth now, gnawing
mere whinstones; and must 'fly to England;' and, returning from
England, must creep into the corner, and lie quiet, toothless
(_moneyless_),—all this let the lover of Figaro fancy, and weep
for. We here, without weeping, not without sadness, wave the
withered tough fellow-mortal our farewell. His Figaro has
returned to the French stage; nay is, at this day, sometimes
named the best piece there. And indeed, so long as Man's Life can
ground itself only on artificiality and aridity; each new Revolt
and Change of Dynasty turning up only a new stratum of dry
rubbish, and no soil yet coming to view,—may it not be good to
protest against such a Life, in many ways, and even in the Figaro
way?
Chapter 3.1.III.
Dumouriez.
Such are the last days of August, 1792; days gloomy, disastrous,
and of evil omen. What will become of this poor France? Dumouriez
rode from the Camp of Maulde, eastward to Sedan, on Tuesday last,
the 28th of the month; reviewed that so-called Army left forlorn
there by Lafayette: the forlorn soldiers gloomed on him; were
heard growling on him, "This is one of them, ce b—e la, that made
War be declared." (_Dumouriez, Memoires, ii. 383._) Unpromising
Army! Recruits flow in, filtering through Depot after Depot; but
recruits merely: in want of all; happy if they have so much as
arms. And Longwi has fallen basely; and Brunswick, and the
Prussian King, with his sixty thousand, will beleaguer Verdun;
and Clairfait and Austrians press deeper in, over the Northern
marches: 'a hundred and fifty thousand' as fear counts, 'eighty
thousand' as the returns shew, do hem us in; Cimmerian Europe
behind them. There is Castries-and-Broglie chivalry; Royalist
foot 'in red facing and nankeen trousers;' breathing death and
the gallows.
And lo, finally! at Verdun on Sunday the 2d of September 1792,
Brunswick is here. With his King and sixty thousand, glittering
over the heights, from beyond the winding Meuse River, he looks
down on us, on our 'high citadel' and all our confectionery-ovens
(_for we are celebrated for confectionery_) has sent courteous
summons, in order to spare the effusion of blood!—Resist him to
the death? Every day of retardation precious? How, O General
Beaurepaire (_asks the amazed Municipality_) shall we resist him?
We, the Verdun Municipals, see no resistance possible. Has he not
sixty thousand, and artillery without end? Retardation,
Patriotism is good; but so likewise is peaceable baking of
pastry, and sleeping in whole skin.—Hapless Beaurepaire stretches
out his hands, and pleads passionately, in the name of country,
honour, of Heaven and of Earth: to no purpose. The Municipals
have, by law, the power of ordering it;—with an Army officered by
Royalism or Crypto-Royalism, such a Law seemed needful: and they
order it, as pacific Pastrycooks, not as heroic Patriots
would,—To surrender! Beaurepaire strides home, with long steps:
his valet, entering the room, sees him 'writing eagerly,' and
withdraws. His valet hears then, in a few minutes, the report of
a pistol: Beaurepaire is lying dead; his eager writing had been a
brief suicidal farewell. In this manner died Beaurepaire, wept of
France; buried in the Pantheon, with honourable pension to his
Widow, and for Epitaph these words, He chose Death rather than
yield to Despots. The Prussians, descending from the heights, are
peaceable masters of Verdun.
And so Brunswick advances, from stage to stage: who shall now
stay him,—covering forty miles of country? Foragers fly far; the
villages of the North-East are harried; your Hessian forager has
only 'three sous a day:' the very Emigrants, it is said, will
take silver-plate,—by way of revenge. Clermont, Sainte-Menehould,
Varennes especially, ye Towns of the Night of Spurs; tremble ye!
Procureur Sausse and the Magistracy of Varennes have fled; brave
Boniface Le Blanc of the Bras d'Or is to the woods: Mrs. Le
Blanc, a young woman fair to look upon, with her young infant,
has to live in greenwood, like a beautiful Bessy Bell of Song,
her bower thatched with rushes;—catching premature rheumatism.
(_Helen Maria Williams, Letters from France (_London, 1791-93_),
iii. 96._) Clermont may ring the tocsin now, and illuminate
itself! Clermont lies at the foot of its Cow (_or Vache, so they
name that Mountain_), a prey to the Hessian spoiler: its fair
women, fairer than most, are robbed: not of life, or what is
dearer, yet of all that is cheaper and portable; for Necessity,
on three half-pence a-day, has no law. At Saint-Menehould, the
enemy has been expected more than once,—our Nationals all turning
out in arms; but was not yet seen. Post-master Drouet, he is not
in the woods, but minding his Election; and will sit in the
Convention, notable King-taker, and bold Old-Dragoon as he is.
Thus on the North-East all roams and runs; and on a set day, the
date of which is irrecoverable by History, Brunswick 'has engaged
to dine in Paris,'—the Powers willing. And at Paris, in the
centre, it is as we saw; and in La Vendee, South-West, it is as
we saw; and Sardinia is in the South-East, and Spain is in the
South, and Clairfait with Austria and sieged Thionville is in the
North;—and all France leaps distracted, like the winnowed Sahara
waltzing in sand-colonnades! More desperate posture no country
ever stood in. A country, one would say, which the Majesty of
Prussia (_if it so pleased him_) might partition, and clip in
pieces, like a Poland; flinging the remainder to poor Brother
Louis,—with directions to keep it quiet, or else we will keep it
for him!
Or perhaps the Upper Powers, minded that a new Chapter in
Universal History shall begin here and not further on, may have
ordered it all otherwise? In that case, Brunswick will not dine
in Paris on the set day; nor, indeed, one knows not when!—Verily,
amid this wreckage, where poor France seems grinding itself down
to dust and bottomless ruin, who knows what miraculous
salient-point of Deliverance and New-life may have already come
into existence there; and be already working there, though as yet
human eye discern it not! On the night of that same twenty-eighth
of August, the unpromising Review-day in Sedan, Dumouriez
assembles a Council of War at his lodgings there. He spreads out
the map of this forlorn war-district: Prussians here, Austrians
there; triumphant both, with broad highway, and little
hinderance, all the way to Paris; we, scattered helpless, here
and here: what to advise? The Generals, strangers to Dumouriez,
look blank enough; know not well what to advise,—if it be not
retreating, and retreating till our recruits accumulate; till
perhaps the chapter of chances turn up some leaf for us; or
Paris, at all events, be sacked at the latest day possible. The
Many-counselled, who 'has not closed an eye for three nights,'
listens with little speech to these long cheerless speeches;
merely watching the speaker that he may know him; then wishes
them all good-night;—but beckons a certain young Thouvenot, the
fire of whose looks had pleased him, to wait a moment. Thouvenot
waits: Voila, says Polymetis, pointing to the map! That is the
Forest of Argonne, that long stripe of rocky Mountain and wild
Wood; forty miles long; with but five, or say even three
practicable Passes through it: this, for they have forgotten it,
might one not still seize, though Clairfait sits so nigh? Once
seized;—the Champagne called the Hungry (_or worse, Champagne
Pouilleuse_) on their side of it; the fat Three Bishoprics, and
willing France, on ours; and the Equinox-rains not far;—this
Argonne 'might be the Thermopylae of France!' (_Dumouriez, ii.
391._)
O brisk Dumouriez Polymetis with thy teeming head, may the gods
grant it!—Polymetis, at any rate, folds his map together, and
flings himself on bed; resolved to try, on the morrow morning.
With astucity, with swiftness, with audacity! One had need to be
a lion-fox, and have luck on one's side.
Chapter 3.1.IV.
September in Paris.
At Paris, by lying Rumour which proved prophetic and veridical,
the fall of Verdun was known some hours before it happened. It is
Sunday the second of September; handiwork hinders not the
speculations of the mind. Verdun gone (_though some still deny
it_); the Prussians in full march, with gallows-ropes, with fire
and faggot! Thirty thousand Aristocrats within our own walls; and
but the merest quarter-tithe of them yet put in Prison! Nay there
goes a word that even these will revolt. Sieur Jean Julien,
wagoner of Vaugirard, (_Moore, i. 178._) being set in the Pillory
last Friday, took all at once to crying, That he would be well
revenged ere long; that the King's Friends in Prison would burst
out; force the Temple, set the King on horseback; and, joined by
the unimprisoned, ride roughshod over us all. This the
unfortunate wagoner of Vaugirard did bawl, at the top of his
lungs: when snatched off to the Townhall, he persisted in it,
still bawling; yesternight, when they guillotined him, he died
with the froth of it on his lips. (_Hist. Parl. xvii. 409._) For
a man's mind, padlocked to the Pillory, may go mad; and all men's
minds may go mad; and 'believe him,' as the frenetic will do,
'because it is impossible.'
So that apparently the knot of the crisis, and last agony of
France is come? Make front to this, thou Improvised Commune,
strong Danton, whatsoever man is strong! Readers can judge
whether the Flag of Country in Danger flapped soothing or
distractively on the souls of men, that day.
But the Improvised Commune, but strong Danton is not wanting,
each after his kind. Huge Placards are getting plastered to the
walls; at two o'clock the stormbell shall be sounded, the
alarm-cannon fired; all Paris shall rush to the Champ-de-Mars,
and have itself enrolled. Unarmed, truly, and undrilled; but
desperate, in the strength of frenzy. Haste, ye men; ye very
women, offer to mount guard and shoulder the brown musket: weak
clucking-hens, in a state of desperation, will fly at the muzzle
of the mastiff, and even conquer him,—by vehemence of character!
Terror itself, when once grown transcendental, becomes a kind of
courage; as frost sufficiently intense, according to Poet Milton,
will burn.—Danton, the other night, in the Legislative Committee
of General Defence, when the other Ministers and Legislators had
all opined, said, It would not do to quit Paris, and fly to
Saumur; that they must abide by Paris; and take such attitude as
would put their enemies in fear,—faire peur; a word of his which
has been often repeated, and reprinted—in italics. (_Biographie
des Ministres (_Bruxelles, 1826_), p. 96._)
At two of the clock, Beaurepaire, as we saw, has shot himself at
Verdun; and over Europe, mortals are going in for afternoon
sermon. But at Paris, all steeples are clangouring not for
sermon; the alarm-gun booming from minute to minute;
Champ-de-Mars and Fatherland's Altar boiling with desperate
terror-courage: what a miserere going up to Heaven from this once
Capital of the Most Christian King! The Legislative sits in
alternate awe and effervescence; Vergniaud proposing that Twelve
shall go and dig personally on Montmartre; which is decreed by
acclaim.
But better than digging personally with acclaim, see Danton
enter;—the black brows clouded, the colossus-figure tramping
heavy; grim energy looking from all features of the rugged man!
Strong is that grim Son of France, and Son of Earth; a Reality
and not a Formula he too; and surely now if ever, being hurled
low enough, it is on the Earth and on Realities that he rests.
"Legislators!" so speaks the stentor-voice, as the Newspapers yet
preserve it for us, "it is not the alarm-cannon that you hear: it
is the pas-de-charge against our enemies. To conquer them, to
hurl them back, what do we require? Il nous faut de l'audace, et
encore de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace, To dare, and again
to dare, and without end to dare!" (_Moniteur in Hist. Parl.
xvii. 347._)—Right so, thou brawny Titan; there is nothing left
for thee but that. Old men, who heard it, will still tell you how
the reverberating voice made all hearts swell, in that moment;
and braced them to the sticking-place; and thrilled abroad over
France, like electric virtue, as a word spoken in season.
But the Commune, enrolling in the Champ-de-Mars? But the
Committee of Watchfulness, become now Committee of Public
Salvation; whose conscience is Marat? The Commune enrolling
enrolls many; provides Tents for them in that Mars'-Field, that
they may march with dawn on the morrow: praise to this part of
the Commune! To Marat and the Committee of Watchfulness not
praise;—not even blame, such as could be meted out in these
insufficient dialects of ours; expressive silence rather! Lone
Marat, the man forbid, meditating long in his Cellars of refuge,
on his Stylites Pillar, could see salvation in one thing only: in
the fall of 'two hundred and sixty thousand Aristocrat heads.'
With so many score of Naples Bravoes, each a dirk in his
right-hand, a muff on his left, he would traverse France, and do
it. But the world laughed, mocking the severe-benevolence of a
People's-Friend; and his idea could not become an action, but
only a fixed-idea. Lo, now, however, he has come down from his
Stylites Pillar, to a Tribune particuliere; here now, without the
dirks, without the muffs at least, were it not grown
possible,—now in the knot of the crisis, when salvation or
destruction hangs in the hour!
The Ice-Tower of Avignon was noised of sufficiently, and lives in
all memories; but the authors were not punished: nay we saw
Jourdan Coupe-tete, borne on men's shoulders, like a copper
Portent, 'traversing the cities of the South.'—What phantasms,
squalid-horrid, shaking their dirk and muff, may dance through
the brain of a Marat, in this dizzy pealing of tocsin-miserere,
and universal frenzy, seek not to guess, O Reader! Nor what the
cruel Billaud 'in his short brown coat was thinking;' nor
Sergent, not yet Agate-Sergent; nor Panis the confident of
Danton;—nor, in a word, how gloomy Orcus does breed in her gloomy
womb, and fashion her monsters, and prodigies of Events, which
thou seest her visibly bear! Terror is on these streets of Paris;
terror and rage, tears and frenzy: tocsin-miserere pealing
through the air; fierce desperation rushing to battle; mothers,
with streaming eyes and wild hearts, sending forth their sons to
die. 'Carriage-horses are seized by the bridle,' that they may
draw cannon; 'the traces cut, the carriages left standing.' In
such tocsin-miserere, and murky bewilderment of Frenzy, are not
Murder, Ate, and all Furies near at hand? On slight hint, who
knows on how slight, may not Murder come; and, with her
snaky-sparkling hand, illuminate this murk!
How it was and went, what part might be premeditated, what was
improvised and accidental, man will never know, till the great
Day of Judgment make it known. But with a Marat for keeper of the
Sovereign's Conscience—And we know what the ultima ratio of
Sovereigns, when they are driven to it, is! In this Paris there
are as many wicked men, say a hundred or more, as exist in all
the Earth: to be hired, and set on; to set on, of their own
accord, unhired.—And yet we will remark that premeditation itself
is not performance, is not surety of performance; that it is
perhaps, at most, surety of letting whosoever wills perform. From
the purpose of crime to the act of crime there is an abyss;
wonderful to think of. The finger lies on the pistol; but the man
is not yet a murderer: nay, his whole nature staggering at such
consummation, is there not a confused pause rather,—one last
instant of possibility for him? Not yet a murderer; it is at the
mercy of light trifles whether the most fixed idea may not yet
become unfixed. One slight twitch of a muscle, the death flash
bursts; and he is it, and will for Eternity be it;—and Earth has
become a penal Tartarus for him; his horizon girdled now not with
golden hope, but with red flames of remorse; voices from the
depths of Nature sounding, Wo, wo on him!
Of such stuff are we all made; on such powder-mines of bottomless
guilt and criminality, 'if God restrained not; as is well
said,—does the purest of us walk. There are depths in man that go
the length of lowest Hell, as there are heights that reach
highest Heaven;—for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him,
made by him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery as he is?—But
looking on this Champ-de-Mars, with its tent-buildings, and
frantic enrolments; on this murky-simmering Paris, with its
crammed Prisons (_supposed about to burst_), with its
tocsin-miserere, its mothers' tears, and soldiers' farewell
shoutings,—the pious soul might have prayed, that day, that God's
grace would restrain, and greatly restrain; lest on slight hest
or hint, Madness, Horror and Murder rose, and this Sabbath-day of
September became a Day black in the Annals of Men.—
The tocsin is pealing its loudest, the clocks inaudibly striking
Three, when poor Abbe Sicard, with some thirty other Nonjurant
Priests, in six carriages, fare along the streets, from their
preliminary House of Detention at the Townhall, westward towards
the Prison of the Abbaye. Carriages enough stand deserted on the
streets; these six move on,—through angry multitudes, cursing as
they move. Accursed Aristocrat Tartuffes, this is the pass ye
have brought us to! And now ye will break the Prisons, and set
Capet Veto on horseback to ride over us? Out upon you, Priests of
Beelzebub and Moloch; of Tartuffery, Mammon, and the Prussian
Gallows,—which ye name Mother-Church and God! Such reproaches
have the poor Nonjurants to endure, and worse; spoken in on them
by frantic Patriots, who mount even on the carriage-steps; the
very Guards hardly refraining. Pull up your carriage-blinds!—No!
answers Patriotism, clapping its horny paw on the carriage blind,
and crushing it down again. Patience in oppression has limits: we
are close on the Abbaye, it has lasted long: a poor Nonjurant, of
quicker temper, smites the horny paw with his cane; nay, finding
solacement in it, smites the unkempt head, sharply and again more
sharply, twice over,—seen clearly of us and of the world. It is
the last that we see clearly. Alas, next moment, the carriages
are locked and blocked in endless raging tumults; in yells deaf
to the cry for mercy, which answer the cry for mercy with
sabre-thrusts through the heart. (_Felemhesi (_anagram for Mehee
Fils_), La Verite tout entiere, sur les vrais auteurs de la
journee du 2 Septembre 1792 (_reprinted in Hist. Parl. xviii.
156-181_), p. 167._) The thirty Priests are torn out, are
massacred about the Prison-Gate, one after one,—only the poor
Abbe Sicard, whom one Moton a watchmaker, knowing him, heroically
tried to save, and secrete in the Prison, escapes to tell;—and it
is Night and Orcus, and Murder's snaky-sparkling head has risen
in the murk!—
From Sunday afternoon (_exclusive of intervals, and pauses not
final_) till Thursday evening, there follow consecutively a
Hundred Hours. Which hundred hours are to be reckoned with the
hours of the Bartholomew Butchery, of the Armagnac Massacres,
Sicilian Vespers, or whatsoever is savagest in the annals of this
world. Horrible the hour when man's soul, in its paroxysm, spurns
asunder the barriers and rules; and shews what dens and depths
are in it! For Night and Orcus, as we say, as was long
prophesied, have burst forth, here in this Paris, from their
subterranean imprisonment: hideous, dim, confused; which it is
painful to look on; and yet which cannot, and indeed which should
not, be forgotten.
The Reader, who looks earnestly through this dim Phantasmagory of
the Pit, will discern few fixed certain objects; and yet still a
few. He will observe, in this Abbaye Prison, the sudden massacre
of the Priests being once over, a strange Court of Justice, or
call it Court of Revenge and Wild-Justice, swiftly fashion
itself, and take seat round a table, with the Prison-Registers
spread before it;—Stanislas Maillard, Bastille-hero, famed Leader
of the Menads, presiding. O Stanislas, one hoped to meet thee
elsewhere than here; thou shifty Riding-Usher, with an inkling of
Law! This work also thou hadst to do; and then—to depart for ever
from our eyes. At La Force, at the Chatelet, the Conciergerie,
the like Court forms itself, with the like accompaniments: the
thing that one man does other men can do. There are some Seven
Prisons in Paris, full of Aristocrats with conspiracies;—nay not
even Bicetre and Salpetriere shall escape, with their Forgers of
Assignats: and there are seventy times seven hundred Patriot
hearts in a state of frenzy. Scoundrel hearts also there are; as
perfect, say, as the Earth holds,—if such are needed. To whom, in
this mood, law is as no-law; and killing, by what name soever
called, is but work to be done.
So sit these sudden Courts of Wild-Justice, with the
Prison-Registers before them; unwonted wild tumult howling all
round: the Prisoners in dread expectancy within. Swift: a name is
called; bolts jingle, a Prisoner is there. A few questions are
put; swiftly this sudden Jury decides: Royalist Plotter or not?
Clearly not; in that case, Let the Prisoner be enlarged With Vive
la Nation. Probably yea; then still, Let the Prisoner be
enlarged, but without Vive la Nation; or else it may run, Let the
prisoner be conducted to La Force. At La Force again their
formula is, Let the Prisoner be conducted to the Abbaye.—"To La
Force then!" Volunteer bailiffs seize the doomed man; he is at
the outer gate; 'enlarged,' or 'conducted,'—not into La Force,
but into a howling sea; forth, under an arch of wild sabres, axes
and pikes; and sinks, hewn asunder. And another sinks, and
another; and there forms itself a piled heap of corpses, and the
kennels begin to run red. Fancy the yells of these men, their
faces of sweat and blood; the crueller shrieks of these women,
for there are women too; and a fellow-mortal hurled naked into it
all! Jourgniac de Saint Meard has seen battle, has seen an
effervescent Regiment du Roi in mutiny; but the bravest heart may
quail at this. The Swiss Prisoners, remnants of the Tenth of
August, 'clasped each other spasmodically,' and hung back; grey
veterans crying: "Mercy Messieurs; ah, mercy!" But there was no
mercy. Suddenly, however, one of these men steps forward. He had
a blue frock coat; he seemed to be about thirty, his stature was
above common, his look noble and martial. "I go first," said he,
"since it must be so: adieu!" Then dashing his hat sharply behind
him: "Which way?" cried he to the Brigands: "Shew it me, then."
They open the folding gate; he is announced to the multitude. He
stands a moment motionless; then plunges forth among the pikes,
and dies of a thousand wounds.' (_Felemhesi, La Verite tout
entiere (_ut supra_), p. 173._)
Man after man is cut down; the sabres need sharpening, the
killers refresh themselves from wine jugs. Onward and onward goes
the butchery; the loud yells wearying down into bass growls. A
sombre-faced, shifting multitude looks on; in dull approval, or
dull disapproval; in dull recognition that it is Necessity. 'An
Anglais in drab greatcoat' was seen, or seemed to be seen,
serving liquor from his own dram-bottle;—for what purpose, 'if
not set on by Pitt,' Satan and himself know best! Witty Dr. Moore
grew sick on approaching, and turned into another street.
(_Moore's Journal, i. 185-195._)—Quick enough goes this
Jury-Court; and rigorous. The brave are not spared, nor the
beautiful, nor the weak. Old M. de Montmorin, the Minister's
Brother, was acquitted by the Tribunal of the Seventeenth; and
conducted back, elbowed by howling galleries; but is not
acquitted here. Princess de Lamballe has lain down on bed:
"Madame, you are to be removed to the Abbaye." "I do not wish to
remove; I am well enough here." There is a need-be for removing.
She will arrange her dress a little, then; rude voices answer,
"You have not far to go." She too is led to the hell-gate; a
manifest Queen's-Friend. She shivers back, at the sight of bloody
sabres; but there is no return: Onwards! That fair hindhead is
cleft with the axe; the neck is severed. That fair body is cut in
fragments; with indignities, and obscene horrors of moustachio
grands-levres, which human nature would fain find
incredible,—which shall be read in the original language only.
She was beautiful, she was good, she had known no happiness.
Young hearts, generation after generation, will think with
themselves: O worthy of worship, thou king-descended,
god-descended and poor sister-woman! why was not I there; and
some Sword Balmung, or Thor's Hammer in my hand? Her head is
fixed on a pike; paraded under the windows of the Temple; that a
still more hated, a Marie-Antoinette, may see. One Municipal, in
the Temple with the Royal Prisoners at the moment, said, "Look
out." Another eagerly whispered, "Do not look." The circuit of
the Temple is guarded, in these hours, by a long stretched
tricolor riband: terror enters, and the clangour of infinite
tumult: hitherto not regicide, though that too may come.
But it is more edifying to note what thrillings of affection,
what fragments of wild virtues turn up, in this shaking asunder
of man's existence, for of these too there is a proportion. Note
old Marquis Cazotte: he is doomed to die; but his young Daughter
clasps him in her arms, with an inspiration of eloquence, with a
love which is stronger than very death; the heart of the killers
themselves is touched by it; the old man is spared. Yet he was
guilty, if plotting for his King is guilt: in ten days more, a
Court of Law condemned him, and he had to die elsewhere;
bequeathing his Daughter a lock of his old grey hair. Or note old
M. de Sombreuil, who also had a Daughter:—My Father is not an
Aristocrat; O good gentlemen, I will swear it, and testify it,
and in all ways prove it; we are not; we hate Aristocrats! "Wilt
thou drink Aristocrats' blood?" The man lifts blood (_if
universal Rumour can be credited (_Dulaure: Esquisses Historiques
des principaux evenemens de la Revolution, ii. 206 (_cited in
Montgaillard, iii. 205._); the poor maiden does drink. "This
Sombreuil is innocent then!" Yes indeed,—and now note, most of
all, how the bloody pikes, at this news, do rattle to the ground;
and the tiger-yells become bursts of jubilee over a brother
saved; and the old man and his daughter are clasped to bloody
bosoms, with hot tears, and borne home in triumph of Vive la
Nation, the killers refusing even money! Does it seem strange,
this temper of theirs? It seems very certain, well proved by
Royalist testimony in other instances; (_Bertrand-Moleville, Mem.
Particuliers, ii.213, &c. &c._) and very significant.
Chapter 3.1.V.
A Trilogy.
As all Delineation, in these ages, were it never so Epic,
'speaking itself and not singing itself,' must either found on
Belief and provable Fact, or have no foundation at all (_nor
except as floating cobweb any existence at all_),—the Reader will
perhaps prefer to take a glance with the very eyes of
eye-witnesses; and see, in that way, for himself, how it was.
Brave Jourgniac, innocent Abbe Sicard, judicious Advocate Maton,
these, greatly compressing themselves, shall speak, each an
instant. Jourgniac's Agony of Thirty-eight hours went through
'above a hundred editions,' though intrinsically a poor work.
Some portion of it may here go through above the
hundred-and-first, for want of a better.
'Towards seven o'clock' (_Sunday night, at the Abbaye; for
Jourgniac goes by dates_): 'We saw two men enter, their hands
bloody and armed with sabres; a turnkey, with a torch, lighted
them; he pointed to the bed of the unfortunate Swiss, Reding.
Reding spoke with a dying voice. One of them paused; but the
other cried Allons donc; lifted the unfortunate man; carried him
out on his back to the street. He was massacred there.
'We all looked at one another in silence, we clasped each other's
hands. Motionless, with fixed eyes, we gazed on the pavement of
our prison; on which lay the moonlight, checkered with the triple
stancheons of our windows.
'Three in the morning: They were breaking-in one of the
prison-doors. We at first thought they were coming to kill us in
our room; but heard, by voices on the staircase, that it was a
room where some Prisoners had barricaded themselves. They were
all butchered there, as we shortly gathered.
'Ten o'clock: The Abbe Lenfant and the Abbe de Chapt-Rastignac
appeared in the pulpit of the Chapel, which was our prison; they
had entered by a door from the stairs. They said to us that our
end was at hand; that we must compose ourselves, and receive
their last blessing. An electric movement, not to be defined,
threw us all on our knees, and we received it. These two
whitehaired old men, blessing us from their place above; death
hovering over our heads, on all hands environing us; the moment
is never to be forgotten. Half an hour after, they were both
massacred, and we heard their cries.' (_Jourgniac Saint-Meard,
Mon Agonie de Trente-huit heures, reprinted in Hist. Parl. xviii.
103-135._)—Thus Jourgniac in his Agony in the Abbaye.
But now let the good Maton speak, what he, over in La Force, in
the same hours, is suffering and witnessing. This Resurrection by
him is greatly the best, the least theatrical of these Pamphlets;
and stands testing by documents:
'Towards seven o'clock,' on Sunday night, 'prisoners were called
frequently, and they did not reappear. Each of us reasoned in his
own way, on this singularity: but our ideas became calm, as we
persuaded ourselves that the Memorial I had drawn up for the
National Assembly was producing effect.
'At one in the morning, the grate which led to our quarter opened
anew. Four men in uniform, each with a drawn sabre and blazing
torch, came up to our corridor, preceded by a turnkey; and
entered an apartment close to ours, to investigate a box there,
which we heard them break up. This done, they stept into the
gallery, and questioned the man Cuissa, to know where Lamotte
(_Necklace's Widower_) was. Lamotte, they said, had some months
ago, under pretext of a treasure he knew of, swindled a sum of
three-hundred livres from one of them, inviting him to dinner for
that purpose. The wretched Cuissa, now in their hands, who indeed
lost his life this night, answered trembling, That he remembered
the fact well, but could not tell what was become of Lamotte.
Determined to find Lamotte and confront him with Cuissa, they
rummaged, along with this latter, through various other
apartments; but without effect, for we heard them say: "Come
search among the corpses then: for, nom de Dieu! we must find
where he is."
'At this time, I heard Louis Bardy, the Abbe Bardy's name called:
he was brought out; and directly massacred, as I learnt. He had
been accused, along with his concubine, five or six years before,
of having murdered and cut in pieces his own Brother, Auditor of
the Chambre des Comptes at Montpelier; but had by his subtlety,
his dexterity, nay his eloquence, outwitted the judges, and
escaped.
'One may fancy what terror these words, "Come search among the
corpses then," had thrown me into. I saw nothing for it now but
resigning myself to die. I wrote my last-will; concluding it by a
petition and adjuration, that the paper should be sent to its
address. Scarcely had I quitted the pen, when there came two
other men in uniform; one of them, whose arm and sleeve up to the
very shoulder, as well as the sabre, were covered with blood,
said, He was as weary as a hodman that had been beating plaster.
'Baudin de la Chenaye was called; sixty years of virtues could
not save him. They said, "A l'Abbaye:" he passed the fatal
outer-gate; gave a cry of terror, at sight of the heaped corpses;
covered his eyes with his hands, and died of innumerable wounds.
At every new opening of the grate, I thought I should hear my own
name called, and see Rossignol enter.
'I flung off my nightgown and cap; I put on a coarse unwashed
shirt, a worn frock without waistcoat, an old round hat; these
things I had sent for, some days ago, in the fear of what might
happen.
'The rooms of this corridor had been all emptied but ours. We
were four together; whom they seemed to have forgotten: we
addressed our prayers in common to the Eternal to be delivered
from this peril.
'Baptiste the turnkey came up by himself, to see us. I took him
by the hands; I conjured him to save us; promised him a hundred
louis, if he would conduct me home. A noise coming from the
grates made him hastily withdraw.
'It was the noise of some dozen or fifteen men, armed to the
teeth; as we, lying flat to escape being seen, could see from our
windows: "Up stairs!" said they: "Let not one remain." I took out
my penknife; I considered where I should strike myself,'—but
reflected 'that the blade was too short,' and also 'on religion.'
Finally, however, between seven and eight o'clock in the morning,
enter four men with bludgeons and sabres!—'to one of whom Gerard
my comrade whispered, earnestly, apart. During their colloquy I
searched every where for shoes, that I might lay off the Advocate
pumps (_pantoufles de Palais_) I had on,' but could find
none.—'Constant, called le Sauvage, Gerard, and a third whose
name escapes me, they let clear off: as for me, four sabres were
crossed over my breast, and they led me down. I was brought to
their bar; to the Personage with the scarf, who sat as judge
there. He was a lame man, of tall lank stature. He recognised me
on the streets, and spoke to me seven months after. I have been
assured that he was son of a retired attorney, and named Chepy.
Crossing the Court called Des Nourrices, I saw Manuel haranguing
in tricolor scarf.' The trial, as we see, ends in acquittal and
resurrection. (_Maton de la Varenne, Ma Resurrection in Hist.
Parl. xviii. 135-156._)
Poor Sicard, from the violon of the Abbaye, shall say but a few
words; true-looking, though tremulous. Towards three in the
morning, the killers bethink them of this little violon; and
knock from the court. 'I tapped gently, trembling lest the
murderers might hear, on the opposite door, where the Section
Committee was sitting: they answered gruffly that they had no
key. There were three of us in this violon; my companions thought
they perceived a kind of loft overhead. But it was very high;
only one of us could reach it, by mounting on the shoulders of
both the others. One of them said to me, that my life was
usefuller than theirs: I resisted, they insisted: no denial! I
fling myself on the neck of these two deliverers; never was scene
more touching. I mount on the shoulders of the first, then on
those of the second, finally on the loft; and address to my two
comrades the expression of a soul overwhelmed with natural
emotions. (_Abbe Sicard: Relation adressee a un de ses amis,
Hist. Parl. xviii. 98-103._)
The two generous companions, we rejoice to find, did not perish.
But it is time that Jourgniac de Saint-Meard should speak his
last words, and end this singular trilogy. The night had become
day; and the day has again become night. Jourgniac, worn down
with uttermost agitation, has fallen asleep, and had a cheering
dream: he has also contrived to make acquaintance with one of the
volunteer bailiffs, and spoken in native Provencal with him. On
Tuesday, about one in the morning, his Agony is reaching its
crisis.
'By the glare of two torches, I now descried the terrible
tribunal, where lay my life or my death. The President, in grey
coats, with a sabre at his side, stood leaning with his hands
against a table, on which were papers, an inkstand, tobacco-pipes
and bottles. Some ten persons were around, seated or standing;
two of whom had jackets and aprons: others were sleeping
stretched on benches. Two men, in bloody shirts, guarded the door
of the place; an old turnkey had his hand on the lock. In front
of the President, three men held a Prisoner, who might be about
sixty' (_or seventy: he was old Marshal Maille, of the Tuileries
and August Tenth_). 'They stationed me in a corner; my guards
crossed their sabres on my breast. I looked on all sides for my
Provencal: two National Guards, one of them drunk, presented some
appeal from the Section of Croix Rouge in favour of the Prisoner;
the Man in Grey answered: "They are useless, these appeals for
traitors." Then the Prisoner exclaimed: "It is frightful; your
judgment is a murder." The President answered; "My hands are
washed of it; take M. Maille away." They drove him into the
street; where, through the opening of the door, I saw him
massacred.
'The President sat down to write; registering, I suppose, the
name of this one whom they had finished; then I heard him say:
"Another, A un autre!"
'Behold me then haled before this swift and bloody judgment-bar,
where the best protection was to have no protection, and all
resources of ingenuity became null if they were not founded on
truth. Two of my guards held me each by a hand, the third by the
collar of my coat. "Your name, your profession?" said the
President. "The smallest lie ruins you," added one of the
judges,—"My name is Jourgniac Saint-Meard; I have served, as an
officer, twenty years: and I appear at your tribunal with the
assurance of an innocent man, who therefore will not lie."—"We
shall see that," said the President: "Do you know why you are
arrested?"—"Yes, Monsieur le President; I am accused of editing
the Journal De la Cour et de la Ville. But I hope to prove the
falsity"'—
But no; Jourgniac's proof of the falsity, and defence generally,
though of excellent result as a defence, is not interesting to
read. It is long-winded; there is a loose theatricality in the
reporting of it, which does not amount to unveracity, yet which
tends that way. We shall suppose him successful, beyond hope, in
proving and disproving; and skip largely,—to the catastrophe,
almost at two steps.
'"But after all," said one of the Judges, "there is no smoke
without kindling; tell us why they accuse you of that."—"I was
about to do so"'—Jourgniac does so; with more and more success.
'"Nay," continued I, "they accuse me even of recruiting for the
Emigrants!" At these words there arose a general murmur. "O
Messieurs, Messieurs," I exclaimed, raising my voice, "it is my
turn to speak; I beg M. le President to have the kindness to
maintain it for me; I never needed it more."—"True enough, true
enough," said almost all the judges with a laugh: "Silence!"
'While they were examining the testimonials I had produced, a new
Prisoner was brought in, and placed before the President. "It was
one Priest more," they said, "whom they had ferreted out of the
Chapelle." After very few questions: "A la Force!" He flung his
breviary on the table: was hurled forth, and massacred. I
reappeared before the tribunal.
'"You tell us always," cried one of the judges, with a tone of
impatience, "that you are not this, that you are not that: what
are you then?"—"I was an open Royalist."—There arose a general
murmur; which was miraculously appeased by another of the men,
who had seemed to take an interest in me: "We are not here to
judge opinions," said he, "but to judge the results of them."
Could Rousseau and Voltaire both in one, pleading for me, have
said better?—"Yes, Messieurs," cried I, "always till the Tenth of
August, I was an open Royalist. Ever since the Tenth of August
that cause has been finished. I am a Frenchman, true to my
country. I was always a man of honour."
'"My soldiers never distrusted me. Nay, two days before that
business of Nanci, when their suspicion of their officers was at
its height, they chose me for commander, to lead them to
Luneville, to get back the prisoners of the Regiment
Mestre-de-Camp, and seize General Malseigne."' Which fact there
is, most luckily, an individual present who by a certain token
can confirm.
'The President, this cross-questioning being over, took off his
hat and said: "I see nothing to suspect in this man; I am for
granting him his liberty. Is that your vote?" To which all the
judges answered: "Oui, oui; it is just!"'
And there arose vivats within doors and without; 'escort of
three,' amid shoutings and embracings: thus Jourgniac escaped
from jury-trial and the jaws of death. (_Mon Agonie (_ut supra_),
Hist. Parl. xviii. 128._) Maton and Sicard did, either by trial,
and no bill found, lank President Chepy finding 'absolutely
nothing;' or else by evasion, and new favour of Moton the brave
watchmaker, likewise escape; and were embraced, and wept over;
weeping in return, as they well might.
Thus they three, in wondrous trilogy, or triple soliloquy;
uttering simultaneously, through the dread night-watches, their
Night-thoughts,—grown audible to us! They Three are become
audible: but the other 'Thousand and Eighty-nine, of whom Two
Hundred and Two were Priests,' who also had Night-thoughts,
remain inaudible; choked for ever in black Death. Heard only of
President Chepy and the Man in Grey!—
Chapter 3.1.VI.
The Circular.
But the Constituted Authorities, all this while? The Legislative
Assembly; the Six Ministers; the Townhall; Santerre with the
National Guard?—It is very curious to think what a City is.
Theatres, to the number of some twenty-three, were open every
night during these prodigies: while right-arms here grew weary
with slaying, right-arms there are twiddledeeing on melodious
catgut; at the very instant when Abbe Sicard was clambering up
his second pair of shoulders, three-men high, five hundred
thousand human individuals were lying horizontal, as if nothing
were amiss.
As for the poor Legislative, the sceptre had departed from it.
The Legislative did send Deputation to the Prisons, to the
Street-Courts; and poor M. Dusaulx did harangue there; but
produced no conviction whatsoever: nay, at last, as he continued
haranguing, the Street-Court interposed, not without threats; and
he had to cease, and withdraw. This is the same poor worthy old
M. Dusaulx who told, or indeed almost sang (_though with cracked
voice_), the Taking of the Bastille,—to our satisfaction long
since. He was wont to announce himself, on such and on all
occasions, as the Translator of Juvenal. "Good Citizens, you see
before you a man who loves his country, who is the Translator of
Juvenal," said he once.—"Juvenal?" interrupts Sansculottism: "who
the devil is Juvenal? One of your sacres Aristocrates? To the
Lanterne!" From an orator of this kind, conviction was not to be
expected. The Legislative had much ado to save one of its own
Members, or Ex-Members, Deputy Journeau, who chanced to be lying
in arrest for mere Parliamentary delinquencies, in these Prisons.
As for poor old Dusaulx and Company, they returned to the Salle
de Manege, saying, "It was dark; and they could not see well what
was going on." (_Moniteur, Debate of 2nd September, 1792._)
Roland writes indignant messages, in the name of Order, Humanity,
and the Law; but there is no Force at his disposal. Santerre's
National Force seems lazy to rise; though he made requisitions,
he says,—which always dispersed again. Nay did not we, with
Advocate Maton's eyes, see 'men in uniform,' too, with their
'sleeves bloody to the shoulder?' Petion goes in tricolor scarf;
speaks "the austere language of the law:" the killers give up,
while he is there; when his back is turned, recommence. Manuel
too in scarf we, with Maton's eyes, transiently saw haranguing,
in the Court called of Nurses, Cour des Nourrices. On the other
hand, cruel Billaud, likewise in scarf, 'with that small puce
coat and black wig we are used to on him,' (_Mehee, Fils ut
supra, in Hist. Parl. xviii. p. 189._) audibly delivers,
'standing among corpses,' at the Abbaye, a short but
ever-memorable harangue, reported in various phraseology, but
always to this purpose: "Brave Citizens, you are extirpating the
Enemies of Liberty; you are at your duty. A grateful Commune, and
Country, would wish to recompense you adequately; but cannot, for
you know its want of funds. Whoever shall have worked
(_travaille_) in a Prison shall receive a draft of one louis,
payable by our cashier. Continue your work." (_Montgaillard, iii.
191._)—The Constituted Authorities are of yesterday; all pulling
different ways: there is properly not Constituted Authority, but
every man is his own King; and all are kinglets, belligerent,
allied, or armed-neutral, without king over them.
'O everlasting infamy,' exclaims Montgaillard, 'that Paris stood
looking on in stupor for four days, and did not interfere!' Very
desirable indeed that Paris had interfered; yet not unnatural
that it stood even so, looking on in stupor. Paris is in
death-panic, the enemy and gibbets at its door: whosoever in
Paris has the heart to front death finds it more pressing to do
it fighting the Prussians, than fighting the killers of
Aristocrats. Indignant abhorrence, as in Roland, may be here;
gloomy sanction, premeditation or not, as in Marat and Committee
of Salvation, may be there; dull disapproval, dull approval, and
acquiescence in Necessity and Destiny, is the general temper. The
Sons of Darkness, 'two hundred or so,' risen from their
lurking-places, have scope to do their work. Urged on by
fever-frenzy of Patriotism, and the madness of Terror;—urged on
by lucre, and the gold louis of wages? Nay, not lucre: for the
gold watches, rings, money of the Massacred, are punctually
brought to the Townhall, by Killers sans-indispensables, who
higgle afterwards for their twenty shillings of wages; and
Sergent sticking an uncommonly fine agate on his finger (_'fully
meaning to account for it'_), becomes Agate-Sergent. But the
temper, as we say, is dull acquiescence. Not till the Patriotic
or Frenetic part of the work is finished for want of material;
and Sons of Darkness, bent clearly on lucre alone, begin
wrenching watches and purses, brooches from ladies' necks 'to
equip volunteers,' in daylight, on the streets,—does the temper
from dull grow vehement; does the Constable raise his truncheon,
and striking heartily (_like a cattle-driver in earnest_) beat
the 'course of things' back into its old regulated drove-roads.
The Garde-Meuble itself was surreptitiously plundered, on the
17th of the Month, to Roland's new horror; who anew bestirs
himself, and is, as Sieyes says, 'the veto of scoundrels,' Roland
veto des coquins. (_Helen Maria Williams, iii. 27._)—
This is the September Massacre, otherwise called 'Severe Justice
of the People.' These are the Septemberers (_Septembriseurs_); a
name of some note and lucency,—but lucency of the Nether-fire
sort; very different from that of our Bastille Heroes, who shone,
disputable by no Friend of Freedom, as in heavenly
light-radiance: to such phasis of the business have we advanced
since then! The numbers massacred are, in Historical fantasy,
'between two and three thousand;' or indeed they are 'upwards of
six thousand,' for Peltier (_in vision_) saw them massacring the
very patients of the Bicetre Madhouse 'with grape-shot;' nay
finally they are 'twelve thousand' and odd hundreds,—not more
than that. (_See Hist. Parl. xvii. 421, 422._) In Arithmetical
ciphers, and Lists drawn up by accurate Advocate Maton, the
number, including two hundred and two priests, three 'persons
unknown,' and 'one thief killed at the Bernardins,' is, as above
hinted, a Thousand and Eighty-nine,—no less than that.
A thousand and eighty-nine lie dead, 'two hundred and sixty
heaped carcasses on the Pont au Change' itself;—among which,
Robespierre pleading afterwards will 'nearly weep' to reflect
that there was said to be one slain innocent. (_Moniteur of 6th
November, Debate of 5th November, 1793._) One; not two, O thou
seagreen Incorruptible? If so, Themis Sansculotte must be lucky;
for she was brief!—In the dim Registers of the Townhall, which
are preserved to this day, men read, with a certain sickness of
heart, items and entries not usual in Town Books: 'To workers
employed in preserving the salubrity of the air in the Prisons,
and persons 'who presided over these dangerous operations,' so
much,—in various items, nearly seven hundred pounds sterling. To
carters employed to 'the Burying-grounds of Clamart, Montrouge,
and Vaugirard,' at so much a journey, per cart; this also is an
entry. Then so many francs and odd sous 'for the necessary
quantity of quick-lime!' (_Etat des sommes payees par la Commune
de Paris, Hist. Parl. xviii. 231._) Carts go along the streets;
full of stript human corpses, thrown pellmell; limbs sticking
up:—seest thou that cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped
embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness, in its cold
rigour; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb prayer, in
expostulation de profundis, Take pity on the Sons of Men!—Mercier
saw it, as he walked down 'the Rue Saint-Jacques from Montrouge,
on the morrow of the Massacres:' but not a Hand; it was a
Foot,—which he reckons still more significant, one understands
not well why. Or was it as the Foot of one spurning Heaven?
Rushing, like a wild diver, in disgust and despair, towards the
depths of Annihilation? Even there shall His hand find thee, and
His right-hand hold thee,—surely for right not for wrong, for
good not evil! 'I saw that Foot,' says Mercier; 'I shall know it
again at the great Day of Judgment, when the Eternal, throned on
his thunders, shall judge both Kings and Septemberers.'
(_Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 21._)
That a shriek of inarticulate horror rose over this thing, not
only from French Aristocrats and Moderates, but from all Europe,
and has prolonged itself to the present day, was most natural and
right. The thing lay done, irrevocable; a thing to be counted
besides some other things, which lie very black in our Earth's
Annals, yet which will not erase therefrom. For man, as was
remarked, has transcendentalisms in him; standing, as he does,
poor creature, every way 'in the confluence of Infinitudes;' a
mystery to himself and others: in the centre of two Eternities,
of three Immensities,—in the intersection of primeval Light with
the everlasting dark! Thus have there been, especially by
vehement tempers reduced to a state of desperation, very
miserable things done. Sicilian Vespers, and 'eight thousand
slaughtered in two hours,' are a known thing. Kings themselves,
not in desperation, but only in difficulty, have sat hatching,
for year and day (_nay De Thou says, for seven years_), their
Bartholomew Business; and then, at the right moment, also on an
Autumn Sunday, this very Bell (_they say it is the identical
metal_) of St. Germain l'Auxerrois was set a-pealing—with effect.
(_9th to 13th September, 1572, Dulaure, Hist. de Paris, iv.
289._) Nay the same black boulder-stones of these Paris Prisons
have seen Prison-massacres before now; men massacring countrymen,
Burgundies massacring Armagnacs, whom they had suddenly
imprisoned, till as now there are piled heaps of carcasses, and
the streets ran red;—the Mayor Petion of the time speaking the
austere language of the law, and answered by the Killers, in old
French (_it is some four hundred years old_): "Maugre bieu,
Sire,—Sir, God's malison on your justice, your pity, your right
reason. Cursed be of God whoso shall have pity on these false
traitorous Armagnacs, English; dogs they are; they have destroyed
us, wasted this realm of France, and sold it to the English."
(_Dulaure, iii. 494._) And so they slay, and fling aside the
slain, to the extent of 'fifteen hundred and eighteen, among whom
are found four Bishops of false and damnable counsel, and two
Presidents of Parlement.' For though it is not Satan's world this
that we live in, Satan always has his place in it (_underground
properly_); and from time to time bursts up. Well may mankind
shriek, inarticulately anathematising as they can. There are
actions of such emphasis that no shrieking can be too emphatic
for them. Shriek ye; acted have they.
Shriek who might in this France, in this Paris Legislative or
Paris Townhall, there are Ten Men who do not shriek. A Circular
goes out from the Committee of Salut Public, dated 3rd of
September 1792; directed to all Townhalls: a State-paper too
remarkable to be overlooked. 'A part of the ferocious
conspirators detained in the Prisons,' it says, 'have been put to
death by the People; and it,' the Circular, 'cannot doubt but the
whole Nation, driven to the edge of ruin by such endless series
of treasons, will make haste to adopt this means of public
salvation; and all Frenchmen will cry as the men of Paris: We go
to fight the enemy, but we will not leave robbers behind us, to
butcher our wives and children.' To which are legibly appended
these signatures: Panis, Sergent; Marat, Friend of the People;
(_Hist. Parl. xvii. 433._) with Seven others;—carried down
thereby, in a strange way, to the late remembrance of
Antiquarians. We remark, however, that their Circular rather
recoiled on themselves. The Townhalls made no use of it; even the
distracted Sansculottes made little; they only howled and
bellowed, but did not bite. At Rheims 'about eight persons' were
killed; and two afterwards were hanged for doing it. At Lyons,
and a few other places, some attempt was made; but with hardly
any effect, being quickly put down.
Less fortunate were the Prisoners of Orleans; was the good Duke
de la Rochefoucault. He journeying, by quick stages, with his
Mother and Wife, towards the Waters of Forges, or some quieter
country, was arrested at Gisors; conducted along the streets,
amid effervescing multitudes, and killed dead 'by the stroke of a
paving-stone hurled through the coach-window.' Killed as a once
Liberal now Aristocrat; Protector of Priests, Suspender of
virtuous Petions, and his unfortunate Hot-grown-cold, detestable
to Patriotism. He dies lamented of Europe; his blood spattering
the cheeks of his old Mother, ninety-three years old.
As for the Orleans Prisoners, they are State Criminals: Royalist
Ministers, Delessarts, Montmorins; who have been accumulating on
the High Court of Orleans, ever since that Tribunal was set up.
Whom now it seems good that we should get transferred to our new
Paris Court of the Seventeenth; which proceeds far quicker.
Accordingly hot Fournier from Martinique, Fournier l'Americain,
is off, missioned by Constituted Authority; with stanch National
Guards, with Lazouski the Pole; sparingly provided with
road-money. These, through bad quarters, through difficulties,
perils, for Authorities cross each other in this time,—do
triumphantly bring off the Fifty or Fifty-three Orleans
Prisoners, towards Paris; where a swifter Court of the
Seventeenth will do justice on them. (_Ibid. xvii. 434._) But lo,
at Paris, in the interim, a still swifter and swiftest Court of
the Second, and of September, has instituted itself: enter not
Paris, or that will judge you!—What shall hot Fournier do? It was
his duty, as volunteer Constable, had he been a perfect
character, to guard those men's lives never so Aristocratic, at
the expense of his own valuable life never so Sansculottic, till
some Constituted Court had disposed of them. But he was an
imperfect character and Constable; perhaps one of the more
imperfect.
Hot Fournier, ordered to turn thither by one Authority, to turn
thither by another Authority, is in a perplexing multiplicity of
orders; but finally he strikes off for Versailles. His Prisoners
fare in tumbrils, or open carts, himself and Guards riding and
marching around: and at the last village, the worthy Mayor of
Versailles comes to meet him, anxious that the arrival and
locking up were well over. It is Sunday, the ninth day of the
month. Lo, on entering the Avenue of Versailles, what multitudes,
stirring, swarming in the September sun, under the dull-green
September foliage; the Four-rowed Avenue all humming and
swarming, as if the Town had emptied itself! Our tumbrils roll
heavily through the living sea; the Guards and Fournier making
way with ever more difficulty; the Mayor speaking and gesturing
his persuasivest; amid the inarticulate growling hum, which
growls ever the deeper even by hearing itself growl, not without
sharp yelpings here and there:—Would to God we were out of this
strait place, and wind and separation had cooled the heat, which
seems about igniting here!
And yet if the wide Avenue is too strait, what will the Street de
Surintendance be, at leaving of the same? At the corner of
Surintendance Street, the compressed yelpings became a continuous
yell: savage figures spring on the tumbril-shafts; first spray of
an endless coming tide! The Mayor pleads, pushes, half-desperate;
is pushed, carried off in men's arms: the savage tide has
entrance, has mastery. Amid horrid noise, and tumult as of fierce
wolves, the Prisoners sink massacred,—all but some eleven, who
escaped into houses, and found mercy. The Prisons, and what other
Prisoners they held, were with difficulty saved. The stript
clothes are burnt in bonfire; the corpses lie heaped in the ditch
on the morrow morning. (_Pieces officielles relatives au massacre
des Prisonniers a Versailles in Hist. Parl. xviii. 236-249._) All
France, except it be the Ten Men of the Circular and their
people, moans and rages, inarticulately shrieking; all Europe
rings.
But neither did Danton shriek; though, as Minister of Justice, it
was more his part to do so. Brawny Danton is in the breach, as of
stormed Cities and Nations; amid the Sweep of Tenth-of-August
cannon, the rustle of Prussian gallows-ropes, the smiting of
September sabres; destruction all round him, and the rushing-down
of worlds: Minister of Justice is his name; but Titan of the
Forlorn Hope, and Enfant Perdu of the Revolution, is his
quality,—and the man acts according to that. "We must put our
enemies in fear!" Deep fear, is it not, as of its own accord,
falling on our enemies? The Titan of the Forlorn Hope, he is not
the man that would swiftest of all prevent its so falling.
Forward, thou lost Titan of an Enfant Perdu; thou must dare, and
again dare, and without end dare; there is nothing left for thee
but that! "Que mon nom soit fletri, Let my name be blighted:"
what am I? The Cause alone is great; and shall live, and not
perish.—So, on the whole, here too is a swallower of Formulas; of
still wider gulp than Mirabeau: this Danton, Mirabeau of the
Sansculottes. In the September days, this Minister was not heard
of as co-operating with strict Roland; his business might lie
elsewhere,—with Brunswick and the Hotel-de-Ville. When applied to
by an official person, about the Orleans Prisoners, and the risks
they ran, he answered gloomily, twice over, "Are not these men
guilty?"—When pressed, he 'answered in a terrible voice,' and
turned his back. (_Biographie des Ministres, p. 97._) Two
Thousand slain in the Prisons; horrible if you will: but
Brunswick is within a day's journey of us; and there are Five-and
twenty Millions yet, to slay or to save. Some men have
tasks,—frightfuller than ours! It seems strange, but is not
strange, that this Minister of Moloch-Justice, when any suppliant
for a friend's life got access to him, was found to have human
compassion; and yielded and granted 'always;' 'neither did one
personal enemy of Danton perish in these days.' (_Ibid. p. 103._)
To shriek, we say, when certain things are acted, is proper and
unavoidable. Nevertheless, articulate speech, not shrieking, is
the faculty of man: when speech is not yet possible, let there
be, with the shortest delay, at least—silence. Silence,
accordingly, in this forty-fourth year of the business, and
eighteen hundred and thirty-sixth of an 'Era called Christian as
lucus a non,' is the thing we recommend and practise. Nay,
instead of shrieking more, it were perhaps edifying to remark, on
the other side, what a singular thing Customs (_in Latin, Mores_)
are; and how fitly the Virtue, Vir-tus, Manhood or Worth, that is
in a man, is called his Morality, or Customariness. Fell
Slaughter, one the most authentic products of the Pit you would
say, once give it Customs, becomes War, with Laws of War; and is
Customary and Moral enough; and red individuals carry the tools
of it girt round their haunches, not without an air of
pride,—which do thou nowise blame. While, see! so long as it is
but dressed in hodden or russet; and Revolution, less frequent
than War, has not yet got its Laws of Revolution, but the hodden
or russet individuals are Uncustomary—O shrieking beloved brother
blockheads of Mankind, let us close those wide mouths of ours;
let us cease shrieking, and begin considering!
Chapter 3.1.VII.
September in Argonne.
Plain, at any rate, is one thing: that the fear, whatever of fear
those Aristocrat enemies might need, has been brought about. The
matter is getting serious then! Sansculottism too has become a
Fact, and seems minded to assert itself as such? This huge
mooncalf of Sansculottism, staggering about, as young calves do,
is not mockable only, and soft like another calf; but terrible
too, if you prick it; and, through its hideous nostrils, blows
fire!—Aristocrats, with pale panic in their hearts, fly towards
covert; and a light rises to them over several things; or rather
a confused transition towards light, whereby for the moment
darkness is only darker than ever. But, What will become of this
France? Here is a question! France is dancing its desert-waltz,
as Sahara does when the winds waken; in whirlblasts twenty-five
millions in number; waltzing towards Townhalls, Aristocrat
Prisons, and Election Committee-rooms; towards Brunswick and the
Frontiers;—towards a New Chapter of Universal History; if indeed
it be not the Finis, and winding-up of that!
In Election Committee-rooms there is now no dubiety; but the work
goes bravely along. The Convention is getting chosen,—really in a
decisive spirit; in the Townhall we already date First year of
the Republic. Some Two hundred of our best Legislators may be
re-elected, the Mountain bodily: Robespierre, with Mayor Petion,
Buzot, Curate Gregoire, Rabaut, some three score
Old-Constituents; though we once had only 'thirty voices.' All
these; and along with them, friends long known to Revolutionary
fame: Camille Desmoulins, though he stutters in speech; Manuel,
Tallien and Company; Journalists Gorsas, Carra, Mercier, Louvet
of Faublas; Clootz Speaker of Mankind; Collot d'Herbois, tearing
a passion to rags; Fabre d'Eglantine, speculative Pamphleteer;
Legendre the solid Butcher; nay Marat, though rural France can
hardly believe it, or even believe that there is a Marat except
in print. Of Minister Danton, who will lay down his Ministry for
a Membership, we need not speak. Paris is fervent; nor is the
Country wanting to itself. Barbaroux, Rebecqui, and fervid
Patriots are coming from Marseilles. Seven hundred and forty-five
men (_or indeed forty-nine, for Avignon now sends Four_) are
gathering: so many are to meet; not so many are to part!
Attorney Carrier from Aurillac, Ex-Priest Lebon from Arras, these
shall both gain a name. Mountainous Auvergne re-elects her Romme:
hardy tiller of the soil, once Mathematical Professor; who,
unconscious, carries in petto a remarkable New Calendar, with
Messidors, Pluvioses, and such like;—and having given it well
forth, shall depart by the death they call Roman. Sieyes
old-Constituent comes; to make new Constitutions as many as
wanted: for the rest, peering out of his clear cautious eyes, he
will cower low in many an emergency, and find silence safest.
Young Saint-Just is coming, deputed by Aisne in the North; more
like a Student than a Senator: not four-and-twenty yet; who has
written Books; a youth of slight stature, with mild mellow voice,
enthusiast olive-complexion, and long dark hair. Feraud, from the
far valley D'Aure in the folds of the Pyrenees, is coming; an
ardent Republican; doomed to fame, at least in death.
All manner of Patriot men are coming: Teachers, Husbandmen,
Priests and Ex-Priests, Traders, Doctors; above all, Talkers, or
the Attorney-species. Man-midwives, as Levasseur of the Sarthe,
are not wanting. Nor Artists: gross David, with the swoln cheek,
has long painted, with genius in a state of convulsion; and will
now legislate. The swoln cheek, choking his words in the birth,
totally disqualifies him as orator; but his pencil, his head, his
gross hot heart, with genius in a state of convulsion, will be
there. A man bodily and mentally swoln-cheeked, disproportionate;
flabby-large, instead of great; weak withal as in a state of
convulsion, not strong in a state of composure: so let him play
his part. Nor are naturalised Benefactors of the Species
forgotten: Priestley, elected by the Orne Department, but
declining: Paine the rebellious Needleman, by the Pas de Calais,
who accepts.
Few Nobles come, and yet not none. Paul Francois Barras, 'noble
as the Barrases, old as the rocks of Provence;' he is one. The
reckless, shipwrecked man: flung ashore on the coast of the
Maldives long ago, while sailing and soldiering as Indian
Fighter; flung ashore since then, as hungry Parisian
Pleasure-hunter and Half-pay, on many a Circe Island, with
temporary enchantment, temporary conversion into beasthood and
hoghood;—the remote Var Department has now sent him hither. A man
of heat and haste; defective in utterance; defective indeed in
any thing to utter; yet not without a certain rapidity of glance,
a certain swift transient courage; who, in these times, Fortune
favouring, may go far. He is tall, handsome to the eye, 'only the
complexion a little yellow;' but 'with a robe of purple with a
scarlet cloak and plume of tricolor, on occasions of solemnity,'
the man will look well. (_Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans, para
Barras._) Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, Old-Constituent, is a kind
of noble, and of enormous wealth; he too has come hither:—to have
the Pain of Death abolished? Hapless Ex-Parlementeer! Nay, among
our Sixty Old-Constituents, see Philippe d'Orleans a Prince of
the Blood! Not now d'Orleans: for, Feudalism being swept from the
world, he demands of his worthy friends the Electors of Paris, to
have a new name of their choosing; whereupon Procureur Manuel,
like an antithetic literary man, recommends Equality, Egalite. A
Philippe Egalite therefore will sit; seen of the Earth and
Heaven.
Such a Convention is gathering itself together. Mere angry
poultry in moulting season; whom Brunswick's grenadiers and
cannoneers will give short account of. Would the weather only
mend a little! (_Bertrand-Moleville, Memoires, ii. 225._)
In vain, O Bertrand! The weather will not mend a whit:—nay even
if it did? Dumouriez Polymetis, though Bertrand knows it not,
started from brief slumber at Sedan, on that morning of the 29th
of August; with stealthiness, with promptitude, audacity. Some
three mornings after that, Brunswick, opening wide eyes,
perceives the Passes of the Argonne all seized; blocked with
felled trees, fortified with camps; and that it is a most shifty
swift Dumouriez this, who has outwitted him!
The manoeuvre may cost Brunswick 'a loss of three weeks,' very
fatal in these circumstances. A Mountain-wall of forty miles
lying between him and Paris: which he should have
preoccupied;—which how now to get possession of? Also the rain it
raineth every day; and we are in a hungry Champagne Pouilleuse, a
land flowing only with ditch-water. How to cross this
Mountain-wall of the Argonne; or what in the world to do with
it?—there are marchings and wet splashings by steep paths, with
sackerments and guttural interjections; forcings of Argonne
Passes,—which unhappily will not force. Through the woods,
volleying War reverberates, like huge gong-music, or Moloch's
kettledrum, borne by the echoes; swoln torrents boil angrily
round the foot of rocks, floating pale carcasses of men. In vain!
Islettes Village, with its church-steeple, rises intact in the
Mountain-pass, between the embosoming heights; your forced
marchings and climbings have become forced slidings, and
tumblings back. From the hill-tops thou seest nothing but dumb
crags, and endless wet moaning woods; the Clermont Vache (_huge
Cow that she is_) disclosing herself (_See Helen Maria Williams.
Letters, iii. 79-81._) at intervals; flinging off her
cloud-blanket, and soon taking it on again, drowned in the
pouring Heaven. The Argonne Passes will not force: by must skirt
the Argonne; go round by the end of it.
But fancy whether the Emigrant Seigneurs have not got their
brilliancy dulled a little; whether that 'Foot Regiment in
red-facings with nankeen trousers' could be in field-day order!
In place of gasconading, a sort of desperation, and hydrophobia
from excess of water, is threatening to supervene. Young Prince
de Ligne, son of that brave literary De Ligne the Thundergod of
Dandies, fell backwards; shot dead in Grand-Pre, the Northmost of
the Passes: Brunswick is skirting and rounding, laboriously, by
the extremity of the South. Four days; days of a rain as of
Noah,—without fire, without food! For fire you cut down green
trees, and produce smoke; for food you eat green grapes, and
produce colic, pestilential dysentery, (_Greek_). And the
Peasants assassinate us, they do not join us; shrill women cry
shame on us, threaten to draw their very scissors on us! O ye
hapless dulled-bright Seigneurs, and hydrophobic splashed
Nankeens;—but O, ten times more, ye poor sackerment-ing
ghastly-visaged Hessians and Hulans, fallen on your backs; who
had no call to die there, except compulsion and three-halfpence
a-day! Nor has Mrs. Le Blanc of the Golden Arm a good time of it,
in her bower of dripping rushes. Assassinating Peasants are
hanged; Old-Constituent Honourable members, though of venerable
age, ride in carts with their hands tied; these are the woes of
war.
Thus they; sprawling and wriggling, far and wide, on the slopes
and passes of the Argonne;—a loss to Brunswick of five-and-twenty
disastrous days. There is wriggling and struggling; facing,
backing, and right-about facing; as the positions shift, and the
Argonne gets partly rounded, partly forced:—but still Dumouriez,
force him, round him as you will, sticks like a rooted fixture on
the ground; fixture with many hinges; wheeling now this way, now
that; shewing always new front, in the most unexpected manner:
nowise consenting to take himself away. Recruits stream up on
him: full of heart; yet rather difficult to deal with. Behind
Grand-Pre, for example, Grand-Pre which is on the wrong-side of
the Argonne, for we are now forced and rounded,—the full heart,
in one of those wheelings and shewings of new front, did as it
were overset itself, as full hearts are liable to do; and there
rose a shriek of sauve qui peut, and a death-panic which had nigh
ruined all! So that the General had to come galloping; and, with
thunder-words, with gesture, stroke of drawn sword even, check
and rally, and bring back the sense of shame; (_Dumouriez,
Memoires, iii. 29._)—nay to seize the first shriekers and
ringleaders; 'shave their heads and eyebrows,' and pack them
forth into the world as a sign. Thus too (_for really the rations
are short, and wet camping with hungry stomach brings bad
humour_) there is like to be mutiny. Whereupon again Dumouriez
'arrives at the head of their line, with his staff, and an escort
of a hundred huzzars. He had placed some squadrons behind them,
the artillery in front; he said to them: "As for you, for I will
neither call you citizens, nor soldiers, nor my men (_ni mes
enfans_), you see before you this artillery, behind you this
cavalry. You have dishonoured yourselves by crimes. If you amend,
and grow to behave like this brave Army which you have the honour
of belonging to, you will find in me a good father. But
plunderers and assassins I do not suffer here. At the smallest
mutiny I will have you shivered in pieces (_hacher en pieces_).
Seek out the scoundrels that are among you, and dismiss them
yourselves; I hold you responsible for them."' (_Ibid., Memoires
iii. 55._)
Patience, O Dumouriez! This uncertain heap of shriekers,
mutineers, were they once drilled and inured, will become a
phalanxed mass of Fighters; and wheel and whirl, to order,
swiftly like the wind or the whirlwind: tanned mustachio-figures;
often barefoot, even bare-backed; with sinews of iron; who
require only bread and gunpowder: very Sons of Fire, the
adroitest, hastiest, hottest ever seen perhaps since Attila's
time. They may conquer and overrun amazingly, much as that same
Attila did;—whose Attila's-Camp and Battlefield thou now seest,
on this very ground; (_Helen Maria Williams, iii. 32._) who,
after sweeping bare the world, was, with difficulty, and days of
tough fighting, checked here by Roman Aetius and Fortune; and his
dust-cloud made to vanish in the East again!—
Strangely enough, in this shrieking Confusion of a Soldiery,
which we saw long since fallen all suicidally out of square in
suicidal collision,—at Nanci, or on the streets of Metz, where
brave Bouille stood with drawn sword; and which has collided and
ground itself to pieces worse and worse ever since, down now to
such a state: in this shrieking Confusion, and not elsewhere,
lies the first germ of returning Order for France! Round which,
we say, poor France nearly all ground down suicidally likewise
into rubbish and Chaos, will be glad to rally; to begin growing,
and new-shaping her inorganic dust: very slowly, through
centuries, through Napoleons, Louis Philippes, and other the like
media and phases,—into a new, infinitely preferable France, we
can hope!—
These wheelings and movements in the region of the Argonne, which
are all faithfully described by Dumouriez himself, and more
interesting to us than Hoyle's or Philidor's best Game of Chess,
let us, nevertheless, O Reader, entirely omit;—and hasten to
remark two things: the first a minute private, the second a large
public thing. Our minute private thing is: the presence, in the
Prussian host, in that war-game of the Argonne, of a certain Man,
belonging to the sort called Immortal; who, in days since then,
is becoming visible more and more, in that character, as the
Transitory more and more vanishes; for from of old it was
remarked that when the Gods appear among men, it is seldom in
recognisable shape; thus Admetus' neatherds give Apollo a draught
of their goatskin whey-bottle (_well if they do not give him
strokes with their ox-rungs_), not dreaming that he is the
Sungod! This man's name is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He is
Herzog Weimar's Minister, come with the small contingent of
Weimar; to do insignificant unmilitary duty here; very
irrecognizable to nearly all! He stands at present, with drawn
bridle, on the height near Saint-Menehould, making an experiment
on the 'cannon-fever;' having ridden thither against persuasion,
into the dance and firing of the cannon-balls, with a scientific
desire to understand what that same cannon-fever may be: 'The
sound of them,' says he, 'is curious enough; as if it were
compounded of the humming of tops, the gurgling of water and the
whistle of birds. By degrees you get a very uncommon sensation;
which can only be described by similitude. It seems as if you
were in some place extremely hot, and at the same time were
completely penetrated by the heat of it; so that you feel as if
you and this element you are in were perfectly on a par. The
eyesight loses nothing of its strength or distinctness; and yet
it is as if all things had got a kind of brown-red colour, which
makes the situation and the objects still more impressive on
you.' (_Goethe, Campagne in Frankreich, Werke, xxx. 73._)
This is the cannon-fever, as a World-Poet feels it.—A man
entirely irrecognisable! In whose irrecognisable head, meanwhile,
there verily is the spiritual counterpart (_and call it
complement_) of this same huge Death-Birth of the World; which
now effectuates itself, outwardly in the Argonne, in such
cannon-thunder; inwardly, in the irrecognisable head, quite
otherwise than by thunder! Mark that man, O Reader, as the
memorablest of all the memorable in this Argonne Campaign. What
we say of him is not dream, nor flourish of rhetoric; but
scientific historic fact; as many men, now at this distance, see
or begin to see.
But the large public thing we had to remark is this: That the
Twentieth of September, 1792, was a raw morning covered with
mist; that from three in the morning Sainte-Menehould, and those
Villages and homesteads we know of old were stirred by the rumble
of artillery-wagons, by the clatter of hoofs, and many footed
tramp of men: all manner of military, Patriot and Prussian,
taking up positions, on the Heights of La Lune and other Heights;
shifting and shoving,—seemingly in some dread chess-game; which
may the Heavens turn to good! The Miller of Valmy has fled dusty
under ground; his Mill, were it never so windy, will have rest
to-day. At seven in the morning the mist clears off: see
Kellermann, Dumouriez' second in command, with 'eighteen pieces
of cannon,' and deep-serried ranks, drawn up round that same
silent Windmill, on his knoll of strength; Brunswick, also, with
serried ranks and cannon, glooming over to him from the height of
La Lune; only the little brook and its little dell now parting
them.
So that the much-longed-for has come at last! Instead of hunger
and dysentery, we shall have sharp shot; and then!—Dumouriez,
with force and firm front, looks on from a neighbouring height;
can help only with his wishes, in silence. Lo, the eighteen
pieces do bluster and bark, responsive to the bluster of La Lune;
and thunder-clouds mount into the air; and echoes roar through
all dells, far into the depths of Argonne Wood (_deserted now_);
and limbs and lives of men fly dissipated, this way and that. Can
Brunswick make an impression on them? The dull-bright Seigneurs
stand biting their thumbs: these Sansculottes seem not to fly
like poultry! Towards noontide a cannon-shot blows Kellermann's
horse from under him; there bursts a powder-cart high into the
air, with knell heard over all: some swagging and swaying
observable;—Brunswick will try! "Camarades," cries Kellermann,
"Vive la Patrie! Allons vaincre pour elle, Let us conquer." "Live
the Fatherland!" rings responsive, to the welkin, like
rolling-fire from side to side: our ranks are as firm as rocks;
and Brunswick may recross the dell, ineffectual; regain his old
position on La Lune; not unbattered by the way. And so, for the
length of a September day,—with bluster and bark; with bellow far
echoing! The cannonade lasts till sunset; and no impression made.
Till an hour after sunset, the few remaining Clocks of the
District striking Seven; at this late time of day Brunswick tries
again. With not a whit better fortune! He is met by rock-ranks,
by shouts of Vive la Patrie; and driven back, not unbattered.
Whereupon he ceases; retires 'to the Tavern of La Lune;' and sets
to raising a redoute lest he be attacked!
Verily so: ye dulled-bright Seigneurs, make of it what ye may.
Ah, and France does not rise round us in mass; and the Peasants
do not join us, but assassinate us: neither hanging nor any
persuasion will induce them! They have lost their old
distinguishing love of King, and King's-cloak,—I fear,
altogether; and will even fight to be rid of it: that seems now
their humour. Nor does Austria prosper, nor the siege of
Thionville. The Thionvillers, carrying their insolence to the
epigrammatic pitch, have put a Wooden Horse on their walls, with
a bundle of hay hung from him, and this Inscription: 'When I
finish my hay, you will take Thionville.' (_Hist. Parl. xix.
177._) To such height has the frenzy of mankind risen.
The trenches of Thionville may shut: and what though those of
Lille open? The Earth smiles not on us, nor the Heaven; but weeps
and blears itself, in sour rain, and worse. Our very friends
insult us; we are wounded in the house of our friends: "His
Majesty of Prussia had a greatcoat, when the rain came; and
(_contrary to all known laws_) he put it on, though our two
French Princes, the hope of their country, had none!" To which
indeed, as Goethe admits, what answer could be made? (_Goethe,
xxx. 49._)—Cold and Hunger and Affront, Colic and Dysentery and
Death; and we here, cowering redouted, most unredoubtable, amid
the 'tattered corn-shocks and deformed stubble,' on the splashy
Height of La Lune, round the mean Tavern de La Lune!—
This is the Cannonade of Valmy; wherein the World-Poet
experimented on the cannon-fever; wherein the French Sansculottes
did not fly like poultry. Precious to France! Every soldier did
his duty, and Alsatian Kellermann (_how preferable to old Luckner
the dismissed!_) began to become greater; and Egalite Fils,
Equality Junior, a light gallant Field-Officer, distinguished
himself by intrepidity:—it is the same intrepid individual who
now, as Louis-Philippe, without the Equality, struggles, under
sad circumstances, to be called King of the French for a season.
Chapter 3.1.VIII.
Exeunt.
But this Twentieth of September is otherwise a great day. For,
observe, while Kellermann's horse was flying blown from under him
at the Mill of Valmy, our new National Deputies, that shall be a
NATIONAL CONVENTION, are hovering and gathering about the Hall of
the Hundred Swiss; with intent to constitute themselves!
On the morrow, about noontide, Camus the Archivist is busy
'verifying their powers;' several hundreds of them already here.
Whereupon the Old Legislative comes solemnly over, to merge its
old ashes Phoenix-like in the body of the new;—and so forthwith,
returning all solemnly back to the Salle de Manege, there sits a
National Convention, Seven Hundred and Forty-nine complete, or
complete enough; presided by Petion;—which proceeds directly to
do business. Read that reported afternoon's-debate, O Reader;
there are few debates like it: dull reporting Moniteur itself
becomes more dramatic than a very Shakespeare. For epigrammatic
Manuel rises, speaks strange things; how the President shall have
a guard of honour, and lodge in the Tuileries:—rejected. And
Danton rises and speaks; and Collot d'Herbois rises, and Curate
Gregoire, and lame Couthon of the Mountain rises; and in rapid
Meliboean stanzas, only a few lines each, they propose motions
not a few: That the corner-stone of our new Constitution is
Sovereignty of the People; that our Constitution shall be
accepted by the People or be null; further that the People ought
to be avenged, and have right Judges; that the Imposts must
continue till new order; that Landed and other Property be sacred
forever; finally that 'Royalty from this day is abolished in
France:'—Decreed all, before four o'clock strike, with
acclamation of the world! (_Hist. Parl. xix. 19._) The tree was
all so ripe; only shake it and there fall such yellow cart-loads.
And so over in the Valmy Region, as soon as the news come, what
stir is this, audible, visible from our muddy heights of La Lune?
(_Williams, iii. 71._) Universal shouting of the French on their
opposite hillside; caps raised on bayonets; and a sound as of
Republique; Vive la Republique borne dubious on the winds!—On the
morrow morning, so to speak, Brunswick slings his knapsacks
before day, lights any fires he has; and marches without tap of
drum. Dumouriez finds ghastly symptoms in that camp; 'latrines
full of blood!' (_1st October, 1792; Dumouriez, iii. 73._) The
chivalrous King of Prussia, for he as we saw is here in person,
may long rue the day; may look colder than ever on these
dulled-bright Seigneurs, and French Princes their Country's
hope;—and, on the whole, put on his great-coat without ceremony,
happy that he has one. They retire, all retire with convenient
despatch, through a Champagne trodden into a quagmire, the wild
weather pouring on them; Dumouriez through his Kellermanns and
Dillons pricking them a little in the hinder parts. A little, not
much; now pricking, now negotiating: for Brunswick has his eyes
opened; and the Majesty of Prussia is a repentant Majesty.
Nor has Austria prospered, nor the Wooden Horse of Thionville
bitten his hay; nor Lille City surrendered itself. The Lille
trenches opened, on the 29th of the month; with balls and shells,
and redhot balls; as if not trenches but Vesuvius and the Pit had
opened. It was frightful, say all eye-witnesses; but it is
ineffectual. The Lillers have risen to such temper; especially
after these news from Argonne and the East. Not a
Sans-indispensables in Lille that would surrender for a King's
ransom. Redhot balls rain, day and night; 'six-thousand,' or so,
and bombs 'filled internally with oil of turpentine which
splashes up in flame;'—mainly on the dwellings of the
Sansculottes and Poor; the streets of the Rich being spared. But
the Sansculottes get water-pails; form quenching-regulations,
"The ball is in Peter's house!" "The ball is in John's!" They
divide their lodging and substance with each other; shout Vive la
Republique; and faint not in heart. A ball thunders through the
main chamber of the Hotel-de-Ville, while the Commune is there
assembled: "We are in permanence," says one, coldly, proceeding
with his business; and the ball remains permanent too, sticking
in the wall, probably to this day. (_Bombardement de Lille in
Hist. Parl. xx. 63-71._)
The Austrian Archduchess (_Queen's Sister_) will herself see red
artillery fired; in their over-haste to satisfy an Archduchess
'two mortars explode and kill thirty persons.' It is in vain;
Lille, often burning, is always quenched again; Lille will not
yield. The very boys deftly wrench the matches out of fallen
bombs: 'a man clutches a rolling ball with his hat, which takes
fire; when cool, they crown it with a bonnet rouge.' Memorable
also be that nimble Barber, who when the bomb burst beside him,
snatched up a shred of it, introduced soap and lather into it,
crying, "Voila mon plat a barbe, My new shaving-dish!" and shaved
'fourteen people' on the spot. Bravo, thou nimble Shaver; worthy
to shave old spectral Redcloak, and find treasures!—On the eighth
day of this desperate siege, the sixth day of October, Austria
finding it fruitless, draws off, with no pleasurable
consciousness; rapidly, Dumouriez tending thitherward; and Lille
too, black with ashes and smoulder, but jubilant skyhigh, flings
its gates open. The Plat a barbe became fashionable; 'no Patriot
of an elegant turn,' says Mercier several years afterwards, 'but
shaves himself out of the splinter of a Lille bomb.'
Quid multa, Why many words? The Invaders are in flight;
Brunswick's Host, the third part of it gone to death, staggers
disastrous along the deep highways of Champagne; spreading out
also into 'the fields, of a tough spongy red-coloured clay;—like
Pharaoh through a Red Sea of mud,' says Goethe; 'for he also lay
broken chariots, and riders and foot seemed sinking around.'
(_Campagne in Frankreich, p. 103._) On the eleventh morning of
October, the World-Poet, struggling Northwards out of Verdun,
which he had entered Southwards, some five weeks ago, in quite
other order, discerned the following Phenomenon and formed part
of it:
'Towards three in the morning, without having had any sleep, we
were about mounting our carriage, drawn up at the door; when an
insuperable obstacle disclosed itself: for there rolled on
already, between the pavement-stones which were crushed up into a
ridge on each side, an uninterrupted column of sick-wagons
through the Town, and all was trodden as into a morass. While we
stood waiting what could be made of it, our Landlord the Knight
of Saint-Louis pressed past us, without salutation.' He had been
a Calonne's Notable in 1787, an Emigrant since; had returned to
his home, jubilant, with the Prussians; but must now forth again
into the wide world, 'followed by a servant carrying a little
bundle on his stick.
'The activity of our alert Lisieux shone eminent; and, on this
occasion too, brought us on: for he struck into a small gap of
the wagon-row; and held the advancing team back till we, with our
six and our four horses, got intercalated; after which, in my
light little coachlet, I could breathe freer. We were now under
way; at a funeral pace, but still under way. The day broke; we
found ourselves at the outlet of the Town, in a tumult and
turmoil without measure. All sorts of vehicles, few horsemen,
innumerable foot-people, were crossing each other on the great
esplanade before the Gate. We turned to the right, with our
Column, towards Estain, on a limited highway, with ditches at
each side. Self-preservation, in so monstrous a press, knew now
no pity, no respect of aught. Not far before us there fell down a
horse of an ammunition-wagon: they cut the traces, and let it
lie. And now as the three others could not bring their load
along, they cut them also loose, tumbled the heavy-packed vehicle
into the ditch; and, with the smallest retardation, we had to
drive on, right over the horse, which was just about to rise; and
I saw too clearly how its legs, under the wheels, went crashing
and quivering.
'Horse and foot endeavoured to escape from the narrow laborious
highway into the meadows: but these too were rained to ruin;
overflowed by full ditches, the connexion of the footpaths every
where interrupted. Four gentlemanlike, handsome, well-dressed
French soldiers waded for a time beside our carriage; wonderfully
clean and neat: and had such art of picking their steps, that
their foot-gear testified no higher than the ancle to the muddy
pilgrimage these good people found themselves engaged in.
'That under such circumstances one saw, in ditches, in meadows,
in fields and crofts, dead horses enough, was natural to the
case: by and by, however, you found them also flayed, the fleshy
parts even cut away; sad token of the universal distress.
'Thus we fared on; every moment in danger, at the smallest
stoppage on our own part, of being ourselves tumbled overboard;
under which circumstances, truly, the careful dexterity of our
Lisieux could not be sufficiently praised. The same talent shewed
itself at Estain; where we arrived towards noon; and descried,
over the beautiful well-built little Town, through streets and on
squares, around and beside us, one sense-confusing tumult: the
mass rolled this way and that; and, all struggling forward, each
hindered the other. Unexpectedly our carriage drew up before a
stately house in the market-place; master and mistress of the
mansion saluted us in reverent distance.' Dexterous Lisieux,
though we knew it not, had said we were the King of Prussia's
Brother!
'But now, from the ground-floor windows, looking over the whole
market-place, we had the endless tumult lying, as it were,
palpable. All sorts of walkers, soldiers in uniform, marauders,
stout but sorrowing citizens and peasants, women and children,
crushed and jostled each other, amid vehicles of all forms:
ammunition-wagons, baggage-wagons; carriages, single, double, and
multiplex; such hundredfold miscellany of teams, requisitioned or
lawfully owned, making way, hitting together, hindering each
other, rolled here to right and to left. Horned-cattle too were
struggling on; probably herds that had been put in requisition.
Riders you saw few; but the elegant carriages of the Emigrants,
many-coloured, lackered, gilt and silvered, evidently by the best
builders, caught your eye. (_See Hermann and Dorothea (_also by
Goethe_), Buch Kalliope._)
'The crisis of the strait however arose further on a little;
where the crowded market-place had to introduce itself into a
street,—straight indeed and good, but proportionably far too
narrow. I have, in my life, seen nothing like it: the aspect of
it might perhaps be compared to that of a swoln river which has
been raging over meadows and fields, and is now again obliged to
press itself through a narrow bridge, and flow on in its bounded
channel. Down the long street, all visible from our windows,
there swelled continually the strangest tide: a high
double-seated travelling-coach towered visible over the flood of
things. We thought of the fair Frenchwomen we had seen in the
morning. It was not they, however, it was Count Haugwitz; him you
could look at, with a kind of sardonic malice, rocking onwards,
step by step, there.' (_Campagne in Frankreich, Goethe's Werke
(_Stuttgart, 1829_), xxx. 133-137._)
In such untriumphant Procession has the Brunswick Manifesto
issued! Nay in worse, 'in Negotiation with these miscreants,'—the
first news of which produced such a revulsion in the Emigrant
nature, as put our scientific World-Poet 'in fear for the wits of
several.' There is no help: they must fare on, these poor
Emigrants, angry with all persons and things, and making all
persons angry, in the hapless course they struck into. Landlord
and landlady testify to you, at tables-d'hote, how insupportable
these Frenchmen are: how, in spite of such humiliation, of
poverty and probable beggary, there is ever the same struggle for
precedence, the same forwardness, and want of discretion. High in
honour, at the head of the table, you with your own eyes observe
not a Seigneur but the automaton of a Seigneur, fallen into
dotage; still worshipped, reverently waited on, and fed. In
miscellaneous seats, is a miscellany of soldiers, commissaries,
adventurers; consuming silently their barbarian victuals. 'On all
brows is to be read a hard destiny; all are silent, for each has
his own sufferings to bear, and looks forth into misery without
bounds.' One hasty wanderer, coming in, and eating without
ungraciousness what is set before him, the landlord lets off
almost scot-free. "He is," whispered the landlord to me, "the
first of these cursed people I have seen condescend to taste our
German black bread." (_Ibid. 152._) (_Ibid. 210-12._)
And Dumouriez is in Paris; lauded and feasted; paraded in
glittering saloons, floods of beautifullest blond-dresses and
broadcloth-coats flowing past him, endless, in admiring joy. One
night, nevertheless, in the splendour of one such scene, he sees
himself suddenly apostrophised by a squalid unjoyful Figure, who
has come in uninvited, nay despite of all lackeys; an unjoyful
Figure! The Figure is come "in express mission from the
Jacobins," to inquire sharply, better then than later, touching
certain things: "Shaven eyebrows of Volunteer Patriots, for
instance?" Also "your threats of shivering in pieces?" Also, "why
you have not chased Brunswick hotly enough?" Thus, with sharp
croak, inquires the Figure.—"Ah, c'est vous qu'on appelle Marat,
You are he they call Marat!" answers the General, and turns
coldly on his heel. (_Dumouriez, iii. 115.—Marat's account, In
the Debats des Jacobins and Journal de la Republique (_Hist.
Parl. xix. 317-21_), agrees to the turning on the heel, but
strives to interpret it differently._)—"Marat!" The blonde-gowns
quiver like aspens; the dress-coats gather round; Actor Talma
(_for it is his house_), and almost the very chandelier-lights,
are blue: till this obscene Spectrum, or visual Appearance,
vanish back into native Night.
General Dumouriez, in few brief days, is gone again, towards the
Netherlands; will attack the Netherlands, winter though it be.
And General Montesquiou, on the South-East, has driven in the
Sardinian Majesty; nay, almost without a shot fired, has taken
Savoy from him, which longs to become a piece of the Republic.
And General Custine, on the North-East, has dashed forth on
Spires and its Arsenal; and then on Electoral Mentz, not
uninvited, wherein are German Democrats and no shadow of an
Elector now:—so that in the last days of October, Frau Forster, a
daughter of Heyne's, somewhat democratic, walking out of the Gate
of Mentz with her Husband, finds French Soldiers playing at bowls
with cannon-balls there. Forster trips cheerfully over one iron
bomb, with "Live the Republic!" A black-bearded National Guard
answers: "Elle vivra bien sans vous, It will probably live
independently of you!" (_Johann Georg Forster's Briefwechsel
(_Leipzig, 1829_), i. 88._)
BOOK 3.II.
REGICIDE
Chapter 3.2.I.
The Deliberative.
France therefore has done two things very completely: she has
hurled back her Cimmerian Invaders far over the marches; and
likewise she has shattered her own internal Social Constitution,
even to the minutest fibre of it, into wreck and dissolution.
Utterly it is all altered: from King down to Parish Constable,
all Authorities, Magistrates, Judges, persons that bore rule,
have had, on the sudden, to alter themselves, so far as needful;
or else, on the sudden, and not without violence, to be altered:
a Patriot 'Executive Council of Ministers,' with a Patriot Danton
in it, and then a whole Nation and National Convention, have
taken care of that. Not a Parish Constable, in the furthest
hamlet, who has said De Par le Roi, and shewn loyalty, but must
retire, making way for a new improved Parish Constable who can
say De par la Republique.
It is a change such as History must beg her readers to imagine,
undescribed. An instantaneous change of the whole body-politic,
the soul-politic being all changed; such a change as few bodies,
politic or other, can experience in this world. Say perhaps, such
as poor Nymph Semele's body did experience, when she would needs,
with woman's humour, see her Olympian Jove as very Jove;—and so
stood, poor Nymph, this moment Semele, next moment not Semele,
but Flame and a Statue of red-hot Ashes! France has looked upon
Democracy; seen it face to face.—The Cimmerian Invaders will
rally, in humbler temper, with better or worse luck: the wreck
and dissolution must reshape itself into a social Arrangement as
it can and may. But as for this National Convention, which is to
settle every thing, if it do, as Deputy Paine and France
generally expects, get all finished 'in a few months,' we shall
call it a most deft Convention.
In truth, it is very singular to see how this mercurial French
People plunges suddenly from Vive le Roi to Vive la Republique;
and goes simmering and dancing; shaking off daily (_so to
speak_), and trampling into the dust, its old social garnitures,
ways of thinking, rules of existing; and cheerfully dances
towards the Ruleless, Unknown, with such hope in its heart, and
nothing but Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood in its mouth. Is it
two centuries, or is it only two years, since all France roared
simultaneously to the welkin, bursting forth into sound and smoke
at its Feast of Pikes, "Live the Restorer of French Liberty?"
Three short years ago there was still Versailles and an
Oeil-de-Boeuf: now there is that watched Circuit of the Temple,
girt with dragon-eyed Municipals, where, as in its final limbo,
Royalty lies extinct. In the year 1789, Constituent Deputy
Barrere 'wept,' in his Break-of-Day Newspaper, at sight of a
reconciled King Louis; and now in 1792, Convention Deputy
Barrere, perfectly tearless, may be considering, whether the
reconciled King Louis shall be guillotined or not.
Old garnitures and social vestures drop off (_we say_) so fast,
being indeed quite decayed, and are trodden under the National
dance. And the new vestures, where are they; the new modes and
rules? Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: not vestures but the wish
for vestures! The Nation is for the present, figuratively
speaking, naked! It has no rule or vesture; but is naked,—a
Sansculottic Nation.
So far, therefore, in such manner have our Patriot Brissots,
Guadets triumphed. Vergniaud's Ezekiel-visions of the fall of
thrones and crowns, which he spake hypothetically and
prophetically in the Spring of the year, have suddenly come to
fulfilment in the Autumn. Our eloquent Patriots of the
Legislative, like strong Conjurors, by the word of their mouth,
have swept Royalism with its old modes and formulas to the winds;
and shall now govern a France free of formulas. Free of formulas!
And yet man lives not except with formulas; with customs, ways of
doing and living: no text truer than this; which will hold true
from the Tea-table and Tailor's shopboard up to the High
Senate-houses, Solemn Temples; nay through all provinces of Mind
and Imagination, onwards to the outmost confines of articulate
Being,—Ubi homines sunt modi sunt! There are modes wherever there
are men. It is the deepest law of man's nature; whereby man is a
craftsman and 'tool-using animal;' not the slave of Impulse,
Chance, and Brute Nature, but in some measure their lord.
Twenty-five millions of men, suddenly stript bare of their modi,
and dancing them down in that manner, are a terrible thing to
govern!
Eloquent Patriots of the Legislative, meanwhile, have precisely
this problem to solve. Under the name and nickname of 'statesmen,
hommes d'etat,' of 'moderate-men, moderantins,' of Brissotins,
Rolandins, finally of Girondins, they shall become world-famous
in solving it. For the Twenty-five millions are Gallic
effervescent too;—filled both with hope of the unutterable, of
universal Fraternity and Golden Age; and with terror of the
unutterable, Cimmerian Europe all rallying on us. It is a problem
like few. Truly, if man, as the Philosophers brag, did to any
extent look before and after, what, one may ask, in many cases
would become of him? What, in this case, would become of these
Seven Hundred and Forty-nine men? The Convention, seeing clearly
before and after, were a paralysed Convention. Seeing clearly to
the length of its own nose, it is not paralysed.
To the Convention itself neither the work nor the method of doing
it is doubtful: To make the Constitution; to defend the Republic
till that be made. Speedily enough, accordingly, there has been a
'Committee of the Constitution' got together. Sieyes,
Old-Constituent, Constitution-builder by trade; Condorcet, fit
for better things; Deputy Paine, foreign Benefactor of the
Species, with that 'red carbuncled face, and the black beaming
eyes;' Herault de Sechelles, Ex-Parlementeer, one of the
handsomest men in France: these, with inferior guild-brethren,
are girt cheerfully to the work; will once more 'make the
Constitution;' let us hope, more effectually than last time. For
that the Constitution can be made, who doubts,—unless the Gospel
of Jean Jacques came into the world in vain? True, our last
Constitution did tumble within the year, so lamentably. But what
then, except sort the rubbish and boulders, and build them up
again better? 'Widen your basis,' for one thing,—to Universal
Suffrage, if need be; exclude rotten materials, Royalism and such
like, for another thing. And in brief, build, O unspeakable
Sieyes and Company, unwearied! Frequent perilous downrushing of
scaffolding and rubble-work, be that an irritation, no
discouragement. Start ye always again, clearing aside the wreck;
if with broken limbs, yet with whole hearts; and build, we say,
in the name of Heaven,—till either the work do stand; or else
mankind abandon it, and the Constitution-builders be paid off,
with laughter and tears! One good time, in the course of
Eternity, it was appointed that this of Social Contract too
should try itself out. And so the Committee of Constitution shall
toil: with hope and faith;—with no disturbance from any reader of
these pages.
To make the Constitution, then, and return home joyfully in a few
months: this is the prophecy our National Convention gives of
itself; by this scientific program shall its operations and
events go on. But from the best scientific program, in such a
case, to the actual fulfilment, what a difference! Every reunion
of men, is it not, as we often say, a reunion of incalculable
Influences; every unit of it a microcosm of Influences;—of which
how shall Science calculate or prophesy! Science, which cannot,
with all its calculuses, differential, integral, and of
variations, calculate the Problem of Three gravitating Bodies,
ought to hold her peace here, and say only: In this National
Convention there are Seven Hundred and Forty-nine very singular
Bodies, that gravitate and do much else;—who, probably in an
amazing manner, will work the appointment of Heaven.
Of National Assemblages, Parliaments, Congresses, which have long
sat; which are of saturnine temperament; above all, which are not
'dreadfully in earnest,' something may be computed or
conjectured: yet even these are a kind of Mystery in
progress,—whereby we see the Journalist Reporter find livelihood:
even these jolt madly out of the ruts, from time to time. How
much more a poor National Convention, of French vehemence; urged
on at such velocity; without routine, without rut, track or
landmark; and dreadfully in earnest every man of them! It is a
Parliament literally such as there was never elsewhere in the
world. Themselves are new, unarranged; they are the Heart and
presiding centre of a France fallen wholly into maddest
disarrangement. From all cities, hamlets, from the utmost ends of
this France with its Twenty-five million vehement souls,
thick-streaming influences storm in on that same Heart, in the
Salle de Manege, and storm out again: such fiery venous-arterial
circulation is the function of that Heart. Seven Hundred and
Forty-nine human individuals, we say, never sat together on
Earth, under more original circumstances. Common individuals most
of them, or not far from common; yet in virtue of the position
they occupied, so notable. How, in this wild piping of the
whirlwind of human passions, with death, victory, terror, valour,
and all height and all depth pealing and piping, these men, left
to their own guidance, will speak and act?
Readers know well that this French National Convention (_quite
contrary to its own Program_) became the astonishment and horror
of mankind; a kind of Apocalyptic Convention, or black Dream
become real; concerning which History seldom speaks except in the
way of interjection: how it covered France with woe, delusion,
and delirium; and from its bosom there went forth Death on the
pale Horse. To hate this poor National Convention is easy; to
praise and love it has not been found impossible. It is, as we
say, a Parliament in the most original circumstances. To us, in
these pages, be it as a fuliginous fiery mystery, where Upper has
met Nether, and in such alternate glare and blackness of darkness
poor bedazzled mortals know not which is Upper, which is Nether;
but rage and plunge distractedly, as mortals, in that case, will
do. A Convention which has to consume itself, suicidally; and
become dead ashes—with its World! Behoves us, not to enter
exploratively its dim embroiled deeps; yet to stand with
unwavering eyes, looking how it welters; what notable phases and
occurrences it will successively throw up.
One general superficial circumstance we remark with praise: the
force of Politeness. To such depth has the sense of civilisation
penetrated man's life; no Drouet, no Legendre, in the maddest tug
of war, can altogether shake it off. Debates of Senates
dreadfully in earnest are seldom given frankly to the world; else
perhaps they would surprise it. Did not the Grand Monarque
himself once chase his Louvois with a pair of brandished tongs?
But reading long volumes of these Convention Debates, all in a
foam with furious earnestness, earnest many times to the extent
of life and death, one is struck rather with the degree of
continence they manifest in speech; and how in such wild
ebullition, there is still a kind of polite rule struggling for
mastery, and the forms of social life never altogether disappear.
These men, though they menace with clenched right-hands, do not
clench one another by the collar; they draw no daggers, except
for oratorical purposes, and this not often: profane swearing is
almost unknown, though the Reports are frank enough; we find only
one or two oaths, oaths by Marat, reported in all.
For the rest, that there is 'effervescence' who doubts?
Effervescence enough; Decrees passed by acclamation to-day,
repealed by vociferation to-morrow; temper fitful, most rotatory
changeful, always headlong! The 'voice of the orator is covered
with rumours;' a hundred 'honourable Members rush with menaces
towards the Left side of the Hall;' President has 'broken three
bells in succession,'—claps on his hat, as signal that the
country is near ruined. A fiercely effervescent Old-Gallic
Assemblage!—Ah, how the loud sick sounds of Debate, and of Life,
which is a debate, sink silent one after another: so loud now,
and in a little while so low! Brennus, and those antique Gael
Captains, in their way to Rome, to Galatia, and such places,
whither they were in the habit of marching in the most fiery
manner, had Debates as effervescent, doubt it not; though no
Moniteur has reported them. They scolded in Celtic Welsh, those
Brennuses; neither were they Sansculotte; nay rather breeches
(_braccae, say of felt or rough-leather_) were the only thing
they had; being, as Livy testifies, naked down to the
haunches:—and, see, it is the same sort of work and of men still,
now when they have got coats, and speak nasally a kind of broken
Latin! But on the whole does not TIME envelop this present
National Convention; as it did those Brennuses, and ancient
August Senates in felt breeches? Time surely; and also Eternity.
Dim dusk of Time,—or noon which will be dusk; and then there is
night, and silence; and Time with all its sick noises is
swallowed in the still sea. Pity thy brother, O Son of Adam! The
angriest frothy jargon that he utters, is it not properly the
whimpering of an infant which cannot speak what ails it, but is
in distress clearly, in the inwards of it; and so must squall and
whimper continually, till its Mother take it, and it get—to
sleep!
This Convention is not four days old, and the melodious Meliboean
stanzas that shook down Royalty are still fresh in our ear, when
there bursts out a new diapason,—unhappily, of Discord, this
time. For speech has been made of a thing difficult to speak of
well: the September Massacres. How deal with these September
Massacres; with the Paris Commune that presided over them? A
Paris Commune hateful-terrible; before which the poor effete
Legislative had to quail, and sit quiet. And now if a young
omnipotent Convention will not so quail and sit, what steps shall
it take? Have a Departmental Guard in its pay, answer the
Girondins, and Friends of Order! A Guard of National Volunteers,
missioned from all the Eighty-three or Eighty-five Departments,
for that express end; these will keep Septemberers, tumultuous
Communes in a due state of submissiveness, the Convention in a
due state of sovereignty. So have the Friends of Order answered,
sitting in Committee, and reporting; and even a Decree has been
passed of the required tenour. Nay certain Departments, as the
Var or Marseilles, in mere expectation and assurance of a Decree,
have their contingent of Volunteers already on march: brave
Marseillese, foremost on the Tenth of August, will not be
hindmost here; 'fathers gave their sons a musket and twenty-five
louis,' says Barbaroux, 'and bade them march.'
Can any thing be properer? A Republic that will found itself on
justice must needs investigate September Massacres; a Convention
calling itself National, ought it not to be guarded by a National
force?—Alas, Reader, it seems so to the eye: and yet there is
much to be said and argued. Thou beholdest here the small
beginning of a Controversy, which mere logic will not settle. Two
small well-springs, September, Departmental Guard, or rather at
bottom they are but one and the same small well-spring; which
will swell and widen into waters of bitterness; all manner of
subsidiary streams and brooks of bitterness flowing in, from this
side and that; till it become a wide river of bitterness, of rage
and separation,—which can subside only into the Catacombs. This
Departmental Guard, decreed by overwhelming majorities, and then
repealed for peace's sake, and not to insult Paris, is again
decreed more than once; nay it is partially executed, and the
very men that are to be of it are seen visibly parading the Paris
streets,—shouting once, being overtaken with liquor: "A bas
Marat, Down with Marat!" (_Hist. Parl. xx. 184._) Nevertheless,
decreed never so often, it is repealed just as often; and
continues, for some seven months, an angry noisy Hypothesis only:
a fair Possibility struggling to become a Reality, but which
shall never be one; which, after endless struggling, shall, in
February next, sink into sad rest,—dragging much along with it.
So singular are the ways of men and honourable Members.
But on this fourth day of the Convention's existence, as we said,
which is the 25th of September 1792, there comes Committee Report
on that Decree of the Departmental Guard, and speech of repealing
it; there come denunciations of anarchy, of a Dictatorship,—which
let the incorruptible Robespierre consider: there come
denunciations of a certain Journal de la Republique, once called
Ami du Peuple; and so thereupon there comes, visibly stepping up,
visibly standing aloft on the Tribune, ready to speak, the Bodily
Spectrum of People's-Friend Marat! Shriek, ye Seven Hundred and
Forty-nine; it is verily Marat, he and not another. Marat is no
phantasm of the brain, or mere lying impress of Printer's Types;
but a thing material, of joint and sinew, and a certain small
stature: ye behold him there, in his blackness in his dingy
squalor, a living fraction of Chaos and Old Night; visibly
incarnate, desirous to speak. "It appears," says Marat to the
shrieking Assembly, "that a great many persons here are enemies
of mine." "All! All!" shriek hundreds of voices: enough to drown
any People's-Friend. But Marat will not drown: he speaks and
croaks explanation; croaks with such reasonableness, air of
sincerity, that repentant pity smothers anger, and the shrieks
subside or even become applauses. For this Convention is
unfortunately the crankest of machines: it shall be pointing
eastward, with stiff violence, this moment; and then do but touch
some spring dexterously, the whole machine, clattering and
jerking seven-hundred-fold, will whirl with huge crash, and, next
moment, is pointing westward! Thus Marat, absolved and applauded,
victorious in this turn of fence, is, as the Debate goes on,
prickt at again by some dexterous Girondin; and then the shrieks
rise anew, and Decree of Accusation is on the point of passing;
till the dingy People's-Friend bobs aloft once more; croaks once
more persuasive stillness, and the Decree of Accusation sinks,
Whereupon he draws forth—a Pistol; and setting it to his Head,
the seat of such thought and prophecy, says: "If they had passed
their Accusation Decree, he, the People's-Friend, would have
blown his brains out." A People's Friend has that faculty in him.
For the rest, as to this of the two hundred and sixty thousand
Aristocrat Heads, Marat candidly says, "C'est la mon avis, such
is my opinion." Also it is not indisputable: "No power on Earth
can prevent me from seeing into traitors, and unmasking them,"—by
my superior originality of mind? (_Moniteur Newspaper, Nos. 271,
280, 294, Annee premiere; Moore's Journal, ii. 21, 157, &c.
which, however, may perhaps, as in similar cases, be only a copy
of the Newspaper._) An honourable member like this Friend of the
People few terrestrial Parliaments have had.
We observe, however, that this first onslaught by the Friends of
Order, as sharp and prompt as it was, has failed. For neither can
Robespierre, summoned out by talk of Dictatorship, and greeted
with the like rumour on shewing himself, be thrown into Prison,
into Accusation;—not though Barbaroux openly bear testimony
against him, and sign it on paper. With such sanctified meekness
does the Incorruptible lift his seagreen cheek to the smiter;
lift his thin voice, and with jesuitic dexterity plead, and
prosper: asking at last, in a prosperous manner: "But what
witnesses has the Citoyen Barbaroux to support his testimony?"
"Moi!" cries hot Rebecqui, standing up, striking his breast with
both hands, and answering, "Me!" (_Moniteur, ut supra; Seance du
25 Septembre._) Nevertheless the Seagreen pleads again, and makes
it good: the long hurlyburly, 'personal merely,' while so much
public matter lies fallow, has ended in the order of the day. O
Friends of the Gironde, why will you occupy our august sessions
with mere paltry Personalities, while the grand Nationality lies
in such a state?—The Gironde has touched, this day, on the foul
black-spot of its fair Convention Domain; has trodden on it, and
yet not trodden it down. Alas, it is a well-spring, as we said,
this black-spot; and will not tread down!
Chapter 3.2.II.
The Executive.
May we not conjecture therefore that round this grand enterprise
of Making the Constitution there will, as heretofore, very
strange embroilments gather, and questions and interests
complicate themselves; so that after a few or even several
months, the Convention will not have settled every thing? Alas, a
whole tide of questions comes rolling, boiling; growing ever
wider, without end! Among which, apart from this question of
September and Anarchy, let us notice those, which emerge oftener
than the others, and promise to become Leading Questions: of the
Armies; of the Subsistences; thirdly, of the Dethroned King.
As to the Armies, Public Defence must evidently be put on a
proper footing; for Europe seems coalising itself again; one is
apprehensive even England will join it. Happily Dumouriez
prospers in the North;—nay what if he should prove too
prosperous, and become Liberticide, Murderer of
Freedom!—Dumouriez prospers, through this winter season; yet not
without lamentable complaints. Sleek Pache, the Swiss
Schoolmaster, he that sat frugal in his Alley, the wonder of
neighbours, has got lately—whither thinks the Reader? To be
Minister of war! Madame Roland, struck with his sleek ways,
recommended him to her Husband as Clerk: the sleek Clerk had no
need of salary, being of true Patriotic temper; he would come
with a bit of bread in his pocket, to save dinner and time; and,
munching incidentally, do three men's work in a day, punctual,
silent, frugal,—the sleek Tartuffe that he was. Wherefore Roland,
in the late Overturn, recommended him to be War-Minister. And
now, it would seem, he is secretly undermining Roland; playing
into the hands of your hotter Jacobins and September Commune; and
cannot, like strict Roland, be the Veto des Coquins! (_Madame
Roland, Memoires, ii. 237, &c._)
How the sleek Pache might mine and undermine, one knows not well;
this however one does know: that his War-Office has become a den
of thieves and confusion, such as all men shudder to behold. That
the Citizen Hassenfratz, as Head-Clerk, sits there in bonnet
rouge, in rapine, in violence, and some Mathematical calculation;
a most insolent, red-nightcapped man. That Pache munches his
pocket-loaf, amid head-clerks and sub-clerks, and has spent all
the War-Estimates: that Furnishers scour in gigs, over all
districts of France, and drive bargains;—and lastly that the Army
gets next to no furniture. No shoes, though it is winter; no
clothes; some have not even arms: 'In the Army of the South,'
complains an honourable Member, 'there are thirty thousand pairs
of breeches wanting,'—a most scandalous want.
Roland's strict soul is sick to see the course things take: but
what can he do? Keep his own Department strict; rebuke, and
repress wheresoever possible; at lowest, complain. He can
complain in Letter after Letter, to a National Convention, to
France, to Posterity, the Universe; grow ever more querulous
indignant;—till at last may he not grow wearisome? For is not
this continual text of his, at bottom a rather barren one: How
astonishing that in a time of Revolt and abrogation of all Law
but Cannon Law, there should be such Unlawfulness? Intrepid
Veto-of-Scoundrels, narrow-faithful, respectable, methodic man,
work thou in that manner, since happily it is thy manner, and
wear thyself away; though ineffectual, not profitless in it—then
nor now!—The brave Dame Roland, bravest of all French women,
begins to have misgivings: the figure of Danton has too much of
the 'Sardanapalus character,' at a Republican Rolandin
Dinner-table: Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, proses sad stuff about
a Universal Republic, or union of all Peoples and Kindreds in one
and the same Fraternal Bond; of which Bond, how it is to be tied,
one unhappily sees not.
It is also an indisputable, unaccountable or accountable fact
that Grains are becoming scarcer and scarcer. Riots for grain,
tumultuous Assemblages demanding to have the price of grain fixed
abound far and near. The Mayor of Paris and other poor Mayors are
like to have their difficulties. Petion was re-elected Mayor of
Paris; but has declined; being now a Convention Legislator. Wise
surely to decline: for, besides this of Grains and all the rest,
there is in these times an Improvised insurrectionary Commune
passing into an Elected legal one; getting their accounts
settled,—not without irritancy! Petion has declined: nevertheless
many do covet and canvass. After months of scrutinising,
balloting, arguing and jargoning, one Doctor Chambon gets the
post of honour: who will not long keep it; but be, as we shall
see, literally crushed out of it. (_Dictionnaire des Hommes
Marquans, para Chambon._)
Think also if the private Sansculotte has not his difficulties,
in a time of dearth! Bread, according to the People's-Friend, may
be some 'six sous per pound, a day's wages some fifteen;' and
grim winter here. How the Poor Man continues living, and so
seldom starves, by miracle! Happily, in these days, he can
enlist, and have himself shot by the Austrians, in an unusually
satisfactory manner: for the Rights of Man.—But Commandant
Santerre, in this so straitened condition of the flour-market,
and state of Equality and Liberty, proposes, through the
Newspapers, two remedies, or at least palliatives: First, that
all classes of men should live, two days of the week, on
potatoes; then second, that every man should hang his dog.
Hereby, as the Commandant thinks, the saving, which indeed he
computes to so many sacks, would be very considerable. A
cheerfuller form of inventive-stupidity than Commandant
Santerre's dwells in no human soul. Inventive-stupidity, imbedded
in health, courage and good-nature: much to be commended. "My
whole strength," he tells the Convention once, "is, day and
night, at the service of my fellow-Citizens: if they find me
worthless, they will dismiss me; I will return and brew beer."
(_Moniteur in Hist. Parl. xx. 412._)
Or figure what correspondences a poor Roland, Minister of the
Interior, must have, on this of Grains alone! Free-trade in
Grain, impossibility to fix the Prices of Grain; on the other
hand, clamour and necessity to fix them: Political Economy
lecturing from the Home Office, with demonstration clear as
Scripture;—ineffectual for the empty National Stomach. The Mayor
of Chartres, like to be eaten himself, cries to the Convention:
the Convention sends honourable Members in Deputation; who
endeavour to feed the multitude by miraculous spiritual methods;
but cannot. The multitude, in spite of all Eloquence, come
bellowing round; will have the Grain-Prices fixed, and at a
moderate elevation; or else—the honourable Deputies hanged on the
spot! The honourable Deputies, reporting this business, admit
that, on the edge of horrid death, they did fix, or affect to fix
the Price of Grain: for which, be it also noted, the Convention,
a Convention that will not be trifled with, sees good to
reprimand them. (_Hist. Parl. xx. 431-440._)
But as to the origin of these Grain Riots, is it not most
probably your secret Royalists again? Glimpses of Priests were
discernible in this of Chartres,—to the eye of Patriotism. Or
indeed may not 'the root of it all lie in the Temple Prison, in
the heart of a perjured King,' well as we guard him? (_Ibid.
409._) Unhappy perjured King!—And so there shall be Baker's
Queues, by and by, more sharp-tempered than ever: on every
Baker's door-rabbet an iron ring, and coil of rope; whereon, with
firm grip, on this side and that, we form our Queue: but
mischievous deceitful persons cut the rope, and our Queue becomes
a ravelment; wherefore the coil must be made of iron chain.
(_Mercier, Nouveau Paris._) Also there shall be Prices of Grain
well fixed; but then no grain purchasable by them: bread not to
be had except by Ticket from the Mayor, few ounces per mouth
daily; after long swaying, with firm grip, on the chain of the
Queue. And Hunger shall stalk direful; and Wrath and Suspicion,
whetted to the Preternatural pitch, shall stalk;—as those other
preternatural 'shapes of Gods in their wrathfulness' were
discerned stalking, 'in glare and gloom of that fire-ocean,' when
Troy Town fell!—
Chapter 3.2.III.
Discrowned.
But the question more pressing than all on the Legislator, as
yet, is this third: What shall be done with King Louis?
King Louis, now King and Majesty to his own family alone, in
their own Prison Apartment alone, has been Louis Capet and the
Traitor Veto with the rest of France. Shut in his Circuit of the
Temple, he has heard and seen the loud whirl of things; yells of
September Massacres, Brunswick war-thunders dying off in disaster
and discomfiture; he passive, a spectator merely;—waiting whither
it would please to whirl with him. From the neighbouring windows,
the curious, not without pity, might see him walk daily, at a
certain hour, in the Temple Garden, with his Queen, Sister and
two Children, all that now belongs to him in this Earth. (_Moore,
i. 123; ii. 224, &c._) Quietly he walks and waits; for he is not
of lively feelings, and is of a devout heart. The wearied
Irresolute has, at least, no need of resolving now. His daily
meals, lessons to his Son, daily walk in the Garden, daily game
at ombre or drafts, fill up the day: the morrow will provide for
itself.
The morrow indeed; and yet How? Louis asks, How? France, with
perhaps still more solicitude, asks, How? A King dethroned by
insurrection is verily not easy to dispose of. Keep him prisoner,
he is a secret centre for the Disaffected, for endless plots,
attempts and hopes of theirs. Banish him, he is an open centre
for them; his royal war-standard, with what of divinity it has,
unrolls itself, summoning the world. Put him to death? A cruel
questionable extremity that too: and yet the likeliest in these
extreme circumstances, of insurrectionary men, whose own life and
death lies staked: accordingly it is said, from the last step of
the throne to the first of the scaffold there is short distance.
But, on the whole, we will remark here that this business of
Louis looks altogether different now, as seen over Seas and at
the distance of forty-four years, than it looked then, in France,
and struggling, confused all round one! For indeed it is a most
lying thing that same Past Tense always: so beautiful, sad,
almost Elysian-sacred, 'in the moonlight of Memory,' it seems;
and seems only. For observe: always, one most important element
is surreptitiously (_we not noticing it_) withdrawn from the Past
Time: the haggard element of Fear! Not there does Fear dwell, nor
Uncertainty, nor Anxiety; but it dwells here; haunting us,
tracking us; running like an accursed ground-discord through all
the music-tones of our Existence;—making the Tense a mere Present
one! Just so is it with this of Louis. Why smite the fallen? asks
Magnanimity, out of danger now. He is fallen so low this
once-high man; no criminal nor traitor, how far from it; but the
unhappiest of Human Solecisms: whom if abstract Justice had to
pronounce upon, she might well become concrete Pity, and
pronounce only sobs and dismissal!
So argues retrospective Magnanimity: but Pusillanimity, present,
prospective? Reader, thou hast never lived, for months, under the
rustle of Prussian gallows-ropes; never wert thou portion of a
National Sahara-waltz, Twenty-five millions running distracted to
fight Brunswick! Knights Errant themselves, when they conquered
Giants, usually slew the Giants: quarter was only for other
Knights Errant, who knew courtesy and the laws of battle. The
French Nation, in simultaneous, desperate dead-pull, and as if by
miracle of madness, has pulled down the most dread Goliath, huge
with the growth of ten centuries; and cannot believe, though his
giant bulk, covering acres, lies prostrate, bound with peg and
packthread, that he will not rise again, man-devouring; that the
victory is not partly a dream. Terror has its scepticism;
miraculous victory its rage of vengeance. Then as to criminalty,
is the prostrated Giant, who will devour us if he rise, an
innocent Giant? Curate Gregoire, who indeed is now Constitutional
Bishop Gregoire, asserts, in the heat of eloquence, that Kingship
by the very nature of it is a crime capital; that Kings' Houses
are as wild-beasts' dens. (_Moniteur, Seance du 21 Septembre,
Annee 1er, 1792._) Lastly consider this: that there is on record
a Trial of Charles First! This printed Trial of Charles First is
sold and read every where at present: (_Moore's Journal, ii.
165._)—Quelle spectacle! Thus did the English People judge their
Tyrant, and become the first of Free Peoples: which feat, by the
grace of Destiny, may not France now rival? Scepticism of terror,
rage of miraculous victory, sublime spectacle to the
universe,—all things point one fatal way.
Such leading questions, and their endless incidental ones: of
September Anarchists and Departmental Guard; of Grain Riots,
plaintiff Interior Ministers; of Armies, Hassenfratz
dilapidations; and what is to be done with Louis,—beleaguer and
embroil this Convention; which would so gladly make the
Constitution rather. All which questions too, as we often urge of
such things, are in growth; they grow in every French head; and
can be seen growing also, very curiously, in this mighty welter
of Parliamentary Debate, of Public Business which the Convention
has to do. A question emerges, so small at first; is put off,
submerged; but always re-emerges bigger than before. It is a
curious, indeed an indescribable sort of growth which such things
have.
We perceive, however, both by its frequent re-emergence and by
its rapid enlargement of bulk, that this Question of King Louis
will take the lead of all the rest. And truly, in that case, it
will take the lead in a much deeper sense. For as Aaron's Rod
swallowed all the other Serpents; so will the Foremost Question,
whichever may get foremost, absorb all other questions and
interests; and from it and the decision of it will they all, so
to speak, be born, or new-born, and have shape, physiognomy and
destiny corresponding. It was appointed of Fate that, in this
wide-weltering, strangely growing, monstrous stupendous imbroglio
of Convention Business, the grand First-Parent of all the
questions, controversies, measures and enterprises which were to
be evolved there to the world's astonishment, should be this
Question of King Louis.
Chapter 3.2.IV.
The Loser pays.
The Sixth of November, 1792, was a great day for the Republic:
outwardly, over the Frontiers; inwardly, in the Salle de Manege.
Outwardly: for Dumouriez, overrunning the Netherlands, did, on
that day, come in contact with Saxe-Teschen and the Austrians;
Dumouriez wide-winged, they wide-winged; at and around the
village of Jemappes, near Mons. And fire-hail is whistling far
and wide there, the great guns playing, and the small; so many
green Heights getting fringed and maned with red Fire. And
Dumouriez is swept back on this wing, and swept back on that, and
is like to be swept back utterly; when he rushes up in person,
the prompt Polymetis; speaks a prompt word or two; and then, with
clear tenor-pipe, 'uplifts the Hymn of the Marseillese, entonna
la Marseillaise,' (_Dumouriez, Memoires, iii. 174._) ten thousand
tenor or bass pipes joining; or say, some Forty Thousand in all;
for every heart leaps at the sound: and so with rhythmic
march-melody, waxing ever quicker, to double and to treble quick,
they rally, they advance, they rush, death-defying,
man-devouring; carry batteries, redoutes, whatsoever is to be
carried; and, like the fire-whirlwind, sweep all manner of
Austrians from the scene of action. Thus, through the hands of
Dumouriez, may Rouget de Lille, in figurative speech, be said to
have gained, miraculously, like another Orpheus, by his
Marseillese fiddle-strings (_fidibus canoris_) a Victory of
Jemappes; and conquered the Low Countries.
Young General Egalite, it would seem, shone brave among the
bravest on this occasion. Doubtless a brave Egalite;—whom however
does not Dumouriez rather talk of oftener than need were? The
Mother Society has her own thoughts. As for the Elder Egalite he
flies low at this time; appears in the Convention for some
half-hour daily, with rubicund, pre-occupied, or impressive
quasi-contemptuous countenance; and then takes himself away.
(_Moore, ii. 148._) The Netherlands are conquered, at least
overrun. Jacobin missionaries, your Prolys, Pereiras, follow in
the train of the Armies; also Convention Commissioners, melting
church-plate, revolutionising and remodelling—among whom Danton,
in brief space, does immensities of business; not neglecting his
own wages and trade-profits, it is thought. Hassenfratz
dilapidates at home; Dumouriez grumbles and they dilapidate
abroad: within the walls there is sinning, and without the walls
there is sinning.
But in the Hall of the Convention, at the same hour with this
victory of Jemappes, there went another thing forward: Report, of
great length, from the proper appointed Committee, on the Crimes
of Louis. The Galleries listen breathless; take comfort, ye
Galleries: Deputy Valaze, Reporter on this occasion, thinks Louis
very criminal; and that, if convenient, he should be tried;—poor
Girondin Valaze, who may be tried himself, one day! Comfortable
so far. Nay here comes a second Committee-reporter, Deputy
Mailhe, with a Legal Argument, very prosy to read now, very
refreshing to hear then, That, by the Law of the Country, Louis
Capet was only called Inviolable by a figure of rhetoric; but at
bottom was perfectly violable, triable; that he can, and even
should be tried. This Question of Louis, emerging so often as an
angry confused possibility, and submerging again, has emerged now
in an articulate shape.
Patriotism growls indignant joy. The so-called reign of Equality
is not to be a mere name, then, but a thing! Try Louis Capet?
scornfully ejaculates Patriotism: Mean criminals go to the
gallows for a purse cut; and this chief criminal, guilty of a
France cut; of a France slashed asunder with Clotho-scissors and
Civil war; with his victims 'twelve hundred on the Tenth of
August alone' lying low in the Catacombs, fattening the passes of
Argonne Wood, of Valmy and far Fields; he, such chief criminal,
shall not even come to the bar?—For, alas, O Patriotism! add we,
it was from of old said, The loser pays! It is he who has to pay
all scores, run up by whomsoever; on him must all breakages and
charges fall; and the twelve hundred on the Tenth of August are
not rebel traitors, but victims and martyrs: such is the law of
quarrel.
Patriotism, nothing doubting, watches over this Question of the
Trial, now happily emerged in an articulate shape; and will see
it to maturity, if the gods permit. With a keen solicitude
Patriotism watches; getting ever keener, at every new difficulty,
as Girondins and false brothers interpose delays; till it get a
keenness as of fixed-idea, and will have this Trial and no
earthly thing instead of it,—if Equality be not a name. Love of
Equality; then scepticism of terror, rage of victory, sublime
spectacle of the universe: all these things are strong.
But indeed this Question of the Trial, is it not to all persons a
most grave one; filling with dubiety many a Legislative head!
Regicide? asks the Gironde Respectability: To kill a king, and
become the horror of respectable nations and persons? But then
also, to save a king; to lose one's footing with the decided
Patriot; and undecided Patriot, though never so respectable,
being mere hypothetic froth and no footing?—The dilemma presses
sore; and between the horns of it you wriggle round and round.
Decision is nowhere, save in the Mother Society and her Sons.
These have decided, and go forward: the others wriggle round
uneasily within their dilemma-horns, and make way nowhither.
Chapter 3.2.V.
Stretching of Formulas.
But how this Question of the Trial grew laboriously, through the
weeks of gestation, now that it has been articulated or
conceived, were superfluous to trace here. It emerged and
submerged among the infinite of questions and embroilments. The
Veto of Scoundrels writes plaintive Letters as to Anarchy;
'concealed Royalists,' aided by Hunger, produce Riots about
Grain. Alas, it is but a week ago, these Girondins made a new
fierce onslaught on the September Massacres!
For, one day, among the last of October, Robespierre, being
summoned to the tribune by some new hint of that old calumny of
the Dictatorship, was speaking and pleading there, with more and
more comfort to himself; till, rising high in heart, he cried out
valiantly: Is there any man here that dare specifically accuse
me? "Moi!" exclaimed one. Pause of deep silence: a lean angry
little Figure, with broad bald brow, strode swiftly towards the
tribune, taking papers from its pocket: "I accuse thee,
Robespierre,"—I, Jean Baptiste Louvet! The Seagreen became
tallow-green; shrinking to a corner of the tribune: Danton cried,
"Speak, Robespierre, there are many good citizens that listen;"
but the tongue refused its office. And so Louvet, with a shrill
tone, read and recited crime after crime: dictatorial temper,
exclusive popularity, bullying at elections, mob-retinue,
September Massacres;—till all the Convention shrieked again, and
had almost indicted the Incorruptible there on the spot. Never
did the Incorruptible run such a risk. Louvet, to his dying day,
will regret that the Gironde did not take a bolder attitude, and
extinguish him there and then.
Not so, however: the Incorruptible, about to be indicted in this
sudden manner, could not be refused a week of delay. That week,
he is not idle; nor is the Mother Society idle,—fierce-tremulous
for her chosen son. He is ready at the day with his written
Speech; smooth as a Jesuit Doctor's; and convinces some. And now?
Why, now lazy Vergniaud does not rise with Demosthenic thunder;
poor Louvet, unprepared, can do little or nothing: Barrere
proposes that these comparatively despicable 'personalities' be
dismissed by order of the day! Order of the day it accordingly
is. Barbaroux cannot even get a hearing; not though he rush down
to the Bar, and demand to be heard there as a petitioner.
(_Louvet, Memoires (_Paris, 1823_) p. 52; Moniteur (_Seances du
29 Octobre, 5 Novembre, 1792_); Moore (_ii. 178_), &c._) The
convention, eager for public business (_with that first
articulate emergence of the Trial just coming on_), dismisses
these comparative miseres and despicabilities: splenetic Louvet
must digest his spleen, regretfully for ever: Robespierre, dear
to Patriotism, is dearer for the dangers he has run.
This is the second grand attempt by our Girondin Friends of
Order, to extinguish that black-spot in their domain; and we see
they have made it far blacker and wider than before! Anarchy,
September Massacre: it is a thing that lies hideous in the
general imagination; very detestable to the undecided Patriot, of
Respectability: a thing to be harped on as often as need is. Harp
on it, denounce it, trample it, ye Girondin Patriots:—and yet
behold, the black-spot will not trample down; it will only, as we
say, trample blacker and wider: fools, it is no black-spot of the
surface, but a well-spring of the deep! Consider rightly, it is
the apex of the everlasting Abyss, this black-spot, looking up as
water through thin ice;—say, as the region of Nether Darkness
through your thin film of Gironde Regulation and Respectability;
trample it not, lest the film break, and then—!
The truth is, if our Gironde Friends had an understanding of it,
where were French Patriotism, with all its eloquence, at this
moment, had not that same great Nether Deep, of Bedlam,
Fanaticism and Popular wrath and madness, risen unfathomable on
the Tenth of August? French Patriotism were an eloquent
Reminiscence; swinging on Prussian gibbets. Nay, where, in few
months, were it still, should the same great Nether Deep
subside?—Nay, as readers of Newspapers pretend to recollect, this
hatefulness of the September Massacre is itself partly an
after-thought: readers of Newspapers can quote Gorsas and various
Brissotins approving of the September Massacre, at the time it
happened; and calling it a salutary vengeance! (_See Hist. Parl.
xvii. 401; Newspapers by Gorsas and others, cited ibid. 428._) So
that the real grief, after all, were not so much righteous
horror, as grief that one's own power was departing? Unhappy
Girondins!
In the Jacobin Society, therefore, the decided Patriot complains
that here are men who with their private ambitions and
animosities, will ruin Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood, all
three: they check the spirit of Patriotism, throw
stumbling-blocks in its way; and instead of pushing on, all
shoulders at the wheel, will stand idle there, spitefully
clamouring what foul ruts there are, what rude jolts we give! To
which the Jacobin Society answers with angry roar;—with angry
shriek, for there are Citoyennes too, thick crowded in the
galleries here. Citoyennes who bring their seam with them, or
their knitting-needles; and shriek or knit as the case needs;
famed Tricoteuses, Patriot Knitters;—Mere Duchesse, or the like
Deborah and Mother of the Faubourgs, giving the keynote. It is a
changed Jacobin Society; and a still changing. Where Mother
Duchess now sits, authentic Duchesses have sat. High-rouged dames
went once in jewels and spangles; now, instead of jewels, you may
take the knitting-needles and leave the rouge: the rouge will
gradually give place to natural brown, clean washed or even
unwashed; and Demoiselle Theroigne herself get scandalously
fustigated. Strange enough: it is the same tribune raised in
mid-air, where a high Mirabeau, a high Barnave and Aristocrat
Lameths once thundered: whom gradually your Brissots, Guadets,
Vergniauds, a hotter style of Patriots in bonnet rouge, did
displace; red heat, as one may say, superseding light. And now
your Brissots in turn, and Brissotins, Rolandins, Girondins, are
becoming supernumerary; must desert the sittings, or be expelled:
the light of the Mighty Mother is burning not red but
blue!—Provincial Daughter-Societies loudly disapprove these
things; loudly demand the swift reinstatement of such eloquent
Girondins, the swift 'erasure of Marat, radiation de Marat.' The
Mother Society, so far as natural reason can predict, seems
ruining herself. Nevertheless she has, at all crises, seemed so;
she has a preternatural life in her, and will not ruin.
But, in a fortnight more, this great Question of the Trial, while
the fit Committee is assiduously but silently working on it,
receives an unexpected stimulus. Our readers remember poor
Louis's turn for smithwork: how, in old happier days, a certain
Sieur Gamain of Versailles was wont to come over, and instruct
him in lock-making;—often scolding him, they say for his
numbness. By whom, nevertheless, the royal Apprentice had learned
something of that craft. Hapless Apprentice; perfidious
Master-Smith! For now, on this 20th of November 1792, dingy Smith
Gamain comes over to the Paris Municipality, over to Minister
Roland, with hints that he, Smith Gamain, knows a thing; that, in
May last, when traitorous Correspondence was so brisk, he and the
royal Apprentice fabricated an 'Iron Press, Armoire de Fer,'
cunningly inserting the same in a wall of the royal chamber in
the Tuileries; invisible under the wainscot; where doubtless it
still sticks! Perfidious Gamain, attended by the proper
Authorities, finds the wainscot panel which none else can find;
wrenches it up; discloses the Iron Press,—full of Letters and
Papers! Roland clutches them out; conveys them over in towels to
the fit assiduous Committee, which sits hard by. In towels, we
say, and without notarial inventory; an oversight on the part of
Roland.
Here, however, are Letters enough: which disclose to a
demonstration the Correspondence of a traitorous self-preserving
Court; and this not with Traitors only, but even with Patriots,
so-called! Barnave's treason, of Correspondence with the Queen,
and friendly advice to her, ever since that Varennes Business, is
hereby manifest: how happy that we have him, this Barnave, lying
safe in the Prison of Grenoble, since September last, for he had
long been suspect! Talleyrand's treason, many a man's treason, if
not manifest hereby, is next to it. Mirabeau's treason: wherefore
his Bust in the Hall of the Convention 'is veiled with gauze,'
till we ascertain. Alas, it is too ascertainable! His Bust in the
Hall of the Jacobins, denounced by Robespierre from the tribune
in mid-air, is not veiled, it is instantly broken to sherds; a
Patriot mounting swiftly with a ladder, and shivering it down on
the floor;—it and others: amid shouts. (_Journal des Debats des
Jacobins in Hist. Parl. xxii. 296._) Such is their recompense and
amount of wages, at this date: on the principle of supply and
demand! Smith Gamain, inadequately recompensed for the present,
comes, some fifteen months after, with a humble Petition; setting
forth that no sooner was that important Iron Press finished off
by him, than (_as he now bethinks himself_) Louis gave him a
large glass of wine. Which large glass of wine did produce in the
stomach of Sieur Gamain the terriblest effects, evidently tending
towards death, and was then brought up by an emetic; but has,
notwithstanding, entirely ruined the constitution of Sieur
Gamain; so that he cannot work for his family (_as he now
bethinks himself_). The recompense of which is 'Pension of Twelve
Hundred Francs,' and 'honourable mention.' So different is the
ratio of demand and supply at different times.
Thus, amid obstructions and stimulating furtherances, has the
Question of the Trial to grow; emerging and submerging; fostered
by solicitous Patriotism. Of the Orations that were spoken on it,
of the painfully devised Forms of Process for managing it, the
Law Arguments to prove it lawful, and all the infinite floods of
Juridical and other ingenuity and oratory, be no syllable
reported in this History. Lawyer ingenuity is good: but what can
it profit here? If the truth must be spoken, O august Senators,
the only Law in this case is: Vae victis, the loser pays! Seldom
did Robespierre say a wiser word than the hint he gave to that
effect, in his oration, that it was needless to speak of Law,
that here, if never elsewhere, our Right was Might. An oration
admired almost to ecstasy by the Jacobin Patriot: who shall say
that Robespierre is not a thorough-going man; bold in Logic at
least? To the like effect, or still more plainly, spake young
Saint-Just, the black-haired, mild-toned youth. Danton is on
mission, in the Netherlands, during this preliminary work. The
rest, far as one reads, welter amid Law of Nations, Social
Contract, Juristics, Syllogistics; to us barren as the East wind.
In fact, what can be more unprofitable than the sight of Seven
Hundred and Forty-nine ingenious men, struggling with their whole
force and industry, for a long course of weeks, to do at bottom
this: To stretch out the old Formula and Law Phraseology, so that
it may cover the new, contradictory, entirely uncoverable Thing?
Whereby the poor Formula does but crack, and one's honesty along
with it! The thing that is palpably hot, burning, wilt thou prove
it, by syllogism, to be a freezing-mixture? This of stretching
out Formulas till they crack is, especially in times of swift
change, one of the sorrowfullest tasks poor Humanity has.
Chapter 3.2.VI.
At the Bar.
Meanwhile, in a space of some five weeks, we have got to another
emerging of the Trial, and a more practical one than ever.
On Tuesday, eleventh of December, the King's Trial has emerged,
very decidedly: into the streets of Paris; in the shape of that
green Carriage of Mayor Chambon, within which sits the King
himself, with attendants, on his way to the Convention Hall!
Attended, in that green Carriage, by Mayors Chambon, Procureurs
Chaumette; and outside of it by Commandants Santerre, with
cannon, cavalry and double row of infantry; all Sections under
arms, strong Patrols scouring all streets; so fares he, slowly
through the dull drizzling weather: and about two o'clock we
behold him, 'in walnut-coloured great-coat, redingote noisette,'
descending through the Place Vendome, towards that Salle de
Manege; to be indicted, and judicially interrogated. The
mysterious Temple Circuit has given up its secret; which now, in
this walnut-coloured coat, men behold with eyes. The same bodily
Louis who was once Louis the Desired, fares there: hapless King,
he is getting now towards port; his deplorable farings and
voyagings draw to a close. What duty remains to him henceforth,
that of placidly enduring, he is fit to do.
The singular Procession fares on; in silence, says Prudhomme, or
amid growlings of the Marseillese Hymn; in silence, ushers itself
into the Hall of the Convention, Santerre holding Louis's arm
with his hand. Louis looks round him, with composed air, to see
what kind of Convention and Parliament it is. Much changed
indeed:—since February gone two years, when our Constituent, then
busy, spread fleur-de-lys velvet for us; and we came over to say
a kind word here, and they all started up swearing Fidelity; and
all France started up swearing, and made it a Feast of Pikes;
which has ended in this! Barrere, who once 'wept' looking up from
his Editor's-Desk, looks down now from his President's-Chair,
with a list of Fifty-seven Questions; and says, dry-eyed: "Louis,
you may sit down." Louis sits down: it is the very seat, they
say, same timber and stuffing, from which he accepted the
Constitution, amid dancing and illumination, autumn gone a year.
So much woodwork remains identical; so much else is not
identical. Louis sits and listens, with a composed look and mind.
Of the Fifty-seven Questions we shall not give so much as one.
They are questions captiously embracing all the main Documents
seized on the Tenth of August, or found lately in the Iron Press;
embracing all the main incidents of the Revolution History; and
they ask, in substance, this: Louis, who wert King, art thou not
guilty to a certain extent, by act and written document, of
trying to continue King? Neither in the Answers is there much
notable. Mere quiet negations, for most part; an accused man
standing on the simple basis of No: I do not recognise that
document; I did not do that act; or did it according to the law
that then was. Whereupon the Fifty-seven Questions, and Documents
to the number of a Hundred and Sixty-two, being exhausted in this
manner, Barrere finishes, after some three hours, with his:
"Louis, I invite you to withdraw."
Louis withdraws, under Municipal escort, into a neighbouring
Committee-room; having first, in leaving the bar, demanded to
have Legal Counsel. He declines refreshment, in this
Committee-room, then, seeing Chaumette busy with a small loaf
which a grenadier had divided with him, says, he will take a bit
of bread. It is five o'clock; and he had breakfasted but slightly
in a morning of such drumming and alarm. Chaumette breaks his
half-loaf: the King eats of the crust; mounts the green Carriage,
eating; asks now what he shall do with the crumb? Chaumette's
clerk takes it from him; flings it out into the street. Louis
says, It is pity to fling out bread, in a time of dearth. "My
grandmother," remarks Chaumette, "used to say to me, Little boy,
never waste a crumb of bread, you cannot make one." "Monsieur
Chaumette," answers Louis, "your grandmother seems to have been a
sensible woman." (_Prudhomme's Newspaper in Hist. Parl. xxi.
314._) Poor innocent mortal: so quietly he waits the drawing of
the lot;—fit to do this at least well; Passivity alone, without
Activity, sufficing for it! He talks once of travelling over
France by and by, to have a geographical and topographical view
of it; being from of old fond of geography.—The Temple Circuit
again receives him, closes on him; gazing Paris may retire to its
hearths and coffee-houses, to its clubs and theatres: the damp
Darkness has sunk, and with it the drumming and patrolling of
this strange Day.
Louis is now separated from his Queen and Family; given up to his
simple reflections and resources. Dull lie these stone walls
round him; of his loved ones none with him. In this state of
'uncertainty,' providing for the worst, he writes his Will: a
Paper which can still be read; full of placidity, simplicity,
pious sweetness. The Convention, after debate, has granted him
Legal Counsel, of his own choosing. Advocate Target feels himself
'too old,' being turned of fifty-four; and declines. He had
gained great honour once, defending Rohan the Necklace-Cardinal;
but will gain none here. Advocate Tronchet, some ten years older,
does not decline. Nay behold, good old Malesherbes steps forward
voluntarily; to the last of his fields, the good old hero! He is
grey with seventy years: he says, 'I was twice called to the
Council of him who was my Master, when all the world coveted that
honour; and I owe him the same service now, when it has become
one which many reckon dangerous.' These two, with a younger
Deseze, whom they will select for pleading, are busy over that
Fifty-and-sevenfold Indictment, over the Hundred and Sixty-two
Documents; Louis aiding them as he can.
A great Thing is now therefore in open progress; all men, in all
lands, watching it. By what Forms and Methods shall the
Convention acquit itself, in such manner that there rest not on
it even the suspicion of blame? Difficult that will be! The
Convention, really much at a loss, discusses and deliberates. All
day from morning to night, day after day, the Tribune drones with
oratory on this matter; one must stretch the old Formula to cover
the new Thing. The Patriots of the Mountain, whetted ever keener,
clamour for despatch above all; the only good Form will be a
swift one. Nevertheless the Convention deliberates; the Tribune
drones,—drowned indeed in tenor, and even in treble, from time to
time; the whole Hall shrilling up round it into pretty frequent
wrath and provocation. It has droned and shrilled wellnigh a
fortnight, before we can decide, this shrillness getting ever
shriller, That on Wednesday 26th of December, Louis shall appear,
and plead. His Advocates complain that it is fatally soon; which
they well might as Advocates: but without remedy; to Patriotism
it seems endlessly late.
On Wednesday, therefore, at the cold dark hour of eight in the
morning, all Senators are at their post. Indeed they warm the
cold hour, as we find, by a violent effervescence, such as is too
common now; some Louvet or Buzot attacking some Tallien, Chabot;
and so the whole Mountain effervescing against the whole Gironde.
Scarcely is this done, at nine, when Louis and his three
Advocates, escorted by the clang of arms and Santerre's National
force, enter the Hall.
Deseze unfolds his papers; honourably fulfilling his perilous
office, pleads for the space of three hours. An honourable
Pleading, 'composed almost overnight;' courageous yet discreet;
not without ingenuity, and soft pathetic eloquence: Louis fell on
his neck, when they had withdrawn, and said with tears, Mon
pauvre Deseze. Louis himself, before withdrawing, had added a few
words, "perhaps the last he would utter to them:" how it pained
his heart, above all things, to be held guilty of that bloodshed
on the Tenth of August; or of ever shedding or wishing to shed
French blood. So saying, he withdrew from that Hall;—having
indeed finished his work there. Many are the strange errands he
has had thither; but this strange one is the last.
And now, why will the Convention loiter? Here is the Indictment
and Evidence; here is the Pleading: does not the rest follow of
itself? The Mountain, and Patriotism in general, clamours still
louder for despatch; for Permanent-session, till the task be
done. Nevertheless a doubting, apprehensive Convention decides
that it will still deliberate first; that all Members, who desire
it, shall have leave to speak.—To your desks, therefore, ye
eloquent Members! Down with your thoughts, your echoes and
hearsays of thoughts: now is the time to shew oneself; France and
the Universe listens! Members are not wanting: Oration spoken
Pamphlet follows spoken Pamphlet, with what eloquence it can:
President's List swells ever higher with names claiming to speak;
from day to day, all days and all hours, the constant Tribune
drones;—shrill Galleries supplying, very variably, the tenor and
treble. It were a dull tune otherwise.
The Patriots, in Mountain and Galleries, or taking counsel
nightly in Section-house, in Mother Society, amid their shrill
Tricoteuses, have to watch lynx-eyed; to give voice when needful;
occasionally very loud. Deputy Thuriot, he who was Advocate
Thuriot, who was Elector Thuriot, and from the top of the
Bastille, saw Saint-Antoine rising like the ocean; this Thuriot
can stretch a Formula as heartily as most men. Cruel Billaud is
not silent, if you incite him. Nor is cruel Jean-Bon silent; a
kind of Jesuit he too;—write him not, as the Dictionaries too
often do, Jambon, which signifies mere Ham.
But, on the whole, let no man conceive it possible that Louis is
not guilty. The only question for a reasonable man is, or was:
Can the Convention judge Louis? Or must it be the whole People:
in Primary Assembly, and with delay? Always delay, ye Girondins,
false hommes d'etat! so bellows Patriotism, its patience almost
failing.—But indeed, if we consider it, what shall these poor
Girondins do? Speak their convictions that Louis is a Prisoner of
War; and cannot be put to death without injustice, solecism,
peril? Speak such conviction; and lose utterly your footing with
the decided Patriot? Nay properly it is not even a conviction,
but a conjecture and dim puzzle. How many poor Girondins are sure
of but one thing: That a man and Girondin ought to have footing
somewhere, and to stand firmly on it; keeping well with the
Respectable Classes! This is what conviction and assurance of
faith they have. They must wriggle painfully between their
dilemma-horns. (_See Extracts from their Newspapers, in Hist.
Parl. xxi. 1-38, &c._)
Nor is France idle, nor Europe. It is a Heart this Convention, as
we said, which sends out influences, and receives them. A King's
Execution, call it Martyrdom, call it Punishment, were an
influence! Two notable influences this Convention has already
sent forth, over all Nations; much to its own detriment. On the
19th of November, it emitted a Decree, and has since confirmed
and unfolded the details of it. That any Nation which might see
good to shake off the fetters of Despotism was thereby, so to
speak, the Sister of France, and should have help and
countenance. A Decree much noised of by Diplomatists, Editors,
International Lawyers; such a Decree as no living Fetter of
Despotism, nor Person in Authority anywhere, can approve of! It
was Deputy Chambon the Girondin who propounded this Decree;—at
bottom perhaps as a flourish of rhetoric.
The second influence we speak of had a still poorer origin: in
the restless loud-rattling slightly-furnished head of one Jacob
Dupont from the Loire country. The Convention is speculating on a
plan of National Education: Deputy Dupont in his speech says, "I
am free to avow, M. le President, that I for my part am an
Atheist," (_Moniteur, Seance du 14 Decembre 1792._)—thinking the
world might like to know that. The French world received it
without commentary; or with no audible commentary, so loud was
France otherwise. The Foreign world received it with confutation,
with horror and astonishment; (_Mrs. Hannah More, Letter to Jacob
Dupont (_London, 1793_); &c. &c._) a most miserable influence
this! And now if to these two were added a third influence, and
sent pulsing abroad over all the Earth: that of Regicide?
Foreign Courts interfere in this Trial of Louis; Spain, England:
not to be listened to; though they come, as it were, at least
Spain comes, with the olive-branch in one hand, and the sword
without scabbard in the other. But at home too, from out of this
circumambient Paris and France, what influences come
thick-pulsing! Petitions flow in; pleading for equal justice, in
a reign of so-called Equality. The living Patriot pleads;—O ye
National Deputies, do not the dead Patriots plead? The Twelve
Hundred that lie in cold obstruction, do not they plead; and
petition, in Death's dumb-show, from their narrow house there,
more eloquently than speech? Crippled Patriots hop on crutches
round the Salle de Manege, demanding justice. The Wounded of the
Tenth of August, the Widows and Orphans of the Killed petition in
a body; and hop and defile, eloquently mute, through the Hall:
one wounded Patriot, unable to hop, is borne on his bed thither,
and passes shoulder-high, in the horizontal posture. (_Hist.
Parl. xxii. 131; Moore, &c._) The Convention Tribune, which has
paused at such sight, commences again,—droning mere Juristic
Oratory. But out of doors Paris is piping ever higher.
Bull-voiced St. Huruge is heard; and the hysteric eloquence of
Mother Duchesse: 'Varlet, Apostle of Liberty,' with pike and red
cap, flies hastily, carrying his oratorical folding-stool.
Justice on the Traitor! cries all the Patriot world. Consider
also this other cry, heard loud on the streets: "Give us Bread,
or else kill us!" Bread and Equality; Justice on the Traitor,
that we may have Bread!
The Limited or undecided Patriot is set against the Decided.
Mayor Chambon heard of dreadful rioting at the Theatre de la
Nation: it had come to rioting, and even to fist-work, between
the Decided and the Undecided, touching a new Drama called Ami
des Lois (_Friend of the Laws_). One of the poorest Dramas ever
written; but which had didactic applications in it; wherefore
powdered wigs of Friends of Order and black hair of Jacobin heads
are flying there; and Mayor Chambon hastens with Santerre, in
hopes to quell it. Far from quelling it, our poor Mayor gets so
'squeezed,' says the Report, and likewise so blamed and bullied,
say we,—that he, with regret, quits the brief Mayoralty
altogether, 'his lungs being affected.' This miserable Amis des
Lois is debated of in the Convention itself; so violent,
mutually-enraged, are the Limited Patriots and the Unlimited.
(_Hist. Parl. xxiii. 31, 48, &c._)
Between which two classes, are not Aristocrats enough, and
Crypto-Aristocrats, busy? Spies running over from London with
important Packets; spies pretending to run! One of these latter,
Viard was the name of him, pretended to accuse Roland, and even
the Wife of Roland; to the joy of Chabot and the Mountain. But
the Wife of Roland came, being summoned, on the instant, to the
Convention Hall; came, in her high clearness; and, with few clear
words, dissipated this Viard into despicability and air; all
Friends of Order applauding. (_Moniteur, Seance du 7 Decembre
1792._) So, with Theatre-riots, and 'Bread, or else kill us;'
with Rage, Hunger, preternatural Suspicion, does this wild Paris
pipe. Roland grows ever more querulous, in his Messages and
Letters; rising almost to the hysterical pitch. Marat, whom no
power on Earth can prevent seeing into traitors and Rolands,
takes to bed for three days; almost dead, the invaluable
People's-Friend, with heartbreak, with fever and headache: 'O,
Peuple babillard, si tu savais agir, People of Babblers, if thou
couldst but act!'
To crown all, victorious Dumouriez, in these New-year's days, is
arrived in Paris;—one fears, for no good. He pretends to be
complaining of Minister Pache, and Hassenfratz dilapidations; to
be concerting measures for the spring campaign: one finds him
much in the company of the Girondins. Plotting with them against
Jacobinism, against Equality, and the Punishment of Louis! We
have Letters of his to the Convention itself. Will he act the old
Lafayette part, this new victorious General? Let him withdraw
again; not undenounced. (_Dumouriez, Memoires, iii. c. 4._)
And still, in the Convention Tribune, it drones continually, mere
Juristic Eloquence, and Hypothesis without Action; and there are
still fifties on the President's List. Nay these Gironde
Presidents give their own party preference: we suspect they play
foul with the List; men of the Mountain cannot be heard. And
still it drones, all through December into January and a New
year; and there is no end! Paris pipes round it; multitudinous;
ever higher, to the note of the whirlwind. Paris will 'bring
cannon from Saint-Denis;' there is talk of 'shutting the
Barriers,'—to Roland's horror.
Whereupon, behold, the Convention Tribune suddenly ceases
droning: we cut short, be on the List who likes; and make end. On
Tuesday next, the Fifteenth of January 1793, it shall go to the
Vote, name by name; and, one way or other, this great game play
itself out!
Chapter 3.2.VII.
The Three Votings.
Is Louis Capet guilty of conspiring against Liberty? Shall our
Sentence be itself final, or need ratifying by Appeal to the
People? If guilty, what Punishment? This is the form agreed to,
after uproar and 'several hours of tumultuous indecision:' these
are the Three successive Questions, whereon the Convention shall
now pronounce. Paris floods round their Hall; multitudinous, many
sounding. Europe and all Nations listen for their answer. Deputy
after Deputy shall answer to his name: Guilty or Not guilty?
As to the Guilt, there is, as above hinted, no doubt in the mind
of Patriot man. Overwhelming majority pronounces Guilt; the
unanimous Convention votes for Guilt, only some feeble
twenty-eight voting not Innocence, but refusing to vote at all.
Neither does the Second Question prove doubtful, whatever the
Girondins might calculate. Would not Appeal to the People be
another name for civil war? Majority of two to one answers that
there shall be no Appeal: this also is settled. Loud Patriotism,
now at ten o'clock, may hush itself for the night; and retire to
its bed not without hope. Tuesday has gone well. On the morrow
comes, What Punishment? On the morrow is the tug of war.
Consider therefore if, on this Wednesday morning, there is an
affluence of Patriotism; if Paris stands a-tiptoe, and all
Deputies are at their post! Seven Hundred and Forty-nine
honourable Deputies; only some twenty absent on mission, Duchatel
and some seven others absent by sickness. Meanwhile expectant
Patriotism and Paris standing a-tiptoe, have need of patience.
For this Wednesday again passes in debate and effervescence;
Girondins proposing that a 'majority of three-fourths' shall be
required; Patriots fiercely resisting them. Danton, who has just
got back from mission in the Netherlands, does obtain 'order of
the day' on this Girondin proposal; nay he obtains further that
we decide sans desemparer, in Permanent-session, till we have
done.
And so, finally, at eight in the evening this Third stupendous
Voting, by roll-call or appel nominal, does begin. What
Punishment? Girondins undecided, Patriots decided, men afraid of
Royalty, men afraid of Anarchy, must answer here and now.
Infinite Patriotism, dusky in the lamp-light, floods all
corridors, crowds all galleries, sternly waiting to hear.
Shrill-sounding Ushers summon you by Name and Department; you
must rise to the Tribune and say.
Eye-witnesses have represented this scene of the Third Voting,
and of the votings that grew out of it; a scene protracted, like
to be endless, lasting, with few brief intervals, from Wednesday
till Sunday morning,—as one of the strangest seen in the
Revolution. Long night wears itself into day, morning's paleness
is spread over all faces; and again the wintry shadows sink, and
the dim lamps are lit: but through day and night and the
vicissitude of hours, Member after Member is mounting continually
those Tribune-steps; pausing aloft there, in the clearer upper
light, to speak his Fate-word; then diving down into the dusk and
throng again. Like Phantoms in the hour of midnight; most
spectral, pandemonial! Never did President Vergniaud, or any
terrestrial President, superintend the like. A King's Life, and
so much else that depends thereon, hangs trembling in the
balance. Man after man mounts; the buzz hushes itself till he
have spoken: Death; Banishment: Imprisonment till the Peace. Many
say, Death; with what cautious well-studied phrases and
paragraphs they could devise, of explanation, of enforcement, of
faint recommendation to mercy. Many too say, Banishment;
something short of Death. The balance trembles, none can yet
guess whitherward. Whereat anxious Patriotism bellows;
irrepressible by Ushers.
The poor Girondins, many of them, under such fierce bellowing of
Patriotism, say Death; justifying, motivant, that most miserable
word of theirs by some brief casuistry and jesuitry. Vergniaud
himself says, Death; justifying by jesuitry. Rich Lepelletier
Saint-Fargeau had been of the Noblesse, and then of the Patriot
Left Side, in the Constituent; and had argued and reported, there
and elsewhere, not a little, against Capital Punishment:
nevertheless he now says, Death; a word which may cost him dear.
Manuel did surely rank with the Decided in August last; but he
has been sinking and backsliding ever since September, and the
scenes of September. In this Convention, above all, no word he
could speak would find favour; he says now, Banishment; and in
mute wrath quits the place for ever,—much hustled in the
corridors. Philippe Egalite votes in his soul and conscience,
Death, at the sound of which, and of whom, even Patriotism shakes
its head; and there runs a groan and shudder through this Hall of
Doom. Robespierre's vote cannot be doubtful; his speech is long.
Men see the figure of shrill Sieyes ascend; hardly pausing,
passing merely, this figure says, "La Mort sans phrase, Death
without phrases;" and fares onward and downward. Most spectral,
pandemonial!
And yet if the Reader fancy it of a funereal, sorrowful or even
grave character, he is far mistaken. 'The Ushers in the Mountain
quarter,' says Mercier, 'had become as Box-openers at the Opera;'
opening and shutting of Galleries for privileged persons, for
'd'Orleans Egalite's mistresses,' or other high-dizened women of
condition, rustling with laces and tricolor. Gallant Deputies
pass and repass thitherward, treating them with ices,
refreshments and small-talk; the high-dizened heads beck
responsive; some have their card and pin, pricking down the Ayes
and Noes, as at a game of Rouge-et-Noir. Further aloft reigns
Mere Duchesse with her unrouged Amazons; she cannot be prevented
making long Hahas, when the vote is not La Mort. In these
Galleries there is refection, drinking of wine and brandy 'as in
open tavern, en pleine tabagie.' Betting goes on in all
coffeehouses of the neighbourhood. But within doors, fatigue,
impatience, uttermost weariness sits now on all visages; lighted
up only from time to time, by turns of the game. Members have
fallen asleep; Ushers come and awaken them to vote: other Members
calculate whether they shall not have time to run and dine.
Figures rise, like phantoms, pale in the dusky lamp-light; utter
from this Tribune, only one word: Death. 'Tout est optique,' says
Mercier, 'the world is all an optical shadow.' (_Mercier, Nouveau
Paris, vi. 156-59; Montgaillard, iii. 348-87; Moore, &c._) Deep
in the Thursday night, when the Voting is done, and Secretaries
are summing it up, sick Duchatel, more spectral than another,
comes borne on a chair, wrapt in blankets, 'in nightgown and
nightcap,' to vote for Mercy: one vote it is thought may turn the
scale.
Ah no! In profoundest silence, President Vergniaud, with a voice
full of sorrow, has to say: "I declare, in the name of the
Convention, that the Punishment it pronounces on Louis Capet is
that of Death." Death by a small majority of Fifty-three. Nay, if
we deduct from the one side, and add to the other, a certain
Twenty-six, who said Death but coupled some faintest ineffectual
surmise of mercy with it, the majority will be but One.
Death is the sentence: but its execution? It is not executed yet!
Scarcely is the vote declared when Louis's Three Advocates enter;
with Protest in his name, with demand for Delay, for Appeal to
the People. For this do Deseze and Tronchet plead, with brief
eloquence: brave old Malesherbes pleads for it with eloquent want
of eloquence, in broken sentences, in embarrassment and sobs;
that brave time-honoured face, with its grey strength, its broad
sagacity and honesty, is mastered with emotion, melts into dumb
tears. (_Moniteur in Hist. Parl. xxiii. 210. See Boissy d'Anglas,
Vie de Malesherbes, ii. 139._)—They reject the Appeal to the
People; that having been already settled. But as to the Delay,
what they call Sursis, it shall be considered; shall be voted for
to-morrow: at present we adjourn. Whereupon Patriotism 'hisses'
from the Mountain: but a 'tyrannical majority' has so decided,
and adjourns.
There is still this fourth Vote then, growls indignant
Patriotism:—this vote, and who knows what other votes, and
adjournments of voting; and the whole matter still hovering
hypothetical! And at every new vote those Jesuit Girondins, even
they who voted for Death, would so fain find a loophole!
Patriotism must watch and rage. Tyrannical adjournments there
have been; one, and now another at midnight on plea of
fatigue,—all Friday wasted in hesitation and higgling; in
re-counting of the votes, which are found correct as they stood!
Patriotism bays fiercer than ever; Patriotism, by long-watching,
has become red-eyed, almost rabid.
"Delay: yes or no?" men do vote it finally, all Saturday, all day
and night. Men's nerves are worn out, men's hearts are desperate;
now it shall end. Vergniaud, spite of the baying, ventures to say
Yes, Delay; though he had voted Death. Philippe Egalite says, in
his soul and conscience, No. The next Member mounting: "Since
Philippe says No, I for my part say Yes, Moi je dis Oui." The
balance still trembles. Till finally, at three o'clock on Sunday
morning, we have: No Delay, by a majority of Seventy; Death
within four-and-twenty hours!
Garat Minister of Justice has to go to the Temple, with this
stern message: he ejaculates repeatedly, "Quelle commission
affreuse, What a frightful function!" (_Biographie des Ministres,
p. 157._) Louis begs for a Confessor; for yet three days of life,
to prepare himself to die. The Confessor is granted; the three
days and all respite are refused.
There is no deliverance, then? Thick stone walls answer, None—Has
King Louis no friends? Men of action, of courage grown desperate,
in this his extreme need? King Louis's friends are feeble and
far. Not even a voice in the coffeehouses rises for him. At Meot
the Restaurateur's no Captain Dampmartin now dines; or sees
death-doing whiskerandoes on furlough exhibit daggers of improved
structure! Meot's gallant Royalists on furlough are far across
the Marches; they are wandering distracted over the world: or
their bones lie whitening Argonne Wood. Only some weak Priests
'leave Pamphlets on all the bournestones,' this night, calling
for a rescue; calling for the pious women to rise; or are taken
distributing Pamphlets, and sent to prison. (_See Prudhomme's
Newspaper, Revolutions de Paris in Hist. Parl. xxiii. 318._)
Nay there is one death-doer, of the ancient Meot sort, who, with
effort, has done even less and worse: slain a Deputy, and set all
the Patriotism of Paris on edge! It was five on Saturday evening
when Lepelletier St. Fargeau, having given his vote, No Delay,
ran over to Fevrier's in the Palais Royal to snatch a morsel of
dinner. He had dined, and was paying. A thickset man 'with black
hair and blue beard,' in a loose kind of frock, stept up to him;
it was, as Fevrier and the bystanders bethought them, one Paris
of the old King's-Guard. "Are you Lepelletier?" asks
he.—"Yes."—"You voted in the King's Business?"—"I voted
Death."—"Scelerat, take that!" cries Paris, flashing out a sabre
from under his frock, and plunging it deep in Lepelletier's side.
Fevrier clutches him; but he breaks off; is gone.
The voter Lepelletier lies dead; he has expired in great pain, at
one in the morning;—two hours before that Vote of no Delay was
fully summed up! Guardsman Paris is flying over France; cannot be
taken; will be found some months after, self-shot in a remote
inn. (_Hist. Parl. xxiii. 275, 318; Felix Lepelletier, Vie de
Michel Lepelletier son Frere, p. 61. &c. Felix, with due love of
the miraculous, will have it that the Suicide in the inn was not
Paris, but some double-ganger of his._)—Robespierre sees reason
to think that Prince d'Artois himself is privately in Town; that
the Convention will be butchered in the lump. Patriotism sounds
mere wail and vengeance: Santerre doubles and trebles all his
patrols. Pity is lost in rage and fear; the Convention has
refused the three days of life and all respite.
Chapter 3.2.VIII.
Place de la Revolution.
To this conclusion, then, hast thou come, O hapless Louis! The
Son of Sixty Kings is to die on the Scaffold by form of law.
Under Sixty Kings this same form of Law, form of Society, has
been fashioning itself together, these thousand years; and has
become, one way and other, a most strange Machine. Surely, if
needful, it is also frightful this Machine; dead, blind; not what
it should be; which, with swift stroke, or by cold slow torture,
has wasted the lives and souls of innumerable men. And behold now
a King himself, or say rather Kinghood in his person, is to
expire here in cruel tortures;—like a Phalaris shut in the belly
of his own red-heated Brazen Bull! It is ever so; and thou
shouldst know it, O haughty tyrannous man: injustice breeds
injustice; curses and falsehoods do verily 'return always home,'
wide as they may wander. Innocent Louis bears the sins of many
generations: he too experiences that man's tribunal is not in
this Earth; that if he had no Higher one, it were not well with
him.
A King dying by such violence appeals impressively to the
imagination; as the like must do, and ought to do. And yet at
bottom it is not the King dying, but the Man! Kingship is a coat;
the grand loss is of the skin. The man from whom you take his
Life, to him can the whole combined world do more? Lally went on
his hurdle, his mouth filled with a gag. Miserablest mortals,
doomed for picking pockets, have a whole five-act Tragedy in
them, in that dumb pain, as they go to the gallows, unregarded;
they consume the cup of trembling down to the lees. For Kings and
for Beggars, for the justly doomed and the unjustly, it is a hard
thing to die. Pity them all: thy utmost pity with all aids and
appliances and throne-and-scaffold contrasts, how far short is it
of the thing pitied!
A Confessor has come; Abbe Edgeworth, of Irish extraction, whom
the King knew by good report, has come promptly on this solemn
mission. Leave the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King; it with
its malice will go its way, thou also canst go thine. A hard
scene yet remains: the parting with our loved ones. Kind hearts,
environed in the same grim peril with us; to be left here! Let
the Reader look with the eyes of Valet Clery, through these
glass-doors, where also the Municipality watches; and see the
cruellest of scenes:
'At half-past eight, the door of the ante-room opened: the Queen
appeared first, leading her Son by the hand; then Madame Royale
and Madame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves into the arms of
the King. Silence reigned for some minutes; interrupted only by
sobs. The Queen made a movement to lead his Majesty towards the
inner room, where M. Edgeworth was waiting unknown to them: "No,"
said the King, "let us go into the dining-room, it is there only
that I can see you." They entered there; I shut the door of it,
which was of glass. The King sat down, the Queen on his left
hand, Madame Elizabeth on his right, Madame Royale almost in
front; the young Prince remained standing between his Father's
legs. They all leaned towards him, and often held him embraced.
This scene of woe lasted an hour and three-quarters; during which
we could hear nothing; we could see only that always when the
King spoke, the sobbings of the Princesses redoubled, continued
for some minutes; and that then the King began again to speak.'
(_Clery's Narrative (_London, 1798_), cited in Weber, iii.
312._)—And so our meetings and our partings do now end! The
sorrows we gave each other; the poor joys we faithfully shared,
and all our lovings and our sufferings, and confused toilings
under the earthly Sun, are over. Thou good soul, I shall never,
never through all ages of Time, see thee any more!—NEVER! O
Reader, knowest thou that hard word?
For nearly two hours this agony lasts; then they tear themselves
asunder. "Promise that you will see us on the morrow." He
promises:—Ah yes, yes; yet once; and go now, ye loved ones; cry
to God for yourselves and me!—It was a hard scene, but it is
over. He will not see them on the morrow. The Queen in passing
through the ante-room glanced at the Cerberus Municipals; and
with woman's vehemence, said through her tears, "Vous etes tous
des scelerats."
King Louis slept sound, till five in the morning, when Clery, as
he had been ordered, awoke him. Clery dressed his hair. While
this went forward, Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept
trying it on his finger; it was his wedding-ring, which he is now
to return to the Queen as a mute farewell. At half-past six, he
took the Sacrament; and continued in devotion, and conference
with Abbe Edgeworth. He will not see his Family: it were too hard
to bear.
At eight, the Municipals enter: the King gives them his Will and
messages and effects; which they, at first, brutally refuse to
take charge of: he gives them a roll of gold pieces, a hundred
and twenty-five louis; these are to be returned to Malesherbes,
who had lent them. At nine, Santerre says the hour is come. The
King begs yet to retire for three minutes. At the end of three
minutes, Santerre again says the hour is come. 'Stamping on the
ground with his right foot, Louis answers: "Partons, let us
go."'—How the rolling of those drums comes in, through the Temple
bastions and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly wife; soon to be
a widow! He is gone, then, and has not seen us? A Queen weeps
bitterly; a King's Sister and Children. Over all these Four does
Death also hover: all shall perish miserably save one; she, as
Duchesse d'Angouleme, will live,—not happily.
At the Temple Gate were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of
pitiful women: "Grace! Grace!" Through the rest of the streets
there is silence as of the grave. No man not armed is allowed to
be there: the armed, did any even pity, dare not express it, each
man overawed by all his neighbours. All windows are down, none
seen looking through them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage
rolls this morning, in these streets but one only. Eighty
thousand armed men stand ranked, like armed statues of men;
cannons bristle, cannoneers with match burning, but no word or
movement: it is as a city enchanted into silence and stone; one
carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the only sound.
Louis reads, in his Book of Devotion, the Prayers of the Dying:
clatter of this death-march falls sharp on the ear, in the great
silence; but the thought would fain struggle heavenward, and
forget the Earth.
As the clocks strike ten, behold the Place de la Revolution, once
Place de Louis Quinze: the Guillotine, mounted near the old
Pedestal where once stood the Statue of that Louis! Far round,
all bristles with cannons and armed men: spectators crowding in
the rear; d'Orleans Egalite there in cabriolet. Swift messengers,
hoquetons, speed to the Townhall, every three minutes: near by is
the Convention sitting,—vengeful for Lepelletier. Heedless of
all, Louis reads his Prayers of the Dying; not till five minutes
yet has he finished; then the Carriage opens. What temper he is
in? Ten different witnesses will give ten different accounts of
it. He is in the collision of all tempers; arrived now at the
black Mahlstrom and descent of Death: in sorrow, in indignation,
in resignation struggling to be resigned. "Take care of M.
Edgeworth," he straitly charges the Lieutenant who is sitting
with them: then they two descend.
The drums are beating: "Taisez-vous, Silence!" he cries 'in a
terrible voice, d'une voix terrible.' He mounts the scaffold, not
without delay; he is in puce coat, breeches of grey, white
stockings. He strips off the coat; stands disclosed in a
sleeve-waistcoat of white flannel. The Executioners approach to
bind him: he spurns, resists; Abbe Edgeworth has to remind him
how the Saviour, in whom men trust, submitted to be bound. His
hands are tied, his head bare; the fatal moment is come. He
advances to the edge of the Scaffold, 'his face very red,' and
says: "Frenchmen, I die innocent: it is from the Scaffold and
near appearing before God that I tell you so. I pardon my
enemies; I desire that France—" A General on horseback, Santerre
or another, prances out with uplifted hand: "Tambours!" The drums
drown the voice. "Executioners do your duty!" The Executioners,
desperate lest themselves be murdered (_for Santerre and his
Armed Ranks will strike, if they do not_), seize the hapless
Louis: six of them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling
there; and bind him to their plank. Abbe Edgeworth, stooping,
bespeaks him: "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to Heaven." The Axe
clanks down; a King's Life is shorn away. It is Monday the 21st
of January 1793. He was aged Thirty-eight years four months and
twenty-eight days. (_Newspapers, Municipal Records, &c. &c. in
Hist. Parl. xxiii. 298-349_) Deux Amis (_ix. 369-373_), Mercier
(_Nouveau Paris, iii. 3-8._)
Executioner Samson shews the Head: fierce shout of Vive la
Republique rises, and swells; caps raised on bayonets, hats
waving: students of the College of Four Nations take it up, on
the far Quais; fling it over Paris. Orleans drives off in his
cabriolet; the Townhall Councillors rub their hands, saying, "It
is done, It is done." There is dipping of handkerchiefs, of
pike-points in the blood. Headsman Samson, though he afterwards
denied it, (_His Letter in the Newspapers, Hist. Parl. ubi
supra._) sells locks of the hair: fractions of the puce coat are
long after worn in rings. (_Forster's Briefwechsel, i. 473._)—And
so, in some half-hour it is done; and the multitude has all
departed. Pastrycooks, coffee-sellers, milkmen sing out their
trivial quotidian cries: the world wags on, as if this were a
common day. In the coffeehouses that evening, says Prudhomme,
Patriot shook hands with Patriot in a more cordial manner than
usual. Not till some days after, according to Mercier, did public
men see what a grave thing it was.
A grave thing it indisputably is; and will have consequences. On
the morrow morning, Roland, so long steeped to the lips in
disgust and chagrin, sends in his demission. His accounts lie all
ready, correct in black-on-white to the uttermost farthing: these
he wants but to have audited, that he might retire to remote
obscurity to the country and his books. They will never be
audited those accounts; he will never get retired thither.
It was on Tuesday that Roland demitted. On Thursday comes
Lepelletier St. Fargeau's Funeral, and passage to the Pantheon of
Great Men. Notable as the wild pageant of a winter day. The Body
is borne aloft, half-bare; the winding sheet disclosing the
death-wound: sabre and bloody clothes parade themselves; a
'lugubrious music' wailing harsh naeniae. Oak-crowns shower down
from windows; President Vergniaud walks there, with Convention,
with Jacobin Society, and all Patriots of every colour, all
mourning brotherlike.
Notable also for another thing, this Burial of Lepelletier: it
was the last act these men ever did with concert! All Parties and
figures of Opinion, that agitate this distracted France and its
Convention, now stand, as it were, face to face, and dagger to
dagger; the King's Life, round which they all struck and battled,
being hurled down. Dumouriez, conquering Holland, growls ominous
discontent, at the head of Armies. Men say Dumouriez will have a
King; that young d'Orleans Egalite shall be his King. Deputy
Fauchet, in the Journal des Amis, curses his day, more bitterly
than Job did; invokes the poniards of Regicides, of 'Arras
Vipers' or Robespierres, of Pluto Dantons, of horrid Butchers
Legendre and Simulacra d'Herbois, to send him swiftly to another
world than theirs. (_Hist. Parl. ubi supra._) This is Te-Deum
Fauchet, of the Bastille Victory, of the Cercle Social. Sharp was
the death-hail rattling round one's Flag-of-truce, on that
Bastille day: but it was soft to such wreckage of high Hope as
this; one's New Golden Era going down in leaden dross, and
sulphurous black of the Everlasting Darkness!
At home this Killing of a King has divided all friends; and
abroad it has united all enemies. Fraternity of Peoples,
Revolutionary Propagandism; Atheism, Regicide; total destruction
of social order in this world! All Kings, and lovers of Kings,
and haters of Anarchy, rank in coalition; as in a war for life.
England signifies to Citizen Chauvelin, the Ambassador or rather
Ambassador's-Cloak, that he must quit the country in eight days.
Ambassador's-Cloak and Ambassador, Chauvelin and Talleyrand,
depart accordingly. (_Annual Register of 1793, pp. 114-128._)
Talleyrand, implicated in that Iron Press of the Tuileries,
thinks it safest to make for America.
England has cast out the Embassy: England declares war,—being
shocked principally, it would seem, at the condition of the River
Scheldt. Spain declares war; being shocked principally at some
other thing; which doubtless the Manifesto indicates. (_23d
March, Annual Register, p. 161._) Nay we find it was not England
that declared war first, or Spain first; but that France herself
declared war first on both of them; (_1st February; 7th March,
Moniteur of these dates._)—a point of immense Parliamentary and
Journalistic interest in those days, but which has become of no
interest whatever in these. They all declare war. The sword is
drawn, the scabbard thrown away. It is even as Danton said, in
one of his all-too gigantic figures: "The coalised Kings threaten
us; we hurl at their feet, as gage of battle, the Head of a
King."
BOOK 3.III.
THE GIRONDINS
Chapter 3.3.I.
Cause and Effect.
This huge Insurrectionary Movement, which we liken to a breaking
out of Tophet and the Abyss, has swept away Royalty, Aristocracy,
and a King's life. The question is, What will it next do; how
will it henceforth shape itself? Settle down into a reign of Law
and Liberty; according as the habits, persuasions and endeavours
of the educated, monied, respectable class prescribe? That is to
say: the volcanic lava-flood, bursting up in the manner
described, will explode and flow according to Girondin Formula
and pre-established rule of Philosophy? If so, for our Girondin
friends it will be well.
Meanwhile were not the prophecy rather that as no external force,
Royal or other, now remains which could control this Movement,
the Movement will follow a course of its own; probably a very
original one? Further, that whatsoever man or men can best
interpret the inward tendencies it has, and give them voice and
activity, will obtain the lead of it? For the rest, that as a
thing without order, a thing proceeding from beyond and beneath
the region of order, it must work and welter, not as a Regularity
but as a Chaos; destructive and self-destructive; always till
something that has order arise, strong enough to bind it into
subjection again? Which something, we may further conjecture,
will not be a Formula, with philosophical propositions and
forensic eloquence; but a Reality, probably with a sword in its
hand!
As for the Girondin Formula, of a respectable Republic for the
Middle Classes, all manner of Aristocracies being now
sufficiently demolished, there seems little reason to expect that
the business will stop there. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,
these are the words; enunciative and prophetic. Republic for the
respectable washed Middle Classes, how can that be the fulfilment
thereof? Hunger and nakedness, and nightmare oppression lying
heavy on Twenty-five million hearts; this, not the wounded
vanities or contradicted philosophies of philosophical Advocates,
rich Shopkeepers, rural Noblesse, was the prime mover in the
French Revolution; as the like will be in all such Revolutions,
in all countries. Feudal Fleur-de-lys had become an insupportably
bad marching banner, and needed to be torn and trampled: but
Moneybag of Mammon (_for that, in these times, is what the
respectable Republic for the Middle Classes will signify_) is a
still worse, while it lasts. Properly, indeed, it is the worst
and basest of all banners, and symbols of dominion among men; and
indeed is possible only in a time of general Atheism, and
Unbelief in any thing save in brute Force and Sensualism; pride
of birth, pride of office, any known kind of pride being a degree
better than purse-pride. Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood: not in
the Moneybag, but far elsewhere, will Sansculottism seek these
things.
We say therefore that an Insurrectionary France, loose of control
from without, destitute of supreme order from within, will form
one of the most tumultuous Activities ever seen on this Earth;
such as no Girondin Formula can regulate. An immeasurable force,
made up of forces manifold, heterogeneous, compatible and
incompatible. In plainer words, this France must needs split into
Parties; each of which seeking to make itself good,
contradiction, exasperation will arise; and Parties on Parties
find that they cannot work together, cannot exist together.
As for the number of Parties, there will, strictly counting, be
as many Parties as there are Opinions. According to which rule,
in this National Convention itself, to say nothing of France
generally, the number of Parties ought to be Seven Hundred and
Forty-Nine; for every unit entertains his opinion. But now as
every unit has at once an individual nature, or necessity to
follow his own road, and a gregarious nature or necessity to see
himself travelling by the side of others,—what can there be but
dissolutions, precipitations, endless turbulence of attracting
and repelling; till once the master-element get evolved, and this
wild alchemy arrange itself again?
To the length of Seven Hundred and Forty-nine Parties, however,
no Nation was ever yet seen to go. Nor indeed much beyond the
length of Two Parties; two at a time;—so invincible is man's
tendency to unite, with all the invincible divisiveness he has!
Two Parties, we say, are the usual number at one time: let these
two fight it out, all minor shades of party rallying under the
shade likest them; when the one has fought down the other, then
it, in its turn, may divide, self-destructive; and so the process
continue, as far as needful. This is the way of Revolutions,
which spring up as the French one has done; when the so-called
Bonds of Society snap asunder; and all Laws that are not Laws of
Nature become naught and Formulas merely.
But quitting these somewhat abstract considerations, let History
note this concrete reality which the streets of Paris exhibit, on
Monday the 25th of February 1793. Long before daylight that
morning, these streets are noisy and angry. Petitioning enough
there has been; a Convention often solicited. It was but
yesterday there came a Deputation of Washerwomen with Petition;
complaining that not so much as soap could be had; to say nothing
of bread, and condiments of bread. The cry of women, round the
Salle de Manege, was heard plaintive: "Du pain et du savon, Bread
and Soap." (_Moniteur &c. Hist. Parl. xxiv. 332-348._)
And now from six o'clock, this Monday morning, one perceives the
Baker's Queues unusually expanded, angrily agitating themselves.
Not the Baker alone, but two Section Commissioners to help him,
manage with difficulty the daily distribution of loaves.
Soft-spoken assiduous, in the early candle-light, are Baker and
Commissioners: and yet the pale chill February sunrise discloses
an unpromising scene. Indignant Female Patriots, partly supplied
with bread, rush now to the shops, declaring that they will have
groceries. Groceries enough: sugar-barrels rolled forth into the
street, Patriot Citoyennes weighing it out at a just rate of
eleven-pence a pound; likewise coffee-chests, soap-chests, nay
cinnamon and cloves-chests, with aquavitae and other forms of
alcohol,—at a just rate, which some do not pay; the pale-faced
Grocer silently wringing his hands! What help? The distributive
Citoyennes are of violent speech and gesture, their long
Eumenides' hair hanging out of curl; nay in their girdles pistols
are seen sticking: some, it is even said, have beards,—male
Patriots in petticoats and mob-cap. Thus, in the streets of
Lombards, in the street of Five-Diamonds, street of Pullies, in
most streets of Paris does it effervesce, the livelong day; no
Municipality, no Mayor Pache, though he was War-Minister lately,
sends military against it, or aught against it but
persuasive-eloquence, till seven at night, or later.
On Monday gone five weeks, which was the twenty-first of January,
we saw Paris, beheading its King, stand silent, like a petrified
City of Enchantment: and now on this Monday it is so noisy,
selling sugar! Cities, especially Cities in Revolution, are
subject to these alternations; the secret courses of civic
business and existence effervescing and efflorescing, in this
manner, as a concrete Phenomenon to the eye. Of which Phenomenon,
when secret existence becoming public effloresces on the street,
the philosophical cause-and-effect is not so easy to find. What,
for example, may be the accurate philosophical meaning, and
meanings, of this sale of sugar? These things that have become
visible in the street of Pullies and over Paris, whence are they,
we say; and whither?—
That Pitt has a hand in it, the gold of Pitt: so much, to all
reasonable Patriot men, may seem clear. But then, through what
agents of Pitt? Varlet, Apostle of Liberty, was discerned again
of late, with his pike and his red nightcap. Deputy Marat
published in his journal, this very day, complaining of the
bitter scarcity, and sufferings of the people, till he seemed to
get wroth: 'If your Rights of Man were anything but a piece of
written paper, the plunder of a few shops, and a forestaller or
two hung up at the door-lintels, would put an end to such
things.' (_Hist. Parl. xxiv. 353-356._) Are not these, say the
Girondins, pregnant indications? Pitt has bribed the Anarchists;
Marat is the agent of Pitt: hence this sale of sugar. To the
Mother Society, again, it is clear that the scarcity is
factitious; is the work of Girondins, and such like; a set of men
sold partly to Pitt; sold wholly to their own ambitions, and
hard-hearted pedantries; who will not fix the grain-prices, but
prate pedantically of free-trade; wishing to starve Paris into
violence, and embroil it with the Departments: hence this sale of
sugar.
And, alas, if to these two notabilities, of a Phenomenon and such
Theories of a Phenomenon, we add this third notability, That the
French Nation has believed, for several years now, in the
possibility, nay certainty and near advent, of a universal
Millennium, or reign of Freedom, Equality, Fraternity, wherein
man should be the brother of man, and sorrow and sin flee away?
Not bread to eat, nor soap to wash with; and the reign of perfect
Felicity ready to arrive, due always since the Bastille fell! How
did our hearts burn within us, at that Feast of Pikes, when
brother flung himself on brother's bosom; and in sunny jubilee,
Twenty-five millions burst forth into sound and cannon-smoke!
Bright was our Hope then, as sunlight; red-angry is our Hope
grown now, as consuming fire. But, O Heavens, what enchantment is
it, or devilish legerdemain, of such effect, that Perfect
Felicity, always within arm's length, could never be laid hold
of, but only in her stead Controversy and Scarcity? This set of
traitors after that set! Tremble, ye traitors; dread a People
which calls itself patient, long-suffering; but which cannot
always submit to have its pocket picked, in this way,—of a
Millennium!
Yes, Reader, here is a miracle. Out of that putrescent rubbish of
Scepticism, Sensualism, Sentimentalism, hollow Machiavelism, such
a Faith has verily risen; flaming in the heart of a People. A
whole People, awakening as it were to consciousness in deep
misery, believes that it is within reach of a Fraternal
Heaven-on-Earth. With longing arms, it struggles to embrace the
Unspeakable; cannot embrace it, owing to certain causes.—Seldom
do we find that a whole People can be said to have any Faith at
all; except in things which it can eat and handle. Whensoever it
gets any Faith, its history becomes spirit-stirring, note-worthy.
But since the time when steel Europe shook itself simultaneously,
at the word of Hermit Peter, and rushed towards the Sepulchre
where God had lain, there was no universal impulse of Faith that
one could note. Since Protestantism went silent, no Luther's
voice, no Zisca's drum any longer proclaiming that God's Truth
was _not_ the Devil's Lie; and the last of the Cameronians
(_Renwick was the name of him; honour to the name of the brave!_)
sank, shot, on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh, there was no partial
impulse of Faith among Nations. Till now, behold, once more this
French Nation believes! Herein, we say, in that astonishing Faith
of theirs, lies the miracle. It is a Faith undoubtedly of the
more prodigious sort, even among Faiths; and will embody itself
in prodigies. It is the soul of that world-prodigy named French
Revolution; whereat the world still gazes and shudders.
But, for the rest, let no man ask History to explain by
cause-and-effect how the business proceeded henceforth. This
battle of Mountain and Gironde, and what follows, is the battle
of Fanaticisms and Miracles; unsuitable for cause-and-effect. The
sound of it, to the mind, is as a hubbub of voices in
distraction; little of articulate is to be gathered by long
listening and studying; only battle-tumult, shouts of triumph,
shrieks of despair. The Mountain has left no Memoirs; the
Girondins have left Memoirs, which are too often little other
than long-drawn Interjections, of Woe is me and Cursed be ye. So
soon as History can philosophically delineate the conflagration
of a kindled Fireship, she may try this other task. Here lay the
bitumen-stratum, there the brimstone one; so ran the vein of
gunpowder, of nitre, terebinth and foul grease: this, were she
inquisitive enough, History might partly know. But how they acted
and reacted below decks, one fire-stratum playing into the other,
by its nature and the art of man, now when all hands ran raging,
and the flames lashed high over shrouds and topmast: this let not
History attempt.
The Fireship is old France, the old French Form of Life; her
creed a Generation of men. Wild are their cries and their ragings
there, like spirits tormented in that flame. But, on the whole,
are they not gone, O Reader? Their Fireship and they, frightening
the world, have sailed away; its flames and its thunders quite
away, into the Deep of Time. One thing therefore History will do:
pity them all; for it went hard with them all. Not even the
seagreen Incorruptible but shall have some pity, some human love,
though it takes an effort. And now, so much once thoroughly
attained, the rest will become easier. To the eye of equal
brotherly pity, innumerable perversions dissipate themselves;
exaggerations and execrations fall off, of their own accord.
Standing wistfully on the safe shore, we will look, and see, what
is of interest to us, what is adapted to us.
Chapter 3.3.II.
Culottic and Sansculottic.
Gironde and Mountain are now in full quarrel; their mutual rage,
says Toulongeon, is growing a 'pale' rage. Curious, lamentable:
all these men have the word Republic on their lips; in the heart
of every one of them is a passionate wish for something which he
calls Republic: yet see their death-quarrel! So, however, are men
made. Creatures who live in confusion; who, once thrown together,
can readily fall into that confusion of confusions which quarrel
is, simply because their confusions differ from one another;
still more because they seem to differ! Men's words are a poor
exponent of their thought; nay their thought itself is a poor
exponent of the inward unnamed Mystery, wherefrom both thought
and action have their birth. No man can explain himself, can get
himself explained; men see not one another but distorted
phantasms which they call one another; which they hate and go to
battle with: for all battle is well said to be misunderstanding.
But indeed that similitude of the Fireship; of our poor French
brethren, so fiery themselves, working also in an element of
fire, was not insignificant. Consider it well, there is a shade
of the truth in it. For a man, once committed headlong to
republican or any other Transcendentalism, and fighting and
fanaticising amid a Nation of his like, becomes as it were
enveloped in an ambient atmosphere of Transcendentalism and
Delirium: his individual self is lost in something that is not
himself, but foreign though inseparable from him. Strange to
think of, the man's cloak still seems to hold the same man: and
yet the man is not there, his volition is not there; nor the
source of what he will do and devise; instead of the man and his
volition there is a piece of Fanaticism and Fatalism incarnated
in the shape of him. He, the hapless incarnated Fanaticism, goes
his road; no man can help him, he himself least of all. It is a
wonderful tragical predicament;—such as human language, unused to
deal with these things, being contrived for the uses of common
life, struggles to shadow out in figures. The ambient element of
material fire is not wilder than this of Fanaticism; nor, though
visible to the eye, is it more real. Volition bursts forth
involuntary; rapt along; the movement of free human minds becomes
a raging tornado of fatalism, blind as the winds; and Mountain
and Gironde, when they recover themselves, are alike astounded to
see where it has flung and dropt them. To such height of miracle
can men work on men; the Conscious and the Unconscious blended
inscrutably in this our inscrutable Life; endless Necessity
environing Freewill!
The weapons of the Girondins are Political Philosophy,
Respectability and Eloquence. Eloquence, or call it rhetoric,
really of a superior order; Vergniaud, for instance, turns a
period as sweetly as any man of that generation. The weapons of
the Mountain are those of mere nature: Audacity and Impetuosity
which may become Ferocity, as of men complete in their
determination, in their conviction; nay of men, in some cases,
who as Septemberers must either prevail or perish. The ground to
be fought for is Popularity: further you may either seek
Popularity with the friends of Freedom and Order, or with the
friends of Freedom Simple; to seek it with both has unhappily
become impossible. With the former sort, and generally with the
Authorities of the Departments, and such as read Parliamentary
Debates, and are of Respectability, and of a peace-loving monied
nature, the Girondins carry it. With the extreme Patriot again,
with the indigent millions, especially with the Population of
Paris who do not read so much as hear and see, the Girondins
altogether lose it, and the Mountain carries it.
Egoism, nor meanness of mind, is not wanting on either side.
Surely not on the Girondin side; where in fact the instinct of
self-preservation, too prominently unfolded by circumstances,
cuts almost a sorry figure; where also a certain finesse, to the
length even of shuffling and shamming, now and then shews itself.
They are men skilful in Advocate-fence. They have been called the
Jesuits of the Revolution; (_Dumouriez, Memoires, iii. 314._) but
that is too hard a name. It must be owned likewise that this rude
blustering Mountain has a sense in it of what the Revolution
means; which these eloquent Girondins are totally void of. Was
the Revolution made, and fought for, against the world, these
four weary years, that a Formula might be substantiated; that
Society might become methodic, demonstrable by logic; and the old
Noblesse with their pretensions vanish? Or ought it not withal to
bring some glimmering of light and alleviation to the Twenty-five
Millions, who sat in darkness, heavy-laden, till they rose with
pikes in their hands? At least and lowest, one would think, it
should bring them a proportion of bread to live on? There is in
the Mountain here and there; in Marat People's-friend; in the
incorruptible Seagreen himself, though otherwise so lean and
formularly, a heartfelt knowledge of this latter fact;—without
which knowledge all other knowledge here is naught, and the
choicest forensic eloquence is as sounding brass and a tinkling
cymbal. Most cold, on the other hand, most patronising,
unsubstantial is the tone of the Girondins towards 'our poorer
brethren;'—those brethren whom one often hears of under the
collective name of 'the masses,' as if they were not persons at
all, but mounds of combustible explosive material, for blowing
down Bastilles with! In very truth, a Revolutionist of this kind,
is he not a Solecism? Disowned by Nature and Art; deserving only
to be erased, and disappear! Surely, to our poorer brethren of
Paris, all this Girondin patronage sounds deadening and killing:
if fine-spoken and incontrovertible in logic, then all the
falser, all the hatefuller in fact.
Nay doubtless, pleading for Popularity, here among our poorer
brethren of Paris, the Girondin has a hard game to play. If he
gain the ear of the Respectable at a distance, it is by insisting
on September and such like; it is at the expense of this Paris
where he dwells and perorates. Hard to perorate in such an
auditory! Wherefore the question arises: Could we not get
ourselves out of this Paris? Twice or oftener such an attempt is
made. If not we ourselves, thinks Guadet, then at least our
Suppleans might do it. For every Deputy has his Suppleant, or
Substitute, who will take his place if need be: might not these
assemble, say at Bourges, which is a quiet episcopal Town, in
quiet Berri, forty good leagues off? In that case, what profit
were it for the Paris Sansculottery to insult us; our Suppleans
sitting quiet in Bourges, to whom we could run? Nay even the
Primary electoral Assemblies, thinks Guadet, might be reconvoked,
and a New Convention got, with new orders from the Sovereign
people; and right glad were Lyons, were Bourdeaux, Rouen,
Marseilles, as yet Provincial Towns, to welcome us in their turn,
and become a sort of Capital Towns; and teach these Parisians
reason.
Fond schemes; which all misgo! If decreed, in heat of eloquent
logic, to-day, they are repealed, by clamour, and passionate
wider considerations, on the morrow. (_Moniteur, 1793, No. 140,
&c._) Will you, O Girondins, parcel us into separate Republics,
then; like the Swiss, like your Americans; so that there be no
Metropolis or indivisible French Nation any more? Your
Departmental Guard seemed to point that way! Federal Republic?
Federalist? Men and Knitting-women repeat Federaliste, with or
without much Dictionary-meaning; but go on repeating it, as is
usual in such cases, till the meaning of it becomes almost
magical, fit to designate all mystery of Iniquity; and
Federaliste has grown a word of Exorcism and Apage-Satanas. But
furthermore, consider what 'poisoning of public opinion' in the
Departments, by these Brissot, Gorsas, Caritat-Condorcet
Newspapers! And then also what counter-poisoning, still feller in
quality, by a Pere Duchesne of Hebert, brutallest Newspaper yet
published on Earth; by a Rougiff of Guffroy; by the 'incendiary
leaves of Marat!' More than once, on complaint given and
effervescence rising, it is decreed that a man cannot both be
Legislator and Editor; that he shall choose between the one
function and the other. (_Hist. Parl. xxv. 25, &c._) But this
too, which indeed could help little, is revoked or eluded;
remains a pious wish mainly.
Meanwhile, as the sad fruit of such strife, behold, O ye National
Representatives, how between the friends of Law and the friends
of Freedom everywhere, mere heats and jealousies have arisen;
fevering the whole Republic! Department, Provincial Town is set
against Metropolis, Rich against Poor, Culottic against
Sansculottic, man against man. From the Southern Cities come
Addresses of an almost inculpatory character; for Paris has long
suffered Newspaper calumny. Bourdeaux demands a reign of Law and
Respectability, meaning Girondism, with emphasis. With emphasis
Marseilles demands the like. Nay from Marseilles there come two
Addresses: one Girondin; one Jacobin Sansculottic. Hot Rebecqui,
sick of this Convention-work, has given place to his Substitute,
and gone home; where also, with such jarrings, there is work to
be sick of.
Lyons, a place of Capitalists and Aristocrats, is in still worse
state; almost in revolt. Chalier the Jacobin Town-Councillor has
got, too literally, to daggers-drawn with Nievre-Chol the
Moderantin Mayor; one of your Moderate, perhaps Aristocrat,
Royalist or Federalist Mayors! Chalier, who pilgrimed to Paris
'to behold Marat and the Mountain,' has verily kindled himself at
their sacred urn: for on the 6th of February last, History or
Rumour has seen him haranguing his Lyons Jacobins in a quite
transcendental manner, with a drawn dagger in his hand;
recommending (_they say_) sheer September-methods, patience being
worn out; and that the Jacobin Brethren should, impromptu, work
the Guillotine themselves! One sees him still, in Engravings:
mounted on a table; foot advanced, body contorted; a bald, rude,
slope-browed, infuriated visage of the canine species, the eyes
starting from their sockets; in his puissant right-hand the
brandished dagger, or horse-pistol, as some give it; other
dog-visages kindling under him:—a man not likely to end well!
However, the Guillotine was not got together impromptu, that day,
'on the Pont Saint-Clair,' or elsewhere; but indeed continued
lying rusty in its loft: (_Hist. Parl. xxiv. 385-93; xxvi. 229,
&c._) Nievre-Chol with military went about, rumbling cannon, in
the most confused manner; and the 'nine hundred prisoners'
received no hurt. So distracted is Lyons grown, with its cannon
rumbling. Convention Commissioners must be sent thither
forthwith: if even they can appease it, and keep the Guillotine
in its loft?
Consider finally if, on all these mad jarrings of the Southern
Cities, and of France generally, a traitorous Crypto-Royalist
class is not looking and watching; ready to strike in, at the
right season! Neither is there bread; neither is there soap: see
the Patriot women selling out sugar, at a just rate of twenty-two
sous per pound! Citizen Representatives, it were verily well that
your quarrels finished, and the reign of Perfect Felicity began.
Chapter 3.3.III.
Growing shrill.
On the whole, one cannot say that the Girondins are wanting to
themselves, so far as good-will might go. They prick assiduously
into the sore-places of the Mountain; from principle, and also
from jesuitism.
Besides September, of which there is now little to be made except
effervescence, we discern two sore-places where the Mountain
often suffers: Marat and Orleans Egalite. Squalid Marat, for his
own sake and for the Mountain's, is assaulted ever and anon; held
up to France, as a squalid bloodthirsty Portent, inciting to the
pillage of shops; of whom let the Mountain have the credit! The
Mountain murmurs, ill at ease: this 'Maximum of Patriotism,' how
shall they either own him or disown him? As for Marat personally,
he, with his fixed-idea, remains invulnerable to such things: nay
the People's-friend is very evidently rising in importance, as
his befriended People rises. No shrieks now, when he goes to
speak; occasional applauses rather, furtherance which breeds
confidence. The day when the Girondins proposed to 'decree him
accused' (_decreter d'accusation, as they phrase it_) for that
February Paragraph, of 'hanging up a Forestaller or two at the
door-lintels,' Marat proposes to have them 'decreed insane;' and,
descending the Tribune-steps, is heard to articulate these most
unsenatorial ejaculations: "Les Cochons, les imbecilles, Pigs,
idiots!" Oftentimes he croaks harsh sarcasm, having really a
rough rasping tongue, and a very deep fund of contempt for fine
outsides; and once or twice, he even laughs, nay 'explodes into
laughter, rit aux eclats,' at the gentilities and superfine airs
of these Girondin "men of statesmanship," with their pedantries,
plausibilities, pusillanimities: "these two years," says he, "you
have been whining about attacks, and plots, and danger from
Paris; and you have not a scratch to shew for yourselves."
(_Moniteur, Seance du 20 Mai 1793._)—Danton gruffly rebukes him,
from time to time: a Maximum of Patriotism, whom one can neither
own nor disown!
But the second sore-place of the Mountain is this anomalous
Monseigneur Equality Prince d'Orleans. Behold these men, says the
Gironde; with a whilom Bourbon Prince among them: they are
creatures of the d'Orleans Faction; they will have Philippe made
King; one King no sooner guillotined than another made in his
stead! Girondins have moved, Buzot moved long ago, from principle
and also from jesuitism, that the whole race of Bourbons should
be marched forth from the soil of France; this Prince Egalite to
bring up the rear. Motions which might produce some effect on the
public;—which the Mountain, ill at ease, knows not what to do
with.
And poor Orleans Egalite himself, for one begins to pity even
him, what does he do with them? The disowned of all parties, the
rejected and foolishly be-drifted hither and hither, to what
corner of Nature can he now drift with advantage? Feasible hope
remains not for him: unfeasible hope, in pallid doubtful
glimmers, there may still come, bewildering, not cheering or
illuminating,—from the Dumouriez quarter; and how, if not the
timewasted Orleans Egalite, then perhaps the young unworn
Chartres Egalite might rise to be a kind of King? Sheltered, if
shelter it be, in the clefts of the Mountain, poor Egalite will
wait: one refuge in Jacobinism, one in Dumouriez and
Counter-Revolution, are there not two chances? However, the look
of him, Dame Genlis says, is grown gloomy; sad to see. Sillery
also, the Genlis's Husband, who hovers about the Mountain, not on
it, is in a bad way. Dame Genlis has come to Raincy, out of
England and Bury St. Edmunds, in these days; being summoned by
Egalite, with her young charge, Mademoiselle Egalite, that so
Mademoiselle might not be counted among Emigrants and hardly
dealt with. But it proves a ravelled business: Genlis and charge
find that they must retire to the Netherlands; must wait on the
Frontiers for a week or two; till Monseigneur, by Jacobin help,
get it wound up. 'Next morning,' says Dame Genlis, 'Monseigneur,
gloomier than ever, gave me his arm, to lead me to the carriage.
I was greatly troubled; Mademoiselle burst into tears; her Father
was pale and trembling. After I had got seated, he stood
immovable at the carriage-door, with his eyes fixed on me; his
mournful and painful look seemed to implore pity;—"Adieu,
Madame!" said he. The altered sound of his voice completely
overcame me; not able to utter a word, I held out my hand; he
grasped it close; then turning, and advancing sharply towards the
postillions, he gave them a sign, and we rolled away.' (_Genlis,
Memoires (_London, 1825_), iv. 118._)
Nor are Peace-makers wanting; of whom likewise we mention two;
one fast on the crown of the Mountain, the other not yet alighted
anywhere: Danton and Barrere. Ingenious Barrere, Old-Constituent
and Editor from the slopes of the Pyrenees, is one of the
usefullest men of this Convention, in his way. Truth may lie on
both sides, on either side, or on neither side; my friends, ye
must give and take: for the rest, success to the winning side!
This is the motto of Barrere. Ingenious, almost genial;
quick-sighted, supple, graceful; a man that will prosper.
Scarcely Belial in the assembled Pandemonium was plausibler to
ear and eye. An indispensable man: in the great Art of Varnish he
may be said to seek his fellow. Has there an explosion arisen, as
many do arise, a confusion, unsightliness, which no tongue can
speak of, nor eye look on; give it to Barrere; Barrere shall be
Committee-Reporter of it; you shall see it transmute itself into
a regularity, into the very beauty and improvement that was
needed. Without one such man, we say, how were this Convention
bested? Call him not, as exaggerative Mercier does, 'the greatest
liar in France:' nay it may be argued there is not truth enough
in him to make a real lie of. Call him, with Burke, Anacreon of
the Guillotine, and a man serviceable to this Convention.
The other Peace-maker whom we name is Danton. Peace, O peace with
one another! cries Danton often enough: Are we not alone against
the world; a little band of brothers? Broad Danton is loved by
all the Mountain; but they think him too easy-tempered, deficient
in suspicion: he has stood between Dumouriez and much censure,
anxious not to exasperate our only General: in the shrill tumult
Danton's strong voice reverberates, for union and pacification.
Meetings there are; dinings with the Girondins: it is so
pressingly essential that there be union. But the Girondins are
haughty and respectable; this Titan Danton is not a man of
Formulas, and there rests on him a shadow of September. "Your
Girondins have no confidence in me:" this is the answer a
conciliatory Meillan gets from him; to all the arguments and
pleadings this conciliatory Meillan can bring, the repeated
answer is, "Ils n'ont point de confiance." (_Memoires de Meillan,
Representant du Peuple (_Paris, 1823_), p. 51._)—The tumult will
get ever shriller; rage is growing pale.
In fact, what a pang is it to the heart of a Girondin, this first
withering probability that the despicable unphilosophic anarchic
Mountain, after all, may triumph! Brutal Septemberers, a
fifth-floor Tallien, 'a Robespierre without an idea in his head,'
as Condorcet says, 'or a feeling in his heart:' and yet we, the
flower of France, cannot stand against them; behold the sceptre
departs from us; from us and goes to them! Eloquence,
Philosophism, Respectability avail not: 'against Stupidity the
very gods fight to no purpose,
'Mit der Dummheit kampfen Gotter selbst vergebens!'
Shrill are the plaints of Louvet; his thin existence all
acidified into rage, and preternatural insight of suspicion.
Wroth is young Barbaroux; wroth and scornful. Silent, like a
Queen with the aspic on her bosom, sits the wife of Roland;
Roland's Accounts never yet got audited, his name become a
byword. Such is the fortune of war, especially of revolution. The
great gulf of Tophet, and Tenth of August, opened itself at the
magic of your eloquent voice; and lo now, it will not close at
your voice! It is a dangerous thing such magic. The Magician's
Famulus got hold of the forbidden Book, and summoned a goblin:
Plait-il, What is your will? said the Goblin. The Famulus,
somewhat struck, bade him fetch water: the swift goblin fetched
it, pail in each hand; but lo, would not cease fetching it!
Desperate, the Famulus shrieks at him, smites at him, cuts him in
two; lo, two goblin water-carriers ply; and the house will be
swum away in Deucalion Deluges.
Chapter 3.3.IV.
Fatherland in Danger.
Or rather we will say, this Senatorial war might have lasted
long; and Party tugging and throttling with Party might have
suppressed and smothered one another, in the ordinary bloodless
Parliamentary way; on one condition: that France had been at
least able to exist, all the while. But this Sovereign People has
a digestive faculty, and cannot do without bread. Also we are at
war, and must have victory; at war with Europe, with Fate and
Famine: and behold, in the spring of the year, all victory
deserts us.
Dumouriez had his outposts stretched as far as Aix-la-Chapelle,
and the beautifullest plan for pouncing on Holland, by stratagem,
flat-bottomed boats and rapid intrepidity; wherein too he had
prospered so far; but unhappily could prosper no further.
Aix-la-Chapelle is lost; Maestricht will not surrender to mere
smoke and noise: the flat-bottomed boats must launch themselves
again, and return the way they came. Steady now, ye rapidly
intrepid men; retreat with firmness, Parthian-like! Alas, were it
General Miranda's fault; were it the War-minister's fault; or
were it Dumouriez's own fault and that of Fortune: enough, there
is nothing for it but retreat,—well if it be not even flight; for
already terror-stricken cohorts and stragglers pour off, not
waiting for order; flow disastrous, as many as ten thousand of
them, without halt till they see France again. (_Dumouriez, iv.
16-73._) Nay worse: Dumouriez himself is perhaps secretly turning
traitor? Very sharp is the tone in which he writes to our
Committees. Commissioners and Jacobin Pillagers have done such
incalculable mischief; Hassenfratz sends neither cartridges nor
clothing; shoes we have, deceptively 'soled with wood and
pasteboard.' Nothing in short is right. Danton and Lacroix, when
it was they that were Commissioners, would needs join Belgium to
France;—of which Dumouriez might have made the prettiest little
Duchy for his own secret behoof! With all these things the
General is wroth; and writes to us in a sharp tone. Who knows
what this hot little General is meditating? Dumouriez Duke of
Belgium or Brabant; and say, Egalite the Younger King of France:
there were an end for our Revolution!—Committee of Defence gazes,
and shakes its head: who except Danton, defective in suspicion,
could still struggle to be of hope?
And General Custine is rolling back from the Rhine Country;
conquered Mentz will be reconquered, the Prussians gathering
round to bombard it with shot and shell. Mentz may resist,
Commissioner Merlin, the Thionviller, 'making sallies, at the
head of the besieged;'—resist to the death; but not longer than
that. How sad a reverse for Mentz! Brave Foster, brave Lux
planted Liberty-trees, amid ca-ira-ing music, in the snow-slush
of last winter, there: and made Jacobin Societies; and got the
Territory incorporated with France: they came hither to Paris, as
Deputies or Delegates, and have their eighteen francs a-day: but
see, before once the Liberty-Tree is got rightly in leaf, Mentz
is changing into an explosive crater; vomiting fire, bevomited
with fire!
Neither of these men shall again see Mentz; they have come hither
only to die. Foster has been round the Globe; he saw Cook perish
under Owyhee clubs; but like this Paris he has yet seen or
suffered nothing. Poverty escorts him: from home there can
nothing come, except Job's-news; the eighteen daily francs, which
we here as Deputy or Delegate with difficulty 'touch,' are in
paper assignats, and sink fast in value. Poverty, disappointment,
inaction, obloquy; the brave heart slowly breaking! Such is
Foster's lot. For the rest, Demoiselle Theroigne smiles on you in
the Soirees; 'a beautiful brownlocked face,' of an exalted
temper; and contrives to keep her carriage. Prussian Trenck, the
poor subterranean Baron, jargons and jangles in an unmelodious
manner. Thomas Paine's face is red-pustuled, 'but the eyes
uncommonly bright.' Convention Deputies ask you to dinner: very
courteous; and 'we all play at plumsack.' (_Forster's
Briefwechsel, ii. 514, 460, 631._) 'It is the Explosion and
New-creation of a World,' says Foster; 'and the actors in it,
such small mean objects, buzzing round one like a handful of
flies.'—
Likewise there is war with Spain. Spain will advance through the
gorges of the Pyrenees; rustling with Bourbon banners; jingling
with artillery and menace. And England has donned the red coat;
and marches, with Royal Highness of York,—whom some once spake of
inviting to be our King. Changed that humour now: and ever more
changing; till no hatefuller thing walk this Earth than a denizen
of that tyrannous Island; and Pitt be declared and decreed, with
effervescence, 'L'ennemi du genre humain, The enemy of mankind;'
and, very singular to say, you make an order that no Soldier of
Liberty give quarter to an Englishman. Which order however, the
Soldier of Liberty does but partially obey. We will take no
Prisoners then, say the Soldiers of Liberty; they shall all be
'Deserters' that we take. (_See Dampmartin, Evenemens, ii.
213-30._) It is a frantic order; and attended with inconvenience.
For surely, if you give no quarter, the plain issue is that you
will get none; and so the business become as broad as it was
long.—Our 'recruitment of Three Hundred Thousand men,' which was
the decreed force for this year, is like to have work enough laid
to its hand.
So many enemies come wending on; penetrating through throats of
Mountains, steering over the salt sea; towards all points of our
territory; rattling chains at us. Nay worst of all: there is an
enemy within our own territory itself. In the early days of
March, the Nantes Postbags do not arrive; there arrive only
instead of them Conjecture, Apprehension, bodeful wind of Rumour.
The bodefullest proves true! Those fanatic Peoples of La Vendee
will no longer keep under: their fire of insurrection, heretofore
dissipated with difficulty, blazes out anew, after the King's
Death, as a wide conflagration; not riot, but civil war. Your
Cathelineaus, your Stofflets, Charettes, are other men than was
thought: behold how their Peasants, in mere russet and hodden,
with their rude arms, rude array, with their fanatic Gaelic
frenzy and wild-yelling battle-cry of God and the King, dash at
us like a dark whirlwind; and blow the best-disciplined Nationals
we can get into panic and sauve-qui-peut! Field after field is
theirs; one sees not where it will end. Commandant Santerre may
be sent thither; but with non-effect; he might as well have
returned and brewed beer.
It has become peremptorily necessary that a National Convention
cease arguing, and begin acting. Yield one party of you to the
other, and do it swiftly. No theoretic outlook is here, but the
close certainty of ruin; the very day that is passing over must
be provided for.
It was Friday the eighth of March when this Job's-post from
Dumouriez, thickly preceded and escorted by so many other
Job's-posts, reached the National Convention. Blank enough are
most faces. Little will it avail whether our Septemberers be
punished or go unpunished; if Pitt and Cobourg are coming in,
with one punishment for us all; nothing now between Paris itself
and the Tyrants but a doubtful Dumouriez, and hosts in
loose-flowing loud retreat!—Danton the Titan rises in this hour,
as always in the hour of need. Great is his voice, reverberating
from the domes:—Citizen-Representatives, shall we not, in such
crisis of Fate, lay aside discords? Reputation: O what is the
reputation of this man or of that? Que mon nom soit fletri, que
la France soit libre, Let my name be blighted; let France be
free! It is necessary now again that France rise, in swift
vengeance, with her million right-hands, with her heart as of one
man. Instantaneous recruitment in Paris; let every Section of
Paris furnish its thousands; every section of France! Ninety-six
Commissioners of us, two for each Section of the Forty-eight,
they must go forthwith, and tell Paris what the Country needs of
her. Let Eighty more of us be sent, post-haste, over France; to
spread the fire-cross, to call forth the might of men. Let the
Eighty also be on the road, before this sitting rise. Let them
go, and think what their errand is. Speedy Camp of Fifty thousand
between Paris and the North Frontier; for Paris will pour forth
her volunteers! Shoulder to shoulder; one strong universal
death-defiant rising and rushing; we shall hurl back these Sons
of Night yet again; and France, in spite of the world, be free!
(_Moniteur in Hist. Parl. xxv. 6._)—So sounds the Titan's voice:
into all Section-houses; into all French hearts. Sections sit in
Permanence, for recruitment, enrolment, that very night.
Convention Commissioners, on swift wheels, are carrying the
fire-cross from Town to Town, till all France blaze.
And so there is Flag of Fatherland in Danger waving from the
Townhall, Black Flag from the top of Notre-Dame Cathedral; there
is Proclamation, hot eloquence; Paris rushing out once again to
strike its enemies down. That, in such circumstances, Paris was
in no mild humour can be conjectured. Agitated streets; still
more agitated round the Salle de Manege! Feuillans-Terrace crowds
itself with angry Citizens, angrier Citizenesses; Varlet
perambulates with portable-chair: ejaculations of no measured
kind, as to perfidious fine-spoken Hommes d'etat, friends of
Dumouriez, secret-friends of Pitt and Cobourg, burst from the
hearts and lips of men. To fight the enemy? Yes, and even to
"freeze him with terror, glacer d'effroi;" but first to have
domestic Traitors punished! Who are they that, carping and
quarrelling, in their jesuitic most moderate way, seek to shackle
the Patriotic movement? That divide France against Paris, and
poison public opinion in the Departments? That when we ask for
bread, and a Maximum fixed-price, treat us with lectures on
Free-trade in grains? Can the human stomach satisfy itself with
lectures on Free-trade; and are we to fight the Austrians in a
moderate manner, or in an immoderate? This Convention must be
purged.
"Set up a swift Tribunal for Traitors, a Maximum for Grains:"
thus speak with energy the Patriot Volunteers, as they defile
through the Convention Hall, just on the wing to the
Frontiers;—perorating in that heroical Cambyses' vein of theirs:
beshouted by the Galleries and Mountain; bemurmured by the
Right-side and Plain. Nor are prodigies wanting: lo, while a
Captain of the Section Poissonniere perorates with vehemence
about Dumouriez, Maximum, and Crypto-Royalist Traitors, and his
troop beat chorus with him, waving their Banner overhead, the eye
of a Deputy discerns, in this same Banner, that the cravates or
streamers of it have Royal fleurs-de-lys! The Section-Captain
shrieks; his troop shriek, horror-struck, and 'trample the Banner
under foot:' seemingly the work of some Crypto-Royalist Plotter?
Most probable; (_Choix des Rapports, xi. 277._)—or perhaps at
bottom, only the old Banner of the Section, manufactured prior to
the Tenth of August, when such streamers were according to rule!
(_Hist. Parl. xxv. 72._)
History, looking over the Girondin Memoirs, anxious to
disentangle the truth of them from the hysterics, finds these
days of March, especially this Sunday the Tenth of March, play a
great part. Plots, plots: a plot for murdering the Girondin
Deputies; Anarchists and Secret-Royalists plotting, in hellish
concert, for that end! The far greater part of which is
hysterics. What we do find indisputable is that Louvet and
certain Girondins were apprehensive they might be murdered on
Saturday, and did not go to the evening sitting: but held council
with one another, each inciting his fellow to do something
resolute, and end these Anarchists: to which, however, Petion,
opening the window, and finding the night very wet, answered
only, "Ils ne feront rien," and 'composedly resumed his violin,'
says Louvet: (_Louvet, Memoires, p. 72._) thereby, with soft
Lydian tweedledeeing, to wrap himself against eating cares. Also
that Louvet felt especially liable to being killed; that several
Girondins went abroad to seek beds: liable to being killed; but
were not. Further that, in very truth, Journalist Deputy Gorsas,
poisoner of the Departments, he and his Printer had their houses
broken into (_by a tumult of Patriots, among whom red-capped
Varlet, American Fournier loom forth, in the darkness of the rain
and riot_); had their wives put in fear; their presses, types and
circumjacent equipments beaten to ruin; no Mayor interfering in
time; Gorsas himself escaping, pistol in hand, 'along the coping
of the back wall.' Further that Sunday, the morrow, was not a
workday; and the streets were more agitated than ever: Is it a
new September, then, that these Anarchists intend? Finally, that
no September came;—and also that hysterics, not unnaturally, had
reached almost their acme. (_Meillan, pp. 23, 24; Louvet, pp.
71-80._)
Vergniaud denounces and deplores; in sweetly turned periods.
Section Bonconseil, Good-counsel so-named, not Mauconseil or
Ill-counsel as it once was,—does a far notabler thing: demands
that Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, and other denunciatory
fine-spoken Girondins, to the number of Twenty-two, be put under
arrest! Section Good-counsel, so named ever since the Tenth of
August, is sharply rebuked, like a Section of Ill-counsel;
(_Moniteur (_Seance du 12 Mars_), 15 Mars._) but its word is
spoken, and will not fall to the ground.
In fact, one thing strikes us in these poor Girondins; their
fatal shortness of vision; nay fatal poorness of character, for
that is the root of it. They are as strangers to the People they
would govern; to the thing they have come to work in. Formulas,
Philosophies, Respectabilities, what has been written in Books,
and admitted by the Cultivated Classes; this inadequate Scheme of
Nature's working is all that Nature, let her work as she will,
can reveal to these men. So they perorate and speculate; and call
on the Friends of Law, when the question is not Law or No-Law,
but Life or No-Life. Pedants of the Revolution, if not Jesuits of
it! Their Formalism is great; great also is their Egoism. France
rising to fight Austria has been raised only by Plot of the Tenth
of March, to kill Twenty-two of them! This Revolution Prodigy,
unfolding itself into terrific stature and articulation, by its
own laws and Nature's, not by the laws of Formula, has become
unintelligible, incredible as an impossibility, the waste chaos
of a Dream.' A Republic founded on what they call the Virtues; on
what we call the Decencies and Respectabilities: this they will
have, and nothing but this. Whatsoever other Republic Nature and
Reality send, shall be considered as not sent; as a kind of
Nightmare Vision, and thing non-extant; disowned by the Laws of
Nature, and of Formula. Alas! Dim for the best eyes is this
Reality; and as for these men, they will not look at it with eyes
at all, but only through 'facetted spectacles' of Pedantry,
wounded Vanity; which yield the most portentous fallacious
spectrum. Carping and complaining forever of Plots and Anarchy,
they will do one thing: prove, to demonstration, that the Reality
will not translate into their Formula; that they and their
Formula are incompatible with the Reality: and, in its dark
wrath, the Reality will extinguish it and them! What a man kens
he cans. But the beginning of a man's doom is that vision be
withdrawn from him; that he see not the reality, but a false
spectrum of the reality; and, following that, step darkly, with
more or less velocity, downwards to the utter Dark; to Ruin,
which is the great Sea of Darkness, whither all falsehoods,
winding or direct, continually flow!
This Tenth of March we may mark as an epoch in the Girondin
destinies; the rage so exasperated itself, the misconception so
darkened itself. Many desert the sittings; many come to them
armed. (_Meillan, Memoires, pp. 85, 24._) An honourable Deputy,
setting out after breakfast, must now, besides taking his Notes,
see whether his Priming is in order.
Meanwhile with Dumouriez in Belgium it fares ever worse. Were it
again General Miranda's fault, or some other's fault, there is no
doubt whatever but the 'Battle of Nerwinden,' on the 18th of
March, is lost; and our rapid retreat has become a far too rapid
one. Victorious Cobourg, with his Austrian prickers, hangs like a
dark cloud on the rear of us: Dumouriez never off horseback night
or day; engagement every three hours; our whole discomfited Host
rolling rapidly inwards, full of rage, suspicion, and
sauve-qui-peut! And then Dumouriez himself, what his intents may
be? Wicked seemingly and not charitable! His despatches to
Committee openly denounce a factious Convention, for the woes it
has brought on France and him. And his speeches—for the General
has no reticence! The Execution of the Tyrant this Dumouriez
calls the Murder of the King. Danton and Lacroix, flying thither
as Commissioners once more, return very doubtful; even Danton now
doubts.
Three Jacobin Missionaries, Proly, Dubuisson, Pereyra, have flown
forth; sped by a wakeful Mother Society: they are struck dumb to
hear the General speak. The Convention, according to this
General, consists of three hundred scoundrels and four hundred
imbeciles: France cannot do without a King. "But we have executed
our King." "And what is it to me," hastily cries Dumouriez, a
General of no reticence, "whether the King's name be Ludovicus or
Jacobus?" "Or Philippus!" rejoins Proly;—and hastens to report
progress. Over the Frontiers such hope is there.
Chapter 3.3.V.
Sansculottism Accoutred.
Let us look, however, at the grand internal Sansculottism and
Revolution Prodigy, whether it stirs and waxes: there and not
elsewhere hope may still be for France. The Revolution Prodigy,
as Decree after Decree issues from the Mountain, like creative
fiats, accordant with the nature of the Thing,—is shaping itself
rapidly, in these days, into terrific stature and articulation,
limb after limb. Last March, 1792, we saw all France flowing in
blind terror; shutting town-barriers, boiling pitch for Brigands:
happier, this March, that it is a seeing terror; that a creative
Mountain exists, which can say fiat! Recruitment proceeds with
fierce celerity: nevertheless our Volunteers hesitate to set out,
till Treason be punished at home; they do not fly to the
frontiers; but only fly hither and thither, demanding and
denouncing. The Mountain must speak new fiat, and new fiats.
And does it not speak such? Take, as first example, those Comites
Revolutionnaires for the arrestment of Persons Suspect.
Revolutionary Committee, of Twelve chosen Patriots, sits in every
Township of France; examining the Suspect, seeking arms, making
domiciliary visits and arrestments;—caring, generally, that the
Republic suffer no detriment. Chosen by universal suffrage, each
in its Section, they are a kind of elixir of Jacobinism; some
Forty-four Thousand of them awake and alive over France! In Paris
and all Towns, every house-door must have the names of the
inmates legibly printed on it, 'at a height not exceeding five
feet from the ground;' every Citizen must produce his
certificatory Carte de Civisme, signed by Section-President;
every man be ready to give account of the faith that is in him.
Persons Suspect had as well depart this soil of Liberty! And yet
departure too is bad: all Emigrants are declared Traitors, their
property become National; they are 'dead in Law,'—save indeed
that for our behoof they shall 'live yet fifty years in Law,' and
what heritages may fall to them in that time become National too!
A mad vitality of Jacobinism, with Forty-four Thousand centres of
activity, circulates through all fibres of France.
Very notable also is the Tribunal Extraordinaire: (_Moniteur, No.
70, (_du 11 Mars_), No. 76, &c._) decreed by the Mountain; some
Girondins dissenting, for surely such a Court contradicts every
formula;—other Girondins assenting, nay co-operating, for do not
we all hate Traitors, O ye people of Paris?—Tribunal of the
Seventeenth in Autumn last was swift; but this shall be swifter.
Five Judges; a standing Jury, which is named from Paris and the
Neighbourhood, that there be not delay in naming it: they are
subject to no Appeal; to hardly any Law-forms, but must 'get
themselves convinced' in all readiest ways; and for security are
bound 'to vote audibly;' audibly, in the hearing of a Paris
Public. This is the Tribunal Extraordinaire; which, in few
months, getting into most lively action, shall be entitled
Tribunal Revolutionnaire, as indeed it from the very first has
entitled itself: with a Herman or a Dumas for Judge President,
with a Fouquier-Tinville for Attorney-General, and a Jury of such
as Citizen Leroi, who has surnamed himself Dix-Aout, 'Leroi
August-Tenth,' it will become the wonder of the world. Herein has
Sansculottism fashioned for itself a Sword of Sharpness: a weapon
magical; tempered in the Stygian hell-waters; to the edge of it
all armour, and defence of strength or of cunning shall be soft;
it shall mow down Lives and Brazen-gates; and the waving of it
shed terror through the souls of men.
But speaking of an amorphous Sansculottism taking form, ought we
not above all things to specify how the Amorphous gets itself a
Head? Without metaphor, this Revolution Government continues
hitherto in a very anarchic state. Executive Council of
Ministers, Six in number, there is; but they, especially since
Roland's retreat, have hardly known whether they were Ministers
or not. Convention Committees sit supreme over them; but then
each Committee as supreme as the others: Committee of Twenty-one,
of Defence, of General Surety; simultaneous or successive, for
specific purposes. The Convention alone is
all-powerful,—especially if the Commune go with it; but is too
numerous for an administrative body. Wherefore, in this perilous
quick-whirling condition of the Republic, before the end of
March, we obtain our small Comite de Salut Public; (_Moniteur,
No. 83 (_du 24 Mars 1793_) Nos. 86, 98, 99, 100._) as it were,
for miscellaneous accidental purposes, requiring despatch;—as it
proves, for a sort of universal supervision, and universal
subjection. They are to report weekly, these new Committee-men;
but to deliberate in secret. Their number is Nine, firm Patriots
all, Danton one of them: Renewable every month;—yet why not
reelect them if they turn out well? The flower of the matter is
that they are but nine; that they sit in secret. An
insignificant-looking thing at first, this Committee; but with a
principle of growth in it! Forwarded by fortune, by internal
Jacobin energy, it will reduce all Committees and the Convention
itself to mute obedience, the Six Ministers to Six assiduous
Clerks; and work its will on the Earth and under Heaven, for a
season. 'A Committee of Public Salvation,' whereat the world
still shrieks and shudders.
If we call that Revolutionary Tribunal a Sword, which
Sansculottism has provided for itself, then let us call the 'Law
of the Maximum,' a Provender-scrip, or Haversack, wherein better
or worse some ration of bread may be found. It is true, Political
Economy, Girondin free-trade, and all law of supply and demand,
are hereby hurled topsyturvy: but what help? Patriotism must
live; the 'cupidity of farmers' seems to have no bowels.
Wherefore this Law of the Maximum, fixing the highest price of
grains, is, with infinite effort, got passed; (_Moniteur, du 20
Avril, &c. to 20 Mai, 1793._) and shall gradually extend itself
into a Maximum for all manner of comestibles and commodities:
with such scrambling and topsyturvying as may be fancied! For
now, if, for example, the farmer will not sell? The farmer shall
be forced to sell. An accurate Account of what grain he has shall
be delivered in to the Constituted Authorities: let him see that
he say not too much; for in that case, his rents, taxes and
contributions will rise proportionally: let him see that he say
not too little; for, on or before a set day, we shall suppose in
April, less than one-third of this declared quantity, must remain
in his barns, more than two-thirds of it must have been thrashed
and sold. One can denounce him, and raise penalties.
By such inextricable overturning of all Commercial relation will
Sansculottism keep life in; since not otherwise. On the whole, as
Camille Desmoulins says once, "while the Sansculottes fight, the
Monsieurs must pay." So there come Impots Progressifs, Ascending
Taxes; which consume, with fast-increasing voracity, and
'superfluous-revenue' of men: beyond fifty-pounds a-year you are
not exempt; rising into the hundreds you bleed freely; into the
thousands and tens of thousands, you bleed gushing. Also there
come Requisitions; there comes 'Forced-Loan of a Milliard,' some
Fifty-Millions Sterling; which of course they that have must
lend. Unexampled enough: it has grown to be no country for the
Rich, this; but a country for the Poor! And then if one fly, what
steads it? Dead in Law; nay kept alive fifty years yet, for their
accursed behoof! In this manner, therefore, it goes;
topsyturvying, ca-ira-ing;—and withal there is endless sale of
Emigrant National-Property, there is Cambon with endless
cornucopia of Assignats. The Trade and Finance of Sansculottism;
and how, with Maximum and Bakers'-queues, with Cupidity, Hunger,
Denunciation and Paper-money, it led its galvanic-life, and began
and ended,—remains the most interesting of all Chapters in
Political Economy: still to be written.
All which things are they not clean against Formula? O Girondin
Friends, it is not a Republic of the Virtues we are getting; but
only a Republic of the Strengths, virtuous and other!
Chapter 3.3.VI.
The Traitor.
But Dumouriez, with his fugitive Host, with his King Ludovicus or
King Philippus? There lies the crisis; there hangs the question:
Revolution Prodigy, or Counter-Revolution?—One wide shriek covers
that North-East region. Soldiers, full of rage, suspicion and
terror, flock hither and thither; Dumouriez the many-counselled,
never off horseback, knows now no counsel that were not worse
than none: the counsel, namely, of joining himself with Cobourg;
marching to Paris, extinguishing Jacobinism, and, with some new
King Ludovicus or King Philippus, resting the Constitution of
1791! (_Dumouriez, Memoires, iv. c. 7-10._)
Is Wisdom quitting Dumouriez; the herald of Fortune quitting him?
Principle, faith political or other, beyond a certain faith of
mess-rooms, and honour of an officer, had him not to quit. At any
rate, his quarters in the Burgh of Saint-Amand; his headquarters
in the Village of Saint-Amand des Boues, a short way off,—have
become a Bedlam. National Representatives, Jacobin Missionaries
are riding and running: of the 'three Towns,' Lille, Valenciennes
or even Conde, which Dumouriez wanted to snatch for himself, not
one can be snatched: your Captain is admitted, but the Town-gate
is closed on him, and then the Prison gate, and 'his men wander
about the ramparts.' Couriers gallop breathless; men wait, or
seem waiting, to assassinate, to be assassinated; Battalions nigh
frantic with such suspicion and uncertainty, with
Vive-la-Republique and Sauve-qui-peut, rush this way and
that;—Ruin and Desperation in the shape of Cobourg lying
entrenched close by.
Dame Genlis and her fair Princess d'Orleans find this Burgh of
Saint-Amand no fit place for them; Dumouriez's protection is
grown worse than none. Tough Genlis one of the toughest women; a
woman, as it were, with nine lives in her; whom nothing will
beat: she packs her bandboxes; clear for flight in a private
manner. Her beloved Princess she will—leave here, with the Prince
Chartres Egalite her Brother. In the cold grey of the April
morning, we find her accordingly established in her hired
vehicle, on the street of Saint-Amand; postilions just cracking
their whips to go,—when behold the young Princely Brother,
struggling hitherward, hastily calling; bearing the Princess in
his arms! Hastily he has clutched the poor young lady up, in her
very night-gown, nothing saved of her goods except the watch from
the pillow: with brotherly despair he flings her in, among the
bandboxes, into Genlis's chaise, into Genlis's arms: Leave her
not, in the name of Mercy and Heaven! A shrill scene, but a brief
one:—the postilions crack and go. Ah, whither? Through by-roads
and broken hill-passes: seeking their way with lanterns after
nightfall; through perils, and Cobourg Austrians, and suspicious
French Nationals; finally, into Switzerland; safe though nigh
moneyless. (_Genlis, iv. 139._) The brave young Egalite has a
most wild Morrow to look for; but now only himself to carry
through it.
For indeed over at that Village named of the Mudbaths,
Saint-Amand des Boues, matters are still worse. About four
o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, the 2d of April 1793, two Couriers
come galloping as if for life: Mon General! Four National
Representatives, War-Minister at their head, are posting
hitherward, from Valenciennes: are close at hand,—with what
intents one may guess! While the Couriers are yet speaking,
War-Minister and National Representatives, old Camus the
Archivist for chief speaker of them, arrive. Hardly has Mon
General had time to order out the Huzzar Regiment de Berchigny;
that it take rank and wait near by, in case of accident. And so,
enter War-Minister Beurnonville, with an embrace of friendship,
for he is an old friend; enter Archivist Camus and the other
three, following him.
They produce Papers, invite the General to the bar of the
Convention: merely to give an explanation or two. The General
finds it unsuitable, not to say impossible, and that "the service
will suffer." Then comes reasoning; the voice of the old
Archivist getting loud. Vain to reason loud with this Dumouriez;
he answers mere angry irreverences. And so, amid plumed
staff-officers, very gloomy-looking; in jeopardy and uncertainty,
these poor National messengers debate and consult, retire and
re-enter, for the space of some two hours: without effect.
Whereupon Archivist Camus, getting quite loud, proclaims, in the
name of the National Convention, for he has the power to do it,
That General Dumouriez is arrested: "Will you obey the National
Mandate, General!" "Pas dans ce moment-ci, Not at this particular
moment," answers the General also aloud; then glancing the other
way, utters certain unknown vocables, in a mandatory manner;
seemingly a German word-of-command. (_Dumouriez, iv. 159, &c._)
Hussars clutch the Four National Representatives, and
Beurnonville the War-minister; pack them out of the apartment;
out of the Village, over the lines to Cobourg, in two chaises
that very night,—as hostages, prisoners; to lie long in
Maestricht and Austrian strongholds! (_Their Narrative, written
by Camus in Toulongeon, iii. app. 60-87._) Jacta est alea.
This night Dumouriez prints his 'Proclamation;' this night and
the morrow the Dumouriez Army, in such darkness visible, and rage
of semi-desperation as there is, shall meditate what the General
is doing, what they themselves will do in it. Judge whether this
Wednesday was of halcyon nature, for any one! But, on the
Thursday morning, we discern Dumouriez with small escort, with
Chartres Egalite and a few staff-officers, ambling along the
Conde Highway: perhaps they are for Conde, and trying to persuade
the Garrison there; at all events, they are for an interview with
Cobourg, who waits in the woods by appointment, in that quarter.
Nigh the Village of Doumet, three National Battalions, a set of
men always full of Jacobinism, sweep past us; marching rather
swiftly,—seemingly in mistake, by a way we had not ordered. The
General dismounts, steps into a cottage, a little from the
wayside; will give them right order in writing. Hark! what
strange growling is heard: what barkings are heard, loud yells of
"Traitors," of "Arrest:" the National Battalions have wheeled
round, are emitting shot! Mount, Dumouriez, and spring for life!
Dumouriez and Staff strike the spurs in, deep; vault over
ditches, into the fields, which prove to be morasses; sprawl and
plunge for life; bewhistled with curses and lead. Sunk to the
middle, with or without horses, several servants killed, they
escape out of shot-range, to General Mack the Austrian's
quarters. Nay they return on the morrow, to Saint-Amand and
faithful foreign Berchigny; but what boots it? The Artillery has
all revolted, is jingling off to Valenciennes: all have revolted,
are revolting; except only foreign Berchigny, to the extent of
some poor fifteen hundred, none will follow Dumouriez against
France and Indivisible Republic: Dumouriez's occupation's gone.
(_Memoires, iv. 162-180._)
Such an instinct of Frenehhood and Sansculottism dwells in these
men: they will follow no Dumouriez nor Lafayette, nor any mortal
on such errand. Shriek may be of Sauve-qui-peut, but will also be
of Vive-la-Republique. New National Representatives arrive; new
General Dampierre, soon killed in battle; new General Custine;
the agitated Hosts draw back to some Camp of Famars; make head
against Cobourg as they can.
And so Dumouriez is in the Austrian quarters; his drama ended, in
this rather sorry manner. A most shifty, wiry man; one of
Heaven's Swiss that wanted only work. Fifty years of unnoticed
toil and valour; one year of toil and valour, not unnoticed, but
seen of all countries and centuries; then thirty other years
again unnoticed, of Memoir-writing, English Pension, scheming and
projecting to no purpose: Adieu thou Swiss of Heaven, worthy to
have been something else!
His Staff go different ways. Brave young Egalite reaches
Switzerland and the Genlis Cottage; with a strong crabstick in
his hand, a strong heart in his body: his Princedom in now
reduced to that. Egalite the Father sat playing whist, in his
Palais Egalite, at Paris, on the 6th day of this same month of
April, when a catchpole entered: Citoyen Egalite is wanted at the
Convention Committee! (_See Montgaillard, iv. 144._) Examination,
requiring Arrestment; finally requiring Imprisonment,
transference to Marseilles and the Castle of If! Orleansdom has
sunk in the black waters; Palais Egalite, which was Palais Royal,
is like to become Palais National.
Chapter 3.3.VII.
In Fight.
Our Republic, by paper Decree, may be 'One and Indivisible;' but
what profits it while these things are? Federalists in the
Senate, renegadoes in the Army, traitors everywhere! France, all
in desperate recruitment since the Tenth of March, does not fly
to the frontier, but only flies hither and thither. This
defection of contemptuous diplomatic Dumouriez falls heavy on the
fine-spoken high-sniffing Hommes d'etat, whom he consorted with;
forms a second epoch in their destinies.
Or perhaps more strictly we might say, the second Girondin epoch,
though little noticed then, began on the day when, in reference
to this defection, the Girondins broke with Danton. It was the
first day of April; Dumouriez had not yet plunged across the
morasses to Cobourg, but was evidently meaning to do it, and our
Commissioners were off to arrest him; when what does the Girondin
Lasource see good to do, but rise, and jesuitically question and
insinuate at great length, whether a main accomplice of Dumouriez
had not probably been—Danton? Gironde grins sardonic assent;
Mountain holds its breath. The figure of Danton, Levasseur says,
while this speech went on, was noteworthy. He sat erect, with a
kind of internal convulsion struggling to keep itself motionless;
his eye from time to time flashing wilder, his lip curling in
Titanic scorn. (_Memoires de Rene Levasseur (_Bruxelles, 1830_),
i. 164._) Lasource, in a fine-spoken attorney-manner, proceeds:
there is this probability to his mind, and there is that;
probabilities which press painfully on him, which cast the
Patriotism of Danton under a painful shade; which painful shade
he, Lasource, will hope that Danton may find it not impossible to
dispel.
"Les Scelerats!" cries Danton, starting up, with clenched
right-hand, Lasource having done: and descends from the Mountain,
like a lava-flood; his answer not unready. Lasource's
probabilities fly like idle dust; but leave a result behind them.
"Ye were right, friends of the Mountain," begins Danton, "and I
was wrong: there is no peace possible with these men. Let it be
war then! They will not save the Republic with us: it shall be
saved without them; saved in spite of them." Really a burst of
rude Parliamentary eloquence this; which is still worth reading,
in the old Moniteur! With fire-words the exasperated rude Titan
rives and smites these Girondins; at every hit the glad Mountain
utters chorus: Marat, like a musical bis, repeating the last
phrase. (_Seance du 1er Avril, 1793 in Hist. Parl. xxv. 24-35._)
Lasource's probabilities are gone: but Danton's pledge of battle
remains lying.
A third epoch, or scene in the Girondin Drama, or rather it is
but the completion of this second epoch, we reckon from the day
when the patience of virtuous Petion finally boiled over; and the
Girondins, so to speak, took up this battle-pledge of Danton's
and decreed Marat accused. It was the eleventh of the same month
of April, on some effervescence rising, such as often rose; and
President had covered himself, mere Bedlam now ruling; and
Mountain and Gironde were rushing on one another with clenched
right-hands, and even with pistols in them; when, behold, the
Girondin Duperret drew a sword! Shriek of horror rose, instantly
quenching all other effervescence, at sight of the clear
murderous steel; whereupon Duperret returned it to the leather
again;—confessing that he did indeed draw it, being instigated by
a kind of sacred madness, "sainte fureur," and pistols held at
him; but that if he parricidally had chanced to scratch the
outmost skin of National Representation with it, he too carried
pistols, and would have blown his brains out on the spot. (_Hist.
Parl. xv. 397._)
But now in such posture of affairs, virtuous Petion rose, next
morning, to lament these effervescences, this endless Anarchy
invading the Legislative Sanctuary itself; and here, being
growled at and howled at by the Mountain, his patience, long
tried, did, as we say, boil over; and he spake vehemently, in
high key, with foam on his lips; 'whence,' says Marat, 'I
concluded he had got 'la rage,' the rabidity, or dog-madness.
Rabidity smites others rabid: so there rises new foam-lipped
demand to have Anarchists extinguished; and specially to have
Marat put under Accusation. Send a Representative to the
Revolutionary Tribunal? Violate the inviolability of a
Representative? Have a care, O Friends! This poor Marat has
faults enough; but against Liberty or Equality, what fault? That
he has loved and fought for it, not wisely but too well. In
dungeons and cellars, in pinching poverty, under anathema of men;
even so, in such fight, has he grown so dingy, bleared; even so
has his head become a Stylites one! Him you will fling to your
Sword of Sharpness; while Cobourg and Pitt advance on us,
fire-spitting?
The Mountain is loud, the Gironde is loud and deaf; all lips are
foamy. With 'Permanent-Session of twenty-four hours,' with vote
by rollcall, and a dead-lift effort, the Gironde carries it:
Marat is ordered to the Revolutionary Tribunal, to answer for
that February Paragraph of Forestallers at the door-lintel, with
other offences; and, after a little hesitation, he obeys.
(_Moniteur, du 16 Avril 1793, et seqq._)
Thus is Danton's battle-pledge taken up: there is, as he said
there would be, 'war without truce or treaty, ni treve ni
composition.' Wherefore, close now with one another, Formula and
Reality, in death-grips, and wrestle it out; both of you cannot
live, but only one!
Chapter 3.3.VIII.
In Death-Grips.
It proves what strength, were it only of inertia, there is in
established Formulas, what weakness in nascent Realities, and
illustrates several things, that this death-wrestle should still
have lasted some six weeks or more. National business, discussion
of the Constitutional Act, for our Constitution should decidedly
be got ready, proceeds along with it. We even change our
Locality; we shift, on the Tenth of May, from the old Salle de
Manege, into our new Hall, in the Palace, once a King's but now
the Republic's, of the Tuileries. Hope and ruth, flickering
against despair and rage, still struggles in the minds of men.
It is a most dark confused death-wrestle, this of the six weeks.
Formalist frenzy against Realist frenzy; Patriotism, Egoism,
Pride, Anger, Vanity, Hope and Despair, all raised to the
frenetic pitch: Frenzy meets Frenzy, like dark clashing
whirlwinds; neither understands the other; the weaker, one day,
will understand that it is verily swept down! Girondism is strong
as established Formula and Respectability: do not as many as
Seventy-two of the Departments, or say respectable Heads of
Departments, declare for us? Calvados, which loves its Buzot,
will even rise in revolt, so hint the Addresses; Marseilles,
cradle of Patriotism, will rise; Bourdeaux will rise, and the
Gironde Department, as one man; in a word, who will not rise,
were our Representation Nationale to be insulted, or one hair of
a Deputy's head harmed! The Mountain, again, is strong as Reality
and Audacity. To the Reality of the Mountain are not all
furthersome things possible? A new Tenth of August, if needful;
nay a new Second of September!—
But, on Wednesday afternoon, twenty-fourth day of April, year
1793, what tumult as of fierce jubilee is this? It is Marat
returning from Revolutionary Tribunal! A week or more of
death-peril: and now there is triumphant acquittal; Revolutionary
Tribunal can find no accusation against this man. And so the eye
of History beholds Patriotism, which had gloomed unutterable
things all week, break into loud jubilee, embrace its Marat; lift
him into a chair of triumph, bear him shoulder-high through the
streets. Shoulder-high is the injured People's-friend, crowned
with an oak-garland; amid the wavy sea of red nightcaps,
carmagnole jackets, grenadier bonnets and female mob-caps;
far-sounding like a sea! The injured People's-friend has here
reached his culminating-point; he too strikes the stars with his
sublime head.
But the Reader can judge with what face President Lasource, he of
the 'painful probabilities,' who presides in this Convention
Hall, might welcome such jubilee-tide, when it got thither, and
the Decreed of Accusation floating on the top of it! A National
Sapper, spokesman on the occasion, says, the People know their
Friend, and love his life as their own; "whosoever wants Marat's
head must get the Sapper's first." (_Seance in Moniteur, No. 116,
du 26 Avril, An 1er._) Lasource answered with some vague painful
mumblement,—which, says Levasseur, one could not help tittering
at. (_Levasseur, Memoires, i. c. 6._) Patriot Sections,
Volunteers not yet gone to the Frontiers, come demanding the
"purgation of traitors from your own bosom;" the expulsion, or
even the trial and sentence, of a factious Twenty-two.
Nevertheless the Gironde has got its Commission of Twelve; a
Commission specially appointed for investigating these troubles
of the Legislative Sanctuary: let Sansculottism say what it will,
Law shall triumph. Old-Constituent Rabaut Saint-Etienne presides
over this Commission: "it is the last plank whereon a wrecked
Republic may perhaps still save herself." Rabaut and they
therefore sit, intent; examining witnesses; launching
arrestments; looking out into a waste dim sea of troubles.—the
womb of Formula, or perhaps her grave! Enter not that sea, O
Reader! There are dim desolation and confusion; raging women and
raging men. Sections come demanding Twenty-two; for the number
first given by Section Bonconseil still holds, though the names
should even vary. Other Sections, of the wealthier kind, come
denouncing such demand; nay the same Section will demand to-day,
and denounce the demand to-morrow, according as the wealthier
sit, or the poorer. Wherefore, indeed, the Girondins decree that
all Sections shall close 'at ten in the evening;' before the
working people come: which Decree remains without effect. And
nightly the Mother of Patriotism wails doleful; doleful, but her
eye kindling! And Fournier l'Americain is busy, and the two
Banker Freys, and Varlet Apostle of Liberty; the bull-voice of
Marquis Saint-Huruge is heard. And shrill women vociferate from
all Galleries, the Convention ones and downwards. Nay a 'Central
Committee' of all the Forty-eight Sections, looms forth huge and
dubious; sitting dim in the Archeveche, sending Resolutions,
receiving them: a Centre of the Sections; in dread deliberation
as to a New Tenth of August!
One thing we will specify to throw light on many: the aspect
under which, seen through the eyes of these Girondin Twelve, or
even seen through one's own eyes, the Patriotism of the softer
sex presents itself. There are Female Patriots, whom the
Girondins call Megaeras, and count to the extent of eight
thousand; with serpent-hair, all out of curl; who have changed
the distaff for the dagger. They are of 'the Society called
Brotherly,' Fraternelle, say Sisterly, which meets under the roof
of the Jacobins. 'Two thousand daggers,' or so, have been
ordered,—doubtless, for them. They rush to Versailles, to raise
more women; but the Versailles women will not rise. (_Buzot,
Memoires, pp. 69, 84; Meillan, Memoires, pp. 192, 195, 196. See
Commission des Douze in Choix des Rapports, xii. 69-131._)
Nay, behold, in National Garden of Tuileries,—Demoiselle
Theroigne herself is become as a brownlocked Diana (_were that
possible_) attacked by her own dogs, or she-dogs! The Demoiselle,
keeping her carriage, is for Liberty indeed, as she has full well
shewn; but then for Liberty with Respectability: whereupon these
serpent-haired Extreme She-Patriots now do fasten on her, tatter
her, shamefully fustigate her, in their shameful way; almost
fling her into the Garden-ponds, had not help intervened. Help,
alas, to small purpose. The poor Demoiselle's head and
nervous-system, none of the soundest, is so tattered and
fluttered that it will never recover; but flutter worse and
worse, till it crack; and within year and day we hear of her in
madhouse, and straitwaistcoat, which proves permanent!—Such
brownlocked Figure did flutter, and inarticulately jabber and
gesticulate, little able to speak the obscure meaning it had,
through some segment of that Eighteenth Century of Time. She
disappears here from the Revolution and Public History, for
evermore. (_Deux Amis, vii. 77-80; Forster, i. 514; Moore, i. 70.
She did not die till 1817; in the Salpetriere, in the most abject
state of insanity; see Esquirol, Des Maladies Mentales (_Paris,
1838_), i. 445-50._)
Another thing we will not again specify, yet again beseech the
Reader to imagine: the reign of Fraternity and Perfection.
Imagine, we say, O Reader, that the Millennium were struggling on
the threshold, and yet not so much as groceries could be
had,—owing to traitors. With what impetus would a man strike
traitors, in that case? Ah, thou canst not imagine it: thou hast
thy groceries safe in the shops, and little or no hope of a
Millennium ever coming!—But, indeed, as to the temper there was
in men and women, does not this one fact say enough: the height
SUSPICION had risen to? Preternatural we often called it;
seemingly in the language of exaggeration: but listen to the cold
deposition of witnesses. Not a musical Patriot can blow himself a
snatch of melody from the French Horn, sitting mildly pensive on
the housetop, but Mercier will recognise it to be a signal which
one Plotting Committee is making to another. Distraction has
possessed Harmony herself; lurks in the sound of Marseillese and
ca-ira. (_Mercier, Nouveau Paris, vi. 63._) Louvet, who can see
as deep into a millstone as the most, discerns that we shall be
invited back to our old Hall of the Manege, by a Deputation; and
then the Anarchists will massacre Twenty-two of us, as we walk
over. It is Pitt and Cobourg; the gold of Pitt.—Poor Pitt! They
little know what work he has with his own Friends of the People;
getting them bespied, beheaded, their habeas-corpuses suspended,
and his own Social Order and strong-boxes kept tight,—to fancy
him raising mobs among his neighbours!
But the strangest fact connected with French or indeed with human
Suspicion, is perhaps this of Camille Desmoulins. Camille's head,
one of the clearest in France, has got itself so saturated
through every fibre with Preternaturalism of Suspicion, that
looking back on that Twelfth of July 1789, when the thousands
rose round him, yelling responsive at his word in the Palais
Royal Garden, and took cockades, he finds it explicable only on
this hypothesis, That they were all hired to do it, and set on by
the Foreign and other Plotters. 'It was not for nothing,' says
Camille with insight, 'that this multitude burst up round me when
I spoke!' No, not for nothing. Behind, around, before, it is one
huge Preternatural Puppet-play of Plots; Pitt pulling the wires.
(_See Histoire des Brissotins, par Camille Desmoulins, a Pamphlet
of Camille's, Paris, 1793._) Almost I conjecture that I Camille
myself am a Plot, and wooden with wires.—The force of insight
could no further go.
Be this as it will, History remarks that the Commission of
Twelve, now clear enough as to the Plots; and luckily having 'got
the threads of them all by the end,' as they say,—are launching
Mandates of Arrest rapidly in these May days; and carrying
matters with a high hand; resolute that the sea of troubles shall
be restrained. What chief Patriot, Section-President even, is
safe? They can arrest him; tear him from his warm bed, because he
has made irregular Section Arrestments! They arrest Varlet
Apostle of Liberty. They arrest Procureur-Substitute Hebert, Pere
Duchesne; a Magistrate of the People, sitting in Townhall; who,
with high solemnity of martyrdom, takes leave of his colleagues;
prompt he, to obey the Law; and solemnly acquiescent, disappears
into prison.
The swifter fly the Sections, energetically demanding him back;
demanding not arrestment of Popular Magistrates, but of a
traitorous Twenty-two. Section comes flying after
Section;—defiling energetic, with their Cambyses' vein of
oratory: nay the Commune itself comes, with Mayor Pache at its
head; and with question not of Hebert and the Twenty-two alone,
but with this ominous old question made new, "Can you save the
Republic, or must we do it?" To whom President Max Isnard makes
fiery answer: If by fatal chance, in any of those tumults which
since the Tenth of March are ever returning, Paris were to lift a
sacrilegious finger against the National Representation, France
would rise as one man, in never-imagined vengeance, and shortly
"the traveller would ask, on which side of the Seine Paris had
stood!" (_Moniteur, Seance du 25 Mai, 1793._) Whereat the
Mountain bellows only louder, and every Gallery; Patriot Paris
boiling round.
And Girondin Valaze has nightly conclaves at his house; sends
billets; 'Come punctually, and well armed, for there is to be
business.' And Megaera women perambulate the streets, with flags,
with lamentable alleleu. (_Meillan, Memoires, p. 195; Buzot, pp.
69, 84._) And the Convention-doors are obstructed by roaring
multitudes: find-spoken hommes d'etat are hustled, maltreated, as
they pass; Marat will apostrophise you, in such death-peril, and
say, Thou too art of them. If Roland ask leave to quit Paris,
there is order of the day. What help? Substitute Hebert, Apostle
Varlet, must be given back; to be crowned with oak-garlands. The
Commission of Twelve, in a Convention overwhelmed with roaring
Sections, is broken; then on the morrow, in a Convention of
rallied Girondins, is reinstated. Dim Chaos, or the sea of
troubles, is struggling through all its elements; writhing and
chafing towards some creation.
Chapter 3.3.IX.
Extinct.
Accordingly, on Friday, the Thirty-first of May 1793, there comes
forth into the summer sunlight one of the strangest scenes. Mayor
Pache with Municipality arrives at the Tuileries Hall of
Convention; sent for, Paris being in visible ferment; and gives
the strangest news.
How, in the grey of this morning, while we sat Permanent in
Townhall, watchful for the commonweal, there entered, precisely
as on a Tenth of August, some Ninety-six extraneous persons; who
declared themselves to be in a state of Insurrection; to be
plenipotentiary Commissioners from the Forty-eight Sections,
sections or members of the Sovereign People, all in a state of
Insurrection; and further that we, in the name of said Sovereign
in Insurrection, were dismissed from office. How we thereupon
laid off our sashes, and withdrew into the adjacent Saloon of
Liberty. How in a moment or two, we were called back; and
reinstated; the Sovereign pleasing to think us still worthy of
confidence. Whereby, having taken new oath of office, we on a
sudden find ourselves Insurrectionary Magistrates, with
extraneous Committee of Ninety-six sitting by us; and a Citoyen
Henriot, one whom some accuse of Septemberism, is made
Generalissimo of the National Guard; and, since six o'clock, the
tocsins ring and the drums beat:—Under which peculiar
circumstances, what would an august National Convention please to
direct us to do? (_Compare Debats de la Convention (_Paris,
1828_), iv. 187-223; Moniteur, Nos. 152, 3, 4, An 1er._)
Yes, there is the question! "Break the Insurrectionary
Authorities," answers some with vehemence. Vergniaud at least
will have "the National Representatives all die at their post;"
this is sworn to, with ready loud acclaim. But as to breaking the
Insurrectionary Authorities,—alas, while we yet debate, what
sound is that? Sound of the Alarm-Cannon on the Pont Neuf; which
it is death by the Law to fire without order from us!
It does boom off there, nevertheless; sending a sound through all
hearts. And the tocsins discourse stern music; and Henriot with
his Armed Force has enveloped us! And Section succeeds Section,
the livelong day; demanding with Cambyses'-oratory, with the
rattle of muskets, That traitors, Twenty-two or more, be
punished; that the Commission of Twelve be irrecoverably broken.
The heart of the Gironde dies within it; distant are the
Seventy-two respectable Departments, this fiery Municipality is
near! Barrere is for a middle course; granting something. The
Commission of Twelve declares that, not waiting to be broken, it
hereby breaks itself, and is no more. Fain would Reporter Rabaut
speak his and its last-words; but he is bellowed off. Too happy
that the Twenty-two are still left unviolated!—Vergniaud,
carrying the laws of refinement to a great length, moves, to the
amazement of some, that 'the Sections of Paris have deserved well
of their country.' Whereupon, at a late hour of the evening, the
deserving Sections retire to their respective places of abode.
Barrere shall report on it. With busy quill and brain he sits,
secluded; for him no sleep to-night. Friday the last of May has
ended in this manner.
The Sections have deserved well: but ought they not to deserve
better? Faction and Girondism is struck down for the moment, and
consents to be a nullity; but will it not, at another favourabler
moment rise, still feller; and the Republic have to be saved in
spite of it? So reasons Patriotism, still Permanent; so reasons
the Figure of Marat, visible in the dim Section-world, on the
morrow. To the conviction of men!—And so at eventide of Saturday,
when Barrere had just got it all varnished in the course of the
day, and his Report was setting off in the evening mail-bags,
tocsin peals out again! Generale is beating; armed men taking
station in the Place Vendome and elsewhere for the night;
supplied with provisions and liquor. There under the summer stars
will they wait, this night, what is to be seen and to be done,
Henriot and Townhall giving due signal.
The Convention, at sound of generale, hastens back to its Hall;
but to the number only of a Hundred; and does little business,
puts off business till the morrow. The Girondins do not stir out
thither, the Girondins are abroad seeking beds. Poor Rabaut, on
the morrow morning, returning to his post, with Louvet and some
others, through streets all in ferment, wrings his hands,
ejaculating, "Illa suprema dies!" (_Louvet, Memoires, p. 89._) It
has become Sunday, the second day of June, year 1793, by the old
style; by the new style, year One of Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity. We have got to the last scene of all, that ends this
history of the Girondin Senatorship.
It seems doubtful whether any terrestrial Convention had ever met
in such circumstances as this National one now does. Tocsin is
pealing; Barriers shut; all Paris is on the gaze, or under arms.
As many as a Hundred Thousand under arms they count: National
Force; and the Armed Volunteers, who should have flown to the
Frontiers and La Vendee; but would not, treason being unpunished;
and only flew hither and thither! So many, steady under arms,
environ the National Tuileries and Garden. There are horse, foot,
artillery, sappers with beards: the artillery one can see with
their camp-furnaces in this National Garden, heating bullets red,
and their match is lighted. Henriot in plumes rides, amid a
plumed Staff: all posts and issues are safe; reserves lie out, as
far as the Wood of Boulogne; the choicest Patriots nearest the
scene. One other circumstance we will note: that a careful
Municipality, liberal of camp-furnaces, has not forgotten
provision-carts. No member of the Sovereign need now go home to
dinner; but can keep rank,—plentiful victual circulating
unsought. Does not this People understand Insurrection? Ye, not
uninventive, Gualches!—
Therefore let a National Representation, 'mandatories of the
Sovereign,' take thought of it. Expulsion of your Twenty-two, and
your Commission of Twelve: we stand here till it be done!
Deputation after Deputation, in ever stronger language, comes
with that message. Barrere proposes a middle course:—Will not
perhaps the inculpated Deputies consent to withdraw voluntarily;
to make a generous demission, and self-sacrifice for the sake of
one's country? Isnard, repentant of that search on which
river-bank Paris stood, declares himself ready to demit. Ready
also is Te-Deum Fauchet; old Dusaulx of the Bastille, 'vieux
radoteur, old dotard,' as Marat calls him, is still readier. On
the contrary, Lanjuinais the Breton declares that there is one
man who never will demit voluntarily; but will protest to the
uttermost, while a voice is left him. And he accordingly goes on
protesting; amid rage and clangor; Legendre crying at last:
"Lanjuinais, come down from the Tribune, or I will fling thee
down, ou je te jette en bas!" For matters are come to extremity.
Nay they do clutch hold of Lanjuinais, certain zealous
Mountain-men; but cannot fling him down, for he 'cramps himself
on the railing;' and 'his clothes get torn.' Brave Senator,
worthy of pity! Neither will Barbaroux demit; he "has sworn to
die at his post, and will keep that oath." Whereupon the
Galleries all rise with explosion; brandishing weapons, some of
them; and rush out saying: "Allons, then; we must save our
country!" Such a Session is this of Sunday the second of June.
Churches fill, over Christian Europe, and then empty themselves;
but this Convention empties not, the while: a day of shrieking
contention, of agony, humiliation and tearing of coatskirts; illa
suprema dies! Round stand Henriot and his Hundred Thousand,
copiously refreshed from tray and basket: nay he is 'distributing
five francs a-piece;' we Girondins saw it with our eyes; five
francs to keep them in heart! And distraction of armed riot
encumbers our borders, jangles at our Bar; we are prisoners in
our own Hall: Bishop Gregoire could not get out for a besoin
actuel without four gendarmes to wait on him! What is the
character of a National Representative become? And now the
sunlight falls yellower on western windows, and the chimney-tops
are flinging longer shadows; the refreshed Hundred Thousand, nor
their shadows, stir not! What to resolve on? Motion rises,
superfluous one would think, That the Convention go forth in a
body; ascertain with its own eyes whether it is free or not. Lo,
therefore, from the Eastern Gate of the Tuileries, a distressed
Convention issuing; handsome Herault Sechelles at their head; he
with hat on, in sign of public calamity, the rest
bareheaded,—towards the Gate of the Carrousel; wondrous to see:
towards Henriot and his plumed staff. "In the name of the
National Convention, make way!" Not an inch of the way does
Henriot make: "I receive no orders, till the Sovereign, yours and
mine, has been obeyed." The Convention presses on; Henriot
prances back, with his staff, some fifteen paces, "To arms!
Cannoneers to your guns!"—flashes out his puissant sword, as the
Staff all do, and the Hussars all do. Cannoneers brandish the lit
match; Infantry present arms,—alas, in the level way, as if for
firing! Hatted Herault leads his distressed flock, through their
pinfold of a Tuileries again; across the Garden, to the Gate on
the opposite side. Here is Feuillans Terrace, alas, there is our
old Salle de Manege; but neither at this Gate of the Pont
Tournant is there egress. Try the other; and the other: no
egress! We wander disconsolate through armed ranks; who indeed
salute with Live the Republic, but also with Die the Gironde.
Other such sight, in the year One of Liberty, the westering sun
never saw.
And now behold Marat meets us; for he lagged in this Suppliant
Procession of ours: he has got some hundred elect Patriots at his
heels: he orders us in the Sovereign's name to return to our
place, and do as we are bidden and bound. The Convention returns.
"Does not the Convention," says Couthon with a singular power of
face, "see that it is free?"—none but friends round it? The
Convention, overflowing with friends and armed Sectioners,
proceeds to vote as bidden. Many will not vote, but remain
silent; some one or two protest, in words: the Mountain has a
clear unanimity. Commission of Twelve, and the denounced
Twenty-two, to whom we add Ex-Ministers Claviere and Lebrun:
these, with some slight extempore alterations (_this or that
orator proposing, but Marat disposing_), are voted to be under
'Arrestment in their own houses.' Brissot, Buzot, Vergniaud,
Guadet, Louvet, Gensonne, Barbaroux, Lasource, Lanjuinais,
Rabaut,—Thirty-two, by the tale; all that we have known as
Girondins, and more than we have known. They, 'under the
safeguard of the French People;' by and by, under the safeguard
of two Gendarmes each, shall dwell peaceably in their own houses;
as Non-Senators; till further order. Herewith ends Seance of
Sunday the second of June 1793.
At ten o'clock, under mild stars, the Hundred Thousand, their
work well finished, turn homewards. This same day, Central
Insurrection Committee has arrested Madame Roland; imprisoned her
in the Abbaye. Roland has fled, no one knows whither.
Thus fell the Girondins, by Insurrection; and became extinct as a
Party: not without a sigh from most Historians. The men were men
of parts, of Philosophic culture, decent behaviour; not
condemnable in that they were Pedants and had not better parts;
not condemnable, but most unfortunate. They wanted a Republic of
the Virtues, wherein themselves should be head; and they could
only get a Republic of the Strengths, wherein others than they
were head.
For the rest, Barrere shall make Report of it. The night
concludes with a 'civic promenade by torchlight:' (_Buzot,
Memoires, p. 310. See Pieces Justificatives, of Narratives,
Commentaries, &c. in Buzot, Louvet, Meillan: Documens
Complementaires, in Hist. Parl. xxviii. 1-78._) surely the true
reign of Fraternity is now not far?
BOOK 3.IV.
TERROR
Chapter 3.4.I.
Charlotte Corday.
In the leafy months of June and July, several French Departments
germinate a set of rebellious paper-leaves, named Proclamations,
Resolutions, Journals, or Diurnals 'of the Union for Resistance
to Oppression.' In particular, the Town of Caen, in Calvados,
sees its paper-leaf of Bulletin de Caen suddenly bud, suddenly
establish itself as Newspaper there; under the Editorship of
Girondin National Representatives!
For among the proscribed Girondins are certain of a more
desperate humour. Some, as Vergniaud, Valaze, Gensonne, 'arrested
in their own houses' will await with stoical resignation what the
issue may be. Some, as Brissot, Rabaut, will take to flight, to
concealment; which, as the Paris Barriers are opened again in a
day or two, is not yet difficult. But others there are who will
rush, with Buzot, to Calvados; or far over France, to Lyons,
Toulon, Nantes and elsewhither, and then rendezvous at Caen: to
awaken as with war-trumpet the respectable Departments; and
strike down an anarchic Mountain Faction; at least not yield
without a stroke at it. Of this latter temper we count some score
or more, of the Arrested, and of the Not-yet-arrested; a Buzot, a
Barbaroux, Louvet, Guadet, Petion, who have escaped from
Arrestment in their own homes; a Salles, a Pythagorean Valady, a
Duchatel, the Duchatel that came in blanket and nightcap to vote
for the life of Louis, who have escaped from danger and
likelihood of Arrestment. These, to the number at one time of
Twenty-seven, do accordingly lodge here, at the 'Intendance, or
Departmental Mansion,' of the Town of Caen; welcomed by Persons
in Authority; welcomed and defrayed, having no money of their
own. And the Bulletin de Caen comes forth, with the most
animating paragraphs: How the Bourdeaux Department, the Lyons
Department, this Department after the other is declaring itself;
sixty, or say sixty-nine, or seventy-two (_Meillan, p. 72, 73;
Louvet, p. 129._) respectable Departments either declaring, or
ready to declare. Nay Marseilles, it seems, will march on Paris
by itself, if need be. So has Marseilles Town said, That she will
march. But on the other hand, that Montelimart Town has said, No
thoroughfare; and means even to 'bury herself' under her own
stone and mortar first—of this be no mention in Bulletin of Caen.
Such animating paragraphs we read in this Newspaper; and
fervours, and eloquent sarcasm: tirades against the Mountain,
frame pen of Deputy Salles; which resemble, say friends, Pascal's
Provincials. What is more to the purpose, these Girondins have
got a General in chief, one Wimpfen, formerly under Dumouriez;
also a secondary questionable General Puisaye, and others; and
are doing their best to raise a force for war. National
Volunteers, whosoever is of right heart: gather in, ye National
Volunteers, friends of Liberty; from our Calvados Townships, from
the Eure, from Brittany, from far and near; forward to Paris, and
extinguish Anarchy! Thus at Caen, in the early July days, there
is a drumming and parading, a perorating and consulting: Staff
and Army; Council; Club of Carabots, Anti-jacobin friends of
Freedom, to denounce atrocious Marat. With all which, and the
editing of Bulletins, a National Representative has his hands
full.
At Caen it is most animated; and, as one hopes, more or less
animated in the 'Seventy-two Departments that adhere to us.' And
in a France begirt with Cimmerian invading Coalitions, and torn
with an internal La Vendee, this is the conclusion we have
arrived at: to put down Anarchy by Civil War! Durum et durum, the
Proverb says, non faciunt murum. La Vendee burns: Santerre can do
nothing there; he may return home and brew beer. Cimmerian
bombshells fly all along the North. That Siege of Mentz is become
famed;—lovers of the Picturesque (_as Goethe will testify_),
washed country-people of both sexes, stroll thither on Sundays,
to see the artillery work and counterwork; 'you only duck a
little while the shot whizzes past.' (_Belagerung von Mainz,
Goethe's Werke, xxx. 278-334._) Conde is capitulating to the
Austrians; Royal Highness of York, these several weeks, fiercely
batters Valenciennes. For, alas, our fortified Camp of Famars was
stormed; General Dampierre was killed; General Custine was
blamed,—and indeed is now come to Paris to give 'explanations.'
Against all which the Mountain and atrocious Marat must even make
head as they can. They, anarchic Convention as they are, publish
Decrees, expostulatory, explanatory, yet not without severity;
they ray forth Commissioners, singly or in pairs, the
olive-branch in one hand, yet the sword in the other.
Commissioners come even to Caen; but without effect. Mathematical
Romme, and Prieur named of the Cote d'Or, venturing thither, with
their olive and sword, are packed into prison: there may Romme
lie, under lock and key, 'for fifty days;' and meditate his New
Calendar, if he please. Cimmeria and Civil War! Never was
Republic One and Indivisible at a lower ebb.—
Amid which dim ferment of Caen and the World, History specially
notices one thing: in the lobby of the Mansion de l'Intendance,
where busy Deputies are coming and going, a young Lady with an
aged valet, taking grave graceful leave of Deputy Barbaroux.
(_Meillan, p.75; Louvet, p. 114._) She is of stately Norman
figure; in her twenty-fifth year; of beautiful still countenance:
her name is Charlotte Corday, heretofore styled d'Armans, while
Nobility still was. Barbaroux has given her a Note to Deputy
Duperret,—him who once drew his sword in the effervescence.
Apparently she will to Paris on some errand? 'She was a
Republican before the Revolution, and never wanted energy.' A
completeness, a decision is in this fair female Figure: 'by
energy she means the spirit that will prompt one to sacrifice
himself for his country.' What if she, this fair young Charlotte,
had emerged from her secluded stillness, suddenly like a Star;
cruel-lovely, with half-angelic, half-demonic splendour; to gleam
for a moment, and in a moment be extinguished: to be held in
memory, so bright complete was she, through long
centuries!—Quitting Cimmerian Coalitions without, and the
dim-simmering Twenty-five millions within, History will look
fixedly at this one fair Apparition of a Charlotte Corday; will
note whither Charlotte moves, how the little Life burns forth so
radiant, then vanishes swallowed of the Night.
With Barbaroux's Note of Introduction, and slight stock of
luggage, we see Charlotte, on Tuesday the ninth of July, seated
in the Caen Diligence, with a place for Paris. None takes
farewell of her, wishes her Good-journey: her Father will find a
line left, signifying that she is gone to England, that he must
pardon her and forget her. The drowsy Diligence lumbers along;
amid drowsy talk of Politics, and praise of the Mountain; in
which she mingles not; all night, all day, and again all night.
On Thursday, not long before none, we are at the Bridge of
Neuilly; here is Paris with her thousand black domes,—the goal
and purpose of thy journey! Arrived at the Inn de la Providence
in the Rue des Vieux Augustins, Charlotte demands a room; hastens
to bed; sleeps all afternoon and night, till the morrow morning.
On the morrow morning, she delivers her Note to Duperret. It
relates to certain Family Papers which are in the Minister of the
Interior's hand; which a Nun at Caen, an old Convent-friend of
Charlotte's, has need of; which Duperret shall assist her in
getting: this then was Charlotte's errand to Paris? She has
finished this, in the course of Friday;—yet says nothing of
returning. She has seen and silently investigated several things.
The Convention, in bodily reality, she has seen; what the
Mountain is like. The living physiognomy of Marat she could not
see; he is sick at present, and confined to home.
About eight on the Saturday morning, she purchases a large
sheath-knife in the Palais Royal; then straightway, in the Place
des Victoires, takes a hackney-coach: "To the Rue de l'Ecole de
Medecine, No. 44." It is the residence of the Citoyen Marat!—The
Citoyen Marat is ill, and cannot be seen; which seems to
disappoint her much. Her business is with Marat, then? Hapless
beautiful Charlotte; hapless squalid Marat! From Caen in the
utmost West, from Neuchatel in the utmost East, they two are
drawing nigh each other; they two have, very strangely, business
together.—Charlotte, returning to her Inn, despatches a short
Note to Marat; signifying that she is from Caen, the seat of
rebellion; that she desires earnestly to see him, and 'will put
it in his power to do France a great service.' No answer.
Charlotte writes another Note, still more pressing; sets out with
it by coach, about seven in the evening, herself. Tired
day-labourers have again finished their Week; huge Paris is
circling and simmering, manifold, according to its vague wont:
this one fair Figure has decision in it; drives straight,—towards
a purpose.
It is yellow July evening, we say, the thirteenth of the month;
eve of the Bastille day,—when 'M. Marat,' four years ago, in the
crowd of the Pont Neuf, shrewdly required of that Besenval
Hussar-party, which had such friendly dispositions, "to dismount,
and give up their arms, then;" and became notable among Patriot
men! Four years: what a road he has travelled;—and sits now,
about half-past seven of the clock, stewing in slipper-bath; sore
afflicted; ill of Revolution Fever,—of what other malady this
History had rather not name. Excessively sick and worn, poor man:
with precisely elevenpence-halfpenny of ready money, in paper;
with slipper-bath; strong three-footed stool for writing on, the
while; and a squalid—Washerwoman, one may call her: that is his
civic establishment in Medical-School Street; thither and not
elsewhither has his road led him. Not to the reign of Brotherhood
and Perfect Felicity; yet surely on the way towards that?—Hark, a
rap again! A musical woman's-voice, refusing to be rejected: it
is the Citoyenne who would do France a service. Marat,
recognising from within, cries, Admit her. Charlotte Corday is
admitted.
Citoyen Marat, I am from Caen the seat of rebellion, and wished
to speak with you.—Be seated, mon enfant. Now what are the
Traitors doing at Caen? What Deputies are at Caen?—Charlotte
names some Deputies. "Their heads shall fall within a fortnight,"
croaks the eager People's-Friend, clutching his tablets to write:
Barbaroux, Petion, writes he with bare shrunk arm, turning aside
in the bath: Petion, and Louvet, and—Charlotte has drawn her
knife from the sheath; plunges it, with one sure stroke, into the
writer's heart. "A moi, chere amie, Help, dear!" No more could
the Death-choked say or shriek. The helpful Washerwoman running
in, there is no Friend of the People, or Friend of the
Washerwoman, left; but his life with a groan gushes out,
indignant, to the shades below. (_Moniteur, Nos. 197, 198, 199;
Hist. Parl. xxviii. 301-5; Deux Amis, x. 368-374._)
And so Marat People's-Friend is ended; the lone Stylites has got
hurled down suddenly from his Pillar,—whither He that made him
does know. Patriot Paris may sound triple and tenfold, in dole
and wail; re-echoed by Patriot France; and the Convention,
'Chabot pale with terror declaring that they are to be all
assassinated,' may decree him Pantheon Honours, Public Funeral,
Mirabeau's dust making way for him; and Jacobin Societies, in
lamentable oratory, summing up his character, parallel him to
One, whom they think it honour to call 'the good
Sansculotte,'—whom we name not here. (_See Eloge funebre de
Jean-Paul Marat, prononce a Strasbourg in Barbaroux, p. 125-131;
Mercier, &c._) Also a Chapel may be made, for the urn that holds
his Heart, in the Place du Carrousel; and new-born children be
named Marat; and Lago-de-Como Hawkers bake mountains of stucco
into unbeautiful Busts; and David paint his Picture, or
Death-scene; and such other Apotheosis take place as the human
genius, in these circumstances, can devise: but Marat returns no
more to the light of this Sun. One sole circumstance we have read
with clear sympathy, in the old Moniteur Newspaper: how Marat's
brother comes from Neuchatel to ask of the Convention 'that the
deceased Jean-Paul Marat's musket be given him.' (_Seance du 16
Septembre 1793._) For Marat too had a brother, and natural
affections; and was wrapt once in swaddling-clothes, and slept
safe in a cradle like the rest of us. Ye children of men!—A
sister of his, they say, lives still to this day in Paris.
As for Charlotte Corday her work is accomplished; the recompense
of it is near and sure. The chere amie, and neighbours of the
house, flying at her, she 'overturns some movables,' entrenches
herself till the gendarmes arrive; then quietly surrenders; goes
quietly to the Abbaye Prison: she alone quiet, all Paris sounding
in wonder, in rage or admiration, round her. Duperret is put in
arrest, on account of her; his Papers sealed,—which may lead to
consequences. Fauchet, in like manner; though Fauchet had not so
much as heard of her. Charlotte, confronted with these two
Deputies, praises the grave firmness of Duperret, censures the
dejection of Fauchet.
On Wednesday morning, the thronged Palais de Justice and
Revolutionary Tribunal can see her face; beautiful and calm: she
dates it 'fourth day of the Preparation of Peace.' A strange
murmur ran through the Hall, at sight of her; you could not say
of what character. (_Proces de Charlotte Corday, &c. Hist. Parl.
xxviii. 311-338._) Tinville has his indictments and tape-papers
the cutler of the Palais Royal will testify that he sold her the
sheath-knife; "all these details are needless," interrupted
Charlotte; "it is I that killed Marat." By whose instigation?—"By
no one's." What tempted you, then? His crimes. "I killed one
man," added she, raising her voice extremely (_extremement_), as
they went on with their questions, "I killed one man to save a
hundred thousand; a villain to save innocents; a savage
wild-beast to give repose to my country. I was a Republican
before the Revolution; I never wanted energy." There is therefore
nothing to be said. The public gazes astonished: the hasty
limners sketch her features, Charlotte not disapproving; the men
of law proceed with their formalities. The doom is Death as a
murderess. To her Advocate she gives thanks; in gentle phrase, in
high-flown classical spirit. To the Priest they send her she
gives thanks; but needs not any shriving, or ghostly or other aid
from him.
On this same evening, therefore, about half-past seven o'clock,
from the gate of the Conciergerie, to a City all on tiptoe, the
fatal Cart issues: seated on it a fair young creature, sheeted in
red smock of Murderess; so beautiful, serene, so full of life;
journeying towards death,—alone amid the world. Many take off
their hats, saluting reverently; for what heart but must be
touched? (_Deux Amis, x. 374-384._) Others growl and howl. Adam
Lux, of Mentz, declares that she is greater than Brutus; that it
were beautiful to die with her: the head of this young man seems
turned. At the Place de la Revolution, the countenance of
Charlotte wears the same still smile. The executioners proceed to
bind her feet; she resists, thinking it meant as an insult; on a
word of explanation, she submits with cheerful apology. As the
last act, all being now ready, they take the neckerchief from her
neck: a blush of maidenly shame overspreads that fair face and
neck; the cheeks were still tinged with it, when the executioner
lifted the severed head, to shew it to the people. 'It is most
true,' says Foster, 'that he struck the cheek insultingly; for I
saw it with my eyes: the Police imprisoned him for it.'
(_Briefwechsel, i. 508._)
In this manner have the Beautifullest and the Squalidest come in
collision, and extinguished one another. Jean-Paul Marat and
Marie-Anne Charlotte Corday both, suddenly, are no more. 'Day of
the Preparation of Peace?' Alas, how were peace possible or
preparable, while, for example, the hearts of lovely Maidens, in
their convent-stillness, are dreaming not of Love-paradises, and
the light of Life; but of Codrus'-sacrifices, and death well
earned? That Twenty-five million hearts have got to such temper,
this is the Anarchy; the soul of it lies in this: whereof not
peace can be the embodyment! The death of Marat, whetting old
animosities tenfold, will be worse than any life. O ye hapless
Two, mutually extinctive, the Beautiful and the Squalid, sleep ye
well,—in the Mother's bosom that bore you both!
This was the History of Charlotte Corday; most definite, most
complete; angelic-demonic: like a Star! Adam Lux goes home,
half-delirious; to pour forth his Apotheosis of her, in paper and
print; to propose that she have a statue with this inscription,
Greater than Brutus. Friends represent his danger; Lux is
reckless; thinks it were beautiful to die with her.
Chapter 3.4.II.
In Civil War.
But during these same hours, another guillotine is at work, on
another: Charlotte, for the Girondins, dies at Paris to-day;
Chalier, by the Girondins, dies at Lyons to-morrow.
From rumbling of cannon along the streets of that City, it has
come to firing of them, to rabid fighting: Nievre-Chol and the
Girondins triumph;—behind whom there is, as everywhere, a
Royalist Faction waiting to strike in. Trouble enough at Lyons;
and the dominant party carrying it with a high hand! For indeed,
the whole South is astir; incarcerating Jacobins; arming for
Girondins: wherefore we have got a 'Congress of Lyons;' also a
'Revolutionary Tribunal of Lyons,' and Anarchists shall tremble.
So Chalier was soon found guilty, of Jacobinism, of murderous
Plot, 'address with drawn dagger on the sixth of February last;'
and, on the morrow, he also travels his final road, along the
streets of Lyons, 'by the side of an ecclesiastic, with whom he
seems to speak earnestly,'—the axe now glittering high. He could
weep, in old years, this man, and 'fall on his knees on the
pavement,' blessing Heaven at sight of Federation Programs or
like; then he pilgrimed to Paris, to worship Marat and the
Mountain: now Marat and he are both gone;—we said he could not
end well. Jacobinism groans inwardly, at Lyons; but dare not
outwardly. Chalier, when the Tribunal sentenced him, made answer:
"My death will cost this City dear."
Montelimart Town is not buried under its ruins; yet Marseilles is
actually marching, under order of a 'Lyons Congress;' is
incarcerating Patriots; the very Royalists now shewing face.
Against which a General Cartaux fights, though in small force;
and with him an Artillery Major, of the name of—Napoleon
Buonaparte. This Napoleon, to prove that the Marseillese have no
chance ultimately, not only fights but writes; publishes his
Supper of Beaucaire, a Dialogue which has become curious. (_See
Hazlitt, ii. 529-41._) Unfortunate Cities, with their actions and
their reactions! Violence to be paid with violence in geometrical
ratio; Royalism and Anarchism both striking in;—the final
net-amount of which geometrical series, what man shall sum?
The Bar of Iron has never yet floated in Marseilles Harbour; but
the Body of Rebecqui was found floating, self-drowned there. Hot
Rebecqui seeing how confusion deepened, and Respectability grew
poisoned with Royalism, felt that there was no refuge for a
Republican but death. Rebecqui disappeared: no one knew whither;
till, one morning, they found the empty case or body of him risen
to the top, tumbling on the salt waves; (_Barbaroux, p. 29._) and
perceived that Rebecqui had withdrawn forever.—Toulon likewise is
incarcerating Patriots; sending delegates to Congress;
intriguing, in case of necessity, with the Royalists and English.
Montpellier, Bourdeaux, Nantes: all France, that is not under the
swoop of Austria and Cimmeria, seems rushing into madness, and
suicidal ruin. The Mountain labours; like a volcano in a burning
volcanic Land. Convention Committees, of Surety, of Salvation,
are busy night and day: Convention Commissioners whirl on all
highways; bearing olive-branch and sword, or now perhaps sword
only. Chaumette and Municipals come daily to the Tuileries
demanding a Constitution: it is some weeks now since he resolved,
in Townhall, that a Deputation 'should go every day' and demand a
Constitution, till one were got; (_Deux Amis, x. 345._) whereby
suicidal France might rally and pacify itself; a thing
inexpressibly desirable.
This then is the fruit your Anti-anarchic Girondins have got from
that Levying of War in Calvados? This fruit, we may say; and no
other whatsoever. For indeed, before either Charlotte's or
Chalier's head had fallen, the Calvados War itself had, as it
were, vanished, dreamlike, in a shriek! With 'seventy-two
Departments' on one's side, one might have hoped better things.
But it turns out that Respectabilities, though they will vote,
will not fight. Possession is always nine points in Law; but in
Lawsuits of this kind, one may say, it is ninety-and-nine points.
Men do what they were wont to do; and have immense irresolution
and inertia: they obey him who has the symbols that claim
obedience. Consider what, in modern society, this one fact means:
the Metropolis is with our enemies! Metropolis, Mother-city;
rightly so named: all the rest are but as her children, her
nurselings. Why, there is not a leathern Diligence, with its
post-bags and luggage-boots, that lumbers out from her, but is as
a huge life-pulse; she is the heart of all. Cut short that one
leathern Diligence, how much is cut short!—General Wimpfen,
looking practically into the matter, can see nothing for it but
that one should fall back on Royalism; get into communication
with Pitt! Dark innuendoes he flings out, to that effect: whereat
we Girondins start, horrorstruck. He produces as his Second in
command a certain 'Ci-devant,' one Comte Puisaye; entirely
unknown to Louvet; greatly suspected by him.
Few wars, accordingly, were ever levied of a more insufficient
character than this of Calvados. He that is curious in such
things may read the details of it in the Memoirs of that same
Ci-devant Puisaye, the much-enduring man and Royalist: How our
Girondin National Forces, marching off with plenty of wind-music,
were drawn out about the old Chateau of Brecourt, in the
wood-country near Vernon, to meet the Mountain National forces
advancing from Paris. How on the fifteenth afternoon of July,
they did meet,—and, as it were, shrieked mutually, and took
mutually to flight without loss. How Puisaye thereafter, for the
Mountain Nationals fled first, and we thought ourselves the
victors,—was roused from his warm bed in the Castle of Brecourt;
and had to gallop without boots; our Nationals, in the
night-watches, having fallen unexpectedly into sauve qui
peut:—and in brief the Calvados War had burnt priming; and the
only question now was, Whitherward to vanish, in what hole to
hide oneself! (_Memoires de Puisaye (_London, 1803_), ii.
142-67._)
The National Volunteers rush homewards, faster than they came.
The Seventy-two Respectable Departments, says Meillan, 'all
turned round, and forsook us, in the space of four-and-twenty
hours.' Unhappy those who, as at Lyons for instance, have gone
too far for turning! 'One morning,' we find placarded on our
Intendance Mansion, the Decree of Convention which casts us Hors
la loi, into Outlawry: placarded by our Caen Magistrates;—clear
hint that we also are to vanish. Vanish, indeed: but whitherward?
Gorsas has friends in Rennes; he will hide there,—unhappily will
not lie hid. Guadet, Lanjuinais are on cross roads; making for
Bourdeaux. To Bourdeaux! cries the general voice, of Valour alike
and of Despair. Some flag of Respectability still floats there,
or is thought to float.
Thitherward therefore; each as he can! Eleven of these ill-fated
Deputies, among whom we may count, as twelfth, Friend Riouffe the
Man of Letters, do an original thing. Take the uniform of
National Volunteers, and retreat southward with the Breton
Battalion, as private soldiers of that corps. These brave Bretons
had stood truer by us than any other. Nevertheless, at the end of
a day or two, they also do now get dubious, self-divided; we must
part from them; and, with some half-dozen as convoy or guide,
retreat by ourselves,—a solitary marching detachment, through
waste regions of the West. (_Louvet, pp. 101-37; Meillan, pp. 81,
241-70._)
Chapter 3.4.III.
Retreat of the Eleven.
It is one of the notablest Retreats, this of the Eleven, that
History presents: The handful of forlorn Legislators retreating
there, continually, with shouldered firelock and well-filled
cartridge-box, in the yellow autumn; long hundreds of miles
between them and Bourdeaux; the country all getting hostile,
suspicious of the truth; simmering and buzzing on all sides, more
and more. Louvet has preserved the Itinerary of it; a piece worth
all the rest he ever wrote.
O virtuous Petion, with thy early-white head, O brave young
Barbaroux, has it come to this? Weary ways, worn shoes, light
purse;—encompassed with perils as with a sea! Revolutionary
Committees are in every Township; of Jacobin temper; our friends
all cowed, our cause the losing one. In the Borough of
Moncontour, by ill chance, it is market-day: to the gaping public
such transit of a solitary Marching Detachment is suspicious; we
have need of energy, of promptitude and luck, to be allowed to
march through. Hasten, ye weary pilgrims! The country is getting
up; noise of you is bruited day after day, a solitary Twelve
retreating in this mysterious manner: with every new day, a wider
wave of inquisitive pursuing tumult is stirred up till the whole
West will be in motion. 'Cussy is tormented with gout, Buzot is
too fat for marching.' Riouffe, blistered, bleeding, marching
only on tiptoe; Barbaroux limps with sprained ancle, yet ever
cheery, full of hope and valour. Light Louvet glances hare-eyed,
not hare-hearted: only virtuous Petion's serenity 'was but once
seen ruffled.' (_Meillan, pp. 119-137._) They lie in straw-lofts,
in woody brakes; rudest paillasse on the floor of a secret friend
is luxury. They are seized in the dead of night by Jacobin mayors
and tap of drum; get off by firm countenance, rattle of muskets,
and ready wit.
Of Bourdeaux, through fiery La Vendee and the long geographical
spaces that remain, it were madness to think: well, if you can
get to Quimper on the sea-coast, and take shipping there. Faster,
ever faster! Before the end of the march, so hot has the country
grown, it is found advisable to march all night. They do it;
under the still night-canopy they plod along;—and yet behold,
Rumour has outplodded them. In the paltry Village of Carhaix (_be
its thatched huts, and bottomless peat-bogs, long notable to the
Traveller_), one is astonished to find light still glimmering:
citizens are awake, with rush-lights burning, in that nook of the
terrestrial Planet; as we traverse swiftly the one poor street, a
voice is heard saying, "There they are, Les voila qui passent!"
(_Louvet, pp. 138-164._) Swifter, ye doomed lame Twelve: speed
ere they can arm; gain the Woods of Quimper before day, and lie
squatted there!
The doomed Twelve do it; though with difficulty, with loss of
road, with peril, and the mistakes of a night. In Quimper are
Girondin friends, who perhaps will harbour the homeless, till a
Bourdeaux ship weigh. Wayworn, heartworn, in agony of suspense,
till Quimper friendship get warning, they lie there, squatted
under the thick wet boscage; suspicious of the face of man. Some
pity to the brave; to the unhappy! Unhappiest of all Legislators,
O when ye packed your luggage, some score, or two-score months
ago; and mounted this or the other leathern vehicle, to be
Conscript Fathers of a regenerated France, and reap deathless
laurels,—did ye think your journey was to lead hither? The
Quimper Samaritans find them squatted; lift them up to help and
comfort; will hide them in sure places. Thence let them dissipate
gradually; or there they can lie quiet, and write Memoirs, till a
Bourdeaux ship sail.
And thus, in Calvados all is dissipated; Romme is out of prison,
meditating his Calendar; ringleaders are locked in his room. At
Caen the Corday family mourns in silence; Buzot's House is a heap
of dust and demolition; and amid the rubbish sticks a Gallows,
with this inscription, Here dwelt the Traitor Buzot who conspired
against the Republic. Buzot and the other vanished Deputies are
hors la loi, as we saw; their lives free to take where they can
be found. The worse fares it with the poor Arrested visible
Deputies at Paris. 'Arrestment at home' threatens to become
'Confinement in the Luxembourg;' to end: where? For example, what
pale-visaged thin man is this, journeying towards Switzerland as
a Merchant of Neuchatel, whom they arrest in the town of Moulins?
To Revolutionary Committee he is suspect. To Revolutionary
Committee, on probing the matter, he is evidently: Deputy
Brissot! Back to thy Arrestment, poor Brissot; or indeed to
strait confinement,—whither others are fared to follow. Rabaut
has built himself a false-partition, in a friend's house; lives,
in invisible darkness, between two walls. It will end, this same
Arrestment business, in Prison, and the Revolutionary Tribunal.
Nor must we forget Duperret, and the seal put on his papers by
reason of Charlotte. One Paper is there, fit to breed woe enough:
A secret solemn Protest against that suprema dies of the Second
of June! This Secret Protest our poor Duperret had drawn up, the
same week, in all plainness of speech; waiting the time for
publishing it: to which Secret Protest his signature, and that of
other honourable Deputies not a few, stands legibly appended. And
now, if the seals were once broken, the Mountain still
victorious? Such Protestors, your Merciers, Bailleuls,
Seventy-three by the tale, what yet remains of Respectable
Girondism in the Convention, may tremble to think!—These are the
fruits of levying civil war.
Also we find, that, in these last days of July, the famed Siege
of Mentz is finished; the Garrison to march out with honours of
war; not to serve against the Coalition for a year! Lovers of the
Picturesque, and Goethe standing on the Chaussee of Mentz, saw,
with due interest, the Procession issuing forth, in all
solemnity:
'Escorted by Prussian horse came first the French Garrison.
Nothing could look stranger than this latter: a column of
Marseillese, slight, swarthy, party-coloured, in patched clothes,
came tripping on;—as if King Edwin had opened the Dwarf Hill, and
sent out his nimble Host of Dwarfs. Next followed regular troops;
serious, sullen; not as if downcast or ashamed. But the
remarkablest appearance, which struck every one, was that of the
Chasers (_Chasseurs_) coming out mounted: they had advanced quite
silent to where we stood, when their Band struck up the
Marseillaise. This Revolutionary Te-Deum has in itself something
mournful and bodeful, however briskly played; but at present they
gave it in altogether slow time, proportionate to the creeping
step they rode at. It was piercing and fearful, and a most
serious-looking thing, as these cavaliers, long, lean men, of a
certain age, with mien suitable to the music, came pacing on:
singly you might have likened them to Don Quixote; in mass, they
were highly dignified.
'But now a single troop became notable: that of the Commissioners
or Representans. Merlin of Thionville, in hussar uniform,
distinguishing himself by wild beard and look, had another person
in similar costume on his left; the crowd shouted out, with rage,
at sight of this latter, the name of a Jacobin Townsman and
Clubbist; and shook itself to seize him. Merlin drew bridle;
referred to his dignity as French Representative, to the
vengeance that should follow any injury done; he would advise
every one to compose himself, for this was not the last time they
would see him here. (_Belagerung von Maintz, Goethe's Werke, xxx.
315._) Thus rode Merlin; threatening in defeat. But what now
shall stem that tide of Prussians setting in through the open
North-East?' Lucky, if fortified Lines of Weissembourg, and
impassibilities of Vosges Mountains, confine it to French Alsace,
keep it from submerging the very heart of the country!
Furthermore, precisely in the same days, Valenciennes Siege is
finished, in the North-West:—fallen, under the red hail of York!
Conde fell some fortnight since. Cimmerian Coalition presses on.
What seems very notable too, on all these captured French Towns
there flies not the Royalist fleur-de-lys, in the name of a new
Louis the Pretender; but the Austrian flag flies; as if Austria
meant to keep them for herself! Perhaps General Custines, still
in Paris, can give some explanation of the fall of these
strong-places? Mother Society, from tribune and gallery, growls
loud that he ought to do it;—remarks, however, in a splenetic
manner that 'the Monsieurs of the Palais Royal' are calling,
Long-life to this General.
The Mother Society, purged now, by successive 'scrutinies or
epurations,' from all taint of Girondism, has become a great
Authority: what we can call shield-bearer, or bottle-holder, nay
call it fugleman, to the purged National Convention itself. The
Jacobins Debates are reported in the Moniteur, like Parliamentary
ones.
Chapter 3.4.IV.
O Nature.
But looking more specially into Paris City, what is this that
History, on the 10th of August, Year One of Liberty, 'by
old-style, year 1793,' discerns there? Praised be the Heavens, a
new Feast of Pikes!
For Chaumette's 'Deputation every day' has worked out its result:
a Constitution. It was one of the rapidest Constitutions ever put
together; made, some say in eight days, by Herault Sechelles and
others: probably a workmanlike, roadworthy Constitution
enough;—on which point, however, we are, for some reasons, little
called to form a judgment. Workmanlike or not, the Forty-four
Thousand Communes of France, by overwhelming majorities, did
hasten to accept it; glad of any Constitution whatsoever. Nay
Departmental Deputies have come, the venerablest Republicans of
each Department, with solemn message of Acceptance; and now what
remains but that our new Final Constitution be proclaimed, and
sworn to, in Feast of Pikes? The Departmental Deputies, we say,
are come some time ago;—Chaumette very anxious about them, lest
Girondin Monsieurs, Agio-jobbers, or were it even Filles de joie
of a Girondin temper, corrupt their morals. (_Deux Amis, xi.
73._) Tenth of August, immortal Anniversary, greater almost than
Bastille July, is the Day.
Painter David has not been idle. Thanks to David and the French
genius, there steps forth into the sunlight, this day, a Scenic
Phantasmagory unexampled:—whereof History, so occupied with
Real-Phantasmagories, will say but little.
For one thing, History can notice with satisfaction, on the ruins
of the Bastille, a Statue of Nature; gigantic, spouting water
from her two mammelles. Not a Dream this; but a Fact, palpable
visible. There she spouts, great Nature; dim, before daybreak.
But as the coming Sun ruddies the East, come countless
Multitudes, regulated and unregulated; come Departmental
Deputies, come Mother Society and Daughters; comes National
Convention, led on by handsome Herault; soft wind-music breathing
note of expectation. Lo, as great Sol scatters his first
fire-handful, tipping the hills and chimney-heads with gold,
Herault is at great Nature's feet (_she is Plaster of Paris
merely_); Herault lifts, in an iron saucer, water spouted from
the sacred breasts; drinks of it, with an eloquent Pagan Prayer,
beginning, "O Nature!" and all the Departmental Deputies drink,
each with what best suitable ejaculation or prophetic-utterance
is in him;—amid breathings, which become blasts, of wind-music;
and the roar of artillery and human throats: finishing well the
first act of this solemnity.
Next are processionings along the Boulevards: Deputies or
Officials bound together by long indivisible tricolor riband;
general 'members of the Sovereign' walking pellmell, with pikes,
with hammers, with the tools and emblems of their crafts; among
which we notice a Plough, and ancient Baucis and Philemon seated
on it, drawn by their children. Many-voiced harmony and
dissonance filling the air. Through Triumphal Arches enough: at
the basis of the first of which, we descry—whom thinkest
thou?—the Heroines of the Insurrection of Women. Strong Dames of
the Market, they sit there (_Theroigne too ill to attend, one
fears_), with oak-branches, tricolor bedizenment; firm-seated on
their Cannons. To whom handsome Herault, making pause of
admiration, addresses soothing eloquence; whereupon they rise and
fall into the march.
And now mark, in the Place de la Revolution, what other August
Statue may this be; veiled in canvas,—which swiftly we shear off
by pulley and cord? The Statue of Liberty! She too is of plaster,
hoping to become of metal; stands where a Tyrant Louis Quinze
once stood. 'Three thousand birds' are let loose, into the whole
world, with labels round their neck, We are free; imitate us.
Holocaust of Royalist and ci-devant trumpery, such as one could
still gather, is burnt; pontifical eloquence must be uttered, by
handsome Herault, and Pagan orisons offered up.
And then forward across the River; where is new enormous
Statuary; enormous plaster Mountain; Hercules-Peuple, with
uplifted all-conquering club; 'many-headed Dragon of Girondin
Federalism rising from fetid marsh;'—needing new eloquence from
Herault. To say nothing of Champ-de-Mars, and Fatherland's Altar
there; with urn of slain Defenders, Carpenter's-level of the Law;
and such exploding, gesticulating and perorating, that Herault's
lips must be growing white, and his tongue cleaving to the roof
of his mouth. (_Choix des Rapports, xii. 432-42._)
Towards six-o'clock let the wearied President, let Paris
Patriotism generally sit down to what repast, and social repasts,
can be had; and with flowing tankard or light-mantling glass,
usher in this New and Newest Era. In fact, is not Romme's New
Calendar getting ready? On all housetops flicker little tricolor
Flags, their flagstaff a Pike and Liberty-Cap. On all
house-walls, for no Patriot, not suspect, will be behind another,
there stand printed these words: Republic one and indivisible,
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.
As to the New Calendar, we may say here rather than elsewhere
that speculative men have long been struck with the inequalities
and incongruities of the Old Calendar; that a New one has long
been as good as determined on. Marechal the Atheist, almost ten
years ago, proposed a New Calendar, free at least from
superstition: this the Paris Municipality would now adopt, in
defect of a better; at all events, let us have either this of
Marechal's or a better,—the New Era being come. Petitions, more
than once, have been sent to that effect; and indeed, for a year
past, all Public Bodies, Journalists, and Patriots in general,
have dated First Year of the Republic. It is a subject not
without difficulties. But the Convention has taken it up; and
Romme, as we say, has been meditating it; not Marechal's New
Calendar, but a better New one of Romme's and our own. Romme,
aided by a Monge, a Lagrange and others, furnishes mathematics;
Fabre d'Eglantine furnishes poetic nomenclature: and so, on the
5th of October 1793, after trouble enough, they bring forth this
New Republican Calendar of theirs, in a complete state; and by
Law, get it put in action.
Four equal Seasons, Twelve equal Months of thirty days each: this
makes three hundred and sixty days; and five odd days remain to
be disposed of. The five odd days we will make Festivals, and
name the five Sansculottides, or Days without Breeches. Festival
of Genius; Festival of Labour; of Actions; of Rewards; of
Opinion: these are the five Sansculottides. Whereby the great
Circle, or Year, is made complete: solely every fourth year,
whilom called Leap-year, we introduce a sixth Sansculottide; and
name it Festival of the Revolution. Now as to the day of
commencement, which offers difficulties, is it not one of the
luckiest coincidences that the Republic herself commenced on the
21st of September; close on the Vernal Equinox? Vernal Equinox,
at midnight for the meridian of Paris, in the year whilom
Christian 1792, from that moment shall the New Era reckon itself
to begin. Vendemiaire, Brumaire, Frimaire; or as one might say,
in mixed English, Vintagearious, Fogarious, Frostarious: these
are our three Autumn months. Nivose, Pluviose, Ventose, or say
Snowous, Rainous, Windous, make our Winter season. Germinal,
Floreal, Prairial, or Buddal, Floweral, Meadowal, are our Spring
season. Messidor, Thermidor, Fructidor, that is to say (_dor
being Greek for gift_) Reapidor, Heatidor, Fruitidor, are
Republican Summer. These Twelve, in a singular manner, divide the
Republican Year. Then as to minuter subdivisions, let us venture
at once on a bold stroke: adopt your decimal subdivision; and
instead of world-old Week, or Se'ennight, make it a Tennight or
Decade;—not without results. There are three Decades, then, in
each of the months; which is very regular; and the Decadi, or
Tenth-day, shall always be 'the Day of Rest.' And the Christian
Sabbath, in that case? Shall shift for itself!
This, in brief, in this New Calendar of Romme and the Convention;
calculated for the meridian of Paris, and Gospel of Jean-Jacques:
not one of the least afflicting occurrences for the actual
British reader of French History;—confusing the soul with
Messidors, Meadowals; till at last, in self-defence, one is
forced to construct some ground-scheme, or rule of Commutation
from New-style to Old-style, and have it lying by him. Such
ground-scheme, almost worn out in our service, but still legible
and printable, we shall now, in a Note, present to the reader.
For the Romme Calendar, in so many Newspapers, Memoirs, Public
Acts, has stamped itself deep into that section of Time: a New
Era that lasts some Twelve years and odd is not to be despised.
Let the reader, therefore, with such ground-scheme, help himself,
where needful, out of New-style into Old-style, called also
'slave-style, stile-esclave;'—whereof we, in these pages, shall
as much as possible use the latter only.
September 22nd of 1792 is Vendemiaire 1st of Year One, and the
new months are all of 30 days each; therefore:
To the number of the We have the number of the day in
Add day in Days
Vendemiaire 21 September 30 Brumaire
21 October 31 Frimaire
20 November 30
Nivose 20 December 31 Pluviose
19 January 31 Ventose
18 February 28
Germinal 20 March 31 Floreal
19 April 30 Prairial
19 May 31
Messidor 18 June 30
Thermidor 18 July 31
Fructidor 17 August 31
There are 5 Sansculottides, and in leap-year a sixth, to be added
at the end of Fructidor.
The New Calendar ceased on the 1st of January 1806. (_See Choix
des Rapports, xiii. 83-99; xix. 199._)
Thus with new Feast of Pikes, and New Era or New Calendar, did
France accept her New Constitution: the most Democratic
Constitution ever committed to paper. How it will work in
practice? Patriot Deputations from time to time solicit fruition
of it; that it be set a-going. Always, however, this seems
questionable; for the moment, unsuitable. Till, in some weeks,
Salut Public, through the organ of Saint-Just, makes report,
that, in the present alarming circumstances, the state of France
is Revolutionary; that her 'Government must be Revolutionary till
the Peace!' Solely as Paper, then, and as a Hope, must this poor
New Constitution exist;—in which shape we may conceive it lying;
even now, with an infinity of other things, in that Limbo near
the Moon. Further than paper it never got, nor ever will get.
Chapter 3.4.V.
Sword of Sharpness.
In fact it is something quite other than paper theorems, it is
iron and audacity that France now needs.
Is not La Vendee still blazing;—alas too literally; rogue
Rossignol burning the very corn-mills? General Santerre could do
nothing there; General Rossignol, in blind fury, often in liquor,
can do less than nothing. Rebellion spreads, grows ever madder.
Happily those lean Quixote-figures, whom we saw retreating out of
Mentz, 'bound not to serve against the Coalition for a year,'
have got to Paris. National Convention packs them into
post-vehicles and conveyances; sends them swiftly, by post, into
La Vendee! There valiantly struggling, in obscure battle and
skirmish, under rogue Rossignol, let them, unlaurelled, save the
Republic, and 'be cut down gradually to the last man.' (_Deux
Amis, xi. 147; xiii. 160-92, &c._)
Does not the Coalition, like a fire-tide, pour in; Prussia
through the opened North-East; Austria, England through the
North-West? General Houchard prospers no better there than
General Custine did: let him look to it! Through the Eastern and
the Western Pyrenees Spain has deployed itself; spreads, rustling
with Bourbon banners, over the face of the South. Ashes and
embers of confused Girondin civil war covered that region
already. Marseilles is damped down, not quenched; to be quenched
in blood. Toulon, terrorstruck, too far gone for turning, has
flung itself, ye righteous Powers,—into the hands of the English!
On Toulon Arsenal there flies a Flag,—nay not even the
Fleur-de-lys of a Louis Pretender; there flies that accursed St.
George's Cross of the English and Admiral Hood! What remnants of
sea-craft, arsenals, roperies, war-navy France had, has given
itself to these enemies of human nature, 'ennemis du genre
humain.' Beleaguer it, bombard it, ye Commissioners Barras,
Freron, Robespierre Junior; thou General Cartaux, General
Dugommier; above all, thou remarkable Artillery-Major, Napoleon
Buonaparte! Hood is fortifying himself, victualling himself;
means, apparently, to make a new Gibraltar of it.
But lo, in the Autumn night, late night, among the last of
August, what sudden red sunblaze is this that has risen over
Lyons City; with a noise to deafen the world? It is the
Powder-tower of Lyons, nay the Arsenal with four Powder-towers,
which has caught fire in the Bombardment; and sprung into the
air, carrying 'a hundred and seventeen houses' after it. With a
light, one fancies, as of the noon sun; with a roar second only
to the Last Trumpet! All living sleepers far and wide it has
awakened. What a sight was that, which the eye of History saw, in
the sudden nocturnal sunblaze! The roofs of hapless Lyons, and
all its domes and steeples made momentarily clear; Rhone and
Saone streams flashing suddenly visible; and height and hollow,
hamlet and smooth stubblefield, and all the region
round;—heights, alas, all scarped and counterscarped, into
trenches, curtains, redouts; blue Artillery-men, little
Powder-devilkins, plying their hell-trade there, through the not
ambrosial night! Let the darkness cover it again; for it pains
the eye. Of a truth, Chalier's death is costing this City dear.
Convention Commissioners, Lyons Congresses have come and gone;
and action there was and reaction; bad ever growing worse; till
it has come to this: Commissioner Dubois-Crance, 'with seventy
thousand men, and all the Artillery of several Provinces,'
bombarding Lyons day and night.
Worse things still are in store. Famine is in Lyons, and ruin,
and fire. Desperate are the sallies of the besieged; brave Precy,
their National Colonel and Commandant, doing what is in man:
desperate but ineffectual. Provisions cut off; nothing entering
our city but shot and shells! The Arsenal has roared aloft; the
very Hospital will be battered down, and the sick buried alive. A
Black Flag hung on this latter noble Edifice, appealing to the
pity of the beseigers; for though maddened, were they not still
our brethren? In their blind wrath, they took it for a flag of
defiance, and aimed thitherward the more. Bad is growing ever
worse here: and how will the worse stop, till it have grown worst
of all? Commissioner Dubois will listen to no pleading, to no
speech, save this only, 'We surrender at discretion.' Lyons
contains in it subdued Jacobins; dominant Girondins; secret
Royalists. And now, mere deaf madness and cannon-shot enveloping
them, will not the desperate Municipality fly, at last, into the
arms of Royalism itself? Majesty of Sardinia was to bring help,
but it failed. Emigrant Autichamp, in name of the Two Pretender
Royal Highnesses, is coming through Switzerland with help;
coming, not yet come: Precy hoists the Fleur-de-lys!
At sight of which, all true Girondins sorrowfully fling down
their arms:—Let our Tricolor brethren storm us, then, and slay us
in their wrath: with you we conquer not. The famishing women and
children are sent forth: deaf Dubois sends them back;—rains in
mere fire and madness. Our 'redouts of cotton-bags' are taken,
retaken; Precy under his Fleur-de-lys is valiant as Despair. What
will become of Lyons? It is a siege of seventy days. (_Deux Amis,
xi. 80-143._)
Or see, in these same weeks, far in the Western waters: breasting
through the Bay of Biscay, a greasy dingy little Merchantship,
with Scotch skipper; under hatches whereof sit, disconsolate,—the
last forlorn nucleus of Girondism, the Deputies from Quimper!
Several have dissipated themselves, whithersoever they could.
Poor Riouffe fell into the talons of Revolutionary Committee, and
Paris Prison. The rest sit here under hatches; reverend Petion
with his grey hair, angry Buzot, suspicious Louvet, brave young
Barbaroux, and others. They have escaped from Quimper, in this
sad craft; are now tacking and struggling; in danger from the
waves, in danger from the English, in still worse danger from the
French;—banished by Heaven and Earth to the greasy belly of this
Scotch skipper's Merchant-vessel, unfruitful Atlantic raving
round. They are for Bourdeaux, if peradventure hope yet linger
there. Enter not Bourdeaux, O Friends! Bloody Convention
Representatives, Tallien and such like, with their Edicts, with
their Guillotine, have arrived there; Respectability is driven
under ground; Jacobinism lords it on high. From that Reole
landingplace, or Beak of Ambes, as it were, Pale Death, waving
his Revolutionary Sword of sharpness, waves you elsewhither!
On one side or the other of that Bec d'Ambes, the Scotch Skipper
with difficulty moors, a dexterous greasy man; with difficulty
lands his Girondins;—who, after reconnoitring, must rapidly
burrow in the Earth; and so, in subterranean ways, in friends'
back-closets, in cellars, barn-lofts, in Caves of Saint-Emilion
and Libourne, stave off cruel Death. (_Louvet, p. 180-199._)
Unhappiest of all Senators!
Chapter 3.4.VI.
Risen against Tyrants.
Against all which incalculable impediments, horrors and
disasters, what can a Jacobin Convention oppose? The
uncalculating Spirit of Jacobinism, and Sansculottic
sans-formulistic Frenzy! Our Enemies press in on us, says Danton,
but they shall not conquer us, "we will burn France to ashes
rather, nous brulerons la France."
Committees, of Surete or Salut, have raised themselves 'a la
hauteur, to the height of circumstances.' Let all mortals raise
themselves a la hauteur. Let the Forty-four thousand Sections and
their Revolutionary Committees stir every fibre of the Republic;
and every Frenchman feel that he is to do or die. They are the
life-circulation of Jacobinism, these Sections and Committees:
Danton, through the organ of Barrere and Salut Public, gets
decreed, That there be in Paris, by law, two meetings of Section
weekly; also, that the Poorer Citizen be paid for attending, and
have his day's-wages of Forty Sous. (_Moniteur, Seance du 5
Septembre, 1793._) This is the celebrated 'Law of the Forty
Sous;' fiercely stimulant to Sansculottism, to the
life-circulation of Jacobinism.
On the twenty-third of August, Committee of Public Salvation, as
usual through Barrere, had promulgated, in words not unworthy of
remembering, their Report, which is soon made into a Law, of Levy
in Mass. 'All France, and whatsoever it contains of men or
resources, is put under requisition,' says Barrere; really in
Tyrtaean words, the best we know of his. 'The Republic is one
vast besieged city.' Two hundred and fifty Forges shall, in these
days, be set up in the Luxembourg Garden, and round the outer
wall of the Tuileries; to make gun-barrels; in sight of Earth and
Heaven! From all hamlets, towards their Departmental Town; from
all their Departmental Towns, towards the appointed Camp and seat
of war, the Sons of Freedom shall march; their banner is to bear:
'Le Peuple Francais debout contres les Tyrans, The French People
risen against Tyrants.' 'The young men shall go to the battle; it
is their task to conquer: the married men shall forge arms,
transport baggage and artillery; provide subsistence: the women
shall work at soldiers' clothes, make tents; serve in the
hospitals. The children shall scrape old-linen into
surgeon's-lint: the aged men shall have themselves carried into
public places; and there, by their words, excite the courage of
the young; preach hatred to Kings and unity to the Republic.'
(_Debats, Seance du 23 Aout 1793._) Tyrtaean words, which tingle
through all French hearts.
In this humour, then, since no other serves, will France rush
against its enemies. Headlong, reckoning no cost or consequence;
heeding no law or rule but that supreme law, Salvation of the
People! The weapons are all the iron that is in France; the
strength is that of all the men, women and children that are in
France. There, in their two hundred and fifty shed-smithies, in
Garden of Luxembourg or Tuileries, let them forge gun-barrels, in
sight of Heaven and Earth.
Nor with heroic daring against the Foreign foe, can black
vengeance against the Domestic be wanting. Life-circulation of
the Revolutionary Committees being quickened by that Law of the
Forty Sous, Deputy Merlin, not the Thionviller, whom we saw ride
out of Mentz, but Merlin of Douai, named subsequently Merlin
Suspect,—comes, about a week after, with his world-famous Law of
the Suspect: ordering all Sections, by their Committees,
instantly to arrest all Persons Suspect; and explaining withal
who the Arrestable and Suspect specially are. "Are Suspect," says
he, "all who by their actions, by their connexions, speakings,
writings have"—in short become Suspect. (_Moniteur, Seance du 17
Septembre 1793._) Nay Chaumette, illuminating the matter still
further, in his Municipal Placards and Proclamations, will bring
it about that you may almost recognise a Suspect on the streets,
and clutch him there,—off to Committee, and Prison. Watch well
your words, watch well your looks: if Suspect of nothing else,
you may grow, as came to be a saying, 'Suspect of being Suspect!'
For are we not in a State of Revolution?
No frightfuller Law ever ruled in a Nation of men. All Prisons
and Houses of Arrest in French land are getting crowded to the
ridge-tile: Forty-four thousand Committees, like as many
companies of reapers or gleaners, gleaning France, are gathering
their harvest, and storing it in these Houses. Harvest of
Aristocrat tares! Nay, lest the Forty-four thousand, each on its
own harvest-field, prove insufficient, we are to have an ambulant
'Revolutionary Army:' six thousand strong, under right captains,
this shall perambulate the country at large, and strike in
wherever it finds such harvest-work slack. So have Municipality
and Mother Society petitioned; so has Convention decreed. (_Ibid.
Seances du 5, 9, 11 Septembre._) Let Aristocrats, Federalists,
Monsieurs vanish, and all men tremble: 'The Soil of Liberty shall
be purged,'—with a vengeance!
Neither hitherto has the Revolutionary Tribunal been keeping
holyday. Blanchelande, for losing Saint-Domingo; 'Conspirators of
Orleans,' for 'assassinating,' for assaulting the sacred Deputy
Leonard-Bourdon: these with many Nameless, to whom life was
sweet, have died. Daily the great Guillotine has its due. Like a
black Spectre, daily at eventide, glides the Death-tumbril
through the variegated throng of things. The variegated street
shudders at it, for the moment; next moment forgets it: The
Aristocrats! They were guilty against the Republic; their death,
were it only that their goods are confiscated, will be useful to
the Republic; Vive la Republique!
In the last days of August, fell a notabler head: General
Custine's. Custine was accused of harshness, of unskilfulness,
perfidiousness; accused of many things: found guilty, we may say,
of one thing, unsuccessfulness. Hearing his unexpected Sentence,
'Custine fell down before the Crucifix,' silent for the space of
two hours: he fared, with moist eyes and a book of prayer,
towards the Place de la Revolution; glanced upwards at the clear
suspended axe; then mounted swiftly aloft, (_Deux Amis, xi.
148-188._) swiftly was struck away from the lists of the Living.
He had fought in America; he was a proud, brave man; and his
fortune led him hither.
On the 2nd of this same month, at three in the morning, a vehicle
rolled off, with closed blinds, from the Temple to the
Conciergerie. Within it were two Municipals; and
Marie-Antoinette, once Queen of France! There in that
Conciergerie, in ignominious dreary cell, she, cut off from
children, kindred, friend and hope, sits long weeks; expecting
when the end will be. (_See Memoires particuliers de la Captivite
a la Tour du Temple, by the Duchesse d'Angouleme, Paris, 21
Janvier 1817._)
The Guillotine, we find, gets always a quicker motion, as other
things are quickening. The Guillotine, by its speed of going,
will give index of the general velocity of the Republic. The
clanking of its huge axe, rising and falling there, in horrid
systole-diastole, is portion of the whole enormous Life-movement
and pulsation of the Sansculottic System!—'Orleans Conspirators'
and Assaulters had to die, in spite of much weeping and
entreating; so sacred is the person of a Deputy. Yet the sacred
can become desecrated: your very Deputy is not greater than the
Guillotine. Poor Deputy Journalist Gorsas: we saw him hide at
Rennes, when the Calvados War burnt priming. He stole afterwards,
in August, to Paris; lurked several weeks about the Palais
ci-devant Royal; was seen there, one day; was clutched,
identified, and without ceremony, being already 'out of the Law,'
was sent to the Place de la Revolution. He died, recommending his
wife and children to the pity of the Republic. It is the ninth
day of October 1793. Gorsas is the first Deputy that dies on the
scaffold; he will not be the last.
Ex-Mayor Bailly is in prison; Ex-Procureur Manuel. Brissot and
our poor Arrested Girondins have become Incarcerated Indicted
Girondins; universal Jacobinism clamouring for their punishment.
Duperret's Seals are broken! Those Seventy-three Secret
Protesters, suddenly one day, are reported upon, are decreed
accused; the Convention-doors being 'previously shut,' that none
implicated might escape. They were marched, in a very rough
manner, to Prison that evening. Happy those of them who chanced
to be absent! Condorcet has vanished into darkness; perhaps, like
Rabaut, sits between two walls, in the house of a friend.
Chapter 3.4.VII.
Marie-Antoinette.
On Monday the Fourteenth of October, 1793, a Cause is pending in
the Palais de Justice, in the new Revolutionary Court, such as
these old stone-walls never witnessed: the Trial of
Marie-Antoinette. The once brightest of Queens, now tarnished,
defaced, forsaken, stands here at Fouquier Tinville's
Judgment-bar; answering for her life! The Indictment was
delivered her last night. (_Proces de la Reine, Deux Amis, xi.
251-381._) To such changes of human fortune what words are
adequate? Silence alone is adequate.
There are few Printed things one meets with, of such tragic
almost ghastly significance as those bald Pages of the Bulletin
du Tribunal Revolutionnaire, which bear title, Trial of the Widow
Capet. Dim, dim, as if in disastrous eclipse; like the pale
kingdoms of Dis! Plutonic Judges, Plutonic Tinville; encircled,
nine times, with Styx and Lethe, with Fire-Phlegethon and Cocytus
named of Lamentation! The very witnesses summoned are like
Ghosts: exculpatory, inculpatory, they themselves are all
hovering over death and doom; they are known, in our imagination,
as the prey of the Guillotine. Tall ci-devant Count d'Estaing,
anxious to shew himself Patriot, cannot escape; nor Bailly, who,
when asked If he knows the Accused, answers with a reverent
inclination towards her, "Ah, yes, I know Madame." Ex-Patriots
are here, sharply dealt with, as Procureur Manuel; Ex-Ministers,
shorn of their splendour. We have cold Aristocratic impassivity,
faithful to itself even in Tartarus; rabid stupidity, of Patriot
Corporals, Patriot Washerwomen, who have much to say of Plots,
Treasons, August Tenth, old Insurrection of Women. For all now
has become a crime, in her who has lost.
Marie-Antoinette, in this her utter abandonment and hour of
extreme need, is not wanting to herself, the imperial woman. Her
look, they say, as that hideous Indictment was reading, continued
calm; 'she was sometimes observed moving her fingers, as when one
plays on the Piano.' You discern, not without interest, across
that dim Revolutionary Bulletin itself, how she bears herself
queenlike. Her answers are prompt, clear, often of Laconic
brevity; resolution, which has grown contemptuous without ceasing
to be dignified, veils itself in calm words. "You persist then in
denial?"—"My plan is not denial: it is the truth I have said, and
I persist in that." Scandalous Hebert has borne his testimony as
to many things: as to one thing, concerning Marie-Antoinette and
her little Son,—wherewith Human Speech had better not further be
soiled. She has answered Hebert; a Juryman begs to observe that
she has not answered as to this. "I have not answered," she
exclaims with noble emotion, "because Nature refuses to answer
such a charge brought against a Mother. I appeal to all the
Mothers that are here." Robespierre, when he heard of it, broke
out into something almost like swearing at the brutish
blockheadism of this Hebert; (_Vilate, Causes secretes de la
Revolution de Thermidor (_Paris, 1825_), p. 179._) on whose foul
head his foul lie has recoiled. At four o'clock on Wednesday
morning, after two days and two nights of interrogating,
jury-charging, and other darkening of counsel, the result comes
out: Sentence of Death. "Have you anything to say?" The Accused
shook her head, without speech. Night's candles are burning out;
and with her too Time is finishing, and it will be Eternity and
Day. This Hall of Tinville's is dark, ill-lighted except where
she stands. Silently she withdraws from it, to die.
Two Processions, or Royal Progresses, three-and-twenty years
apart, have often struck us with a strange feeling of contrast.
The first is of a beautiful Archduchess and Dauphiness, quitting
her Mother's City, at the age of Fifteen; towards hopes such as
no other Daughter of Eve then had: 'On the morrow,' says Weber an
eye witness, 'the Dauphiness left Vienna. The whole City crowded
out; at first with a sorrow which was silent. She appeared: you
saw her sunk back into her carriage; her face bathed in tears;
hiding her eyes now with her handkerchief, now with her hands;
several times putting out her head to see yet again this Palace
of her Fathers, whither she was to return no more. She motioned
her regret, her gratitude to the good Nation, which was crowding
here to bid her farewell. Then arose not only tears; but piercing
cries, on all sides. Men and women alike abandoned themselves to
such expression of their sorrow. It was an audible sound of wail,
in the streets and avenues of Vienna. The last Courier that
followed her disappeared, and the crowd melted away.' (_Weber, i.
6._)
The young imperial Maiden of Fifteen has now become a worn
discrowned Widow of Thirty-eight; grey before her time: this is
the last Procession: 'Few minutes after the Trial ended, the
drums were beating to arms in all Sections; at sunrise the armed
force was on foot, cannons getting placed at the extremities of
the Bridges, in the Squares, Crossways, all along from the Palais
de Justice to the Place de la Revolution. By ten o'clock,
numerous patrols were circulating in the Streets; thirty thousand
foot and horse drawn up under arms. At eleven, Marie-Antoinette
was brought out. She had on an undress of pique blanc: she was
led to the place of execution, in the same manner as an ordinary
criminal; bound, on a Cart; accompanied by a Constitutional
Priest in Lay dress; escorted by numerous detachments of infantry
and cavalry. These, and the double row of troops all along her
road, she appeared to regard with indifference. On her
countenance there was visible neither abashment nor pride. To the
cries of Vive la Republique and Down with Tyranny, which attended
her all the way, she seemed to pay no heed. She spoke little to
her Confessor. The tricolor Streamers on the housetops occupied
her attention, in the Streets du Roule and Saint-Honore; she also
noticed the Inscriptions on the house-fronts. On reaching the
Place de la Revolution, her looks turned towards the Jardin
National, whilom Tuileries; her face at that moment gave signs of
lively emotion. She mounted the Scaffold with courage enough; at
a quarter past Twelve, her head fell; the Executioner shewed it
to the people, amid universal long-continued cries of 'Vive la
Republique.' (_Deux Amis, xi. 301._)
Chapter 3.4.VIII.
The Twenty-two.
Whom next, O Tinville? The next are of a different colour: our
poor Arrested Girondin Deputies. What of them could still be laid
hold of; our Vergniaud, Brissot, Fauchet, Valaze, Gensonne; the
once flower of French Patriotism, Twenty-two by the tale: hither,
at Tinville's Bar, onward from 'safeguard of the French People,'
from confinement in the Luxembourg, imprisonment in the
Conciergerie, have they now, by the course of things, arrived.
Fouquier Tinville must give what account of them he can.
Undoubtedly this Trial of the Girondins is the greatest that
Fouquier has yet had to do. Twenty-two, all chief Republicans,
ranged in a line there; the most eloquent in France; Lawyers too;
not without friends in the auditory. How will Tinville prove
these men guilty of Royalism, Federalism, Conspiracy against the
Republic? Vergniaud's eloquence awakes once more; 'draws tears,'
they say. And Journalists report, and the Trial lengthens itself
out day after day; 'threatens to become eternal,' murmur many.
Jacobinism and Municipality rise to the aid of Fouquier. On the
28th of the month, Hebert and others come in deputation to inform
a Patriot Convention that the Revolutionary Tribunal is quite
'shackled by forms of Law;' that a Patriot Jury ought to have
'the power of cutting short, of terminer les debats, when they
feel themselves convinced.' Which pregnant suggestion, of cutting
short, passes itself, with all despatch, into a Decree.
Accordingly, at ten o'clock on the night of the 30th of October,
the Twenty-two, summoned back once more, receive this
information, That the Jury feeling themselves convinced have cut
short, have brought in their verdict; that the Accused are found
guilty, and the Sentence on one and all of them is Death with
confiscation of goods.
Loud natural clamour rises among the poor Girondins; tumult;
which can only be repressed by the gendarmes. Valaze stabs
himself; falls down dead on the spot. The rest, amid loud clamour
and confusion, are driven back to their Conciergerie; Lasource
exclaiming, "I die on the day when the People have lost their
reason; ye will die when they recover it." (_Greek,—Plut. Opp. t.
iv. p. 310. ed. Reiske, 1776._) No help! Yielding to violence,
the Doomed uplift the Hymn of the Marseillese; return singing to
their dungeon.
Riouffe, who was their Prison-mate in these last days, has
lovingly recorded what death they made. To our notions, it is not
an edifying death. Gay satirical Pot-pourri by Ducos; rhymed
Scenes of Tragedy, wherein Barrere and Robespierre discourse with
Satan; death's eve spent in 'singing' and 'sallies of gaiety,'
with 'discourses on the happiness of peoples:' these things, and
the like of these, we have to accept for what they are worth. It
is the manner in which the Girondins make their Last Supper.
Valaze, with bloody breast, sleeps cold in death; hears not their
singing. Vergniaud has his dose of poison; but it is not enough
for his friends, it is enough only for himself; wherefore he
flings it from him; presides at this Last Supper of the
Girondins, with wild coruscations of eloquence, with song and
mirth. Poor human Will struggles to assert itself; if not in this
way, then in that. (_Memoires de Riouffe in Memoires sur les
Prisons, Paris, 1823, p. 48-55._)
But on the morrow morning all Paris is out; such a crowd as no
man had seen. The Death-carts, Valaze's cold corpse stretched
among the yet living Twenty-one, roll along. Bareheaded, hands
bound; in their shirt-sleeves, coat flung loosely round the neck:
so fare the eloquent of France; bemurmured, beshouted. To the
shouts of Vive la Republique, some of them keep answering with
counter-shouts of Vive la Republique. Others, as Brissot, sit
sunk in silence. At the foot of the scaffold they again strike
up, with appropriate variations, the Hymn of the Marseillese.
Such an act of music; conceive it well! The yet Living chant
there; the chorus so rapidly wearing weak! Samson's axe is rapid;
one head per minute, or little less. The chorus is worn out;
farewell for evermore ye Girondins. Te-Deum Fauchet has become
silent; Valaze's dead head is lopped: the sickle of the
Guillotine has reaped the Girondins all away. 'The eloquent, the
young, the beautiful and brave!' exclaims Riouffe. O Death, what
feast is toward in thy ghastly Halls?
Nor alas, in the far Bourdeaux region, will Girondism fare
better. In caves of Saint-Emilion, in loft and cellar, the
weariest months, roll on; apparel worn, purse empty; wintry
November come; under Tallien and his Guillotine, all hope now
gone. Danger drawing ever nigher, difficulty pressing ever
straiter, they determine to separate. Not unpathetic the
farewell; tall Barbaroux, cheeriest of brave men, stoops to clasp
his Louvet: "In what place soever thou findest my mother," cries
he, "try to be instead of a son to her: no resource of mine but I
will share with thy Wife, should chance ever lead me where she
is." (_Louvet, p. 213._)
Louvet went with Guadet, with Salles and Valady; Barbaroux with
Buzot and Petion. Valady soon went southward, on a way of his
own. The two friends and Louvet had a miserable day and night;
the 14th of November month, 1793. Sunk in wet, weariness and
hunger, they knock, on the morrow, for help, at a friend's
country-house; the fainthearted friend refuses to admit them.
They stood therefore under trees, in the pouring rain. Flying
desperate, Louvet thereupon will to Paris. He sets forth, there
and then, splashing the mud on each side of him, with a fresh
strength gathered from fury or frenzy. He passes villages,
finding 'the sentry asleep in his box in the thick rain;' he is
gone, before the man can call after him. He bilks Revolutionary
Committees; rides in carriers' carts, covered carts and open;
lies hidden in one, under knapsacks and cloaks of soldiers' wives
on the Street of Orleans, while men search for him: has
hairbreadth escapes that would fill three romances: finally he
gets to Paris to his fair Helpmate; gets to Switzerland, and
waits better days.
Poor Guadet and Salles were both taken, ere long; they died by
the Guillotine in Bourdeaux; drums beating to drown their voice.
Valady also is caught, and guillotined. Barbaroux and his two
comrades weathered it longer, into the summer of 1794; but not
long enough. One July morning, changing their hiding place, as
they have often to do, 'about a league from Saint-Emilion, they
observe a great crowd of country-people;' doubtless Jacobins come
to take them? Barbaroux draws a pistol, shoots himself dead.
Alas, and it was not Jacobins; it was harmless villagers going to
a village wake. Two days afterwards, Buzot and Petion were found
in a Cornfield, their bodies half-eaten with dogs. (_Recherches
Historiques sur les Girondins in Memoires de Buzot, p. 107._)
Such was the end of Girondism. They arose to regenerate France,
these men; and have accomplished this. Alas, whatever quarrel we
had with them, has not their cruel fate abolished it? Pity only
survives. So many excellent souls of heroes sent down to Hades;
they themselves given as a prey of dogs and all manner of birds!
But, here too, the will of the Supreme Power was accomplished. As
Vergniaud said: 'The Revolution, like Saturn, is devouring its
own children.'
BOOK 3.V.
TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY
Chapter 3.5.I.
Rushing down.
We are now, therefore, got to that black precipitous Abyss;
whither all things have long been tending; where, having now
arrived on the giddy verge, they hurl down, in confused ruin;
headlong, pellmell, down, down;—till Sansculottism have
consummated itself; and in this wondrous French Revolution, as in
a Doomsday, a World have been rapidly, if not born again, yet
destroyed and engulphed. Terror has long been terrible: but to
the actors themselves it has now become manifest that their
appointed course is one of Terror; and they say, Be it so. "Que
la Terreur soit a l'ordre du jour."
So many centuries, say only from Hugh Capet downwards, had been
adding together, century transmitting it with increase to
century, the sum of Wickedness, of Falsehood, Oppression of man
by man. Kings were sinners, and Priests were, and People.
Open-Scoundrels rode triumphant, bediademed, becoronetted,
bemitred; or the still fataller species of Secret-Scoundrels, in
their fair-sounding formulas, speciosities, respectabilities,
hollow within: the race of Quacks was grown many as the sands of
the sea. Till at length such a sum of Quackery had accumulated
itself as, in brief, the Earth and the Heavens were weary of.
Slow seemed the Day of Settlement: coming on, all imperceptible,
across the bluster and fanfaronade of Courtierisms,
Conquering-Heroisms, Most-Christian Grand Monarque-isms.
Well-beloved Pompadourisms: yet behold it was always coming;
behold it has come, suddenly, unlooked for by any man! The
harvest of long centuries was ripening and whitening so rapidly
of late; and now it is grown white, and is reaped rapidly, as it
were, in one day. Reaped, in this Reign of Terror; and carried
home, to Hades and the Pit!—Unhappy Sons of Adam: it is ever so;
and never do they know it, nor will they know it. With cheerfully
smoothed countenances, day after day, and generation after
generation, they, calling cheerfully to one another,
"Well-speed-ye," are at work, sowing the wind. And yet, as God
lives, they shall reap the whirlwind: no other thing, we say, is
possible,—since God is a Truth and His World is a Truth.
History, however, in dealing with this Reign of Terror, has had
her own difficulties. While the Phenomenon continued in its
primary state, as mere 'Horrors of the French Revolution,' there
was abundance to be said and shrieked. With and also without
profit. Heaven knows there were terrors and horrors enough: yet
that was not all the Phenomenon; nay, more properly, that was not
the Phenomenon at all, but rather was the shadow of it, the
negative part of it. And now, in a new stage of the business,
when History, ceasing to shriek, would try rather to include
under her old Forms of speech or speculation this new amazing
Thing; that so some accredited scientific Law of Nature might
suffice for the unexpected Product of Nature, and History might
get to speak of it articulately, and draw inferences and profit
from it; in this new stage, History, we must say, babbles and
flounders perhaps in a still painfuller manner. Take, for
example, the latest Form of speech we have seen propounded on the
subject as adequate to it, almost in these months, by our worthy
M. Roux, in his Histoire Parlementaire. The latest and the
strangest: that the French Revolution was a dead-lift effort,
after eighteen hundred years of preparation, to realise—the
Christian Religion! (_Hist. Parl. Introd., i. 1 et seqq._) Unity,
Indivisibility, Brotherhood or Death did indeed stand printed on
all Houses of the Living; also, on Cemeteries, or Houses of the
Dead, stood printed, by order of Procureur Chaumette, Here is
eternal Sleep: (_Deux Amis, xii. 78._) but a Christian Religion
realised by the Guillotine and Death-Eternal, 'is suspect to me,'
as Robespierre was wont to say, 'm'est suspecte.'
Alas, no, M. Roux! A Gospel of Brotherhood, not according to any
of the Four old Evangelists, and calling on men to repent, and
amend each his own wicked existence, that they might be saved;
but a Gospel rather, as we often hint, according to a new Fifth
Evangelist Jean-Jacques, calling on men to amend each the whole
world's wicked existence, and be saved by making the
Constitution. A thing different and distant toto coelo, as they
say: the whole breadth of the sky, and further if possible!—It is
thus, however, that History, and indeed all human Speech and
Reason does yet, what Father Adam began life by doing: strive to
name the new Things it sees of Nature's producing,—often
helplessly enough.
But what if History were to admit, for once, that all the Names
and Theorems yet known to her fall short? That this grand Product
of Nature was even grand, and new, in that it came not to range
itself under old recorded Laws-of-Nature at all; but to disclose
new ones? In that case, History renouncing the pretention to name
it at present, will look honestly at it, and name what she can of
it! Any approximation to the right Name has value: were the right
name itself once here, the Thing is known thenceforth; the Thing
is then ours, and can be dealt with.
Now surely not realization, of Christianity, or of aught earthly,
do we discern in this Reign of Terror, in this French Revolution
of which it is the consummating. Destruction rather we discern—of
all that was destructible. It is as if Twenty-five millions,
risen at length into the Pythian mood, had stood up
simultaneously to say, with a sound which goes through far lands
and times, that this Untruth of an Existence had become
insupportable. O ye Hypocrisies and Speciosities, Royal mantles,
Cardinal plushcloaks, ye Credos, Formulas, Respectabilities,
fair-painted Sepulchres full of dead men's bones,—behold, ye
appear to us to be altogether a Lie. Yet our Life is not a Lie;
yet our Hunger and Misery is not a Lie! Behold we lift up, one
and all, our Twenty-five million right-hands; and take the
Heavens, and the Earth and also the Pit of Tophet to witness,
that either ye shall be abolished, or else we shall be abolished!
No inconsiderable Oath, truly; forming, as has been often said,
the most remarkable transaction in these last thousand years.
Wherefrom likewise there follow, and will follow, results. The
fulfilment of this Oath; that is to say, the black desperate
battle of Men against their whole Condition and Environment,—a
battle, alas, withal, against the Sin and Darkness that was in
themselves as in others: this is the Reign of Terror.
Transcendental despair was the purport of it, though not
consciously so. False hopes, of Fraternity, Political Millennium,
and what not, we have always seen: but the unseen heart of the
whole, the transcendental despair, was not false; neither has it
been of no effect. Despair, pushed far enough, completes the
circle, so to speak; and becomes a kind of genuine productive
hope again.
Doctrine of Fraternity, out of old Catholicism, does, it is true,
very strangely in the vehicle of a Jean-Jacques Evangel, suddenly
plump down out of its cloud-firmament; and from a theorem
determine to make itself a practice. But just so do all creeds,
intentions, customs, knowledges, thoughts and things, which the
French have, suddenly plump down; Catholicism, Classicism,
Sentimentalism, Cannibalism: all isms that make up Man in France,
are rushing and roaring in that gulf; and the theorem has become
a practice, and whatsoever cannot swim sinks. Not Evangelist
Jean-Jacques alone; there is not a Village Schoolmaster but has
contributed his quota: do we not 'thou' one another, according to
the Free Peoples of Antiquity? The French Patriot, in red
phrygian nightcap of Liberty, christens his poor little red
infant Cato,—Censor, or else of Utica. Gracchus has become
Baboeuf and edits Newspapers; Mutius Scaevola, Cordwainer of that
ilk, presides in the Section Mutius-Scaevola: and in brief, there
is a world wholly jumbling itself, to try what will swim!
Wherefore we will, at all events, call this Reign of Terror a
very strange one. Dominant Sansculottism makes, as it were, free
arena; one of the strangest temporary states Humanity was ever
seen in. A nation of men, full of wants and void of habits! The
old habits are gone to wreck because they were old: men, driven
forward by Necessity and fierce Pythian Madness, have, on the
spur of the instant, to devise for the want the way of satisfying
it. The wonted tumbles down; by imitation, by invention, the
Unwonted hastily builds itself up. What the French National head
has in it comes out: if not a great result, surely one of the
strangest.
Neither shall the reader fancy that it was all blank, this Reign
of Terror: far from it. How many hammermen and squaremen, bakers
and brewers, washers and wringers, over this France, must ply
their old daily work, let the Government be one of Terror or one
of Joy! In this Paris there are Twenty-three Theatres nightly;
some count as many as Sixty Places of Dancing. (_Mercier. ii.
124._) The Playwright manufactures: pieces of a strictly
Republican character. Ever fresh Novelgarbage, as of old, fodders
the Circulating Libraries. (_Moniteur of these months, passim._)
The 'Cesspool of Agio,' now in the time of Paper Money, works
with a vivacity unexampled, unimagined; exhales from itself
'sudden fortunes,' like Alladin-Palaces: really a kind of
miraculous Fata-Morganas, since you can live in them, for a time.
Terror is as a sable ground, on which the most variegated of
scenes paints itself. In startling transitions, in colours all
intensated, the sublime, the ludicrous, the horrible succeed one
another; or rather, in crowding tumult, accompany one another.
Here, accordingly, if anywhere, the 'hundred tongues,' which the
old Poets often clamour for, were of supreme service! In defect
of any such organ on our part, let the Reader stir up his own
imaginative organ: let us snatch for him this or the other
significant glimpse of things, in the fittest sequence we can.
Chapter 3.5.II.
Death.
In the early days of November, there is one transient glimpse of
things that is to be noted: the last transit to his long home of
Philippe d'Orleans Egalite. Philippe was 'decreed accused,' along
with the Girondins, much to his and their surprise; but not tried
along with them. They are doomed and dead, some three days, when
Philippe, after his long half-year of durance at Marseilles,
arrives in Paris. It is, as we calculate, the third of November
1793.
On which same day, two notable Female Prisoners are also put in
ward there: Dame Dubarry and Josephine Beauharnais! Dame whilom
Countess Dubarry, Unfortunate-female, had returned from London;
they snatched her, not only as Ex-harlot of a whilom Majesty, and
therefore suspect; but as having 'furnished the Emigrants with
money.' Contemporaneously with whom, there comes the wife of
Beauharnais, soon to be the widow: she that is Josephine Tascher
Beauharnais; that shall be Josephine Empress Buonaparte, for a
black Divineress of the Tropics prophesied long since that she
should be a Queen and more. Likewise, in the same hours, poor
Adam Lux, nigh turned in the head, who, according to Foster, 'has
taken no food these three weeks,' marches to the Guillotine for
his Pamphlet on Charlotte Corday: he 'sprang to the scaffold;'
said he 'died for her with great joy.' Amid such
fellow-travellers does Philippe arrive. For, be the month named
Brumaire year 2 of Liberty, or November year 1793 of Slavery, the
Guillotine goes always, Guillotine va toujours.
Enough, Philippe's indictment is soon drawn, his jury soon
convinced. He finds himself made guilty of Royalism, Conspiracy
and much else; nay, it is a guilt in him that he voted Louis's
Death, though he answers, "I voted in my soul and conscience."
The doom he finds is death forthwith; this present sixth dim day
of November is the last day that Philippe is to see. Philippe,
says Montgaillard, thereupon called for breakfast: sufficiency of
'oysters, two cutlets, best part of an excellent bottle of
claret;' and consumed the same with apparent relish. A
Revolutionary Judge, or some official Convention Emissary, then
arrived, to signify that he might still do the State some service
by revealing the truth about a plot or two. Philippe answered
that, on him, in the pass things had come to, the State had, he
thought, small claim; that nevertheless, in the interest of
Liberty, he, having still some leisure on his hands, was willing,
were a reasonable question asked him, to give reasonable answer.
And so, says Montgaillard, he lent his elbow on the mantel-piece,
and conversed in an under-tone, with great seeming composure;
till the leisure was done, or the Emissary went his ways.
At the door of the Conciergerie, Philippe's attitude was erect
and easy, almost commanding. It is five years, all but a few
days, since Philippe, within these same stone walls, stood up
with an air of graciosity, and asked King Louis, "Whether it was
a Royal Session, then, or a Bed of Justice?" O Heaven!—Three poor
blackguards were to ride and die with him: some say, they
objected to such company, and had to be flung in, neck and heels;
(_Foster, ii. 628; Montgaillard, iv. 141-57._) but it seems not
true. Objecting or not objecting, the gallows-vehicle gets under
way. Philippe's dress is remarked for its elegance; greenfrock,
waistcoat of white pique, yellow buckskins, boots clear as
Warren: his air, as before, entirely composed, impassive, not to
say easy and Brummellean-polite. Through street after street;
slowly, amid execrations;—past the Palais Egalite whilom
Palais-Royal! The cruel Populace stopped him there, some minutes:
Dame de Buffon, it is said, looked out on him, in Jezebel
head-tire; along the ashlar Wall, there ran these words in huge
tricolor print, REPUBLIC ONE AND INDIVISIBLE; LIBERTY, EQUALITY,
FRATERNITY OR DEATH: National Property. Philippe's eyes flashed
hellfire, one instant; but the next instant it was gone, and he
sat impassive, Brummellean-polite. On the scaffold, Samson was
for drawing of his boots: "tush," said Philippe, "they will come
better off after; let us have done, depechons-nous!"
So Philippe was not without virtue, then? God forbid that there
should be any living man without it! He had the virtue to keep
living for five-and-forty years;—other virtues perhaps more than
we know of. Probably no mortal ever had such things recorded of
him: such facts, and also such lies. For he was a Jacobin Prince
of the Blood; consider what a combination! Also, unlike any Nero,
any Borgia, he lived in the Age of Pamphlets. Enough for us:
Chaos has reabsorbed him; may it late or never bear his like
again!—Brave young Orleans Egalite, deprived of all, only not
deprived of himself, is gone to Coire in the Grisons, under the
name of Corby, to teach Mathematics. The Egalite Family is at the
darkest depths of the Nadir.
A far nobler Victim follows; one who will claim remembrance from
several centuries: Jeanne-Marie Phlipon, the Wife of Roland.
Queenly, sublime in her uncomplaining sorrow, seemed she to
Riouffe in her Prison. 'Something more than is usually found in
the looks of women painted itself,' says Riouffe, (_Memoires, Sur
les Prisons, i., pp. 55-7._) 'in those large black eyes of hers,
full of expression and sweetness. She spoke to me often, at the
Grate: we were all attentive round her, in a sort of admiration
and astonishment; she expressed herself with a purity, with a
harmony and prosody that made her language like music, of which
the ear could never have enough. Her conversation was serious,
not cold; coming from the mouth of a beautiful woman, it was
frank and courageous as that of a great men.' 'And yet her maid
said: "Before you, she collects her strength; but in her own
room, she will sit three hours sometimes, leaning on the window,
and weeping."' She had been in Prison, liberated once, but
recaptured the same hour, ever since the first of June: in
agitation and uncertainty; which has gradually settled down into
the last stern certainty, that of death. In the Abbaye Prison,
she occupied Charlotte Corday's apartment. Here in the
Conciergerie, she speaks with Riouffe, with Ex-Minister Claviere;
calls the beheaded Twenty-two "Nos amis, our Friends,"—whom we
are soon to follow. During these five months, those Memoirs of
hers were written, which all the world still reads.
But now, on the 8th of November, 'clad in white,' says Riouffe,
'with her long black hair hanging down to her girdle,' she is
gone to the Judgment Bar. She returned with a quick step; lifted
her finger, to signify to us that she was doomed: her eyes seemed
to have been wet. Fouquier-Tinville's questions had been
'brutal;' offended female honour flung them back on him, with
scorn, not without tears. And now, short preparation soon done,
she shall go her last road. There went with her a certain
Lamarche, 'Director of Assignat printing;' whose dejection she
endeavoured to cheer. Arrived at the foot of the scaffold, she
asked for pen and paper, "to write the strange thoughts that were
rising in her;" (_Memoires de Madame Roland introd., i. 68._) a
remarkable request; which was refused. Looking at the Statue of
Liberty which stands there, she says bitterly: "O Liberty, what
things are done in thy name!" For Lamarche's sake, she will die
first; shew him how easy it is to die: "Contrary to the order"
said Samson.—"Pshaw, you cannot refuse the last request of a
Lady;" and Samson yielded.
Noble white Vision, with its high queenly face, its soft proud
eyes, long black hair flowing down to the girdle; and as brave a
heart as ever beat in woman's bosom! Like a white Grecian Statue,
serenely complete, she shines in that black wreck of things;—long
memorable. Honour to great Nature who, in Paris City, in the Era
of Noble-Sentiment and Pompadourism, can make a Jeanne Phlipon,
and nourish her to clear perennial Womanhood, though but on
Logics, Encyclopedies, and the Gospel according to Jean-Jacques!
Biography will long remember that trait of asking for a pen "to
write the strange thoughts that were rising in her." It is as a
little light-beam, shedding softness, and a kind of sacredness,
over all that preceded: so in her too there was an Unnameable;
she too was a Daughter of the Infinite; there were mysteries
which Philosophism had not dreamt of!—She left long written
counsels to her little Girl; she said her Husband would not
survive her.
Still crueller was the fate of poor Bailly, First National
President, First Mayor of Paris: doomed now for Royalism,
Fayettism; for that Red-Flag Business of the Champ-de-Mars;—one
may say in general, for leaving his Astronomy to meddle with
Revolution. It is the 10th of November 1793, a cold bitter
drizzling rain, as poor Bailly is led through the streets;
howling Populace covering him with curses, with mud; waving over
his face a burning or smoking mockery of a Red Flag. Silent,
unpitied, sits the innocent old man. Slow faring through the
sleety drizzle, they have got to the Champ-de-Mars: Not there!
vociferates the cursing Populace; Such blood ought not to stain
an Altar of the Fatherland; not there; but on that dungheap by
the River-side! So vociferates the cursing Populace; Officiality
gives ear to them. The Guillotine is taken down, though with
hands numbed by the sleety drizzle; is carried to the River-side,
is there set up again, with slow numbness; pulse after pulse
still counting itself out in the old man's weary heart. For hours
long; amid curses and bitter frost-rain! "Bailly, thou
tremblest," said one. "Mon ami, it is for cold," said Bailly,
"c'est de froid." Crueller end had no mortal. (_Vie de Bailly in
Memoires, i., p. 29._)
Some days afterwards, Roland hearing the news of what happened on
the 8th, embraces his kind Friends at Rouen, leaves their kind
house which had given him refuge; goes forth, with farewell too
sad for tears. On the morrow morning, 16th of the month, 'some
four leagues from Rouen, Paris-ward, near Bourg-Baudoin, in M.
Normand's Avenue,' there is seen sitting leant against a tree,
the figure of rigorous wrinkled man; stiff now in the rigour of
death; a cane-sword run through his heart; and at his feet this
writing: 'Whoever thou art that findest me lying, respect my
remains: they are those of a man who consecrated all his life to
being useful; and who has died as he lived, virtuous and honest.'
'Not fear, but indignation, made me quit my retreat, on learning
that my Wife had been murdered. I wished not to remain longer on
an Earth polluted with crimes.' (_Memoires de Madame Roland
introd., i. 88._)
Barnave's appearance at the Revolutionary Tribunal was of the
bravest; but it could not stead him. They have sent for him from
Grenoble; to pay the common smart, Vain is eloquence, forensic or
other, against the dumb Clotho-shears of Tinville. He is still
but two-and-thirty, this Barnave, and has known such changes.
Short while ago, we saw him at the top of Fortune's Wheel, his
word a law to all Patriots: and now surely he is at the bottom of
the Wheel; in stormful altercation with a Tinville Tribunal,
which is dooming him to die! (_Foster, ii. 629._) And Petion,
once also of the Extreme Left, and named Petion Virtue, where is
he? Civilly dead; in the Caves of Saint-Emilion; to be devoured
of dogs. And Robespierre, who rode along with him on the
shoulders of the people, is in Committee of Salut; civilly alive:
not to live always. So giddy-swift whirls and spins this
immeasurable tormentum of a Revolution; wild-booming; not to be
followed by the eye. Barnave, on the Scaffold, stamped his foot;
and looking upwards was heard to ejaculate, "This then is my
reward?"
Deputy Ex-Procureur Manuel is already gone; and Deputy Osselin,
famed also in August and September, is about to go: and Rabaut,
discovered treacherously between his two walls, and the Brother
of Rabaut. National Deputies not a few! And Generals: the memory
of General Custine cannot be defended by his Son; his Son is
already guillotined. Custine the Ex-Noble was replaced by
Houchard the Plebeian: he too could not prosper in the North; for
him too there was no mercy; he has perished in the Place de la
Revolution, after attempting suicide in Prison. And Generals
Biron, Beauharnais, Brunet, whatsoever General prospers not;
tough old Luckner, with his eyes grown rheumy; Alsatian
Westermann, valiant and diligent in La Vendee: none of them can,
as the Psalmist sings, his soul from death deliver.
How busy are the Revolutionary Committees; Sections with their
Forty Halfpence a-day! Arrestment on arrestment falls quick,
continual; followed by death. Ex-Minister Claviere has killed
himself in Prison. Ex-Minister Lebrun, seized in a hayloft, under
the disguise of a working man, is instantly conducted to death.
(_Moniteur, 11 Decembre, 30 Decembre, 1793; Louvet, p. 287._)
Nay, withal, is it not what Barrere calls 'coining money on the
Place de la Revolution?' For always the 'property of the guilty,
if property he have,' is confiscated. To avoid accidents, we even
make a Law that suicide shall not defraud us; that a criminal who
kills himself does not the less incur forfeiture of goods. Let
the guilty tremble, therefore, and the suspect, and the rich, and
in a word all manner of culottic men! Luxembourg Palace, once
Monsieur's, has become a huge loathsome Prison; Chantilly Palace
too, once Conde's:—and their Landlords are at Blankenberg, on the
wrong side of the Rhine. In Paris are now some Twelve Prisons; in
France some Forty-four Thousand: thitherward, thick as brown
leaves in Autumn, rustle and travel the suspect; shaken down by
Revolutionary Committees, they are swept thitherward, as into
their storehouse,—to be consumed by Samson and Tinville. 'The
Guillotine goes not ill, ne va pas mal.'
Chapter 3.5.III.
Destruction.
The suspect may well tremble; but how much more the open
rebels;—the Girondin Cities of the South! Revolutionary Army is
gone forth, under Ronsin the Playwright; six thousand strong; in
'red nightcap, in tricolor waistcoat, in black-shag trousers,
black-shag spencer, with enormous moustachioes, enormous
sabre,—in carmagnole complete;' (_See Louvet, p. 301._) and has
portable guillotines. Representative Carrier has got to Nantes,
by the edge of blazing La Vendee, which Rossignol has literally
set on fire: Carrier will try what captives you make, what
accomplices they have, Royalist or Girondin: his guillotine goes
always, va toujours; and his wool-capped 'Company of Marat.'
Little children are guillotined, and aged men. Swift as the
machine is, it will not serve; the Headsman and all his valets
sink, worn down with work; declare that the human muscles can no
more. (_Deux Amis, xii. 249-51._) Whereupon you must try
fusillading; to which perhaps still frightfuller methods may
succeed.
In Brest, to like purpose, rules Jean-Bon Saint-Andre; with an
Army of Red Nightcaps. In Bourdeaux rules Tallien, with his
Isabeau and henchmen: Guadets, Cussys, Salleses, may fall; the
bloody Pike and Nightcap bearing supreme sway; the Guillotine
coining money. Bristly fox-haired Tallien, once Able Editor,
still young in years, is now become most gloomy, potent; a Pluto
on Earth, and has the keys of Tartarus. One remarks, however,
that a certain Senhorina Cabarus, or call her rather Senhora and
wedded not yet widowed Dame de Fontenai, brown beautiful woman,
daughter of Cabarus the Spanish merchant,—has softened the red
bristly countenance; pleading for herself and friends; and
prevailing. The keys of Tartarus, or any kind of power, are
something to a woman; gloomy Pluto himself is not insensible to
love. Like a new Proserpine, she, by this red gloomy Dis, is
gathered; and, they say, softens his stone heart a little.
Maignet, at Orange in the South; Lebon, at Arras in the North,
become world's wonders. Jacobin Popular Tribunal, with its
National Representative, perhaps where Girondin Popular Tribunal
had lately been, rises here and rises there; wheresoever needed.
Fouches, Maignets, Barrases, Frerons scour the Southern
Departments; like reapers, with their guillotine-sickle. Many are
the labourers, great is the harvest. By the hundred and the
thousand, men's lives are cropt; cast like brands into the
burning.
Marseilles is taken, and put under martial law: lo, at
Marseilles, what one besmutted red-bearded corn-ear is this which
they cut;—one gross Man, we mean, with copper-studded face;
plenteous beard, or beard-stubble, of a tile-colour? By Nemesis
and the Fatal Sisters, it is Jourdan Coupe-tete! Him they have
clutched, in these martial-law districts; him too, with their
'national razor,' their rasoir national, they sternly shave away.
Low now is Jourdan the Headsman's own head;—low as Deshuttes's
and Varigny's, which he sent on pikes, in the Insurrection of
Women! No more shall he, as a copper Portent, be seen gyrating
through the Cities of the South; no more sit judging, with pipes
and brandy, in the Ice-tower of Avignon. The all-hiding Earth has
received him, the bloated Tilebeard: may we never look upon his
like again!—Jourdan one names; the other Hundreds are not named.
Alas, they, like confused faggots, lie massed together for us;
counted by the cartload: and yet not an individual faggot-twig of
them but had a Life and History; and was cut, not without pangs
as when a Kaiser dies!
Least of all cities can Lyons escape. Lyons, which we saw in
dread sunblaze, that Autumn night when the Powder-tower sprang
aloft, was clearly verging towards a sad end. Inevitable: what
could desperate valour and Precy do; Dubois-Crance, deaf as
Destiny, stern as Doom, capturing their 'redouts of cotton-bags;'
hemming them in, ever closer, with his Artillery-lava? Never
would that Ci-devant d'Autichamp arrive; never any help from
Blankenberg. The Lyons Jacobins were hidden in cellars; the
Girondin Municipality waxed pale, in famine, treason and red
fire. Precy drew his sword, and some Fifteen Hundred with him;
sprang to saddle, to cut their way to Switzerland. They cut
fiercely; and were fiercely cut, and cut down; not hundreds,
hardly units of them ever saw Switzerland. (_Deux Amis, xi.
145._) Lyons, on the 9th of October, surrenders at discretion; it
is become a devoted Town. Abbe Lamourette, now Bishop Lamourette,
whilom Legislator, he of the old Baiser-l'Amourette or
Delilah-Kiss, is seized here, is sent to Paris to be guillotined:
'he made the sign of the cross,' they say when Tinville intimated
his death-sentence to him; and died as an eloquent Constitutional
Bishop. But wo now to all Bishops, Priests, Aristocrats and
Federalists that are in Lyons! The manes of Chalier are to be
appeased; the Republic, maddened to the Sibylline pitch, has
bared her right arm. Behold! Representative Fouche, it is Fouche
of Nantes, a name to become well known; he with a Patriot company
goes duly, in wondrous Procession, to raise the corpse of
Chalier. An Ass, housed in Priest's cloak, with a mitre on its
head, and trailing the Mass-Books, some say the very Bible, at
its tail, paces through Lyons streets; escorted by multitudinous
Patriotism, by clangour as of the Pit; towards the grave of
Martyr Chalier. The body is dug up and burnt: the ashes are
collected in an Urn; to be worshipped of Paris Patriotism. The
Holy Books were part of the funeral pile; their ashes are
scattered to the wind. Amid cries of "Vengeance!
Vengeance!"—which, writes Fouche, shall be satisfied. (_Moniteur
(_du 17 Novembre 1793_), &c._)
Lyons in fact is a Town to be abolished; not Lyons henceforth but
'Commune Affranchie, Township Freed;' the very name of it shall
perish. It is to be razed, this once great City, if Jacobinism
prophesy right; and a Pillar to be erected on the ruins, with
this Inscription, Lyons rebelled against the Republic; Lyons is
no more. Fouche, Couthon, Collot, Convention Representatives
succeed one another: there is work for the hangman; work for the
hammerman, not in building. The very Houses of Aristocrats, we
say, are doomed. Paralytic Couthon, borne in a chair, taps on the
wall, with emblematic mallet, saying, "La Loi te frappe, The Law
strikes thee;" masons, with wedge and crowbar, begin demolition.
Crash of downfall, dim ruin and dust-clouds fly in the winter
wind. Had Lyons been of soft stuff, it had all vanished in those
weeks, and the Jacobin prophecy had been fulfilled. But Towns are
not built of soap-froth; Lyons Town is built of stone. Lyons,
though it rebelled against the Republic, is to this day.
Neither have the Lyons Girondins all one neck, that you could
despatch it at one swoop. Revolutionary Tribunal here, and
Military Commission, guillotining, fusillading, do what they can:
the kennels of the Place des Terreaux run red; mangled corpses
roll down the Rhone. Collot d'Herbois, they say, was once hissed
on the Lyons stage: but with what sibilation, of world-catcall or
hoarse Tartarean Trumpet, will ye hiss him now, in this his new
character of Convention Representative,—not to be repeated! Two
hundred and nine men are marched forth over the River, to be shot
in mass, by musket and cannon, in the Promenade of the Brotteaux.
It is the second of such scenes; the first was of some Seventy.
The corpses of the first were flung into the Rhone, but the Rhone
stranded some; so these now, of the second lot, are to be buried
on land. Their one long grave is dug; they stand ranked, by the
loose mould-ridge; the younger of them singing the Marseillaise.
Jacobin National Guards give fire; but have again to give fire,
and again; and to take the bayonet and the spade, for though the
doomed all fall, they do not all die;—and it becomes a butchery
too horrible for speech. So that the very Nationals, as they
fire, turn away their faces. Collot, snatching the musket from
one such National, and levelling it with unmoved countenance,
says "It is thus a Republican ought to fire."
This is the second Fusillade, and happily the last: it is found
too hideous; even inconvenient. They were Two hundred and nine
marched out; one escaped at the end of the Bridge: yet behold,
when you count the corpses, they are Two hundred and ten. Rede us
this riddle, O Collot? After long guessing, it is called to mind
that two individuals, here in the Brotteaux ground, did attempt
to leave the rank, protesting with agony that they were not
condemned men, that they were Police Commissaries: which two we
repulsed, and disbelieved, and shot with the rest! (_Deux Amis,
xii. 251-62._) Such is the vengeance of an enraged Republic.
Surely this, according to Barrere's phrase, is Justice 'under
rough forms, sous des formes acerbes.' But the Republic, as
Fouche says, must "march to Liberty over corpses." Or again as
Barrere has it: "None but the dead do not come back, Il n'y a que
les morts qui ne reviennent pas." Terror hovers far and wide:
'The Guillotine goes not ill.'
But before quitting those Southern regions, over which History
can cast only glances from aloft, she will alight for a moment,
and look fixedly at one point: the Siege of Toulon. Much
battering and bombarding, heating of balls in furnaces or
farm-houses, serving of artillery well and ill, attacking of
Ollioules Passes, Forts Malbosquet, there has been: as yet to
small purpose. We have had General Cartaux here, a whilom Painter
elevated in the troubles of Marseilles; General Doppet, a whilom
Medical man elevated in the troubles of Piemont, who, under
Crance, took Lyons, but cannot take Toulon. Finally we have
General Dugommier, a pupil of Washington. Convention Representans
also we have had; Barrases, Salicettis, Robespierres the
Younger:—also an Artillery Chef de brigade, of extreme diligence,
who often takes his nap of sleep among the guns; a short
taciturn, olive-complexioned young man, not unknown to us, by
name Buonaparte: one of the best Artillery-officers yet met with.
And still Toulon is not taken. It is the fourth month now;
December, in slave-style; Frostarious or Frimaire, in new-style:
and still their cursed Red-Blue Flag flies there. They are
provisioned from the Sea; they have seized all heights, felling
wood, and fortifying themselves; like the coney, they have built
their nest in the rocks.
Meanwhile, Frostarious is not yet become Snowous or Nivose, when
a Council of War is called; Instructions have just arrived from
Government and Salut Public. Carnot, in Salut Public, has sent us
a plan of siege: on which plan General Dugommier has this
criticism to make, Commissioner Salicetti has that; and
criticisms and plans are very various; when that young Artillery
Officer ventures to speak; the same whom we saw snatching sleep
among the guns, who has emerged several times in this
History,—the name of him Napoleon Buonaparte. It is his humble
opinion, for he has been gliding about with spy-glasses, with
thoughts, That a certain Fort l'Eguillette can be clutched, as
with lion-spring, on the sudden; wherefrom, were it once ours,
the very heart of Toulon might be battered, the English Lines
were, so to speak, turned inside out, and Hood and our Natural
Enemies must next day either put to sea, or be burnt to ashes.
Commissioners arch their eyebrows, with negatory sniff: who is
this young gentleman with more wit than we all? Brave veteran
Dugommier, however, thinks the idea worth a word; questions the
young gentleman; becomes convinced; and there is for issue, Try
it.
On the taciturn bronze-countenance, therefore, things being now
all ready, there sits a grimmer gravity than ever, compressing a
hotter central-fire than ever. Yonder, thou seest, is Fort
l'Eguillette; a desperate lion-spring, yet a possible one; this
day to be tried!—Tried it is; and found good. By stratagem and
valour, stealing through ravines, plunging fiery through the
fire-tempest, Fort l'Eguillette is clutched at, is carried; the
smoke having cleared, wiser the Tricolor fly on it: the
bronze-complexioned young man was right. Next morning, Hood,
finding the interior of his lines exposed, his defences turned
inside out, makes for his shipping. Taking such Royalists as
wished it on board with him, he weighs anchor: on this 19th of
December 1793, Toulon is once more the Republic's!
Cannonading has ceased at Toulon; and now the guillotining and
fusillading may begin. Civil horrors, truly: but at least that
infamy of an English domination is purged away. Let there be
Civic Feast universally over France: so reports Barrere, or
Painter David; and the Convention assist in a body. (_Moniteur,
1793, Nos. 101 (_31 Decembre_), 95, 96, 98, &c._) Nay, it is
said, these infamous English (_with an attention rather to their
own interests than to ours_) set fire to our store-houses,
arsenals, warships in Toulon Harbour, before weighing; some score
of brave warships, the only ones we now had! However, it did not
prosper, though the flame spread far and high; some two ships
were burnt, not more; the very galley-slaves ran with buckets to
quench. These same proud Ships, Ships l'Orient and the rest, have
to carry this same young Man to Egypt first: not yet can they be
changed to ashes, or to Sea-Nymphs; not yet to sky-rockets, O
Ship l'Orient, nor became the prey of England,—before their time!
And so, over France universally, there is Civic Feast and
high-tide: and Toulon sees fusillading, grape-shotting in mass,
as Lyons saw; and 'death is poured out in great floods, vomie a
grands flots' and Twelve thousand Masons are requisitioned from
the neighbouring country, to raze Toulon from the face of the
Earth. For it is to be razed, so reports Barrere; all but the
National Shipping Establishments; and to be called henceforth not
Toulon, but Port of the Mountain. There in black death-cloud we
must leave it;—hoping only that Toulon too is built of stone;
that perhaps even Twelve thousand Masons cannot pull it down,
till the fit pass.
One begins to be sick of 'death vomited in great floods.'
Nevertheless hearest thou not, O reader (_for the sound reaches
through centuries_), in the dead December and January nights,
over Nantes Town,—confused noises, as of musketry and tumult, as
of rage and lamentation; mingling with the everlasting moan of
the Loire waters there? Nantes Town is sunk in sleep; but
Representant Carrier is not sleeping, the wool-capped Company of
Marat is not sleeping. Why unmoors that flatbottomed craft, that
gabarre; about eleven at night; with Ninety Priests under
hatches? They are going to Belle Isle? In the middle of the Loire
stream, on signal given, the gabarre is scuttled; she sinks with
all her cargo. 'Sentence of Deportation,' writes Carrier, 'was
executed vertically.' The Ninety Priests, with their
gabarre-coffin, lie deep! It is the first of the Noyades, what we
may call Drownages, of Carrier; which have become famous forever.
Guillotining there was at Nantes, till the Headsman sank worn
out: then fusillading 'in the Plain of Saint-Mauve;' little
children fusilladed, and women with children at the breast;
children and women, by the hundred and twenty; and by the five
hundred, so hot is La Vendee: till the very Jacobins grew sick,
and all but the Company of Marat cried, Hold! Wherefore now we
have got Noyading; and on the 24th night of Frostarious year 2,
which is 14th of December 1793, we have a second Noyade:
consisting of 'a Hundred and Thirty-eight persons.' (_Deux Amis,
xii. 266-72; Moniteur, du 2 Janvier 1794._)
Or why waste a gabarre, sinking it with them? Fling them out;
fling them out, with their hands tied: pour a continual hail of
lead over all the space, till the last struggler of them be sunk!
Unsound sleepers of Nantes, and the Sea-Villages thereabouts,
hear the musketry amid the night-winds; wonder what the meaning
of it is. And women were in that gabarre; whom the Red Nightcaps
were stripping naked; who begged, in their agony, that their
smocks might not be stript from them. And young children were
thrown in, their mothers vainly pleading: "Wolflings," answered
the Company of Marat, "who would grow to be wolves."
By degrees, daylight itself witnesses Noyades: women and men are
tied together, feet and feet, hands and hands: and flung in: this
they call Mariage Republicain, Republican Marriage. Cruel is the
panther of the woods, the she-bear bereaved of her whelps: but
there is in man a hatred crueller than that. Dumb, out of
suffering now, as pale swoln corpses, the victims tumble
confusedly seaward along the Loire stream; the tide rolling them
back: clouds of ravens darken the River; wolves prowl on the
shoal-places: Carrier writes, 'Quel torrent revolutionnaire, What
a torrent of Revolution!' For the man is rabid; and the Time is
rabid. These are the Noyades of Carrier; twenty-five by the tale,
for what is done in darkness comes to be investigated in
sunlight: (_Proces de Carrier, 4 tomes, Paris, 1795._) not to be
forgotten for centuries,—We will turn to another aspect of the
Consummation of Sansculottism; leaving this as the blackest.
But indeed men are all rabid; as the Time is. Representative
Lebon, at Arras, dashes his sword into the blood flowing from the
Guillotine; exclaims, "How I like it!" Mothers, they say, by his
order, have to stand by while the Guillotine devours their
children: a band of music is stationed near; and, at the fall of
every head, strikes up its ca-ira. (_Les Horreures des Prisons
d'Arras, Paris, 1823._) In the Burgh of Bedouin, in the Orange
region, the Liberty-tree has been cut down over night.
Representative Maignet, at Orange, hears of it; burns Bedouin
Burgh to the last dog-hutch; guillotines the inhabitants, or
drives them into the caves and hills. (_Montgaillard, iv. 200._)
Republic One and Indivisible! She is the newest Birth of Nature's
waste inorganic Deep, which men name Orcus, Chaos, primeval
Night; and knows one law, that of self-preservation. Tigresse
Nationale: meddle not with a whisker of her! Swift-crushing is
her stroke; look what a paw she spreads;—pity has not entered her
heart.
Prudhomme, the dull-blustering Printer and Able Editor, as yet a
Jacobin Editor, will become a renegade one, and publish large
volumes on these matters, Crimes of the Revolution; adding
innumerable lies withal, as if the truth were not sufficient. We,
for our part, find it more edifying to know, one good time, that
this Republic and National Tigress is a New Birth; a Fact of
Nature among Formulas, in an Age of Formulas; and to look,
oftenest in silence, how the so genuine Nature-Fact will demean
itself among these. For the Formulas are partly genuine, partly
delusive, supposititious: we call them, in the language of
metaphor, regulated modelled shapes; some of which have bodies
and life still in them; most of which, according to a German
Writer, have only emptiness, 'glass-eyes glaring on you with a
ghastly affectation of life, and in their interior unclean
accumulation of beetles and spiders!' But the Fact, let all men
observe, is a genuine and sincere one; the sincerest of Facts:
terrible in its sincerity, as very Death. Whatsoever is equally
sincere may front it, and beard it; but whatsoever is not?—
Chapter 3.5.IV.
Carmagnole complete.
Simultaneously with this Tophet-black aspect, there unfolds
itself another aspect, which one may call a Tophet-red aspect:
the Destruction of the Catholic Religion; and indeed, for the
time being of Religion itself. We saw Romme's New Calendar
establish its Tenth Day of Rest; and asked, what would become of
the Christian Sabbath? The Calendar is hardly a month old, till
all this is set at rest. Very singular, as Mercier observes: last
Corpus-Christi Day 1792, the whole world, and Sovereign Authority
itself, walked in religious gala, with a quite devout
air;—Butcher Legendre, supposed to be irreverent, was like to be
massacred in his Gig, as the thing went by. A Gallican Hierarchy,
and Church, and Church Formulas seemed to flourish, a little
brown-leaved or so, but not browner than of late years or
decades; to flourish, far and wide, in the sympathies of an
unsophisticated People; defying Philosophism, Legislature and the
Encyclopedie. Far and wide, alas, like a brown-leaved
Vallombrosa; which waits but one whirlblast of the November wind,
and in an hour stands bare! Since that Corpus-Christi Day,
Brunswick has come, and the Emigrants, and La Vendee, and
eighteen months of Time: to all flourishing, especially to
brown-leaved flourishing, there comes, were it never so slowly,
an end.
On the 7th of November, a certain Citoyen Parens, Curate of
Boissise-le-Bertrand, writes to the Convention that he has all
his life been preaching a lie, and is grown weary of doing it;
wherefore he will now lay down his Curacy and stipend, and begs
that an august Convention would give him something else to live
upon. 'Mention honorable,' shall we give him? Or 'reference to
Committee of Finances?' Hardly is this got decided, when goose
Gobel, Constitutional Bishop of Paris, with his Chapter, with
Municipal and Departmental escort in red nightcaps, makes his
appearance, to do as Parens has done. Goose Gobel will now
acknowledge 'no Religion but Liberty;' therefore he doffs his
Priest-gear, and receives the Fraternal embrace. To the joy of
Departmental Momoro, of Municipal Chaumettes and Heberts, of
Vincent and the Revolutionary Army! Chaumette asks, Ought there
not, in these circumstances, to be among our intercalary Days
Sans-breeches, a Feast of Reason? (_Moniteur, Seance du 17
Brumaire (_7th November_), 1793._) Proper surely! Let Atheist
Marechal, Lalande, and little Atheist Naigeon rejoice; let
Clootz, Speaker of Mankind, present to the Convention his
Evidences of the Mahometan Religion, 'a work evincing the nullity
of all Religions,'—with thanks. There shall be Universal Republic
now, thinks Clootz; and 'one God only, Le Peuple.'
The French Nation is of gregarious imitative nature; it needed
but a fugle-motion in this matter; and goose Gobel, driven by
Municipality and force of circumstances, has given one. What Cure
will be behind him of Boissise; what Bishop behind him of Paris?
Bishop Gregoire, indeed, courageously declines; to the sound of
"We force no one; let Gregoire consult his conscience;" but
Protestant and Romish by the hundred volunteer and assent. From
far and near, all through November into December, till the work
is accomplished, come Letters of renegation, come Curates who are
'learning to be Carpenters,' Curates with their new-wedded Nuns:
has not the Day of Reason dawned, very swiftly, and become noon?
From sequestered Townships comes Addresses, stating plainly,
though in Patois dialect, That 'they will have no more to do with
the black animal called Curay, animal noir, appelle Curay.'
(_Analyse du Moniteur (_Paris, 1801_), ii. 280._)
Above all things there come Patriotic Gifts, of Church-furniture.
The remnant of bells, except for tocsin, descend from their
belfries, into the National meltingpot, to make cannon. Censers
and all sacred vessels are beaten broad; of silver, they are fit
for the poverty-stricken Mint; of pewter, let them become bullets
to shoot the 'enemies of du genre humain.' Dalmatics of plush
make breeches for him who has none; linen stoles will clip into
shirts for the Defenders of the Country: old-clothesmen, Jew or
Heathen, drive the briskest trade. Chalier's Ass Procession, at
Lyons, was but a type of what went on, in those same days, in all
Towns. In all Towns and Townships as quick as the guillotine may
go, so quick goes the axe and the wrench: sacristies, lutrins,
altar-rails are pulled down; the Mass Books torn into cartridge
papers: men dance the Carmagnole all night about the bonfire. All
highways jingle with metallic Priest-tackle, beaten broad; sent
to the Convention, to the poverty-stricken Mint. Good Sainte
Genevieve's Chasse is let down: alas, to be burst open, this
time, and burnt on the Place de Greve. Saint Louis's shirt is
burnt;—might not a Defender of the Country have had it? At
Saint-Denis Town, no longer Saint-Denis but Franciade, Patriotism
has been down among the Tombs, rummaging; the Revolutionary Army
has taken spoil. This, accordingly, is what the streets of Paris
saw:
'Most of these persons were still drunk, with the brandy they had
swallowed out of chalices;—eating mackerel on the patenas!
Mounted on Asses, which were housed with Priests' cloaks, they
reined them with Priests' stoles: they held clutched with the
same hand communion-cup and sacred wafer. They stopped at the
doors of Dramshops; held out ciboriums: and the landlord, stoop
in hand, had to fill them thrice. Next came Mules high-laden with
crosses, chandeliers, censers, holy-water vessels,
hyssops;—recalling to mind the Priests of Cybele, whose panniers,
filled with the instruments of their worship, served at once as
storehouse, sacristy and temple. In such equipage did these
profaners advance towards the Convention. They enter there, in an
immense train, ranged in two rows; all masked like mummers in
fantastic sacerdotal vestments; bearing on hand-barrows their
heaped plunder,—ciboriums, suns, candelabras, plates of gold and
silver.' (_Mercier, iv. 134. See Moniteur, Seance du 10
Novembre._)
The Address we do not give; for indeed it was in strophes, sung
viva voce, with all the parts;—Danton glooming considerably, in
his place; and demanding that there be prose and decency in
future. (_See also Moniteur, Seance du 26 Novembre._)
Nevertheless the captors of such spolia opima crave, not
untouched with liquor, permission to dance the Carmagnole also on
the spot: whereto an exhilarated Convention cannot but accede.
Nay, 'several Members,' continues the exaggerative Mercier, who
was not there to witness, being in Limbo now, as one of
Duperret's Seventy-three, 'several Members, quitting their curule
chairs, took the hand of girls flaunting in Priest's vestures,
and danced the Carmagnole along with them.' Such Old-Hallow-tide
have they, in this year, once named of Grace, 1793.
Out of which strange fall of Formulas, tumbling there in confused
welter, betrampled by the Patriotic dance, is it not passing
strange to see a new Formula arise? For the human tongue is not
adequate to speak what 'triviality run distracted' there is in
human nature. Black Mumbo-Jumbo of the woods, and most Indian
Wau-waus, one can understand: but this of Procureur Anaxagoras
whilom John-Peter Chaumette? We will say only: Man is a born
idol-worshipper, sight-worshipper, so sensuous-imaginative is he;
and also partakes much of the nature of the ape.
For the same day, while this brave Carmagnole dance has hardly
jigged itself out, there arrive Procureur Chaumette and
Municipals and Departmentals, and with them the strangest
freightage: a New Religion! Demoiselle Candeille, of the Opera; a
woman fair to look upon, when well rouged: she, borne on
palanquin shoulder-high; with red woolen nightcap; in azure
mantle; garlanded with oak; holding in her hand the Pike of the
Jupiter-Peuple, sails in; heralded by white young women girt in
tricolor. Let the world consider it! This, O National Convention
wonder of the universe, is our New Divinity; Goddess of Reason,
worthy, and alone worthy of revering. Nay, were it too much to
ask of an august National Representation that it also went with
us to the ci-devant Cathedral called of Notre-Dame, and executed
a few strophes in worship of her?
President and Secretaries give Goddess Candeille, borne at due
height round their platform, successively the fraternal kiss;
whereupon she, by decree, sails to the right-hand of the
President and there alights. And now, after due pause and
flourishes of oratory, the Convention, gathering its limbs, does
get under way in the required procession towards
Notre-Dame;—Reason, again in her litter, sitting in the van of
them, borne, as one judges, by men in the Roman costume; escorted
by wind-music, red nightcaps, and the madness of the world. And
so straightway, Reason taking seat on the high-altar of
Notre-Dame, the requisite worship or quasi-worship is, say the
Newspapers, executed; National Convention chanting 'the Hymn to
Liberty, words by Chenier, music by Gossec.' It is the first of
the Feasts of Reason; first communion-service of the New Religion
of Chaumette.
'The corresponding Festival in the Church of Saint-Eustache,'
says Mercier, 'offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The
interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with
cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables
over-loaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pastries
and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors:
whosoever presented himself took part of the good things:
children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in
sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt
intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft,
in a serene manner; Cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as
acolytes. And out of doors,' continues the exaggerative man,
'were mad multitudes dancing round the bonfire of
Chapel-balustrades, of Priests' and Canons' stalls; and the
dancers, I exaggerate nothing, the dancers nigh bare of breeches,
neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and
spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and
Destruction.' (_Mercier, iv. 127-146._) At Saint-Gervais Church
again there was a terrible 'smell of herrings;' Section or
Municipality having provided no food, no condiment, but left it
to chance. Other mysteries, seemingly of a Cabiric or even
Paphian character, we heave under the Veil, which appropriately
stretches itself 'along the pillars of the aisles,'—not to be
lifted aside by the hand of History.
But there is one thing we should like almost better to understand
than any other: what Reason herself thought of it, all the while.
What articulate words poor Mrs. Momoro, for example, uttered;
when she had become ungoddessed again, and the Bibliopolist and
she sat quiet at home, at supper? For he was an earnest man,
Bookseller Momoro; and had notions of Agrarian Law. Mrs. Momoro,
it is admitted, made one of the best Goddesses of Reason; though
her teeth were a little defective. And now if the reader will
represent to himself that such visible Adoration of Reason went
on 'all over the Republic,' through these November and December
weeks, till the Church woodwork was burnt out, and the business
otherwise completed, he will feel sufficiently what an adoring
Republic it was, and without reluctance quit this part of the
subject.
Such gifts of Church-spoil are chiefly the work of the Armee
Revolutionnaire; raised, as we said, some time ago. It is an Army
with portable guillotine: commanded by Playwright Ronsin in
terrible moustachioes; and even by some uncertain shadow of Usher
Maillard, the old Bastille Hero, Leader of the Menads, September
Man in Grey! Clerk Vincent of the War-Office, one of Pache's old
Clerks, 'with a head heated by the ancient orators,' had a main
hand in the appointments, at least in the staff-appointments.
But of the marchings and retreatings of these Six Thousand no
Xenophon exists. Nothing, but an inarticulate hum, of cursing and
sooty frenzy, surviving dubious in the memory of ages! They scour
the country round Paris; seeking Prisoners; raising Requisitions;
seeing that Edicts are executed, that the Farmers have thrashed
sufficiently; lowering Church-bells or metallic Virgins.
Detachments shoot forth dim, towards remote parts of France; nay
new Provincial Revolutionary Armies rise dim, here and there, as
Carrier's Company of Marat, as Tallien's Bourdeaux Troop; like
sympathetic clouds in an atmosphere all electric. Ronsin, they
say, admitted, in candid moments, that his troops were the elixir
of the Rascality of the Earth. One sees them drawn up in
market-places; travel-plashed, rough-bearded, in carmagnole
complete: the first exploit is to prostrate what Royal or
Ecclesiastical monument, crucifix or the like, there may be; to
plant a cannon at the steeple, fetch down the bell without
climbing for it, bell and belfry together. This, however, it is
said, depends somewhat on the size of the town: if the town
contains much population, and these perhaps of a dubious choleric
aspect, the Revolutionary Army will do its work gently, by ladder
and wrench; nay perhaps will take its billet without work at all;
and, refreshing itself with a little liquor and sleep, pass on to
the next stage. (_Deux Amis, xii. 62-5._) Pipe in cheek, sabre on
thigh; in carmagnole complete!
Such things have been; and may again be. Charles Second sent out
his Highland Host over the Western Scotch Whigs; Jamaica Planters
got Dogs from the Spanish Main to hunt their Maroons with: France
too is bescoured with a Devil's Pack, the baying of which, at
this distance of half a century, still sounds in the mind's ear.
Chapter 3.5.V.
Like a Thunder-Cloud.
But the grand, and indeed substantially primary and generic
aspect of the Consummation of Terror remains still to be looked
at; nay blinkard History has for most part all but overlooked
this aspect, the soul of the whole: that which makes it terrible
to the Enemies of France. Let Despotism and Cimmerian Coalitions
consider. All French men and French things are in a State of
Requisition; Fourteen Armies are got on foot; Patriotism, with
all that it has of faculty in heart or in head, in soul or body
or breeches-pocket, is rushing to the frontiers, to prevail or
die! Busy sits Carnot, in Salut Public; busy for his share, in
'organising victory.' Not swifter pulses that Guillotine, in
dread systole-diastole in the Place de la Revolution, than smites
the Sword of Patriotism, smiting Cimmeria back to its own
borders, from the sacred soil.
In fact the Government is what we can call Revolutionary; and
some men are 'a la hauteur,' on a level with the circumstances;
and others are not a la hauteur,—so much the worse for them. But
the Anarchy, we may say, has organised itself: Society is
literally overset; its old forces working with mad activity, but
in the inverse order; destructive and self-destructive.
Curious to see how all still refers itself to some head and
fountain; not even an Anarchy but must have a centre to revolve
round. It is now some six months since the Committee of Salut
Public came into existence: some three months since Danton
proposed that all power should be given it and 'a sum of fifty
millions,' and the 'Government be declared Revolutionary.' He
himself, since that day, would take no hand in it, though again
and again solicited; but sits private in his place on the
Mountain. Since that day, the Nine, or if they should even rise
to Twelve have become permanent, always re-elected when their
term runs out; Salut Public, Surete Generale have assumed their
ulterior form and mode of operating.
Committee of Public Salvation, as supreme; of General Surety, as
subaltern: these like a Lesser and Greater Council, most
harmonious hitherto, have become the centre of all things. They
ride this Whirlwind; they, raised by force of circumstances,
insensibly, very strangely, thither to that dread height;—and
guide it, and seem to guide it. Stranger set of Cloud-Compellers
the Earth never saw. A Robespierre, a Billaud, a Collot, Couthon,
Saint-Just; not to mention still meaner Amars, Vadiers, in Surete
Generale: these are your Cloud-Compellers. Small intellectual
talent is necessary: indeed where among them, except in the head
of Carnot, busied organising victory, would you find any? The
talent is one of instinct rather. It is that of divining aright
what this great dumb Whirlwind wishes and wills; that of willing,
with more frenzy than any one, what all the world wills. To stand
at no obstacles; to heed no considerations human or divine; to
know well that, of divine or human, there is one thing needful,
Triumph of the Republic, Destruction of the Enemies of the
Republic! With this one spiritual endowment, and so few others,
it is strange to see how a dumb inarticulately storming Whirlwind
of things puts, as it were, its reins into your hand, and invites
and compels you to be leader of it.
Hard by, sits a Municipality of Paris; all in red nightcaps since
the fourth of November last: a set of men fully 'on a level with
circumstances,' or even beyond it. Sleek Mayor Pache, studious to
be safe in the middle; Chaumettes, Heberts, Varlets, and Henriot
their great Commandant; not to speak of Vincent the War-clerk, of
Momoros, Dobsents, and such like: all intent to have Churches
plundered, to have Reason adored, Suspects cut down, and the
Revolution triumph. Perhaps carrying the matter too far? Danton
was heard to grumble at the civic strophes; and to recommend
prose and decency. Robespierre also grumbles that in overturning
Superstition we did not mean to make a religion of Atheism. In
fact, your Chaumette and Company constitute a kind of
Hyper-Jacobinism, or rabid 'Faction des Enrages;' which has given
orthodox Patriotism some umbrage, of late months. To 'know a
Suspect on the streets:' what is this but bringing the Law of the
Suspect itself into ill odour? Men half-frantic, men zealous
overmuch,—they toil there, in their red nightcaps, restlessly,
rapidly, accomplishing what of Life is allotted them.
And the Forty-four Thousand other Townships, each with
revolutionary Committee, based on Jacobin Daughter Society;
enlightened by the spirit of Jacobinism; quickened by the Forty
Sous a-day!—The French Constitution spurned always at any thing
like Two Chambers; and yet behold, has it not verily got Two
Chambers? National Convention, elected for one; Mother of
Patriotism, self-elected, for another! Mother of Patriotism has
her Debates reported in the Moniteur, as important
state-procedures; which indisputably they are. A Second Chamber
of Legislature we call this Mother Society;—if perhaps it were
not rather comparable to that old Scotch Body named Lords of the
Articles, without whose origination, and signal given, the
so-called Parliament could introduce no bill, could do no work?
Robespierre himself, whose words are a law, opens his
incorruptible lips copiously in the Jacobins Hall. Smaller
Council of Salut Public, Greater Council of Surete Generale, all
active Parties, come here to plead; to shape beforehand what
decision they must arrive at, what destiny they have to expect.
Now if a question arose, Which of those Two Chambers, Convention,
or Lords of the Articles, was the stronger? Happily they as yet
go hand in hand.
As for the National Convention, truly it has become a most
composed Body. Quenched now the old effervescence; the
Seventy-three locked in ward; once noisy Friends of the Girondins
sunk all into silent men of the Plain, called even 'Frogs of the
Marsh,' Crapauds du Marais! Addresses come, Revolutionary
Church-plunder comes; Deputations, with prose, or strophes: these
the Convention receives. But beyond this, the Convention has one
thing mainly to do: to listen what Salut Public proposes, and
say, Yea.
Bazire followed by Chabot, with some impetuosity, declared, one
morning, that this was not the way of a Free Assembly. "There
ought to be an Opposition side, a Cote Droit," cried Chabot; "if
none else will form it, I will: people say to me, You will all
get guillotined in your turn, first you and Bazire, then Danton,
then Robespierre himself." (_Debats, du 10 Novembre, 1723._) So
spake the Disfrocked, with a loud voice: next week, Bazire and he
lie in the Abbaye; wending, one may fear, towards Tinville and
the Axe; and 'people say to me'—what seems to be proving true!
Bazire's blood was all inflamed with Revolution fever; with
coffee and spasmodic dreams. (_Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans,
i. 115._) Chabot, again, how happy with his rich Jew-Austrian
wife, late Fraulein Frey! But he lies in Prison; and his two
Jew-Austrian Brothers-in-Law, the Bankers Frey, lie with him;
waiting the urn of doom. Let a National Convention, therefore,
take warning, and know its function. Let the Convention, all as
one man, set its shoulder to the work; not with bursts of
Parliamentary eloquence, but in quite other and serviceable ways!
Convention Commissioners, what we ought to call Representatives,
'Representans on mission,' fly, like the Herald Mercury, to all
points of the Territory; carrying your behests far and wide. In
their 'round hat plumed with tricolor feathers, girt with flowing
tricolor taffeta; in close frock, tricolor sash, sword and
jack-boots,' these men are powerfuller than King or Kaiser. They
say to whomso they meet, Do; and he must do it: all men's goods
are at their disposal; for France is as one huge City in Siege.
They smite with Requisitions, and Forced-loan; they have the
power of life and death. Saint-Just and Lebas order the rich
classes of Strasburg to 'strip off their shoes,' and send them to
the Armies where as many as 'ten thousand pairs' are needed.
Also, that within four and twenty hours, 'a thousand beds' are to
be got ready; (_Moniteur, du 27 Novembre 1793._) wrapt in
matting, and sent under way. For the time presses!—Like swift
bolts, issuing from the fuliginous Olympus of Salut Public rush
these men, oftenest in pairs; scatter your thunder-orders over
France; make France one enormous Revolutionary thunder-cloud.
Chapter 3.5.VI.
Do thy Duty.
Accordingly alongside of these bonfires of Church balustrades,
and sounds of fusillading and noyading, there rise quite another
sort of fires and sounds: Smithy-fires and Proof-volleys for the
manufacture of arms.
Cut off from Sweden and the world, the Republic must learn to
make steel for itself; and, by aid of Chemists, she has learnt
it. Towns that knew only iron, now know steel: from their new
dungeons at Chantilly, Aristocrats may hear the rustle of our new
steel furnace there. Do not bells transmute themselves into
cannon; iron stancheons into the white-weapon (_arme blanche_),
by sword-cutlery? The wheels of Langres scream, amid their
sputtering fire halo; grinding mere swords. The stithies of
Charleville ring with gun-making. What say we, Charleville? Two
hundred and fifty-eight Forges stand in the open spaces of Paris
itself; a hundred and forty of them in the Esplanade of the
Invalides, fifty-four in the Luxembourg Garden: so many Forges
stand; grim Smiths beating and forging at lock and barrel there.
The Clockmakers have come, requisitioned, to do the touch-holes,
the hard-solder and filework. Five great Barges swing at anchor
on the Seine Stream, loud with boring; the great press-drills
grating harsh thunder to the general ear and heart. And deft
Stock-makers do gouge and rasp; and all men bestir themselves,
according to their cunning:—in the language of hope, it is
reckoned that a 'thousand finished muskets can be delivered
daily.' (_Choix des Rapports, xiii. 189._) Chemists of the
Republic have taught us miracles of swift tanning; (_Ibid. xv.
360._) the cordwainer bores and stitches;—not of 'wood and
pasteboard,' or he shall answer it to Tinville! The women sew
tents and coats, the children scrape surgeon's-lint, the old men
sit in the market-places; able men are on march; all men in
requisition: from Town to Town flutters, on the Heaven's winds,
this Banner, THE FRENCH PEOPLE RISEN AGAINST TYRANTS.
All which is well. But now arises the question: What is to be
done for saltpetre? Interrupted Commerce and the English Navy
shut us out from saltpetre; and without saltpetre there is no
gunpowder. Republican Science again sits meditative; discovers
that saltpetre exists here and there, though in attenuated
quantity: that old plaster of walls holds a sprinkling of
it;—that the earth of the Paris Cellars holds a sprinkling of it,
diffused through the common rubbish; that were these dug up and
washed, saltpetre might be had. Whereupon swiftly, see! the
Citoyens, with upshoved bonnet rouge, or with doffed bonnet, and
hair toil-wetted; digging fiercely, each in his own cellar, for
saltpetre. The Earth-heap rises at every door; the Citoyennes
with hod and bucket carrying it up; the Citoyens, pith in every
muscle, shovelling and digging: for life and saltpetre. Dig my
braves; and right well speed ye. What of saltpetre is essential
the Republic shall not want.
Consummation of Sansculottism has many aspects and tints: but the
brightest tint, really of a solar or stellar brightness, is this
which the Armies give it. That same fervour of Jacobinism which
internally fills France with hatred, suspicions, scaffolds and
Reason-worship, does, on the Frontiers, shew itself as a glorious
Pro patria mori. Ever since Dumouriez's defection, three
Convention Representatives attend every General. Committee of
Salut has sent them, often with this Laconic order only: "Do thy
duty, Fais ton devoir." It is strange, under what impediments the
fire of Jacobinism, like other such fires, will burn. These
Soldiers have shoes of wood and pasteboard, or go booted in
hayropes, in dead of winter; they skewer a bass mat round their
shoulders, and are destitute of most things. What then? It is for
Rights of Frenchhood, of Manhood, that they fight: the
unquenchable spirit, here as elsewhere, works miracles. "With
steel and bread," says the Convention Representative, "one may
get to China." The Generals go fast to the guillotine; justly and
unjustly. From which what inference? This among others: That
ill-success is death; that in victory alone is life! To conquer
or die is no theatrical palabra, in these circumstances: but a
practical truth and necessity. All Girondism, Halfness,
Compromise is swept away. Forward, ye Soldiers of the Republic,
captain and man! Dash with your Gaelic impetuosity, on Austria,
England, Prussia, Spain, Sardinia; Pitt, Cobourg, York, and the
Devil and the World! Behind us is but the Guillotine; before us
is Victory, Apotheosis and Millennium without end!
See accordingly, on all Frontiers, how the Sons of Night,
astonished after short triumph, do recoil;—the Sons of the
Republic flying at them, with wild _Ça-ira_ or Marseillese _Aux
armes_, with the temper of cat-o'-mountain, or demon incarnate;
which no Son of Night can stand! Spain, which came bursting
through the Pyrenees, rustling with Bourbon banners, and went
conquering here and there for a season, falters at such
cat-o'-mountain welcome; draws itself in again; too happy now
were the Pyrenees impassable. Not only does Dugommier, conqueror
of Toulon, drive Spain back; he invades Spain. General Dugommier
invades it by the Eastern Pyrenees; General Muller shall invade
it by the Western. _Shall_, that is the word: Committee of _Salut
Public_ has said it; Representative Cavaignac, on mission there,
must see it done. Impossible! cries Muller,—Infallible! answers
Cavaignac. Difficulty, impossibility, is to no purpose. "The
Committee is deaf on that side of its head," answers Cavaignac,
"_n'entend pas de cette oreille là_. How many wantest thou, of
men, of horses, cannons? Thou shalt have them. Conquerors,
conquered or hanged, forward we must." (_There is, in_ Prudhomme,
_an atrocity a la Captain-Kirk reported of this Cavaignac; which
has been copied into Dictionaries of_ Hommes Marquans, _of_
Biographie Universelle, _&c.; which not only has no truth in it,
but, much more singular, is still capable of being proved to have
none._) Which things also, even as the Representative spake them,
were _done_. The Spring of the new Year sees Spain invaded: and
redoubts are carried, and Passes and Heights of the most scarped
description; Spanish Field-officerism struck mute at such
cat-o'-mountain spirit, the cannon forgetting to fire. (_Deux
Amis, xiii. 205-30; Toulongeon, &c._) Swept are the Pyrenees;
Town after Town flies up, burst by terror or the petard. In the
course of another year, Spain will crave Peace; acknowledge its
sins and the Republic; nay, in Madrid, there will be joy as for a
victory, that even Peace is got.
Few things, we repeat, can be notabler than these Convention
Representatives, with their power more than kingly. Nay at bottom
are they not Kings, Ablemen, of a sort; chosen from the Seven
Hundred and Forty-nine French Kings; with this order, Do thy
duty? Representative Levasseur, of small stature, by trade a mere
pacific Surgeon-Accoucheur, has mutinies to quell; mad hosts
(_mad at the Doom of Custine_) bellowing far and wide; he alone
amid them, the one small Representative,—small, but as hard as
flint, which also carries fire in it! So too, at Hondschooten,
far in the afternoon, he declares that the battle is not lost;
that it must be gained; and fights, himself, with his own
obstetric hand;—horse shot under him, or say on foot, 'up to the
haunches in tide-water;' cutting stoccado and passado there, in
defiance of Water, Earth, Air and Fire, the choleric little
Representative that he was! Whereby, as natural, Royal Highness
of York had to withdraw,—occasionally at full gallop; like to be
swallowed by the tide: and his Siege of Dunkirk became a dream,
realising only much loss of beautiful siege-artillery and of
brave lives. (_Levasseur, Memoires, ii. c. 2-7._)
General Houchard, it would appear, stood behind a hedge, on this
Hondschooten occasion; wherefore they have since guillotined him.
A new General Jourdan, late Serjeant Jourdan, commands in his
stead: he, in long-winded Battles of Watigny, 'murderous
artillery-fire mingling itself with sound of Revolutionary
battle-hymns,' forces Austria behind the Sambre again; has hopes
of purging the soil of Liberty. With hard wrestling, with
artillerying and ca-ira-ing, it shall be done. In the course of a
new Summer, Valenciennes will see itself beleaguered; Conde
beleaguered; whatsoever is yet in the hands of Austria
beleaguered and bombarded: nay, by Convention Decree, we even
summon them all 'either to surrender in twenty-four hours, or
else be put to the sword;'—a high saying, which, though it
remains unfulfilled, may shew what spirit one is of.
Representative Drouet, as an Old-Dragoon, could fight by a kind
of second nature; but he was unlucky. Him, in a night-foray at
Maubeuge, the Austrians took alive, in October last. They stript
him almost naked, he says; making a shew of him, as King-taker of
Varennes. They flung him into carts; sent him far into the
interior of Cimmeria, to 'a Fortress called Spitzberg' on the
Danube River; and left him there, at an elevation of perhaps a
hundred and fifty feet, to his own bitter reflections.
Reflections; and also devices! For the indomitable Old-dragoon
constructs wing-machinery, of Paperkite; saws window-bars:
determines to fly down. He will seize a boat, will follow the
River's course: land somewhere in Crim Tartary, in the Black Sea
or Constantinople region: a la Sindbad! Authentic History,
accordingly, looking far into Cimmeria, discerns dimly a
phenomenon. In the dead night-watches, the Spitzberg sentry is
near fainting with terror: Is it a huge vague Portent descending
through the night air? It is a huge National Representative
Old-dragoon, descending by Paperkite; too rapidly, alas! For
Drouet had taken with him 'a small provision-store, twenty pounds
weight or thereby;' which proved accelerative: so he fell,
fracturing his leg; and lay there, moaning, till day dawned, till
you could discern clearly that he was not a Portent but a
Representative! (_His narrative in Deux Amis, xiv. 177-86._)
Or see Saint-Just, in the Lines of Weissembourg, though
physically of a timid apprehensive nature, how he charges with
his 'Alsatian Peasants armed hastily' for the nonce; the solemn
face of him blazing into flame; his black hair and tricolor
hat-taffeta flowing in the breeze; These our Lines of
Weissembourg were indeed forced, and Prussia and the Emigrants
rolled through: but we re-force the Lines of Weissembourg; and
Prussia and the Emigrants roll back again still faster,—hurled
with bayonet charges and fiery ca-ira-ing.
Ci-devant Serjeant Pichegru, ci-devant Serjeant Hoche, risen now
to be Generals, have done wonders here. Tall Pichegru was meant
for the Church; was Teacher of Mathematics once, in Brienne
School,—his remarkablest Pupil there was the Boy Napoleon
Buonaparte. He then, not in the sweetest humour, enlisted
exchanging ferula for musket; and had got the length of the
halberd, beyond which nothing could be hoped; when the Bastille
barriers falling made passage for him, and he is here. Hoche bore
a hand at the literal overturn of the Bastille; he was, as we
saw, a Serjeant of the Gardes Francaises, spending his pay in
rushlights and cheap editions of books. How the Mountains are
burst, and many an Enceladus is disemprisoned: and Captains
founding on Four parchments of Nobility, are blown with their
parchments across the Rhine, into Lunar Limbo!
What high feats of arms, therefore, were done in these Fourteen
Armies; and how, for love of Liberty and hope of Promotion,
low-born valour cut its desperate way to Generalship; and, from
the central Carnot in Salut Public to the outmost drummer on the
Frontiers, men strove for their Republic, let readers fancy. The
snows of Winter, the flowers of Summer continue to be stained
with warlike blood. Gaelic impetuosity mounts ever higher with
victory; spirit of Jacobinism weds itself to national vanity: the
Soldiers of the Republic are becoming, as we prophesied, very
Sons of Fire. Barefooted, barebacked: but with bread and iron you
can get to China! It is one Nation against the whole world; but
the Nation has that within her which the whole world will not
conquer. Cimmeria, astonished, recoils faster or slower; all
round the Republic there rises fiery, as it were, a magic ring of
musket-volleying and ca-ira-ing. Majesty of Prussia, as Majesty
of Spain, will by and by acknowledge his sins and the Republic:
and make a Peace of Bale.
Foreign Commerce, Colonies, Factories in the East and in the
West, are fallen or falling into the hands of sea-ruling Pitt,
enemy of human nature. Nevertheless what sound is this that we
hear, on the first of June, 1794; sound of as war-thunder borne
from the Ocean too; of tone most piercing? War-thunder from off
the Brest waters: Villaret-Joyeuse and English Howe, after long
manoeuvring have ranked themselves there; and are belching fire.
The enemies of human nature are on their own element; cannot be
conquered; cannot be kept from conquering. Twelve hours of raging
cannonade; sun now sinking westward through the battle-smoke: six
French Ships taken, the Battle lost; what Ship soever can still
sail, making off! But how is it, then, with that Vengeur Ship,
she neither strikes nor makes off? She is lamed, she cannot make
off; strike she will not. Fire rakes her fore and aft, from
victorious enemies; the Vengeur is sinking. Strong are ye,
Tyrants of the Sea; yet we also, are we weak? Lo! all flags,
streamers, jacks, every rag of tricolor that will yet run on
rope, fly rustling aloft: the whole crew crowds to the upper
deck; and, with universal soul-maddening yell, shouts Vive la
Republique,—sinking, sinking. She staggers, she lurches, her last
drunk whirl; Ocean yawns abysmal: down rushes the Vengeur,
carrying Vive la Republique along with her, unconquerable, into
Eternity! (_Compare Barrere (_Chois des Rapports, xiv. 416-21_);
Lord Howe (_Annual Register of 1794, p. 86_), &c._) Let foreign
Despots think of that. There is an Unconquerable in man, when he
stands on his Rights of Man: let Despots and Slaves and all
people know this, and only them that stand on the Wrongs of Man
tremble to know it.
Chapter 3.5.VII.
Flame-Picture.
In this manner, mad-blazing with flame of all imaginable tints,
from the red of Tophet to the stellar-bright, blazes off this
Consummation of Sansculottism.
But the hundredth part of the things that were done, and the
thousandth part of the things that were projected and decreed to
be done, would tire the tongue of History. Statue of the Peuple
Souverain, high as Strasburg Steeple; which shall fling its
shadow from the Pont Neuf over Jardin National and Convention
Hall;—enormous, in Painter David's head! With other the like
enormous Statues not a few: realised in paper Decree. For,
indeed, the Statue of Liberty herself is still but Plaster in the
Place de la Revolution! Then Equalisation of Weights and
Measures, with decimal division; Institutions, of Music and of
much else; Institute in general; School of Arts, School of Mars,
Eleves de la Patrie, Normal Schools: amid such Gun-boring,
Altar-burning, Saltpetre-digging, and miraculous improvements in
Tannery!
What, for example, is this that Engineer Chappe is doing, in the
Park of Vincennes? In the Park of Vincennes; and onwards, they
say, in the Park of Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau the assassinated
Deputy; and still onwards to the Heights of Ecouen and further,
he has scaffolding set up, has posts driven in; wooden arms with
elbow joints are jerking and fugling in the air, in the most
rapid mysterious manner! Citoyens ran up suspicious. Yes, O
Citoyens, we are signaling: it is a device this, worthy of the
Republic; a thing for what we will call Far-writing without the
aid of postbags; in Greek, it shall be named
Telegraph.—Telegraphe sacre! answers Citoyenism: For writing to
Traitors, to Austria?—and tears it down. Chappe had to escape,
and get a new Legislative Decree. Nevertheless he has
accomplished it, the indefatigable Chappe: this Far-writer, with
its wooden arms and elbow-joints, can intelligibly signal; and
lines of them are set up, to the North Frontiers and elsewhither.
On an Autumn evening of the Year Two, Far-writer having just
written that Conde Town has surrendered to us, we send from
Tuileries Convention Hall this response in the shape of Decree:
'The name of Conde is changed to Nord-Libre, North-Free. The Army
of the North ceases not to merit well of the country.'—To the
admiration of men! For lo, in some half hour, while the
Convention yet debates, there arrives this new answer: 'I inform
thee, je t'annonce, Citizen President, that the decree of
Convention, ordering change of the name Conde into North-Free;
and the other declaring that the Army of the North ceases not to
merit well of the country, are transmitted and acknowledged by
Telegraph. I have instructed my Officer at Lille to forward them
to North-Free by express. Signed, CHAPPE.' (_Choix des Rapports,
xv. 378, 384._)
Or see, over Fleurus in the Netherlands, where General Jourdan,
having now swept the soil of Liberty, and advanced thus far, is
just about to fight, and sweep or be swept, things there not in
the Heaven's Vault, some Prodigy, seen by Austrian eyes and
spyglasses: in the similitude of an enormous Windbag, with
netting and enormous Saucer depending from it? A Jove's Balance,
O ye Austrian spyglasses? One saucer-hole of a Jove's Balance;
your poor Austrian scale having kicked itself quite aloft, out of
sight? By Heaven, answer the spyglasses, it is a Montgolfier, a
Balloon, and they are making signals! Austrian cannon-battery
barks at this Montgolfier; harmless as dog at the Moon: the
Montgolfier makes its signals; detects what Austrian ambuscade
there may be, and descends at its ease. (_26th June, 1794, see
Rapport de Guyton-Morveau sur les aerostats, in Moniteur du 6
Vendemiaire, An 2._) What will not these devils incarnate
contrive?
On the whole, is it not, O Reader, one of the strangest
Flame-Pictures that ever painted itself; flaming off there, on
its ground of Guillotine-black? And the nightly Theatres are
Twenty-three; and the Salons de danse are sixty: full of mere
Egalite, Fraternite and Carmagnole. And Section Committee-rooms
are Forty-eight; redolent of tobacco and brandy: vigorous with
twenty-pence a-day, coercing the suspect. And the Houses of
Arrest are Twelve for Paris alone; crowded and even crammed. And
at all turns, you need your 'Certificate of Civism;' be it for
going out, or for coming in; nay without it you cannot, for
money, get your daily ounces of bread. Dusky red-capped
Baker's-queues; wagging themselves; not in silence! For we still
live by Maximum, in all things; waited on by these two, Scarcity
and Confusion. The faces of men are darkened with suspicion; with
suspecting, or being suspect. The streets lie unswept; the ways
unmended. Law has shut her Books; speaks little, save impromptu,
through the throat of Tinville. Crimes go unpunished: not crimes
against the Revolution. (_Mercier, v. 25; Deux Amis, xii.
142-199._) 'The number of foundling children,' as some compute,
'is doubled.'
How silent now sits Royalism; sits all Aristocratism;
Respectability that kept its Gig! The honour now, and the safety,
is to Poverty, not to Wealth. Your Citizen, who would be
fashionable, walks abroad, with his Wife on his arm, in red wool
nightcap, black shag spencer, and carmagnole complete.
Aristocratism crouches low, in what shelter is still left;
submitting to all requisitions, vexations; too happy to escape
with life. Ghastly chateaus stare on you by the wayside;
disroofed, diswindowed; which the National House-broker is
peeling for the lead and ashlar. The old tenants hover
disconsolate, over the Rhine with Conde; a spectacle to men.
Ci-devant Seigneur, exquisite in palate, will become an exquisite
Restaurateur Cook in Hamburg; Ci-devant Madame, exquisite in
dress, a successful Marchande des Modes in London. In
Newgate-Street, you meet M. le Marquis, with a rough deal on his
shoulder, adze and jack-plane under arm; he has taken to the
joiner trade; it being necessary to live (_faut vivre_). (_See
Deux Amis, xv. 189-192; Memoires de Genlis; Founders of the
French Republic, &c. &c._)—Higher than all Frenchmen the domestic
Stock-jobber flourishes,—in a day of Paper-money. The Farmer also
flourishes: 'Farmers' houses,' says Mercier, 'have become like
Pawn-brokers' shops;' all manner of furniture, apparel, vessels
of gold and silver accumulate themselves there: bread is
precious. The Farmer's rent is Paper-money, and he alone of men
has bread: Farmer is better than Landlord, and will himself
become Landlord.
And daily, we say, like a black Spectre, silently through that
Life-tumult, passes the Revolution Cart; writing on the walls its
MENE, MENE, Thou art weighed, and found wanting! A Spectre with
which one has grown familiar. Men have adjusted themselves:
complaint issues not from that Death-tumbril. Weak women and
ci-devants, their plumage and finery all tarnished, sit there;
with a silent gaze, as if looking into the Infinite Black. The
once light lip wears a curl of irony, uttering no word; and the
Tumbril fares along. They may be guilty before Heaven, or not;
they are guilty, we suppose, before the Revolution. Then, does
not the Republic 'coin money' of them, with its great axe? Red
Nightcaps howl dire approval: the rest of Paris looks on; if with
a sigh, that is much; Fellow-creatures whom sighing cannot help;
whom black Necessity and Tinville have clutched.
One other thing, or rather two other things, we will still
mention; and no more: The Blond Perukes; the Tannery at Meudon.
Great talk is of these Perruques blondes: O Reader, they are made
from the Heads of Guillotined women! The locks of a Duchess, in
this way, may come to cover the scalp of a Cordwainer: her blond
German Frankism his black Gaelic poll, if it be bald. Or they may
be worn affectionately, as relics; rendering one suspect?
(_Mercier, ii. 134._) Citizens use them, not without mockery; of
a rather cannibal sort.
Still deeper into one's heart goes that Tannery at Meudon; not
mentioned among the other miracles of tanning! 'At Meudon,' says
Montgaillard with considerable calmness, 'there was a Tannery of
Human Skins; such of the Guillotined as seemed worth flaying: of
which perfectly good wash-leather was made:' for breeches, and
other uses. The skin of the men, he remarks, was superior in
toughness (_consistance_) and quality to shamoy; that of women
was good for almost nothing, being so soft in texture!
(_Montgaillard, iv. 290._)—History looking back over Cannibalism,
through Purchas's Pilgrims and all early and late Records, will
perhaps find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort on the whole so
detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-feeling, quietly elegant
sort; a sort perfide! Alas then, is man's civilisation only a
wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst,
infernal as ever? Nature still makes him; and has an Infernal in
her as well as a Celestial.
BOOK 3.VI.
THERMIDOR
Chapter 3.6.I.
The Gods are athirst.
What then is this Thing, called La Revolution, which, like an
Angel of Death, hangs over France, noyading, fusillading,
fighting, gun-boring, tanning human skins? La Revolution is but
so many Alphabetic Letters; a thing nowhere to be laid hands on,
to be clapt under lock and key: where is it? what is it? It is
the Madness that dwells in the hearts of men. In this man it is,
and in that man; as a rage or as a terror, it is in all men.
Invisible, impalpable; and yet no black Azrael, with wings spread
over half a continent, with sword sweeping from sea to sea, could
be a truer Reality.
To explain, what is called explaining, the march of this
Revolutionary Government, be no task of ours. Men cannot explain
it. A paralytic Couthon, asking in the Jacobins, 'what hast thou
done to be hanged if the Counter-Revolution should arrive;' a
sombre Saint-Just, not yet six-and-twenty, declaring that 'for
Revolutionists there is no rest but in the tomb;' a seagreen
Robespierre converted into vinegar and gall; much more an Amar
and Vadier, a Collot and Billaud: to inquire what thoughts,
predetermination or prevision, might be in the head of these men!
Record of their thought remains not; Death and Darkness have
swept it out utterly. Nay if we even had their thought, all they
could have articulately spoken to us, how insignificant a
fraction were that of the Thing which realised itself, which
decreed itself, on signal given by them! As has been said more
than once, this Revolutionary Government is not a self-conscious
but a blind fatal one. Each man, enveloped in his
ambient-atmosphere of revolutionary fanatic Madness, rushes on,
impelled and impelling; and has become a blind brute Force; no
rest for him but in the grave! Darkness and the mystery of horrid
cruelty cover it for us, in History; as they did in Nature. The
chaotic Thunder-cloud, with its pitchy black, and its tumult of
dazzling jagged fire, in a world all electric: thou wilt not
undertake to shew how that comported itself,—what the secrets of
its dark womb were; from what sources, with what specialities,
the lightning it held did, in confused brightness of terror,
strike forth, destructive and self-destructive, till it ended?
Like a Blackness naturally of Erebus, which by will of Providence
had for once mounted itself into dominion and the Azure: is not
this properly the nature of Sansculottism consummating itself? Of
which Erebus Blackness be it enough to discern that this and the
other dazzling fire-bolt, dazzling fire-torrent, does by small
Volition and great Necessity, verily issue,—in such and such
succession; destructive so and so, self-destructive so and so:
till it end.
Royalism is extinct, 'sunk,' as they say, 'in the mud of the
Loire;' Republicanism dominates without and within: what,
therefore, on the 15th day of March, 1794, is this? Arrestment,
sudden really as a bolt out of the Blue, has hit strange victims:
Hebert Pere Duchene, Bibliopolist Momoro, Clerk Vincent, General
Ronsin; high Cordelier Patriots, redcapped Magistrates of Paris,
Worshippers of Reason, Commanders of Revolutionary Army! Eight
short days ago, their Cordelier Club was loud, and louder than
ever, with Patriot denunciations. Hebert Pere Duchene had "held
his tongue and his heart these two months, at sight of Moderates,
Crypto-Aristocrats, Camilles, Scelerats in the Convention itself:
but could not do it any longer; would, if other remedy were not,
invoke the Sacred right of Insurrection." So spake Hebert in
Cordelier Session; with vivats, till the roofs rang again.
(_Moniteur, du 17 Ventose (_7th March_) 1794._) Eight short days
ago; and now already! They rub their eyes: it is no dream; they
find themselves in the Luxembourg. Goose Gobel too; and they that
burnt Churches! Chaumette himself, potent Procureur, Agent
National as they now call it, who could 'recognise the Suspect by
the very face of them,' he lingers but three days; on the third
day he too is hurled in. Most chopfallen, blue, enters the
National Agent this Limbo whither he has sent so many. Prisoners
crowd round, jibing and jeering: "Sublime National Agent," says
one, "in virtue of thy immortal Proclamation, lo there! I am
suspect, thou art suspect, he is suspect, we are suspect, ye are
suspect, they are suspect!"
The meaning of these things? Meaning! It is a Plot; Plot of the
most extensive ramifications; which, however, Barrere holds the
threads of. Such Church-burning and scandalous masquerades of
Atheism, fit to make the Revolution odious: where indeed could
they originate but in the gold of Pitt? Pitt indubitably, as
Preternatural Insight will teach one, did hire this Faction of
Enrages, to play their fantastic tricks; to roar in their
Cordeliers Club about Moderatism; to print their Pere Duchene;
worship skyblue Reason in red nightcap; rob all Altars,—and bring
the spoil to us!—
Still more indubitable, visible to the mere bodily sight, is
this: that the Cordeliers Club sits pale, with anger and terror;
and has 'veiled the Rights of Man,'—without effect. Likewise that
the Jacobins are in considerable confusion; busy 'purging
themselves, 's'epurant,' as, in times of Plot and public
Calamity, they have repeatedly had to do. Not even Camille
Desmoulins but has given offence: nay there have risen murmurs
against Danton himself; though he bellowed them down, and
Robespierre finished the matter by 'embracing him in the
Tribune.'
Whom shall the Republic and a jealous Mother Society trust? In
these times of temptation, of Preternatural Insight! For there
are Factions of the Stranger, 'de l'etranger,' Factions of
Moderates, of Enraged; all manner of Factions: we walk in a world
of Plots; strings, universally spread, of deadly gins and
falltraps, baited by the gold of Pitt! Clootz, Speaker of Mankind
so-called, with his Evidences of Mahometan Religion, and babble
of Universal Republic, him an incorruptible Robespierre has
purged away. Baron Clootz, and Paine rebellious Needleman lie,
these two months, in the Luxembourg; limbs of the Faction de
l'etranger. Representative Phelippeaux is purged out: he came
back from La Vendee with an ill report in his mouth against rogue
Rossignol, and our method of warfare there. Recant it, O
Phelippeaux, we entreat thee! Phelippeaux will not recant; and is
purged out. Representative Fabre d'Eglantine, famed Nomenclator
of Romme's Calendar, is purged out; nay, is cast into the
Luxembourg: accused of Legislative Swindling 'in regard to monies
of the India Company.' There with his Chabots, Bazires, guilty of
the like, let Fabre wait his destiny. And Westermann friend of
Danton, he who led the Marseillese on the Tenth of August, and
fought well in La Vendee, but spoke not well of rogue Rossignol,
is purged out. Lucky, if he too go not to the Luxembourg. And
your Prolys, Guzmans, of the Faction of the Stranger, they have
gone; Peyreyra, though he fled is gone, 'taken in the disguise of
a Tavern Cook.' I am suspect, thou art suspect, he is suspect!—
The great heart of Danton is weary of it. Danton is gone to
native Arcis, for a little breathing time of peace: Away, black
Arachne-webs, thou world of Fury, Terror, and Suspicion; welcome,
thou everlasting Mother, with thy spring greenness, thy kind
household loves and memories; true art thou, were all else
untrue! The great Titan walks silent, by the banks of the
murmuring Aube, in young native haunts that knew him when a boy;
wonders what the end of these things may be.
But strangest of all, Camille Desmoulins is purged out. Couthon
gave as a test in regard to Jacobin purgation the question, 'What
hast thou done to be hanged if Counter-Revolution should arrive?'
Yet Camille, who could so well answer this question, is purged
out! The truth is, Camille, early in December last, began
publishing a new Journal, or Series of Pamphlets, entitled the
Vieux Cordelier, Old Cordelier. Camille, not afraid at one time
to 'embrace Liberty on a heap of dead bodies,' begins to ask now,
Whether among so many arresting and punishing Committees there
ought not to be a 'Committee of Mercy?' Saint-Just, he observes,
is an extremely solemn young Republican, who 'carries his head as
if it were a Saint-Sacrement; adorable Hostie, or divine
Real-Presence! Sharply enough, this old Cordelier, Danton and he
were of the earliest primary Cordeliers,—shoots his glittering
war-shafts into your new Cordeliers, your Heberts, Momoros, with
their brawling brutalities and despicabilities: say, as the
Sun-god (_for poor Camille is a Poet_) shot into that Python
Serpent sprung of mud.
Whereat, as was natural, the Hebertist Python did hiss and writhe
amazingly; and threaten 'sacred right of Insurrection;'—and, as
we saw, get cast into Prison. Nay, with all the old wit,
dexterity, and light graceful poignancy, Camille, translating
'out of Tacitus, from the Reign of Tiberius,' pricks into the Law
of the Suspect itself; making it odious! Twice, in the Decade,
his wild Leaves issue; full of wit, nay of humour, of harmonious
ingenuity and insight,—one of the strangest phenomenon of that
dark time; and smite, in their wild-sparkling way, at various
monstrosities, Saint-Sacrament heads, and Juggernaut idols, in a
rather reckless manner. To the great joy of Josephine
Beauharnais, and the other Five Thousand and odd Suspect, who
fill the Twelve Houses of Arrest; on whom a ray of hope dawns!
Robespierre, at first approbatory, knew not at last what to
think; then thought, with his Jacobins, that Camille must be
expelled. A man of true Revolutionary spirit, this Camille; but
with the unwisest sallies; whom Aristocrats and Moderates have
the art to corrupt! Jacobinism is in uttermost crisis and
struggle: enmeshed wholly in plots, corruptibilities, neck-gins
and baited falltraps of Pitt Ennemi du Genre Humain. Camille's
First Number begins with 'O Pitt!'—his last is dated 15 Pluviose
Year 2, 3d February 1794; and ends with these words of
Montezuma's, 'Les dieux ont soif, The gods are athirst.'
Be this as it may, the Hebertists lie in Prison only some nine
days. On the 24th of March, therefore, the Revolution Tumbrils
carry through that Life-tumult a new cargo: Hebert, Vincent,
Momoro, Ronsin, Nineteen of them in all; with whom, curious
enough, sits Clootz Speaker of Mankind. They have been massed
swiftly into a lump, this miscellany of Nondescripts; and travel
now their last road. No help. They too must 'look through the
little window;' they too 'must sneeze into the sack,' eternuer
dans le sac; as they have done to others so is it done to them.
Sainte-Guillotine, meseems, is worse than the old Saints of
Superstition; a man-devouring Saint? Clootz, still with an air of
polished sarcasm, endeavours to jest, to offer cheering
'arguments of Materialism;' he requested to be executed last, 'in
order to establish certain principles,'—which Philosophy has not
retained. General Ronsin too, he still looks forth with some air
of defiance, eye of command: the rest are sunk in a stony
paleness of despair. Momoro, poor Bibliopolist, no Agrarian Law
yet realised,—they might as well have hanged thee at Evreux,
twenty months ago, when Girondin Buzot hindered them. Hebert Pere
Duchene shall never in this world rise in sacred right of
insurrection; he sits there low enough, head sunk on breast; Red
Nightcaps shouting round him, in frightful parody of his
Newspaper Articles, "Grand choler of the Pere Duchene!" Thus
perish they; the sack receives all their heads. Through some
section of History, Nineteen spectre-chimeras shall flit,
speaking and gibbering; till Oblivion swallow them.
In the course of a week, the Revolutionary Army itself is
disbanded; the General having become spectral. This Faction of
Rabids, therefore, is also purged from the Republican soil; here
also the baited falltraps of that Pitt have been wrenched up
harmless; and anew there is joy over a Plot Discovered. The
Revolution then is verily devouring its own children. All
Anarchy, by the nature of it, is not only destructive but
self-destructive.
Chapter 3.6.II.
Danton, No weakness.
Danton, meanwhile, has been pressingly sent for from Arcis: he
must return instantly, cried Camille, cried Phelippeaux and
Friends, who scented danger in the wind. Danger enough! A Danton,
a Robespierre, chief-products of a victorious Revolution, are now
arrived in immediate front of one another; must ascertain how
they will live together, rule together. One conceives easily the
deep mutual incompatibility that divided these two: with what
terror of feminine hatred the poor seagreen Formula looked at the
monstrous colossal Reality, and grew greener to behold him;—the
Reality, again, struggling to think no ill of a chief-product of
the Revolution; yet feeling at bottom that such chief-product was
little other than a chief wind-bag, blown large by Popular air;
not a man with the heart of a man, but a poor spasmodic
incorruptible pedant, with a logic-formula instead of heart; of
Jesuit or Methodist-Parson nature; full of sincere-cant,
incorruptibility, of virulence, poltroonery; barren as the
east-wind! Two such chief-products are too much for one
Revolution.
Friends, trembling at the results of a quarrel on their part,
brought them to meet. "It is right," said Danton, swallowing much
indignation, "to repress the Royalists: but we should not strike
except where it is useful to the Republic; we should not confound
the innocent and the guilty."—"And who told you," replied
Robespierre with a poisonous look, "that one innocent person had
perished?"—"Quoi," said Danton, turning round to Friend Paris
self-named Fabricius, Juryman in the Revolutionary Tribunal:
"Quoi, not one innocent? What sayest thou of it, Fabricius!"
(_Biographie de Ministres, para Danton._)—Friends, Westermann,
this Paris and others urged him to shew himself, to ascend the
Tribune and act. The man Danton was not prone to shew himself; to
act, or uproar for his own safety. A man of careless, large,
hoping nature; a large nature that could rest: he would sit whole
hours, they say, hearing Camille talk, and liked nothing so well.
Friends urged him to fly; his Wife urged him: "Whither fly?"
answered he: "If freed France cast me out, there are only
dungeons for me elsewhere. One carries not his country with him
at the sole of his shoe!" The man Danton sat still. Not even the
arrestment of Friend Herault, a member of Salut, yet arrested by
Salut, can rouse Danton.—On the night of the 30th of March,
Juryman Paris came rushing in; haste looking through his eyes: A
clerk of the Salut Committee had told him Danton's warrant was
made out, he is to be arrested this very night! Entreaties there
are and trepidation, of poor Wife, of Paris and Friends: Danton
sat silent for a while; then answered, "Ils n'oseraient, They
dare not;" and would take no measures. Murmuring "They dare not,"
he goes to sleep as usual.
And yet, on the morrow morning, strange rumour spreads over Paris
City: Danton, Camille, Phelippeaux, Lacroix have been arrested
overnight! It is verily so: the corridors of the Luxembourg were
all crowded, Prisoners crowding forth to see this giant of the
Revolution among them. "Messieurs," said Danton politely, "I
hoped soon to have got you all out of this: but here I am myself;
and one sees not where it will end."—Rumour may spread over
Paris: the Convention clusters itself into groups; wide-eyed,
whispering, "Danton arrested!" Who then is safe? Legendre,
mounting the Tribune, utters, at his own peril, a feeble word for
him; moving that he be heard at that Bar before indictment; but
Robespierre frowns him down: "Did you hear Chabot, or Bazire?
Would you have two weights and measures?" Legendre cowers low;
Danton, like the others, must take his doom.
Danton's Prison-thoughts were curious to have; but are not given
in any quantity: indeed few such remarkable men have been left so
obscure to us as this Titan of the Revolution. He was heard to
ejaculate: "This time twelvemonth, I was moving the creation of
that same Revolutionary Tribunal. I crave pardon for it of God
and man. They are all Brothers Cain: Brissot would have had me
guillotined as Robespierre now will. I leave the whole business
in a frightful welter (_gachis epouvantable_): not one of them
understands anything of government. Robespierre will follow me; I
drag down Robespierre. O, it were better to be a poor fisherman
than to meddle with governing of men."—Camille's young beautiful
Wife, who had made him rich not in money alone, hovers round the
Luxembourg, like a disembodied spirit, day and night. Camille's
stolen letters to her still exist; stained with the mark of his
tears. (_Apercus sur Camille Desmoulins in Vieux Cordelier,
Paris, 1825, pp. 1-29._) "I carry my head like a
Saint-Sacrament?" so Saint-Just was heard to mutter: "Perhaps he
will carry his like a Saint-Dennis."
Unhappy Danton, thou still unhappier light Camille, once light
Procureur de la Lanterne, ye also have arrived, then, at the
Bourne of Creation, where, like Ulysses Polytlas at the limit and
utmost Gades of his voyage, gazing into that dim Waste beyond
Creation, a man does see the Shade of his Mother, pale,
ineffectual;—and days when his Mother nursed and wrapped him are
all-too sternly contrasted with this day! Danton, Camille,
Herault, Westermann, and the others, very strangely massed up
with Bazires, Swindler Chabots, Fabre d'Eglantines, Banker Freys,
a most motley Batch, 'Fournee' as such things will be called,
stand ranked at the Bar of Tinville. It is the 2d of April 1794.
Danton has had but three days to lie in Prison; for the time
presses.
What is your name? place of abode? and the like, Fouquier asks;
according to formality. "My name is Danton," answers he; "a name
tolerably known in the Revolution: my abode will soon be
Annihilation (_dans le Neant_); but I shall live in the Pantheon
of History." A man will endeavour to say something forcible, be
it by nature or not! Herault mentions epigrammatically that he
"sat in this Hall, and was detested of Parlementeers." Camille
makes answer, "My age is that of the bon Sansculotte Jesus; an
age fatal to Revolutionists." O Camille, Camille! And yet in that
Divine Transaction, let us say, there did lie, among other
things, the fatallest Reproof ever uttered here below to Worldly
Right-honourableness; 'the highest Fact,' so devout Novalis calls
it, 'in the Rights of Man.' Camille's real age, it would seem, is
thirty-four. Danton is one year older.
Some five months ago, the Trial of the Twenty-two Girondins was
the greatest that Fouquier had then done. But here is a still
greater to do; a thing which tasks the whole faculty of Fouquier;
which makes the very heart of him waver. For it is the voice of
Danton that reverberates now from these domes; in passionate
words, piercing with their wild sincerity, winged with wrath.
Your best Witnesses he shivers into ruin at one stroke. He
demands that the Committee-men themselves come as Witnesses, as
Accusers; he "will cover them with ignominy." He raises his huge
stature, he shakes his huge black head, fire flashes from the
eyes of him,—piercing to all Republican hearts: so that the very
Galleries, though we filled them by ticket, murmur sympathy; and
are like to burst down, and raise the People, and deliver him! He
complains loudly that he is classed with Chabots, with swindling
Stockjobbers; that his Indictment is a list of platitudes and
horrors. "Danton hidden on the Tenth of August?" reverberates he,
with the roar of a lion in the toils: "Where are the men that had
to press Danton to shew himself, that day? Where are these
high-gifted souls of whom he borrowed energy? Let them appear,
these Accusers of mine: I have all the clearness of my
self-possession when I demand them. I will unmask the three
shallow scoundrels," les trois plats coquins, Saint-Just,
Couthon, Lebas, "who fawn on Robespierre, and lead him towards
his destruction. Let them produce themselves here; I will plunge
them into Nothingness, out of which they ought never to have
risen." The agitated President agitates his bell; enjoins
calmness, in a vehement manner: "What is it to thee how I defend
myself?" cries the other: "the right of dooming me is thine
always. The voice of a man speaking for his honour and his life
may well drown the jingling of thy bell!" Thus Danton, higher and
higher; till the lion voice of him 'dies away in his throat:'
speech will not utter what is in that man. The Galleries murmur
ominously; the first day's Session is over.
O Tinville, President Herman, what will ye do? They have two days
more of it, by strictest Revolutionary Law. The Galleries already
murmur. If this Danton were to burst your mesh-work!—Very curious
indeed to consider. It turns on a hair: and what a Hoitytoity
were there, Justice and Culprit changing places; and the whole
History of France running changed! For in France there is this
Danton only that could still try to govern France. He only, the
wild amorphous Titan;—and perhaps that other olive-complexioned
individual, the Artillery Officer at Toulon, whom we left pushing
his fortune in the South?
On the evening of the second day, matters looking not better but
worse and worse, Fouquier and Herman, distraction in their
aspect, rush over to Salut Public. What is to be done? Salut
Public rapidly concocts a new Decree; whereby if men 'insult
Justice,' they may be 'thrown out of the Debates.' For indeed,
withal, is there not 'a Plot in the Luxembourg Prison?' Ci-devant
General Dillon, and others of the Suspect, plotting with
Camille's Wife to distribute assignats; to force the Prisons,
overset the Republic? Citizen Laflotte, himself Suspect but
desiring enfranchisement, has reported said Plot for us:—a report
that may bear fruit! Enough, on the morrow morning, an obedient
Convention passes this Decree. Salut rushes off with it to the
aid of Tinville, reduced now almost to extremities. And so, Hors
des Debats, Out of the Debates, ye insolents! Policemen do your
duty! In such manner, with a deadlift effort, Salut, Tinville
Herman, Leroi Dix-Aout, and all stanch jurymen setting heart and
shoulder to it, the Jury becomes 'sufficiently instructed;'
Sentence is passed, is sent by an Official, and torn and trampled
on: Death this day. It is the 5th of April, 1794. Camille's poor
Wife may cease hovering about this Prison. Nay let her kiss her
poor children; and prepare to enter it, and to follow!—
Danton carried a high look in the Death-cart. Not so Camille: it
is but one week, and all is so topsy-turvied; angel Wife left
weeping; love, riches, Revolutionary fame, left all at the
Prison-gate; carnivorous Rabble now howling round. Palpable, and
yet incredible; like a madman's dream! Camille struggles and
writhes; his shoulders shuffle the loose coat off them, which
hangs knotted, the hands tied: "Calm my friend," said Danton;
"heed not that vile canaille (_laissez la cette vile canaille_)."
At the foot of the Scaffold, Danton was heard to ejaculate: "O my
Wife, my well-beloved, I shall never see thee more then!"—but,
interrupting himself: "Danton, no weakness!" He said to
Herault-Sechelles stepping forward to embrace him: "Our heads
will meet there," in the Headsman's sack. His last words were to
Samson the Headsman himself: "Thou wilt shew my head to the
people; it is worth shewing."
So passes, like a gigantic mass, of valour, ostentation, fury,
affection and wild revolutionary manhood, this Danton, to his
unknown home. He was of Arcis-sur-Aube; born of 'good
farmer-people' there. He had many sins; but one worst sin he had
not, that of Cant. No hollow Formalist, deceptive and
self-deceptive, ghastly to the natural sense, was this; but a
very Man: with all his dross he was a Man; fiery-real, from the
great fire-bosom of Nature herself. He saved France from
Brunswick; he walked straight his own wild road, whither it led
him. He may live for some generations in the memory of men.
Chapter 3.6.III.
The Tumbrils.
Next week, it is still but the 10th of April, there comes a new
Nineteen; Chaumette, Gobel, Hebert's Widow, the Widow of Camille:
these also roll their fated journey; black Death devours them.
Mean Hebert's Widow was weeping, Camille's Widow tried to speak
comfort to her. O ye kind Heavens, azure, beautiful, eternal
behind your tempests and Time-clouds, is there not pity for all!
Gobel, it seems, was repentant; he begged absolution of a Priest;
did as a Gobel best could. For Anaxagoras Chaumette, the sleek
head now stript of its bonnet rouge, what hope is there? Unless
Death were 'an eternal sleep?' Wretched Anaxagoras, God shall
judge thee, not I.
Hebert, therefore, is gone, and the Hebertists; they that robbed
Churches, and adored blue Reason in red nightcap. Great Danton,
and the Dantonists; they also are gone. Down to the catacombs;
they are become silent men! Let no Paris Municipality, no Sect or
Party of this hue or that, resist the will of Robespierre and
Salut. Mayor Pache, not prompt enough in denouncing these Pitts
Plots, may congratulate about them now. Never so heartily; it
skills not! His course likewise is to the Luxembourg. We appoint
one Fleuriot-Lescot Interim-Mayor in his stead: an 'architect
from Belgium,' they say, this Fleuriot; he is a man one can
depend on. Our new Agent-National is Payan, lately Juryman; whose
cynosure also is Robespierre.
Thus then, we perceive, this confusedly electric Erebus-cloud of
Revolutionary Government has altered its shape somewhat. Two
masses, or wings, belonging to it; an over-electric mass of
Cordelier Rabids, and an under-electric of Dantonist Moderates
and Clemency-men,—these two masses, shooting bolts at one
another, so to speak, have annihilated one another. For the
Erebus-cloud, as we often remark, is of suicidal nature; and, in
jagged irregularity, darts its lightning withal into itself. But
now these two discrepant masses being mutually annihilated, it is
as if the Erebus-cloud had got to internal composure; and did
only pour its hellfire lightning on the World that lay under it.
In plain words, Terror of the Guillotine was never terrible till
now. Systole, diastole, swift and ever swifter goes the Axe of
Samson. Indictments cease by degrees to have so much as
plausibility: Fouquier chooses from the Twelve houses of Arrest
what he calls Batches, 'Fournees,' a score or more at a time; his
Jurymen are charged to make feu de file, fire-filing till the
ground be clear. Citizen Laflotte's report of Plot in the
Luxembourg is verily bearing fruit! If no speakable charge exist
against a man, or Batch of men, Fouquier has always this: a Plot
in the Prison. Swift and ever swifter goes Samson; up, finally,
to three score and more at a Batch! It is the highday of Death:
none but the Dead return not.
O dusky d'Espremenil, what a day is this, the 22d of April, thy
last day! The Palais Hall here is the same stone Hall, where
thou, five years ago, stoodest perorating, amid endless pathos of
rebellious Parlement, in the grey of the morning; bound to march
with d'Agoust to the Isles of Hieres. The stones are the same
stones: but the rest, Men, Rebellion, Pathos, Peroration, see! it
has all fled, like a gibbering troop of ghosts, like the
phantasms of a dying brain! With d'Espremenil, in the same line
of Tumbrils, goes the mournfullest medley. Chapelier goes,
ci-devant popular President of the Constituent; whom the Menads
and Maillard met in his carriage, on the Versailles Road. Thouret
likewise, ci-devant President, father of Constitutional Law-acts;
he whom we heard saying, long since, with a loud voice, "The
Constituent Assembly has fulfilled its mission!" And the noble
old Malesherbes, who defended Louis and could not speak, like a
grey old rock dissolving into sudden water: he journeys here now,
with his kindred, daughters, sons and grandsons, his Lamoignons,
Chateaubriands; silent, towards Death.—One young Chateaubriand
alone is wandering amid the Natchez, by the roar of Niagara
Falls, the moan of endless forests: Welcome thou great Nature,
savage, but not false, not unkind, unmotherly; no Formula thou,
or rapid jangle of Hypothesis, Parliamentary Eloquence,
Constitution-building and the Guillotine; speak thou to me, O
Mother, and sing my sick heart thy mystic everlasting
lullaby-song, and let all the rest be far!—
Another row of Tumbrils we must notice: that which holds
Elizabeth, the Sister of Louis. Her Trial was like the rest; for
Plots, for Plots. She was among the kindliest, most innocent of
women. There sat with her, amid four-and-twenty others, a once
timorous Marchioness de Crussol; courageous now; expressing
towards her the liveliest loyalty. At the foot of the Scaffold,
Elizabeth with tears in her eyes, thanked this Marchioness; said
she was grieved she could not reward her. "Ah, Madame, would your
Royal Highness deign to embrace me, my wishes were
complete!"—"Right willingly, Marquise de Crussol, and with my
whole heart." (_Montgaillard, iv. 200._) Thus they: at the foot
of the Scaffold. The Royal Family is now reduced to two: a girl
and a little boy. The boy, once named Dauphin, was taken from his
Mother while she yet lived; and given to one Simon, by trade a
Cordwainer, on service then about the Temple-Prison, to bring him
up in principles of Sansculottism. Simon taught him to drink, to
swear, to sing the carmagnole. Simon is now gone to the
Municipality: and the poor boy, hidden in a tower of the Temple,
from which in his fright and bewilderment and early decrepitude
he wishes not to stir out, lies perishing, 'his shirt not changed
for six months;' amid squalor and darkness, lamentably,
(_Duchesse d'Angouleme, Captivite a la Tour du Temple, pp.
37-71._)—so as none but poor Factory Children and the like are
wont to perish, unlamented!
The Spring sends its green leaves and bright weather, bright May
brighter than ever: Death pauses not. Lavoisier famed Chemist,
shall die and not live: Chemist Lavoisier was Farmer-General
Lavoisier too, and now 'all the Farmers-General are arrested;'
all, and shall give an account of their monies and incomings; and
die for 'putting water in the tobacco' they sold. (_Tribunal
Revolutionnaire, du 8 Mai 1794, Moniteur, No. 231._) Lavoisier
begged a fortnight more of life, to finish some experiments: but
"the Republic does not need such;" the axe must do its work.
Cynic Chamfort, reading these Inscriptions of Brotherhood or
Death, says "it is a Brotherhood of Cain:" arrested, then
liberated; then about to be arrested again, this Chamfort cuts
and slashes himself with frantic uncertain hand; gains, not
without difficulty, the refuge of death. Condorcet has lurked
deep, these many months; Argus-eyes watching and searching for
him. His concealment is become dangerous to others and himself;
he has to fly again, to skulk, round Paris, in thickets and
stone-quarries. And so at the Village of Clamars, one bleared May
morning, there enters a Figure, ragged, rough-bearded,
hunger-stricken; asks breakfast in the tavern there. Suspect, by
the look of him! "Servant out of place, sayest thou?"
Committee-President of Forty-Sous finds a Latin Horace on him:
"Art thou not one of those Ci-devants that were wont to keep
servants? Suspect!" He is haled forthwith, breakfast unfinished,
towards Bourg-la-Reine, on foot: he faints with exhaustion; is
set on a peasant's horse; is flung into his damp prison-cell: on
the morrow, recollecting him, you enter; Condorcet lies dead on
the floor. They die fast, and disappear: the Notabilities of
France disappear, one after one, like lights in a Theatre, which
you are snuffing out.
Under which circumstances, is it not singular, and almost
touching, to see Paris City drawn out, in the meek May nights, in
civic ceremony, which they call 'Souper Fraternel, Brotherly
Supper? Spontaneous, or partially spontaneous, in the twelfth,
thirteenth, fourteenth nights of this May month, it is seen.
Along the Rue Saint-Honore, and main Streets and Spaces, each
Citoyen brings forth what of supper the stingy Maximum has
yielded him, to the open air; joins it to his neighbour's supper;
and with common table, cheerful light burning frequent, and what
due modicum of cut-glasses and other garnish and relish is
convenient, they eat frugally together, under the kind stars.
(_Tableaux de la Revolution, para Soupers Fraternels; Mercier,
ii. 150._) See it O Night! With cheerfully pledged wine-cup,
hobnobbing to the Reign of Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood, with
their wives in best ribands, with their little ones romping
round, the Citoyens, in frugal Love-feast, sit there. Night in
her wide empire sees nothing similar. O my brothers, why is the
reign of Brotherhood not come! It is come, it shall come, say the
Citoyens frugally hobnobbing.—Ah me! these everlasting stars, do
they not look down 'like glistening eyes, bright with immortal
pity, over the lot of man!'—
One lamentable thing, however, is, that individuals will attempt
assassination—of Representatives of the People. Representative
Collot, Member even of Salut, returning home, 'about one in the
morning,' probably touched with liquor, as he is apt to be, meets
on the stairs, the cry "Scelerat!" and also the snap of a pistol:
which latter flashes in the pan; disclosing to him, momentarily,
a pair of truculent saucer-eyes, swart grim-clenched countenance;
recognisable as that of our little fellow-lodger, Citoyen Amiral,
formerly 'a clerk in the Lotteries!; Collot shouts Murder, with
lungs fit to awaken all the Rue Favart; Amiral snaps a second
time; a second time flashes in the pan; then darts up into his
apartment; and, after there firing, still with inadequate effect,
one musket at himself and another at his captor, is clutched and
locked in Prison. (_Riouffe, p. 73; Deux Amis, xii. 298-302._) An
indignant little man this Amiral, of Southern temper and
complexion, of 'considerable muscular force.' He denies not that
he meant to "purge France of a tyrant;" nay avows that he had an
eye to the Incorruptible himself, but took Collot as more
convenient!
Rumour enough hereupon; heaven-high congratulation of Collot,
fraternal embracing, at the Jacobins, and elsewhere. And yet, it
would seem the assassin-mood proves catching. Two days more, it
is still but the 23d of May, and towards nine in the evening,
Cecile Renault, Paper-dealer's daughter, a young woman of soft
blooming look, presents herself at the Cabinet-maker's in the Rue
Saint-Honore; desires to see Robespierre. Robespierre cannot be
seen: she grumbles irreverently. They lay hold of her. She has
left a basket in a shop hard by: in the basket are female change
of raiment and two knives! Poor Cecile, examined by Committee,
declares she "wanted to see what a tyrant was like:" the change
of raiment was "for my own use in the place I am surely going
to."—"What place?"—"Prison; and then the Guillotine," answered
she.—Such things come of Charlotte Corday; in a people prone to
imitation, and monomania! Swart choleric men try Charlotte's
feat, and their pistols miss fire; soft blooming young women try
it, and, only half-resolute, leave their knives in a shop.
O Pitt, and ye Faction of the Stranger, shall the Republic never
have rest; but be torn continually by baited springs, by wires of
explosive spring-guns? Swart Amiral, fair young Cecile, and all
that knew them, and many that did not know them, lie locked,
waiting the scrutiny of Tinville.
Chapter 3.6.IV.
Mumbo-Jumbo.
But on the day they call Decadi, New-Sabbath, 20 Prairial, 8th
June by old style, what thing is this going forward, in the
Jardin National, whilom Tuileries Garden?
All the world is there, in holydays clothes: (_Vilate, Causes
Secretes de la Revolution de 9 Thermidor._) foul linen went out
with the Hebertists; nay Robespierre, for one, would never once
countenance that; but went always elegant and frizzled, not
without vanity even,—and had his room hung round with seagreen
Portraits and Busts. In holyday clothes, we say, are the
innumerable Citoyens and Citoyennes: the weather is of the
brightest; cheerful expectation lights all countenances. Juryman
Vilate gives breakfast to many a Deputy, in his official
Apartment, in the Pavillon ci-devant of Flora; rejoices in the
bright-looking multitudes, in the brightness of leafy June, in
the auspicious Decadi, or New-Sabbath. This day, if it please
Heaven, we are to have, on improved Anti-Chaumette principles: a
New Religion.
Catholicism being burned out, and Reason-worship guillotined, was
there not need of one? Incorruptible Robespierre, not unlike the
Ancients, as Legislator of a free people will now also be Priest
and Prophet. He has donned his sky-blue coat, made for the
occasion; white silk waistcoat broidered with silver, black silk
breeches, white stockings, shoe-buckles of gold. He is President
of the Convention; he has made the Convention decree, so they
name it, decreter the 'Existence of the Supreme Being,' and
likewise 'ce principe consolateur of the Immortality of the
Soul.' These consolatory principles, the basis of rational
Republican Religion, are getting decreed; and here, on this
blessed Decadi, by help of Heaven and Painter David, is to be our
first act of worship.
See, accordingly, how after Decree passed, and what has been
called 'the scraggiest Prophetic Discourse ever uttered by
man,'—Mahomet Robespierre, in sky-blue coat and black breeches,
frizzled and powdered to perfection, bearing in his hand a
bouquet of flowers and wheat-ears, issues proudly from the
Convention Hall; Convention following him, yet, as is remarked,
with an interval. Amphitheatre has been raised, or at least
Monticule or Elevation; hideous Statues of Atheism, Anarchy and
such like, thanks to Heaven and Painter David, strike abhorrence
into the heart. Unluckily however, our Monticule is too small. On
the top of it not half of us can stand; wherefore there arises
indecent shoving, nay treasonous irreverent growling. Peace, thou
Bourdon de l'Oise; peace, or it may be worse for thee!
The seagreen Pontiff takes a torch, Painter David handing it;
mouths some other froth-rant of vocables, which happily one
cannot hear; strides resolutely forward, in sight of expectant
France; sets his torch to Atheism and Company, which are but made
of pasteboard steeped in turpentine. They burn up rapidly; and,
from within, there rises 'by machinery' an incombustible Statue
of Wisdom, which, by ill hap, gets besmoked a little; but does
stand there visible in as serene attitude as it can.
And then? Why, then, there is other Processioning, scraggy
Discoursing, and—this is our Feast of the Etre Supreme; our new
Religion, better or worse, is come!—Look at it one moment, O
Reader, not two. The Shabbiest page of Human Annals: or is there,
that thou wottest of, one shabbier? Mumbo-Jumbo of the African
woods to me seems venerable beside this new Deity of Robespierre;
for this is a conscious Mumbo-Jumbo, and knows that he is
machinery. O seagreen Prophet, unhappiest of windbags blown nigh
to bursting, what distracted Chimera among realities are thou
growing to! This then, this common pitch-link for artificial
fireworks of turpentine and pasteboard; this is the miraculous
Aaron's Rod thou wilt stretch over a hag-ridden hell-ridden
France, and bid her plagues cease? Vanish, thou and it!—"Avec ton
Etre Supreme," said Billaud, "tu commences m'embeter: With thy
Etre Supreme thou beginnest to be a bore to me." (_See Vilate,
Causes Secretes. Vilate's Narrative is very curious; but is not
to be taken as true, without sifting; being, at bottom, in spite
of its title, not a Narrative but a Pleading._)
Catherine Theot, on the other hand, 'an ancient serving-maid
seventy-nine years of age,' inured to Prophecy and the Bastille
from of old, sits, in an upper room in the Rue-de-Contrescarpe,
poring over the Book of Revelations, with an eye to Robespierre;
finds that this astonishing thrice-potent Maximilien really is
the Man spoken of by Prophets, who is to make the Earth young
again. With her sit devout old Marchionesses, ci-devant
honourable women; among whom Old-Constituent Dom Gerle, with his
addle head, cannot be wanting. They sit there, in the
Rue-de-Contrescarpe; in mysterious adoration: Mumbo is Mumbo, and
Robespierre is his Prophet. A conspicuous man this Robespierre.
He has his volunteer Bodyguard of Tappe-durs, let us say
Strike-sharps, fierce Patriots with feruled sticks; and Jacobins
kissing the hem of his garment. He enjoys the admiration of many,
the worship of some; and is well worth the wonder of one and all.
The grand question and hope, however, is: Will not this Feast of
the Tuileries Mumbo-Jumbo be a sign perhaps that the Guillotine
is to abate? Far enough from that! Precisely on the second day
after it, Couthon, one of the 'three shallow scoundrels,' gets
himself lifted into the Tribune; produces a bundle of papers.
Couthon proposes that, as Plots still abound, the Law of the
Suspect shall have extension, and Arrestment new vigour and
facility. Further that, as in such case business is like to be
heavy, our Revolutionary Tribunal too shall have extension; be
divided, say, into Four Tribunals, each with its President, each
with its Fouquier or Substitute of Fouquier, all labouring at
once, and any remnant of shackle or dilatory formality be struck
off: in this way it may perhaps still overtake the work. Such is
Couthon's Decree of the Twenty-second Prairial, famed in those
times. At hearing of which Decree the very Mountain gasped,
awestruck; and one Ruamps ventured to say that if it passed
without adjournment and discussion, he, as one Representative,
"would blow his brains out." Vain saying! The Incorruptible knit
his brows; spoke a prophetic fateful word or two: the Law of
Prairial is Law; Ruamps glad to leave his rash brains where they
are. Death, then, and always Death! Even so. Fouquier is
enlarging his borders; making room for Batches of a Hundred and
fifty at once;—getting a Guillotine set up, of improved velocity,
and to work under cover, in the apartment close by. So that Salut
itself has to intervene, and forbid him: "Wilt thou demoralise
the Guillotine," asks Collot, reproachfully, "demoraliser le
supplice!"
There is indeed danger of that; were not the Republican faith
great, it were already done. See, for example, on the 17th of
June, what a Batch, Fifty-four at once! Swart Amiral is here, he
of the pistol that missed fire; young Cecile Renault, with her
father, family, entire kith and kin; the widow of d'Espremenil;
old M. de Sombreuil of the Invalides, with his Son,—poor old
Sombreuil, seventy-three years old, his Daughter saved him in
September, and it was but for this. Faction of the Stranger,
fifty-four of them! In red shirts and smocks, as Assassins and
Faction of the Stranger, they flit along there; red baleful
Phantasmagory, towards the land of Phantoms.
Meanwhile will not the people of the Place de la Revolution, the
inhabitants along the Rue Saint-Honore, as these continual
Tumbrils pass, begin to look gloomy? Republicans too have bowels.
The Guillotine is shifted, then again shifted; finally set up at
the remote extremity of the South-East: (_Montgaillard, iv.
237._) Suburbs Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau it is to be hoped,
if they have bowels, have very tough ones.
Chapter 3.6.V.
The Prisons.
It is time now, however, to cast a glance into the Prisons. When
Desmoulins moved for his Committee of Mercy, these Twelve Houses
of Arrest held five thousand persons. Continually arriving since
then, there have now accumulated twelve thousand. They are
Ci-devants, Royalists; in far greater part, they are Republicans,
of various Girondin, Fayettish, Un-Jacobin colour. Perhaps no
human Habitation or Prison ever equalled in squalor, in noisome
horror, these Twelve Houses of Arrest. There exist records of
personal experience in them Memoires sur les Prisons; one of the
strangest Chapters in the Biography of Man.
Very singular to look into it: how a kind of order rises up in
all conditions of human existence; and wherever two or three are
gathered together, there are formed modes of existing together,
habitudes, observances, nay gracefulnesses, joys! Citoyen Coitant
will explain fully how our lean dinner, of herbs and carrion, was
consumed not without politeness and place-aux-dames: how Seigneur
and Shoeblack, Duchess and Doll-Tearsheet, flung pellmell into a
heap, ranked themselves according to method: at what hour 'the
Citoyennes took to their needlework;' and we, yielding the chairs
to them, endeavoured to talk gallantly in a standing posture, or
even to sing and harp more or less. Jealousies, enmities are not
wanting; nor flirtations, of an effective character.
Alas, by degrees, even needlework must cease: Plot in the Prison
rises, by Citoyen Laflotte and Preternatural Suspicion.
Suspicious Municipality snatches from us all implements; all
money and possession, of means or metal, is ruthlessly searched
for, in pocket, in pillow and paillasse, and snatched away;
red-capped Commissaries entering every cell! Indignation,
temporary desperation, at robbery of its very thimble, fills the
gentle heart. Old Nuns shriek shrill discord; demand to be killed
forthwith. No help from shrieking! Better was that of the two
shifty male Citizens, who, eager to preserve an implement or two,
were it but a pipe-picker, or needle to darn hose with,
determined to defend themselves: by tobacco. Swift then, as your
fell Red Caps are heard in the Corridor rummaging and slamming,
the two Citoyens light their pipes and begin smoking. Thick
darkness envelops them. The Red Nightcaps, opening the cell,
breathe but one mouthful; burst forth into chorus of barking and
coughing. "Quoi, Messieurs," cry the two Citoyens, "You don't
smoke? Is the pipe disagreeable! Est-ce que vous ne fumez pas?"
But the Red Nightcaps have fled, with slight search: "Vous
n'aimez pas la pipe?" cry the Citoyens, as their door slams-to
again. (_Maison d'Arret de Port-Libre, par Coittant, &c. Memoires
sur les Prisons, ii._) My poor brother Citoyens, O surely, in a
reign of Brotherhood, you are not the two I would guillotine!
Rigour grows, stiffens into horrid tyranny; Plot in the Prison
getting ever riper. This Plot in the Prison, as we said, is now
the stereotype formula of Tinville: against whomsoever he knows
no crime, this is a ready-made crime. His Judgment-bar has become
unspeakable; a recognised mockery; known only as the wicket one
passes through, towards Death. His Indictments are drawn out in
blank; you insert the Names after. He has his moutons, detestable
traitor jackalls, who report and bear witness; that they
themselves may be allowed to live,—for a time. His Fournees, says
the reproachful Collot, 'shall in no case exceed three-score;'
that is his maximum. Nightly come his Tumbrils to the Luxembourg,
with the fatal Roll-call; list of the Fournee of to-morrow. Men
rush towards the Grate; listen, if their name be in it? One
deep-drawn breath, when the name is not in: we live still one
day! And yet some score or scores of names were in. Quick these;
they clasp their loved ones to their heart, one last time; with
brief adieu, wet-eyed or dry-eyed, they mount, and are away. This
night to the Conciergerie; through the Palais misnamed of
Justice, to the Guillotine to-morrow.
Recklessness, defiant levity, the Stoicism if not of strength yet
of weakness, has possessed all hearts. Weak women and Ci-devants,
their locks not yet made into blond perukes, their skins not yet
tanned into breeches, are accustomed to 'act the Guillotine' by
way of pastime. In fantastic mummery, with towel-turbans,
blanket-ermine, a mock Sanhedrim of Judges sits, a mock Tinville
pleads; a culprit is doomed, is guillotined by the oversetting of
two chairs. Sometimes we carry it farther: Tinville himself, in
his turn, is doomed, and not to the Guillotine alone. With
blackened face, hirsute, horned, a shaggy Satan snatches him not
unshrieking; shews him, with outstretched arm and voice, the fire
that is not quenched, the worm that dies not; the monotony of
Hell-pain, and the What hour? answered by, It is Eternity!
(_Montgaillard, iv. 218; Riouffe, p. 273._)
And still the Prisons fill fuller, and still the Guillotine goes
faster. On all high roads march flights of Prisoners, wending
towards Paris. Not Ci-devants now; they, the noisy of them, are
mown down; it is Republicans now. Chained two and two they march;
in exasperated moments, singing their Marseillaise. A hundred and
thirty-two men of Nantes for instance, march towards Paris, in
these same days: Republicans, or say even Jacobins to the marrow
of the bone; but Jacobins who had not approved Noyading. (_Voyage
de Cent Trente-deux Nantais, Prisons, ii. 288-335._) Vive la
Republique rises from them in all streets of towns: they rest by
night, in unutterable noisome dens, crowded to choking; one or
two dead on the morrow. They are wayworn, weary of heart; can
only shout: Live the Republic; we, as under horrid enchantment,
dying in this way for it!
Some Four Hundred Priests, of whom also there is record, ride at
anchor, 'in the roads of the Isle of Aix,' long months; looking
out on misery, vacuity, waste Sands of Oleron and the
ever-moaning brine. Ragged, sordid, hungry; wasted to shadows:
eating their unclean ration on deck, circularly, in parties of a
dozen, with finger and thumb; beating their scandalous clothes
between two stones; choked in horrible miasmata, closed under
hatches, seventy of them in a berth, through night; so that the
'aged Priest is found lying dead in the morning, in the attitude
of prayer!' (_Relation de ce qu'ont souffert pour la Religion les
Pretres deportes en 1794, dans la rade de l'ile d'Aix, Prisons,
ii. 387-485._)—How long, O Lord!
Not forever; no. All Anarchy, all Evil, Injustice, is, by the
nature of it, dragon's-teeth; suicidal, and cannot endure.
Chapter 3.6.VI.
To finish the Terror.
It is very remarkable, indeed, that since the Etre-Supreme Feast,
and the sublime continued harangues on it, which Billaud feared
would become a bore to him, Robespierre has gone little to
Committee; but held himself apart, as if in a kind of pet. Nay
they have made a Report on that old Catherine Theot, and her
Regenerative Man spoken of by the Prophets; not in the best
spirit. This Theot mystery they affect to regard as a Plot; but
have evidently introduced a vein of satire, of irreverent banter,
not against the Spinster alone, but obliquely against her
Regenerative Man! Barrere's light pen was perhaps at the bottom
of it: read through the solemn snuffling organs of old Vadier of
the Surete Generale, the Theot Report had its effect; wrinkling
the general Republican visage into an iron grin. Ought these
things to be?
We note further that among the Prisoners in the Twelve Houses of
Arrest, there is one whom we have seen before. Senhora Fontenai,
born Cabarus, the fair Proserpine whom Representative Tallien
Pluto-like did gather at Bourdeaux, not without effect on
himself! Tallien is home, by recall, long since, from Bourdeaux;
and in the most alarming position. Vain that he sounded, louder
even than ever, the note of Jacobinism, to hide past
shortcomings: the Jacobins purged him out; two times has
Robespierre growled at him words of omen from the Convention
Tribune. And now his fair Cabarus, hit by denunciation, lies
Arrested, Suspect, in spite of all he could do!—Shut in horrid
pinfold of death, the Senhora smuggles out to her red-gloomy
Tallien the most pressing entreaties and conjurings: Save me;
save thyself. Seest thou not that thy own head is doomed; thou
with a too fiery audacity; a Dantonist withal; against whom lie
grudges? Are ye not all doomed, as in the Polyphemus Cavern; the
fawningest slave of you will be but eaten last!—Tallien feels
with a shudder that it is true. Tallien has had words of omen,
Bourdon has had words, Freron is hated and Barras: each man
'feels his head if it yet stick on his shoulders.'
Meanwhile Robespierre, we still observe, goes little to
Convention, not at all to Committee; speaks nothing except to his
Jacobin House of Lords, amid his bodyguard of Tappe-durs. These
'forty-days,' for we are now far in July, he has not shewed face
in Committee; could only work there by his three shallow
scoundrels, and the terror there was of him. The Incorruptible
himself sits apart; or is seen stalking in solitary places in the
fields, with an intensely meditative air; some say, 'with eyes
red-spotted,' (_Deux Amis, xii. 347-73._) fruit of extreme bile:
the lamentablest seagreen Chimera that walks the Earth that July!
O hapless Chimera; for thou too hadst a life, and a heart of
flesh,—what is this the stern gods, seeming to smile all the way,
have led and let thee to! Art not thou he who, few years ago, was
a young Advocate of promise; and gave up the Arras Judgeship
rather than sentence one man to die?—
What his thoughts might be? His plans for finishing the Terror?
One knows not. Dim vestiges there flit of Agrarian Law; a
victorious Sansculottism become Landed Proprietor; old Soldiers
sitting in National Mansions, in Hospital Palaces of Chambord and
Chantilly; peace bought by victory; breaches healed by Feast of
Etre Supreme;—and so, through seas of blood, to Equality,
Frugality, worksome Blessedness, Fraternity, and Republic of the
virtues! Blessed shore, of such a sea of Aristocrat blood: but
how to land on it? Through one last wave: blood of corrupt
Sansculottists; traitorous or semi-traitorous Conventionals,
rebellious Talliens, Billauds, to whom with my Etre Supreme I
have become a bore; with my Apocalyptic Old Woman a
laughing-stock!—So stalks he, this poor Robespierre, like a
seagreen ghost through the blooming July. Vestiges of schemes
flit dim. But what his schemes or his thoughts were will never be
known to man.
New Catacombs, some say, are digging for a huge simultaneous
butchery. Convention to be butchered, down to the right pitch, by
General Henriot and Company: Jacobin House of Lords made
dominant; and Robespierre Dictator. (_Deux Amis, xii. 350-8._)
There is actually, or else there is not actually, a List made
out; which the Hairdresser has got eye on, as he frizzled the
Incorruptible locks. Each man asks himself, Is it I?
Nay, as Tradition and rumour of Anecdote still convey it, there
was a remarkable bachelor's dinner one hot day at Barrere's. For
doubt not, O Reader, this Barrere and others of them gave
dinners; had 'country-house at Clichy,' with elegant enough
sumptuosities, and pleasures high-rouged! (_See Vilate._) But at
this dinner we speak of, the day being so hot, it is said, the
guests all stript their coats, and left them in the drawing-room:
whereupon Carnot glided out; groped in Robespierre's pocket;
found a list of Forty, his own name among them; and tarried not
at the wine-cup that day!—Ye must bestir yourselves, O Friends;
ye dull Frogs of the Marsh, mute ever since Girondism sank under,
even ye now must croak or die! Councils are held, with word and
beck; nocturnal, mysterious as death. Does not a feline
Maximilien stalk there; voiceless as yet; his green eyes
red-spotted; back bent, and hair up? Rash Tallien, with his rash
temper and audacity of tongue; he shall bell the cat. Fix a day;
and be it soon, lest never!
Lo, before the fixed day, on the day which they call Eighth of
Thermidor, 26th July 1794, Robespierre himself reappears in
Convention; mounts to the Tribune! The biliary face seems clouded
with new gloom; judge whether your Talliens, Bourdons listened
with interest. It is a voice bodeful of death or of life.
Long-winded, unmelodious as the screech-owl's, sounds that
prophetic voice: Degenerate condition of Republican spirit;
corrupt moderatism; Surete, Salut Committees themselves infected;
back-sliding on this hand and on that; I, Maximilien, alone left
incorruptible, ready to die at a moment's warning. For all which
what remedy is there? The Guillotine; new vigour to the
all-healing Guillotine: death to traitors of every hue! So sings
the prophetic voice; into its Convention sounding-board. The old
song this: but to-day, O Heavens! has the sounding-board ceased
to act? There is not resonance in this Convention; there is, so
to speak, a gasp of silence; nay a certain grating of one knows
not what!—Lecointre, our old Draper of Versailles, in these
questionable circumstances, sees nothing he can do so safe as
rise, 'insidiously' or not insidiously, and move, according to
established wont, that the Robespierre Speech be 'printed and
sent to the Departments.' Hark: gratings, even of dissonance!
Honourable Members hint dissonance; Committee-Members, inculpated
in the Speech, utter dissonance; demand 'delay in printing.' Ever
higher rises the note of dissonance; inquiry is even made by
Editor Freron: "What has become of the Liberty of Opinions in
this Convention?" The Order to print and transmit, which had got
passed, is rescinded. Robespierre, greener than ever before, has
to retire, foiled; discerning that it is mutiny, that evil is
nigh.
Mutiny is a thing of the fatallest nature in all enterprises
whatsoever; a thing so incalculable, swift-frightful; not to be
dealt with in fright. But mutiny in a Robespierre Convention,
above all,—it is like fire seen sputtering in the ship's
powder-room! One death-defiant plunge at it, this moment, and you
may still tread it out: hesitate till next moment,—ship and
ship's captain, crew and cargo are shivered far; the ship's
voyage has suddenly ended between sea and sky. If Robespierre
can, to-night, produce his Henriot and Company, and get his work
done by them, he and Sansculottism may still subsist some time;
if not, probably not. Oliver Cromwell, when that Agitator
Serjeant stept forth from the ranks, with plea of grievances, and
began gesticulating and demonstrating, as the mouthpiece of
Thousands expectant there,—discerned, with those truculent eyes
of his, how the matter lay; plucked a pistol from his holsters;
blew Agitator and Agitation instantly out. Noll was a man fit for
such things.
Robespierre, for his part, glides over at evening to his Jacobin
House of Lords; unfolds there, instead of some adequate
resolution, his woes, his uncommon virtues, incorruptibilities;
then, secondly, his rejected screech-owl Oration;—reads this
latter over again; and declares that he is ready to die at a
moment's warning. Thou shalt not die! shouts Jacobinism from its
thousand throats. "Robespierre, I will drink the hemlock with
thee," cries Painter David, "Je boirai la cigue avec toi;"—a
thing not essential to do, but which, in the fire of the moment,
can be said.
Our Jacobin sounding-board, therefore, does act! Applauses
heaven-high cover the rejected Oration; fire-eyed fury lights all
Jacobin features: Insurrection a sacred duty; the Convention to
be purged; Sovereign People under Henriot and Municipality; we
will make a new June-Second of it: to your tents, O Israel! In
this key pipes Jacobinism; in sheer tumult of revolt. Let Tallien
and all Opposition men make off. Collot d'Herbois, though of the
supreme Salut, and so lately near shot, is elbowed, bullied; is
glad to escape alive. Entering Committee-room of Salut, all
dishevelled, he finds sleek sombre Saint-Just there, among the
rest; who in his sleek way asks, "What is passing at the
Jacobins?"—"What is passing?" repeats Collot, in the unhistrionic
Cambyses' vein: "What is passing? Nothing but revolt and horrors
are passing. Ye want our lives; ye shall not have them."
Saint-Just stutters at such Cambyses'-oratory; takes his hat to
withdraw. That report he had been speaking of, Report on
Republican Things in General we may say, which is to be read in
Convention on the morrow, he cannot shew it them this moment: a
friend has it; he, Saint-Just, will get it, and send it, were he
once home. Once home, he sends not it, but an answer that he will
not send it; that they will hear it from the Tribune to-morrow.
Let every man, therefore, according to a well-known good-advice,
'pray to Heaven, and keep his powder dry!' Paris, on the morrow,
will see a thing. Swift scouts fly dim or invisible, all night,
from Surete and Salut; from conclave to conclave; from Mother
Society to Townhall. Sleep, can it fall on the eyes of Talliens,
Frerons, Collots? Puissant Henriot, Mayor Fleuriot, Judge
Coffinhal, Procureur Payan, Robespierre and all the Jacobins are
getting ready.
Chapter 3.6.VII.
Go down to.
Tallien's eyes beamed bright, on the morrow, Ninth of Thermidor
'about nine o'clock,' to see that the Convention had actually
met. Paris is in rumour: but at least we are met, in Legal
Convention here; we have not been snatched seriatim; treated with
a Pride's Purge at the door. "Allons, brave men of the Plain,"
late Frogs of the Marsh! cried Tallien with a squeeze of the
hand, as he passed in; Saint-Just's sonorous organ being now
audible from the Tribune, and the game of games begun.
Saint-Just is verily reading that Report of his; green Vengeance,
in the shape of Robespierre, watching nigh. Behold, however,
Saint-Just has read but few sentences, when interruption rises,
rapid crescendo; when Tallien starts to his feet, and Billaud,
and this man starts and that,—and Tallien, a second time, with
his: "Citoyens, at the Jacobins last night, I trembled for the
Republic. I said to myself, if the Convention dare not strike the
Tyrant, then I myself dare; and with this I will do it, if need
be," said he, whisking out a clear-gleaming Dagger, and
brandishing it there: the Steel of Brutus, as we call it. Whereat
we all bellow, and brandish, impetuous acclaim. "Tyranny;
Dictatorship! Triumvirat!" And the Salut Committee-men accuse,
and all men accuse, and uproar, and impetuously acclaim. And
Saint-Just is standing motionless, pale of face; Couthon
ejaculating, "Triumvir?" with a look at his paralytic legs. And
Robespierre is struggling to speak, but President Thuriot is
jingling the bell against him, but the Hall is sounding against
him like an Aeolus-Hall: and Robespierre is mounting the
Tribune-steps and descending again; going and coming, like to
choke with rage, terror, desperation:—and mutiny is the order of
the day! (_Moniteur, Nos. 311, 312; Debats, iv. 421-42; Deux
Amis, xii. 390-411._)
O President Thuriot, thou that wert Elector Thuriot, and from the
Bastille battlements sawest Saint-Antoine rising like the
Ocean-tide, and hast seen much since, sawest thou ever the like
of this? Jingle of bell, which thou jinglest against Robespierre,
is hardly audible amid the Bedlam-storm; and men rage for life.
"President of Assassins," shrieks Robespierre, "I demand speech
of thee for the last time!" It cannot be had. "To you, O virtuous
men of the Plain," cries he, finding audience one moment, "I
appeal to you!" The virtuous men of the Plain sit silent as
stones. And Thuriot's bell jingles, and the Hall sounds like
Aeolus's Hall. Robespierre's frothing lips are grown 'blue;' his
tongue dry, cleaving to the roof of his mouth. "The blood of
Danton chokes him," cry they. "Accusation! Decree of Accusation!"
Thuriot swiftly puts that question. Accusation passes; the
incorruptible Maximilien is decreed Accused.
"I demand to share my Brother's fate, as I have striven to share
his virtues," cries Augustin, the Younger Robespierre: Augustin
also is decreed. And Couthon, and Saint-Just, and Lebas, they are
all decreed; and packed forth,—not without difficulty, the Ushers
almost trembling to obey. Triumvirat and Company are packed
forth, into Salut Committee-room; their tongue cleaving to the
roof of their mouth. You have but to summon the Municipality; to
cashier Commandant Henriot, and launch Arrest at him; to regular
formalities; hand Tinville his victims. It is noon: the
Aeolus-Hall has delivered itself; blows now victorious,
harmonious, as one irresistible wind.
And so the work is finished? One thinks so; and yet it is not so.
Alas, there is yet but the first-act finished; three or four
other acts still to come; and an uncertain catastrophe! A huge
City holds in it so many confusions: seven hundred thousand human
heads; not one of which knows what its neighbour is doing, nay
not what itself is doing.—See, accordingly, about three in the
afternoon, Commandant Henriot, how instead of sitting cashiered,
arrested, he gallops along the Quais, followed by Municipal
Gendarmes, 'trampling down several persons!' For the Townhall
sits deliberating, openly insurgent: Barriers to be shut; no
Gaoler to admit any Prisoner this day;—and Henriot is galloping
towards the Tuileries, to deliver Robespierre. On the Quai de la
Ferraillerie, a young Citoyen, walking with his wife, says aloud:
"Gendarmes, that man is not your Commandant; he is under arrest."
The Gendarmes strike down the young Citoyen with the flat of
their swords. (_Precis des evenemens du Neuf Thermidor, par C.A.
Meda, ancien Gendarme, Paris, 1825._)
Representatives themselves (_as Merlin the Thionviller_) who
accost him, this puissant Henriot flings into guardhouses. He
bursts towards the Tuileries Committee-room, "to speak with
Robespierre:" with difficulty, the Ushers and Tuileries
Gendarmes, earnestly pleading and drawing sabre, seize this
Henriot; get the Henriot Gendarmes persuaded not to fight; get
Robespierre and Company packed into hackney-coaches, sent off
under escort, to the Luxembourg and other Prisons. This then is
the end? May not an exhausted Convention adjourn now, for a
little repose and sustenance, 'at five o'clock?'
An exhausted Convention did it; and repented it. The end was not
come; only the end of the second-act. Hark, while exhausted
Representatives sit at victuals,—tocsin bursting from all
steeples, drums rolling, in the summer evening: Judge Coffinhal
is galloping with new Gendarmes to deliver Henriot from Tuileries
Committee-room; and does deliver him! Puissant Henriot vaults on
horseback; sets to haranguing the Tuileries Gendarmes; corrupts
the Tuileries Gendarmes too; trots off with them to Townhall.
Alas, and Robespierre is not in Prison: the Gaoler shewed his
Municipal order, durst not on pain of his life, admit any
Prisoner; the Robespierre Hackney-coaches, in confused jangle and
whirl of uncertain Gendarmes, have floated safe—into the
Townhall! There sit Robespierre and Company, embraced by
Municipals and Jacobins, in sacred right of Insurrection;
redacting Proclamations; sounding tocsins; corresponding with
Sections and Mother Society. Is not here a pretty enough
third-act of a natural Greek Drama; catastrophe more uncertain
than ever?
The hasty Convention rushes together again, in the ominous
nightfall: President Collot, for the chair is his, enters with
long strides, paleness on his face; claps on his hat; says with
solemn tone: "Citoyens, armed Villains have beset the
Committee-rooms, and got possession of them. The hour is come, to
die at our post!" "Oui," answer one and all: "We swear it!" It is
no rhodomontade, this time, but a sad fact and necessity; unless
we do at our posts, we must verily die! Swift therefore,
Robespierre, Henriot, the Municipality, are declared Rebels; put
Hors la Loi, Out of Law. Better still, we appoint Barras
Commandant of what Armed-Force is to be had; send Missionary
Representatives to all Sections and quarters, to preach, and
raise force; will die at least with harness on our back.
What a distracted City; men riding and running, reporting and
hearsaying; the Hour clearly in travail,—child not to be named
till born! The poor Prisoners in the Luxembourg hear the rumour;
tremble for a new September. They see men making signals to them,
on skylights and roofs, apparently signals of hope; cannot in the
least make out what it is. (_Memoires sur les Prisons, ii. 277._)
We observe however, in the eventide, as usual, the Death-tumbrils
faring South-eastward, through Saint-Antoine, towards their
Barrier du Trone. Saint-Antoine's tough bowels melt;
Saint-Antoine surrounds the Tumbrils; says, It shall not be. O
Heavens, why should it! Henriot and Gendarmes, scouring the
streets that way, bellow, with waved sabres, that it must. Quit
hope, ye poor Doomed! The Tumbrils move on.
But in this set of Tumbrils there are two other things notable:
one notable person; and one want of a notable person. The notable
person is Lieutenant-General Loiserolles, a nobleman by birth,
and by nature; laying down his life here for his son. In the
Prison of Saint-Lazare, the night before last, hurrying to the
Grate to hear the Death-list read, he caught the name of his son.
The son was asleep at the moment. "I am Loiserolles," cried the
old man: at Tinville's bar, an error in the Christian name is
little; small objection was made. The want of the notable person,
again, is that of Deputy Paine! Paine has sat in the Luxembourg
since January; and seemed forgotten; but Fouquier had pricked him
at last. The Turnkey, List in hand, is marking with chalk the
outer doors of to-morrow's Fournee. Paine's outer door happened
to be open, turned back on the wall; the Turnkey marked it on the
side next him, and hurried on: another Turnkey came, and shut it;
no chalk-mark now visible, the Fournee went without Paine.
Paine's life lay not there.—
Our fifth-act, of this natural Greek Drama, with its natural
unities, can only be painted in gross; somewhat as that antique
Painter, driven desperate, did the foam! For through this blessed
July night, there is clangour, confusion very great, of marching
troops; of Sections going this way, Sections going that; of
Missionary Representatives reading Proclamations by torchlight;
Missionary Legendre, who has raised force somewhere, emptying out
the Jacobins, and flinging their key on the Convention table: "I
have locked their door; it shall be Virtue that re-opens it."
Paris, we say, is set against itself, rushing confused, as
Ocean-currents do; a huge Mahlstrom, sounding there, under cloud
of night. Convention sits permanent on this hand; Municipality
most permanent on that. The poor Prisoners hear tocsin and
rumour; strive to bethink them of the signals apparently of hope.
Meek continual Twilight streaming up, which will be Dawn and a
To-morrow, silvers the Northern hem of Night; it wends and wends
there, that meek brightness, like a silent prophecy, along the
great Ring-Dial of the Heaven. So still, eternal! And on Earth
all is confused shadow and conflict; dissidence, tumultuous gloom
and glare; and Destiny as yet shakes her doubtful urn.
About three in the morning, the dissident Armed-Forces have met.
Henriot's Armed Force stood ranked in the Place de Greve; and now
Barras's, which he has recruited, arrives there; and they front
each other, cannon bristling against cannon. Citoyens! cries the
voice of Discretion, loudly enough, Before coming to bloodshed,
to endless civil-war, hear the Convention Decree read:
'Robespierre and all rebels Out of Law!'—Out of Law? There is
terror in the sound: unarmed Citoyens disperse rapidly home;
Municipal Cannoneers range themselves on the Convention side,
with shouting. At which shout, Henriot descends from his upper
room, far gone in drink as some say; finds his Place de Greve
empty; the cannons' mouth turned towards him; and, on the
whole,—that it is now the catastrophe!
Stumbling in again, the wretched drunk-sobered Henriot announces:
"All is lost!" "Miserable! it is thou that hast lost it," cry
they: and fling him, or else he flings himself, out of window:
far enough down; into masonwork and horror of cesspool; not into
death but worse. Augustin Robespierre follows him; with the like
fate. Saint-Just called on Lebas to kill him: who would not.
Couthon crept under a table; attempting to kill himself; not
doing it.—On entering that Sanhedrim of Insurrection, we find all
as good as extinct; undone, ready for seizure. Robespierre was
sitting on a chair, with pistol shot blown through, not his head,
but his under jaw; the suicidal hand had failed. (_Meda. p.
384._) Meda asserts that it was he who, with infinite courage,
though in a lefthanded manner, shot Robespierre. Meda got
promoted for his services of this night; and died General and
Baron. Few credited Meda (_in what was otherwise incredible._)
With prompt zeal, not without trouble, we gather these wretched
Conspirators; fish up even Henriot and Augustin, bleeding and
foul; pack them all, rudely enough, into carts; and shall, before
sunrise, have them safe under lock and key. Amid shoutings and
embracings.
Robespierre lay in an anteroom of the Convention Hall, while his
Prison-escort was getting ready; the mangled jaw bound up rudely
with bloody linen: a spectacle to men. He lies stretched on a
table, a deal-box his pillow; the sheath of the pistol is still
clenched convulsively in his hand. Men bully him, insult him: his
eyes still indicate intelligence; he speaks no word. 'He had on
the sky-blue coat he had got made for the Feast of the Etre
Supreme'—O reader, can thy hard heart hold out against that? His
trousers were nankeen; the stockings had fallen down over the
ankles. He spake no word more in this world.
And so, at six in the morning, a victorious Convention adjourns.
Report flies over Paris as on golden wings; penetrates the
Prisons; irradiates the faces of those that were ready to perish:
turnkeys and moutons, fallen from their high estate, look mute
and blue. It is the 28th day of July, called 10th of Thermidor,
year 1794.
Fouquier had but to identify; his Prisoners being already Out of
Law. At four in the afternoon, never before were the streets of
Paris seen so crowded. From the Palais de Justice to the Place de
la Revolution, for thither again go the Tumbrils this time, it is
one dense stirring mass; all windows crammed; the very roofs and
ridge-tiles budding forth human Curiosity, in strange gladness.
The Death-tumbrils, with their motley Batch of Outlaws, some
Twenty-three or so, from Maximilien to Mayor Fleuriot and Simon
the Cordwainer, roll on. All eyes are on Robespierre's Tumbril,
where he, his jaw bound in dirty linen, with his half-dead
Brother, and half-dead Henriot, lie shattered; their 'seventeen
hours' of agony about to end. The Gendarmes point their swords at
him, to shew the people which is he. A woman springs on the
Tumbril; clutching the side of it with one hand; waving the other
Sibyl-like; and exclaims: "The death of thee gladdens my very
heart, m'enivre de joie;" Robespierre opened his eyes; "Scelerat,
go down to Hell, with the curses of all wives and mothers!"—At
the foot of the scaffold, they stretched him on the ground till
his turn came. Lifted aloft, his eyes again opened; caught the
bloody axe. Samson wrenched the coat off him; wrenched the dirty
linen from his jaw: the jaw fell powerless, there burst from him
a cry;—hideous to hear and see. Samson, thou canst not be too
quick!
Samson's work done, there burst forth shout on shout of applause.
Shout, which prolongs itself not only over Paris, but over
France, but over Europe, and down to this Generation. Deservedly,
and also undeservedly. O unhappiest Advocate of Arras, wert thou
worse than other Advocates? Stricter man, according to his
Formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of probities, benevolences,
pleasures-of-virtue, and such like, lived not in that age. A man
fitted, in some luckier settled age, to have become one of those
incorruptible barren Pattern-Figures, and have had marble-tablets
and funeral-sermons! His poor landlord, the Cabinetmaker in the
Rue Saint-Honore, loved him; his Brother died for him. May God be
merciful to him, and to us.
This is end of the Reign of Terror; new glorious Revolution named
of Thermidor; of Thermidor 9th, year 2; which being interpreted
into old slave-style means 27th of July, 1794. Terror is ended;
and death in the Place de la Revolution, were the 'Tail of
Robespierre' once executed; which service Fouquier in large
Batches is swiftly managing.
BOOK 3.VII.
VENDEMIAIRE
Chapter 3.7.I.
Decadent.
How little did any one suppose that here was the end not of
Robespierre only, but of the Revolution System itself! Least of
all did the mutinying Committee-men suppose it; who had mutinied
with no view whatever except to continue the National
Regeneration with their own heads on their shoulders. And yet so
it verily was. The insignificant stone they had struck out, so
insignificant anywhere else, proved to be the Keystone: the whole
arch-work and edifice of Sansculottism began to loosen, to crack,
to yawn; and tumbled, piecemeal, with considerable rapidity,
plunge after plunge; till the Abyss had swallowed it all, and in
this upper world Sansculottism was no more.
For despicable as Robespierre himself might be, the death of
Robespierre was a signal at which great multitudes of men, struck
dumb with terror heretofore, rose out of their hiding places:
and, as it were, saw one another, how multitudinous they were;
and began speaking and complaining. They are countable by the
thousand and the million; who have suffered cruel wrong. Ever
louder rises the plaint of such a multitude; into a universal
sound, into a universal continuous peal, of what they call Public
Opinion. Camille had demanded a 'Committee of Mercy,' and could
not get it; but now the whole nation resolves itself into a
Committee of Mercy: the Nation has tried Sansculottism, and is
weary of it. Force of Public Opinion! What King or Convention can
withstand it? You in vain struggle: the thing that is rejected as
'calumnious' to-day must pass as veracious with triumph another
day: gods and men have declared that Sansculottism cannot be.
Sansculottism, on that Ninth night of Thermidor suicidally
'fractured its under jaw;' and lies writhing, never to rise more.
Through the next fifteenth months, it is what we may call the
death-agony of Sansculottism. Sansculottism, Anarchy of the
Jean-Jacques Evangel, having now got deep enough, is to perish in
a new singular system of Culottism and Arrangement. For
Arrangement is indispensable to man; Arrangement, were it
grounded only on that old primary Evangel of Force, with Sceptre
in the shape of Hammer. Be there method, be there order, cry all
men; were it that of the Drill-serjeant! More tolerable is the
drilled Bayonet-rank, than that undrilled Guillotine,
incalculable as the wind.—How Sansculottism, writhing in
death-throes, strove some twice, or even three times, to get on
its feet again; but fell always, and was flung resupine, the next
instant; and finally breathed out the life of it, and stirred no
more: this we are now, from a due distance, with due brevity, to
glance at; and then—O Reader!—Courage, I see land!
Two of the first acts of the Convention, very natural for it
after this Thermidor, are to be specified here: the first is
renewal of the Governing Committees. Both Surete Generale and
Salut Public, thinned by the Guillotine, need filling up: we
naturally fill them up with Talliens, Frerons, victorious
Thermidorian men. Still more to the purpose, we appoint that they
shall, as Law directs, not in name only but in deed, be renewed
and changed from period to period; a fourth part of them going
out monthly. The Convention will no more lie under bondage of
Committees, under terror of death; but be a free Convention; free
to follow its own judgment, and the Force of Public Opinion. Not
less natural is it to enact that Prisoners and Persons under
Accusation shall have right to demand some 'Writ of Accusation,'
and see clearly what they are accused of. Very natural acts: the
harbingers of hundreds not less so.
For now Fouquier's trade, shackled by Writ of Accusation, and
legal proof, is as good as gone; effectual only against
Robespierre's Tail. The Prisons give up their Suspects; emit them
faster and faster. The Committees see themselves besieged with
Prisoners' friends; complain that they are hindered in their
work: it is as with men rushing out of a crowded place; and
obstructing one another. Turned are the tables: Prisoners pouring
out in floods; Jailors, Moutons and the Tail of Robespierre going
now whither they were wont to send!—The Hundred and thirty-two
Nantese Republicans, whom we saw marching in irons, have arrived;
shrunk to Ninety-four, the fifth man of them choked by the road.
They arrive: and suddenly find themselves not pleaders for life,
but denouncers to death. Their Trial is for acquittal, and more.
As the voice of a trumpet, their testimony sounds far and wide,
mere atrocities of a Reign of Terror. For a space of nineteen
days; with all solemnity and publicity. Representative Carrier,
Company of Marat; Noyadings, Loire Marriages, things done in
darkness, come forth into light: clear is the voice of these poor
resuscitated Nantese; and Journals and Speech and universal
Committee of Mercy reverberate it loud enough, into all ears and
hearts. Deputation arrives from Arras; denouncing the atrocities
of Representative Lebon. A tamed Convention loves its own life:
yet what help? Representative Lebon, Representative Carrier must
wend towards the Revolutionary Tribunal; struggle and delay as we
will, the cry of a Nation pursues them louder and louder. Them
also Tinville must abolish;—if indeed Tinville himself be not
abolished.
We must note moreover the decrepit condition into which a once
omnipotent Mother Society has fallen. Legendre flung her keys on
the Convention table, that Thermidor night; her President was
guillotined with Robespierre. The once mighty Mother came, some
time after, with a subdued countenance, begging back her keys:
the keys were restored her; but the strength could not be
restored her; the strength had departed forever. Alas, one's day
is done. Vain that the Tribune in mid air sounds as of old: to
the general ear it has become a horror, and even a weariness. By
and by, Affiliation is prohibited: the mighty Mother sees herself
suddenly childless; mourns, as so hoarse a Rachel may.
The Revolutionary Committees, without Suspects to prey upon,
perish fast; as it were of famine. In Paris the whole Forty-eight
of them are reduced to Twelve, their Forty sous are abolished:
yet a little while, and Revolutionary Committees are no more.
Maximum will be abolished; let Sansculottism find food where it
can. (_24th December 1794, Moniteur, No. 97._) Neither is there
now any Municipality; any centre at the Townhall. Mayor Fleuriot
and Company perished; whom we shall not be in haste to replace.
The Townhall remains in a broken submissive state; knows not well
what it is growing to; knows only that it is grown weak, and must
obey. What if we should split Paris into, say, a Dozen separate
Municipalities; incapable of concert! The Sections were thus
rendered safe to act with:—or indeed might not the Sections
themselves be abolished? You had then merely your Twelve
manageable pacific Townships, without centre or subdivision;
(_October 1795, Dulaure, viii. 454-6._) and sacred right of
Insurrection fell into abeyance!
So much is getting abolished; fleeting swiftly into the Inane.
For the Press speaks, and the human tongue; Journals, heavy and
light, in Philippic and Burlesque: a renegade Freron, a renegade
Prudhomme, loud they as ever, only the contrary way. And
Ci-devants shew themselves, almost parade themselves;
resuscitated as from death-sleep; publish what death-pains they
have had. The very Frogs of the Marsh croak with emphasis. Your
protesting Seventy-three shall, with a struggle, be emitted out
of Prison, back to their seats; your Louvets, Isnards,
Lanjuinais, and wrecks of Girondism, recalled from their
haylofts, and caves in Switzerland, will resume their place in
the Convention: (_Deux Amis, xiii. 3-39._) natural foes of
Terror!
Thermidorian Talliens, and mere foes of Terror, rule in this
Convention, and out of it. The compressed Mountain shrinks silent
more and more. Moderatism rises louder and louder: not as a
tempest, with threatenings; say rather, as the rushing of a
mighty organ-blast, and melodious deafening Force of Public
Opinion, from the Twenty-five million windpipes of a Nation all
in Committee of Mercy: which how shall any detached body of
individuals withstand?
Chapter 3.7.II.
La Cabarus.
How, above all, shall a poor National Convention, withstand it?
In this poor National Convention, broken, bewildered by long
terror, perturbations, and guillotinement, there is no Pilot,
there is not now even a Danton, who could undertake to steer you
anywhither, in such press of weather. The utmost a bewildered
Convention can do, is to veer, and trim, and try to keep itself
steady: and rush, undrowned, before the wind. Needless to
struggle; to fling helm a-lee, and make 'bout ship! A bewildered
Convention sails not in the teeth of the wind; but is rapidly
blown round again. So strong is the wind, we say; and so changed;
blowing fresher and fresher, as from the sweet South-West; your
devastating North-Easters, and wild tornado-gusts of Terror,
blown utterly out! All Sansculottic things are passing away; all
things are becoming Culottic.
Do but look at the cut of clothes; that light visible Result,
significant of a thousand things which are not so visible. In
winter 1793, men went in red nightcaps; Municipals themselves in
sabots: the very Citoyennes had to petition against such
headgear. But now in this winter 1794, where is the red nightcap?
With the thing beyond the Flood. Your monied Citoyen ponders in
what elegantest style he shall dress himself: whether he shall
not even dress himself as the Free Peoples of Antiquity. The more
adventurous Citoyenne has already done it. Behold her, that
beautiful adventurous Citoyenne: in costume of the Ancient
Greeks, such Greek as Painter David could teach; her sweeping
tresses snooded by glittering antique fillet; bright-eyed tunic
of the Greek women; her little feet naked, as in Antique Statues,
with mere sandals, and winding-strings of riband,—defying the
frost!
There is such an effervescence of Luxury. For your Emigrant
Ci-devants carried not their mansions and furnitures out of the
country with them; but left them standing here: and in the swift
changes of property, what with money coined on the Place de la
Revolution, what with Army-furnishings, sales of Emigrant Domain
and Church Lands and King's Lands, and then with the
Aladdin's-lamp of Agio in a time of Paper-money, such mansions
have found new occupants. Old wine, drawn from Ci-devant bottles,
descends new throats. Paris has swept herself, relighted herself;
Salons, Soupers not Fraternal, beam once more with suitable
effulgence, very singular in colour. The fair Cabarus is come out
of Prison; wedded to her red-gloomy Dis, whom they say she treats
too loftily: fair Cabarus gives the most brilliant soirees. Round
her is gathered a new Republican Army, of Citoyennes in sandals;
Ci-devants or other: what remnants soever of the old grace
survive, are rallied there. At her right-hand, in this cause,
labours fair Josephine the Widow Beauharnais, though in
straitened circumstances: intent, both of them, to blandish down
the grimness of Republican austerity, and recivilise mankind.
Recivilise, as of old they were civilised: by witchery of the
Orphic fiddle-bow, and Euterpean rhythm; by the Graces, by the
Smiles! Thermidorian Deputies are there in those soirees; Editor
Freron, Orateur du Peuple; Barras, who has known other dances
than the Carmagnole. Grim Generals of the Republic are there; in
enormous horse-collar neckcloth, good against sabre-cuts; the
hair gathered all into one knot, 'flowing down behind, fixed with
a comb.' Among which latter do we not recognise, once more, the
little bronzed-complexioned Artillery-Officer of Toulon, home
from the Italian Wars! Grim enough; of lean, almost cruel aspect:
for he has been in trouble, in ill health; also in ill favour, as
a man promoted, deservingly or not, by the Terrorists and
Robespierre Junior. But does not Barras know him? Will not Barras
speak a word for him? Yes,—if at any time it will serve Barras so
to do. Somewhat forlorn of fortune, for the present, stands that
Artillery-Officer; looks, with those deep earnest eyes of his,
into a future as waste as the most. Taciturn; yet with the
strangest utterances in him, if you awaken him, which smite home,
like light or lightning:—on the whole, rather dangerous? A
'dissociable' man? Dissociable enough; a natural terror and
horror to all Phantasms, being himself of the genus Reality! He
stands here, without work or outlook, in this forsaken
manner;—glances nevertheless, it would seem, at the kind glance
of Josephine Beauharnais; and, for the rest, with severe
countenance, with open eyes and closed lips, waits what will
betide.
That the Balls, therefore, have a new figure this winter, we can
see. Not Carmagnoles, rude 'whirlblasts of rags,' as Mercier
called them 'precursors of storm and destruction:' no, soft Ionic
motions; fit for the light sandal, and antique Grecian tunic!
Efflorescence of Luxury has come out: for men have wealth; nay
new-got wealth; and under the Terror you durst not dance except
in rags. Among the innumerable kinds of Balls, let the hasty
reader mark only this single one: the kind they call Victim
Balls, Bals a Victime. The dancers, in choice costume, have all
crape round the left arm: to be admitted, it needs that you be a
Victime; that you have lost a relative under the Terror. Peace to
the Dead; let us dance to their memory! For in all ways one must
dance.
It is very remarkable, according to Mercier, under what varieties
of figure this great business of dancing goes on. 'The women,'
says he, 'are Nymphs, Sultanas; sometimes Minervas, Junos, even
Dianas. In light-unerring gyrations they swim there; with such
earnestness of purpose; with perfect silence, so absorbed are
they. What is singular,' continues he, 'the onlookers are as it
were mingled with the dancers; form as it were a circumambient
element round the different contre-dances, yet without deranging
them. It is rare, in fact, that a Sultana in such circumstances
experience the smallest collision. Her pretty foot darts down, an
inch from mine; she is off again; she is as a flash of light: but
soon the measure recalls her to the point she set out from. Like
a glittering comet she travels her eclipse, revolving on herself,
as by a double effect of gravitation and attraction.' (_Mercier,
Nouveau Paris, iii. 138, 153._) Looking forward a little way,
into Time, the same Mercier discerns Merveilleuses in
'flesh-coloured drawers' with gold circlets; mere dancing Houris
of an artificial Mahomet's-Paradise: much too Mahometan.
Montgaillard, with his splenetic eye, notes a no less strange
thing; that every fashionable Citoyenne you meet is in an
interesting situation. Good Heavens, every! Mere pillows and
stuffing! adds the acrid man;—such, in a time of depopulation by
war and guillotine, being the fashion. (_Montgaillard, iv.
436-42._) No further seek its merits to disclose.
Behold also instead of the old grim Tappe-durs of Robespierre,
what new street-groups are these? Young men habited not in
black-shag Carmagnole spencer, but in superfine habit carre or
spencer with rectangular tail appended to it; 'square-tailed
coat,' with elegant antiguillotinish specialty of collar; 'the
hair plaited at the temples,' and knotted back, long-flowing, in
military wise: young men of what they call the Muscadin or Dandy
species! Freron, in his fondness names them Jeunesse doree,
Golden, or Gilt Youth. They have come out, these Gilt Youths, in
a kind of resuscitated state; they wear crape round the left arm,
such of them as were Victims. More they carry clubs loaded with
lead; in an angry manner: any Tappe-dur or remnant of Jacobinism
they may fall in with, shall fare the worse. They have suffered
much: their friends guillotined; their pleasures, frolics,
superfine collars ruthlessly repressed: 'ware now the base Red
Nightcaps who did it! Fair Cabarus and the Army of Greek sandals
smile approval. In the Theatre Feydeau, young Valour in
square-tailed coat eyes Beauty in Greek sandals, and kindles by
her glances: Down with Jacobinism! No Jacobin hymn or
demonstration, only Thermidorian ones, shall be permitted here:
we beat down Jacobinism with clubs loaded with lead.
But let any one who has examined the Dandy nature, how petulant
it is, especially in the gregarious state, think what an element,
in sacred right of insurrection, this Gilt Youth was! Broils and
battery; war without truce or measure! Hateful is Sansculottism,
as Death and Night. For indeed is not the Dandy culottic,
habilatory, by law of existence; 'a cloth-animal: one that lives,
moves, and has his being in cloth?'—
So goes it, waltzing, bickering; fair Cabarus, by Orphic
witchery, struggling to recivilise mankind. Not unsuccessfully,
we hear. What utmost Republican grimness can resist Greek
sandals, in Ionic motion, the very toes covered with gold rings?
(_Ibid. Mercier, ubi supra._) By degrees the indisputablest
new-politeness rises; grows, with vigour. And yet, whether, even
to this day, that inexpressible tone of society known under the
old Kings, when Sin had 'lost all its deformity' (_with or
without advantage to us_), and airy Nothing had obtained such a
local habitation and establishment as she never had,—be
recovered? Or even, whether it be not lost beyond recovery? (_De
Stael, Considerations iii. c. 10, &c._)—Either way, the world
must contrive to struggle on.
Chapter 3.7.III.
Quiberon.
But indeed do not these long-flowing hair-queues of a Jeunesse
Doree in semi-military costume betoken, unconsciously, another
still more important tendency? The Republic, abhorrent of her
Guillotine, loves her Army.
And with cause. For, surely, if good fighting be a kind of
honour, as it is, in its season; and be with the vulgar of men,
even the chief kind of honour, then here is good fighting, in
good season, if there ever was. These Sons of the Republic, they
rose, in mad wrath, to deliver her from Slavery and Cimmeria. And
have they not done it? Through Maritime Alps, through gorges of
Pyrenees, through Low Countries, Northward along the
Rhine-valley, far is Cimmeria hurled back from the sacred
Motherland. Fierce as fire, they have carried her Tricolor over
the faces of all her enemies;—over scarped heights, over
cannon-batteries; down, as with the Vengeur, into the dead deep
sea. She has 'Eleven hundred thousand fighters on foot,' this
Republic: 'At one particular moment she had,' or supposed she
had, 'seventeen hundred thousand.' (_Toulongeon, iii. c. 7; v. c.
10, p. 194._) Like a ring of lightning, they, volleying and
ca-ira-ing, begirdle her from shore to shore. Cimmerian Coalition
of Despots recoils; smitten with astonishment, and strange pangs.
Such a fire is in these Gaelic Republican men; high-blazing;
which no Coalition can withstand! Not scutcheons, with four
degrees of nobility; but ci-devant Serjeants, who have had to
clutch Generalship out of the cannon's throat, a Pichegru, a
Jourdan, a Hoche, lead them on. They have bread, they have iron;
'with bread and iron you can get to China.'—See Pichegru's
soldiers, this hard winter, in their looped and windowed
destitution, in their 'straw-rope shoes and cloaks of bass-mat,'
how they overrun Holland, like a demon-host, the ice having
bridged all waters; and rush shouting from victory to victory!
Ships in the Texel are taken by huzzars on horseback: fled is
York; fled is the Stadtholder, glad to escape to England, and
leave Holland to fraternise. (_19th January, 1795, Montgaillard,
iv. 287-311._) Such a Gaelic fire, we say, blazes in this People,
like the conflagration of grass and dry-jungle; which no mortal
can withstand—for the moment.
And even so it will blaze and run, scorching all things; and,
from Cadiz to Archangel, mad Sansculottism, drilled now into
Soldiership, led on by some 'armed Soldier of Democracy' (_say,
that Monosyllabic Artillery-Officer_), will set its foot cruelly
on the necks of its enemies; and its shouting and their shrieking
shall fill the world!—Rash Coalised Kings, such a fire have ye
kindled; yourselves fireless, your fighters animated only by
drill-serjeants, messroom moralities, and the drummer's cat!
However, it is begun, and will not end: not for a matter of
twenty years. So long, this Gaelic fire, through its successive
changes of colour and character, will blaze over the face of
Europe, and afflict the scorch all men:—till it provoke all men;
till it kindle another kind of fire, the Teutonic kind, namely;
and be swallowed up, so to speak, in a day! For there is a fire
comparable to the burning of dry-jungle and grass; most sudden,
high-blazing: and another fire which we liken to the burning of
coal, or even of anthracite coal; difficult to kindle, but then
which nothing will put out. The ready Gaelic fire, we can remark
further, and remark not in Pichegrus only, but in innumerable
Voltaires, Racines, Laplaces, no less; for a man, whether he
fight, or sing, or think, will remain the same unity of a man,—is
admirable for roasting eggs, in every conceivable sense. The
Teutonic anthracite again, as we see in Luthers, Leibnitzes,
Shakespeares, is preferable for smelting metals. How happy is our
Europe that has both kinds!—
But be this as it may, the Republic is clearly triumphing. In the
spring of the year Mentz Town again sees itself besieged; will
again change master: did not Merlin the Thionviller, 'with wild
beard and look,' say it was not for the last time they saw him
there? The Elector of Mentz circulates among his brother
Potentates this pertinent query, Were it not advisable to treat
of Peace? Yes! answers many an Elector from the bottom of his
heart. But, on the other hand, Austria hesitates; finally
refuses, being subsidied by Pitt. As to Pitt, whoever hesitate,
he, suspending his Habeas-corpus, suspending his Cash-payments,
stands inflexible,—spite of foreign reverses; spite of domestic
obstacles, of Scotch National Conventions and English Friends of
the People, whom he is obliged to arraign, to hang, or even to
see acquitted with jubilee: a lean inflexible man. The Majesty of
Spain, as we predicted, makes Peace; also the Majesty of Prussia:
and there is a Treaty of Bale. (_5th April, 1795, Montgaillard,
iv. 319._) Treaty with black Anarchists and Regicides! Alas, what
help? You cannot hang this Anarchy; it is like to hang you: you
must needs treat with it.
Likewise, General Hoche has even succeeded in pacificating La
Vendee. Rogue Rossignol and his 'Infernal Columns' have vanished:
by firmness and justice, by sagacity and industry, General Hoche
has done it. Taking 'Movable Columns,' not infernal; girdling-in
the Country; pardoning the submissive, cutting down the
resistive, limb after limb of the Revolt is brought under. La
Rochejacquelin, last of our Nobles, fell in battle; Stofflet
himself makes terms; Georges-Cadoudal is back to Brittany, among
his Chouans: the frightful gangrene of La Vendee seems veritably
extirpated. It has cost, as they reckon in round numbers, the
lives of a Hundred Thousand fellow-mortals; with noyadings,
conflagratings by infernal column, which defy arithmetic. This is
the La Vendee War. (_Histoire de la Guerre de la Vendee, par M.
le Comte de Vauban, Memoires de Madame de la Rochejacquelin,
&c._)
Nay in few months, it does burst up once more, but once
only:—blown upon by Pitt, by our Ci-devant Puisaye of Calvados,
and others. In the month of July 1795, English Ships will ride in
Quiberon roads. There will be debarkation of chivalrous
Ci-devants, of volunteer Prisoners-of-war—eager to desert; of
fire-arms, Proclamations, clothes-chests, Royalists and specie.
Whereupon also, on the Republican side, there will be rapid
stand-to-arms; with ambuscade marchings by Quiberon beach, at
midnight; storming of Fort Penthievre; war-thunder mingling with
the roar of the nightly main; and such a morning light as has
seldom dawned; debarkation hurled back into its boats, or into
the devouring billows, with wreck and wail;—in one word, a
Ci-devant Puisaye as totally ineffectual here as he was in
Calvados, when he rode from Vernon Castle without boots. (_Deux
Amis, xiv. 94-106; Puisaye, Memoires, iii-vii._)
Again, therefore, it has cost the lives of many a brave man.
Among whom the whole world laments the brave Son of Sombreuil.
Ill-fated family! The father and younger son went to the
guillotine; the heroic daughter languishes, reduced to want,
hides her woes from History: the elder son perishes here; shot by
military tribunal as an Emigrant; Hoche himself cannot save him.
If all wars, civil and other, are misunderstandings, what a thing
must right-understanding be!
Chapter 3.7.IV.
Lion not dead.
The Convention, borne on the tide of Fortune towards foreign
Victory, and driven by the strong wind of Public Opinion towards
Clemency and Luxury, is rushing fast; all skill of pilotage is
needed, and more than all, in such a velocity.
Curious to see, how we veer and whirl, yet must ever whirl round
again, and scud before the wind. If, on the one hand, we re-admit
the Protesting Seventy-Three, we, on the other hand, agree to
consummate the Apotheosis of Marat; lift his body from the
Cordeliers Church, and transport it to the Pantheon of Great
Men,—flinging out Mirabeau to make room for him. To no purpose:
so strong blows Public Opinion! A Gilt Youthhood, in plaited
hair-tresses, tears down his Busts from the Theatre Feydeau;
tramples them under foot; scatters them, with vociferation into
the Cesspool of Montmartre. (_Moniteur, du 25 Septembre 1794, du
4 Fevrier 1795._) Swept is his Chapel from the Place du
Carrousel; the Cesspool of Montmartre will receive his very dust.
Shorter godhood had no divine man. Some four months in this
Pantheon, Temple of All the Immortals; then to the Cesspool,
grand Cloaca of Paris and the World! 'His Busts at one time
amounted to four thousand.' Between Temple of All the Immortals
and Cloaca of the World, how are poor human creatures whirled!
Furthermore the question arises, When will the Constitution of
Ninety-three, of 1793, come into action? Considerate heads
surmise, in all privacy, that the Constitution of Ninety-three
will never come into action. Let them busy themselves to get
ready a better.
Or, again, where now are the Jacobins? Childless, most decrepit,
as we saw, sat the mighty Mother; gnashing not teeth, but empty
gums, against a traitorous Thermidorian Convention and the
current of things. Twice were Billaud, Collot and Company accused
in Convention, by a Lecointre, by a Legendre; and the second
time, it was not voted calumnious. Billaud from the Jacobin
tribune says, "The lion is not dead, he is only sleeping." They
ask him in Convention, What he means by the awakening of the
lion? And bickerings, of an extensive sort, arose in the
Palais-Egalite between Tappe-durs and the Gilt Youthhood; cries
of "Down with the Jacobins, the Jacoquins," coquin meaning
scoundrel! The Tribune in mid-air gave battle-sound; answered
only by silence and uncertain gasps. Talk was, in Government
Committees, of 'suspending' the Jacobin Sessions. Hark, there!—it
is in Allhallow-time, or on the Hallow-eve itself, month
ci-devant November, year once named of Grace 1794, sad eve for
Jacobinism,—volley of stones dashing through our windows, with
jingle and execration! The female Jacobins, famed Tricoteuses
with knitting-needles, take flight; are met at the doors by a
Gilt Youthhood and 'mob of four thousand persons;' are hooted,
flouted, hustled; fustigated, in a scandalous manner, cotillons
retrousses;—and vanish in mere hysterics. Sally out ye male
Jacobins! The male Jacobins sally out; but only to battle,
disaster and confusion. So that armed Authority has to intervene:
and again on the morrow to intervene; and suspend the Jacobin
Sessions forever and a day. (_Moniteur, Seances du 10-12 Novembre
1794: Deux Amis, xiii. 43-49._) Gone are the Jacobins; into
invisibility; in a storm of laughter and howls. Their place is
made a Normal School, the first of the kind seen; it then
vanishes into a 'Market of Thermidor Ninth;' into a Market of
Saint-Honore, where is now peaceable chaffering for poultry and
greens. The solemn temples, the great globe itself; the baseless
fabric! Are not we such stuff, we and this world of ours, as
Dreams are made of?
Maximum being abrogated, Trade was to take its own free course.
Alas, Trade, shackled, topsyturvied in the way we saw, and now
suddenly let go again, can for the present take no course at all;
but only reel and stagger. There is, so to speak, no Trade
whatever for the time being. Assignats, long sinking, emitted in
such quantities, sink now with an alacrity beyond parallel.
"Combien?" said one, to a Hackney-coachman, "What fare?" "Six
thousand livres," answered he: some three hundred pounds
sterling, in Paper-money. (_Mercier, ii. 94. '1st February, 1796:
at the Bourse of Paris, the gold louis,' of 20 francs in silver,
'costs 5,300 francs in assignats.' Montgaillard, iv. 419._)
Pressure of Maximum withdrawn, the things it compressed likewise
withdraw. 'Two ounces of bread per day' in the modicum allotted:
wide-waving, doleful are the Bakers' Queues; Farmers' houses are
become pawnbrokers' shops.
One can imagine, in these circumstances, with what humour
Sansculottism growled in its throat, "La Cabarus;" beheld
Ci-devants return dancing, the Thermidor effulgence of
recivilisation, and Balls in flesh-coloured drawers. Greek tunics
and sandals; hosts of Muscadins parading, with their clubs loaded
with lead;—and we here, cast out, abhorred, 'picking offals from
the street;' (_Fantin Desodoards, Histoire de la Revolution, vii.
c. 4._) agitating in Baker's Queue for our two ounces of bread!
Will the Jacobin lion, which they say is meeting secretly 'at the
Acheveche, in bonnet rouge with loaded pistols,' not awaken?
Seemingly not. Our Collot, our Billaud, Barrere, Vadier, in these
last days of March 1795, are found worthy of Deportation, of
Banishment beyond seas; and shall, for the present, be trundled
off to the Castle of Ham. The lion is dead;—or writhing in
death-throes!
Behold, accordingly, on the day they call Twelfth of Germinal
(_which is also called First of April, not a lucky day_), how
lively are these streets of Paris once more! Floods of hungry
women, of squalid hungry men; ejaculating: "Bread, Bread and the
Constitution of Ninety-three!" Paris has risen, once again, like
the Ocean-tide; is flowing towards the Tuileries, for Bread and a
Constitution. Tuileries Sentries do their best; but it serves
not: the Ocean-tide sweeps them away; inundates the Convention
Hall itself; howling, "Bread, and the Constitution!"
Unhappy Senators, unhappy People, there is yet, after all toils
and broils, no Bread, no Constitution. "Du pain, pas tant de
longs discours, Bread, not bursts of Parliamentary eloquence!" so
wailed the Menads of Maillard, five years ago and more; so wail
ye to this hour. The Convention, with unalterable countenance,
with what thought one knows not, keeps its seat in this waste
howling chaos; rings its stormbell from the Pavilion of Unity.
Section Lepelletier, old Filles Saint-Thomas, who are of the
money-changing species; these and Gilt Youthhood fly to the
rescue; sweep chaos forth again, with levelled bayonets. Paris is
declared 'in a state of siege.' Pichegru, Conqueror of Holland,
who happens to be here, is named Commandant, till the disturbance
end. He, in one day, so to speak, ends it. He accomplishes the
transfer of Billaud, Collot and Company; dissipating all
opposition 'by two cannon-shots,' blank cannon-shots, and the
terror of his name; and thereupon announcing, with a Laconicism
which should be imitated, "Representatives, your decrees are
executed," (_Moniteur, Seance du 13 Germinal (_2d April_) 1795._)
lays down his Commandantship.
This Revolt of Germinal, therefore, has passed, like a vain cry.
The Prisoners rest safe in Ham, waiting for ships; some nine
hundred 'chief Terrorists of Paris' are disarmed. Sansculottism,
swept forth with bayonets, has vanished, with its misery, to the
bottom of Saint-Antoine and Saint-Marceau.—Time was when Usher
Maillard with Menads could alter the course of Legislation; but
that time is not. Legislation seems to have got bayonets; Section
Lepelletier takes its firelock, not for us! We retire to our dark
dens; our cry of hunger is called a Plot of Pitt; the Saloons
glitter, the flesh-coloured Drawers gyrate as before. It was for
"The Cabarus" then, and her Muscadins and Money-changers, that we
fought? It was for Balls in flesh-coloured drawers that we took
Feudalism by the beard, and did, and dared, shedding our blood
like water? Expressive Silence, muse thou their praise!—
Chapter 3.7.V.
Lion sprawling its last.
Representative Carrier went to the Guillotine, in December last;
protesting that he acted by orders. The Revolutionary Tribunal,
after all it has devoured, has now only, as Anarchic things do,
to devour itself. In the early days of May, men see a remarkable
thing: Fouquier-Tinville pleading at the Bar once his own. He and
his chief Jurymen, Leroi August-Tenth, Juryman Vilate, a Batch of
Sixteen; pleading hard, protesting that they acted by orders: but
pleading in vain. Thus men break the axe with which they have
done hateful things; the axe itself having grown hateful. For the
rest, Fouquier died hard enough: "Where are thy Batches?" howled
the People.—"Hungry canaille," asked Fouquier, "is thy Bread
cheaper, wanting them?"
Remarkable Fouquier; once but as other Attorneys and Law-beagles,
which hunt ravenous on this Earth, a well-known phasis of human
nature; and now thou art and remainest the most remarkable
Attorney that ever lived and hunted in the Upper Air! For, in
this terrestrial Course of Time, there was to be an Avatar of
Attorneyism; the Heavens had said, Let there be an Incarnation,
not divine, of the venatory Attorney-spirit which keeps its eye
on the bond only;—and lo, this was it; and they have attorneyed
it in its turn. Vanish, then, thou rat-eyed Incarnation of
Attorneyism; who at bottom wert but as other Attorneys, and too
hungry Sons of Adam! Juryman Vilate had striven hard for life,
and published, from his Prison, an ingenious Book, not unknown to
us; but it would not stead: he also had to vanish; and this his
Book of the Secret Causes of Thermidor, full of lies, with
particles of truth in it undiscoverable otherwise, is all that
remains of him.
Revolutionary Tribunal has done; but vengeance has not done.
Representative Lebon, after long struggling, is handed over to
the ordinary Law Courts, and by them guillotined. Nay, at Lyons
and elsewhere, resuscitated Moderatism, in its vengeance, will
not wait the slow process of Law; but bursts into the Prisons,
sets fire to the prisons; burns some three score imprisoned
Jacobins to dire death, or chokes them 'with the smoke of straw.'
There go vengeful truculent 'Companies of Jesus,' 'Companies of
the Sun;' slaying Jacobinism wherever they meet with it; flinging
it into the Rhone-stream; which, once more, bears seaward a
horrid cargo. (_Moniteur, du 27 Juin, du 31 Aout, 1795; Deux
Amis, xiii. 121-9._) Whereupon, at Toulon, Jacobinism rises in
revolt; and is like to hang the National Representatives.—With
such action and reaction, is not a poor National Convention hard
bested? It is like the settlement of winds and waters, of seas
long tornado-beaten; and goes on with jumble and with jangle. Now
flung aloft, now sunk in trough of the sea, your Vessel of the
Republic has need of all pilotage and more.
What Parliament that ever sat under the Moon had such a series of
destinies, as this National Convention of France? It came
together to make the Constitution; and instead of that, it has
had to make nothing but destruction and confusion: to burn up
Catholicisms, Aristocratisms, to worship Reason and dig
Saltpetre, to fight Titanically with itself and with the whole
world. A Convention decimated by the Guillotine; above the tenth
man has bowed his neck to the axe. Which has seen Carmagnoles
danced before it, and patriotic strophes sung amid Church-spoils;
the wounded of the Tenth of August defile in handbarrows; and, in
the Pandemonial Midnight, Egalite's dames in tricolor drink
lemonade, and spectrum of Sieyes mount, saying, Death sans
phrase. A Convention which has effervesced, and which has
congealed; which has been red with rage, and also pale with rage:
sitting with pistols in its pocket, drawing sword (_in a moment
of effervescence_): now storming to the four winds, through a
Danton-voice, Awake, O France, and smite the tyrants; now frozen
mute under its Robespierre, and answering his dirge-voice by a
dubious gasp. Assassinated, decimated; stabbed at, shot at, in
baths, on streets and staircases; which has been the nucleus of
Chaos. Has it not heard the chimes at midnight? It has
deliberated, beset by a Hundred thousand armed men with
artillery-furnaces and provision-carts. It has been betocsined,
bestormed; over-flooded by black deluges of Sansculottism; and
has heard the shrill cry, Bread and Soap. For, as we say, its the
nucleus of Chaos; it sat as the centre of Sansculottism; and had
spread its pavilion on the waste Deep, where is neither path nor
landmark, neither bottom nor shore. In intrinsic valour,
ingenuity, fidelity, and general force and manhood, it has
perhaps not far surpassed the average of Parliaments: but in
frankness of purpose, in singularity of position, it seeks its
fellow. One other Sansculottic submersion, or at most two, and
this wearied vessel of a Convention reaches land.
Revolt of Germinal Twelfth ended as a vain cry; moribund
Sansculottism was swept back into invisibility. There it has lain
moaning, these six weeks: moaning, and also scheming. Jacobins
disarmed, flung forth from their Tribune in mid air, must needs
try to help themselves, in secret conclave under ground. Lo,
therefore, on the First day of the Month Prairial, 20th of May
1795, sound of the generale once more; beating sharp, ran-tan, To
arms, To arms!
Sansculottism has risen, yet again, from its death-lair; waste
wild-flowing, as the unfruitful Sea. Saint-Antoine is a-foot:
"Bread and the Constitution of Ninety-three," so sounds it; so
stands it written with chalk on the hats of men. They have their
pikes, their firelocks; Paper of Grievances; standards; printed
Proclamation, drawn up in quite official manner,—considering
this, and also considering that, they, a much-enduring Sovereign
People, are in Insurrection; will have Bread and the Constitution
of Ninety-three. And so the Barriers are seized, and the generale
beats, and tocsins discourse discord. Black deluges overflow the
Tuileries; spite of sentries, the Sanctuary itself is invaded:
enter, to our Order of the Day, a torrent of dishevelled women,
wailing, "Bread! Bread!" President may well cover himself; and
have his own tocsin rung in 'the Pavilion of Unity;' the ship of
the State again labours and leaks; overwashed, near to swamping,
with unfruitful brine.
What a day, once more! Women are driven out: men storm
irresistibly in; choke all corridors, thunder at all gates.
Deputies, putting forth head, obtest, conjure; Saint-Antoine
rages, "Bread and Constitution." Report has risen that the
'Convention is assassinating the women:' crushing and rushing,
clangor and furor! The oak doors have become as oak tambourines,
sounding under the axe of Saint-Antoine; plaster-work crackles,
woodwork booms and jingles; door starts up;—bursts-in
Saint-Antoine with frenzy and vociferation, Rag-standards,
printed Proclamation, drum-music: astonishment to eye and ear.
Gendarmes, loyal Sectioners charge through the other door; they
are recharged; musketry exploding: Saint-Antoine cannot be
expelled. Obtesting Deputies obtest vainly; Respect the
President; approach not the President! Deputy Feraud, stretching
out his hands, baring his bosom scarred in the Spanish wars,
obtests vainly: threatens and resists vainly. Rebellious Deputy
of the Sovereign, if thou have fought, have not we too? We have
no bread, no Constitution! They wrench poor Feraud; they tumble
him, trample him, wrath waxing to see itself work: they drag him
into the corridor, dead or near it; sever his head, and fix it on
a pike. Ah, did an unexampled Convention want this variety of
destiny too, then? Feraud's bloody head goes on a pike. Such a
game has begun; Paris and the Earth may wait how it will end.
And so it billows free though all Corridors; within, and without,
far as the eye reaches, nothing but Bedlam, and the great Deep
broken loose! President Boissy d'Anglas sits like a rock: the
rest of the Convention is floated 'to the upper benches;'
Sectioners and Gendarmes still ranking there to form a kind of
wall for them. And Insurrection rages; rolls its drums; will read
its Paper of Grievances, will have this decreed, will have that.
Covered sits President Boissy, unyielding; like a rock in the
beating of seas. They menace him, level muskets at him, he yields
not; they hold up Feraud's bloody head to him, with grave stern
air he bows to it, and yields not.
And the Paper of Grievances cannot get itself read for uproar;
and the drums roll, and the throats bawl; and Insurrection, like
sphere-music, is inaudible for very noise: Decree us this, Decree
us that. One man we discern bawling 'for the space of an hour at
all intervals,' "Je demande l'arrestation des coquins et des
laches." Really one of the most comprehensive Petitions ever put
up: which indeed, to this hour, includes all that you can
reasonably ask Constitution of the Year One, Rotten-Borough,
Ballot-Box, or other miraculous Political Ark of the Covenant to
do for you to the end of the world! I also demand arrestment of
the Knaves and Dastards, and nothing more whatever. National
Representation, deluged with black Sansculottism glides out; for
help elsewhere, for safety elsewhere: here is no help.
About four in the afternoon, there remain hardly more than some
Sixty Members: mere friends, or even secret-leaders; a remnant of
the Mountain-crest, held in silence by Thermidorian thraldom. Now
is the time for them; now or never let them descend, and speak!
They descend, these Sixty, invited by Sansculottism: Romme of the
New Calendar, Ruhl of the Sacred Phial, Goujon, Duquesnoy,
Soubrany, and the rest. Glad Sansculottism forms a ring for them;
Romme takes the President's chair; they begin resolving and
decreeing. Fast enough now comes Decree after Decree, in
alternate brief strains, or strophe and antistrophe,—what will
cheapen bread, what will awaken the dormant lion. And at every
new Decree, Sansculottism shouts, Decreed, Decreed; and rolls its
drums.
Fast enough; the work of months in hours,—when see, a Figure
enters, whom in the lamp-light we recognise to be Legendre; and
utters words: fit to be hissed out! And then see, Section
Lepelletier or other Muscadin Section enters, and Gilt Youth,
with levelled bayonets, countenances screwed to the
sticking-place! Tramp, tramp, with bayonets gleaming in the
lamp-light: what can one do, worn down with long riot, grown
heartless, dark, hungry, but roll back, but rush back, and escape
who can? The very windows need to be thrown up, that
Sansculottism may escape fast enough. Money-changer Sections and
Gilt Youth sweep them forth, with steel besom, far into the
depths of Saint-Antoine. Triumph once more! The Decrees of that
Sixty are not so much as rescinded; they are declared null and
non-extant. Romme, Ruhl, Goujon and the ringleaders, some
thirteen in all, are decreed Accused. Permanent-session ends at
three in the morning. (_Deux Amis, xiii. 129-46._) Sansculottism,
once more flung resupine, lies sprawling; sprawling its last.
Such was the First of Prairial, 20th May, 1795. Second and Third
of Prairial, during which Sansculottism still sprawled, and
unexpectedly rang its tocsin, and assembled in arms, availed
Sansculottism nothing. What though with our Rommes and Ruhls,
accused but not yet arrested, we make a new 'True National
Convention' of our own, over in the East; and put the others Out
of Law? What though we rank in arms and march? Armed Force and
Muscadin Sections, some thirty thousand men, environ that old
False Convention: we can but bully one another: bandying
nicknames, "Muscadins," against "Blooddrinkers, Buveurs de Sang."
Feraud's Assassin, taken with the red hand, and sentenced, and
now near to Guillotine and Place de Greve, is retaken; is carried
back into Saint-Antoine: to no purpose. Convention Sectionaries
and Gilt Youth come, according to Decree, to seek him; nay to
disarm Saint-Antoine! And they do disarm it: by rolling of
cannon, by springing upon enemy's cannon; by military audacity,
and terror of the Law. Saint-Antoine surrenders its arms;
Santerre even advising it, anxious for life and brewhouse.
Feraud's Assassin flings himself from a high roof: and all is
lost. (_Toulongeon, v. 297; Moniteur, Nos. 244, 5, 6._)
Discerning which things, old Ruhl shot a pistol through his old
white head; dashed his life in pieces, as he had done the Sacred
Phial of Rheims. Romme, Goujon and the others stand ranked before
a swiftly-appointed, swift Military Tribunal. Hearing the
sentence, Goujon drew a knife, struck it into his breast, passed
it to his neighbour Romme; and fell dead. Romme did the like; and
another all but did it; Roman-death rushing on there, as in
electric-chain, before your Bailiffs could intervene! The
Guillotine had the rest.
They were the Ultimi Romanorum. Billaud, Collot and Company are
now ordered to be tried for life; but are found to be already
off, shipped for Sinamarri, and the hot mud of Surinam. There let
Billaud surround himself with flocks of tame parrots; Collot take
the yellow fever, and drinking a whole bottle of brandy, burn up
his entrails. (_Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans, paras Billaud,
Collot._) Sansculottism spraws no more. The dormant lion has
become a dead one; and now, as we see, any hoof may smite him.
Chapter 3.7.VI.
Grilled Herrings.
So dies Sansculottism, the body of Sansculottism, or is changed.
Its ragged Pythian Carmagnole-dance has transformed itself into a
Pyrrhic, into a dance of Cabarus Balls. Sansculottism is dead;
extinguished by new isms of that kind, which were its own natural
progeny; and is buried, we may say, with such deafening
jubilation and disharmony of funeral-knell on their part, that
only after some half century or so does one begin to learn
clearly why it ever was alive.
And yet a meaning lay in it: Sansculottism verily was alive, a
New-Birth of TIME; nay it still lives, and is not dead, but
changed. The soul of it still lives; still works far and wide,
through one bodily shape into another less amorphous, as is the
way of cunning Time with his New-Births:—till, in some perfected
shape, it embrace the whole circuit of the world! For the wise
man may now everywhere discern that he must found on his manhood,
not on the garnitures of his manhood. He who, in these Epochs of
our Europe, founds on garnitures, formulas, culottisms of what
sort soever, is founding on old cloth and sheep-skin, and cannot
endure. But as for the body of Sansculottism, that is dead and
buried,—and, one hopes, need not reappear, in primary amorphous
shape, for another thousand years!
It was the frightfullest thing ever borne of Time? One of the
frightfullest. This Convention, now grown Anti-Jacobin, did, with
an eye to justify and fortify itself, publish Lists of what the
Reign of Terror had perpetrated: Lists of Persons Guillotined.
The Lists, cries splenetic Abbe Montgaillard, were not complete.
They contain the names of, How many persons thinks the
reader?—Two Thousand all but a few. There were above Four
Thousand, cries Montgaillard: so many were guillotined,
fusilladed, noyaded, done to dire death; of whom Nine Hundred
were women. (_Montgaillard, iv. 241._) It is a horrible sum of
human lives, M. l'Abbe:—some ten times as many shot rightly on a
field of battle, and one might have had his Glorious-Victory with
Te-Deum. It is not far from the two-hundredth part of what
perished in the entire Seven Years War. By which Seven Years War,
did not the great Fritz wrench Silesia from the great Theresa;
and a Pompadour, stung by epigrams, satisfy herself that she
could not be an Agnes Sorel? The head of man is a strange vacant
sounding-shell, M. l'Abbe; and studies Cocker to small purpose.
But what if History, somewhere on this Planet, were to hear of a
Nation, the third soul of whom had not for thirty weeks each year
as many third-rate potatoes as would sustain him? (_Report of the
Irish Poor-Law Commission, 1836._) History, in that case, feels
bound to consider that starvation is starvation; that starvation
from age to age presupposes much: History ventures to assert that
the French Sansculotte of Ninety-three, who, roused from long
death-sleep, could rush at once to the frontiers, and die
fighting for an immortal Hope and Faith of Deliverance for him
and his, was but the second-miserablest of men! The Irish
Sans-potato, had he not senses then, nay a soul? In his frozen
darkness, it was bitter for him to die famishing; bitter to see
his children famish. It was bitter for him to be a beggar, a liar
and a knave. Nay, if that dreary Greenland-wind of benighted
Want, perennial from sire to son, had frozen him into a kind of
torpor and numb callosity, so that he saw not, felt not, was
this, for a creature with a soul in it, some assuagement; or the
cruellest wretchedness of all?
Such things were, such things are; and they go on in silence
peaceably: and Sansculottisms follow them. History, looking back
over this France through long times, back to Turgot's time for
instance, when dumb Drudgery staggered up to its King's Palace,
and in wide expanse of sallow faces, squalor and winged
raggedness, presented hieroglyphically its Petition of
Grievances; and for answer got hanged on a 'new gallows forty
feet high,'—confesses mournfully that there is no period to be
met with, in which the general Twenty-five Millions of France
suffered less than in this period which they name Reign of
Terror! But it was not the Dumb Millions that suffered here; it
was the Speaking Thousands, and Hundreds, and Units; who shrieked
and published, and made the world ring with their wail, as they
could and should: that is the grand peculiarity. The
frightfullest Births of Time are never the loud-speaking ones,
for these soon die; they are the silent ones, which can live from
century to century! Anarchy, hateful as Death, is abhorrent to
the whole nature of man; and must itself soon die.
Wherefore let all men know what of depth and of height is still
revealed in man; and, with fear and wonder, with just sympathy
and just antipathy, with clear eye and open heart, contemplate it
and appropriate it; and draw innumerable inferences from it. This
inference, for example, among the first: 'That if the gods of
this lower world will sit on their glittering thrones, indolent
as Epicurus' gods, with the living Chaos of Ignorance and Hunger
weltering uncared for at their feet, and smooth Parasites
preaching, Peace, peace, when there is no peace,' then the dark
Chaos, it would seem, will rise; has risen, and O Heavens! has it
not tanned their skins into breeches for itself? That there be no
second Sansculottism in our Earth for a thousand years, let us
understand well what the first was; and let Rich and Poor of us
go and do otherwise.—But to our tale.
The Muscadin Sections greatly rejoice; Cabarus Balls gyrate: the
well-nigh insoluble problem Republic without Anarchy, have we not
solved it?—Law of Fraternity or Death is gone: chimerical
Obtain-who-need has become practical Hold-who-have. To anarchic
Republic of the Poverties there has succeeded orderly Republic of
the Luxuries; which will continue as long as it can.
On the Pont au Change, on the Place de Greve, in long sheds,
Mercier, in these summer evenings, saw working men at their
repast. One's allotment of daily bread has sunk to an ounce and a
half. 'Plates containing each three grilled herrings, sprinkled
with shorn onions, wetted with a little vinegar; to this add some
morsel of boiled prunes, and lentils swimming in a clear sauce:
at these frugal tables, the cook's gridiron hissing near by, and
the pot simmering on a fire between two stones, I have seen them
ranged by the hundred; consuming, without bread, their scant
messes, far too moderate for the keenness of their appetite, and
the extent of their stomach.' (_Nouveau Paris, iv. 118._) Seine
water, rushing plenteous by, will supply the deficiency.
O man of Toil, thy struggling and thy daring, these six long
years of insurrection and tribulation, thou hast profited nothing
by it, then? Thou consumest thy herring and water, in the blessed
gold-red evening. O why was the Earth so beautiful, becrimsoned
with dawn and twilight, if man's dealings with man were to make
it a vale of scarcity, of tears, not even soft tears? Destroying
of Bastilles, discomfiting of Brunswicks, fronting of
Principalities and Powers, of Earth and Tophet, all that thou
hast dared and endured,—it was for a Republic of the Cabarus
Saloons? Patience; thou must have patience: the end is not yet.
Chapter 3.7.VII.
The Whiff of Grapeshot.
In fact, what can be more natural, one may say inevitable, as a
Post-Sansculottic transitionary state, than even this? Confused
wreck of a Republic of the Poverties, which ended in Reign of
Terror, is arranging itself into such composure as it can.
Evangel of Jean-Jacques, and most other Evangels, becoming
incredible, what is there for it but return to the old Evangel of
Mammon? Contrat-Social is true or untrue, Brotherhood is
Brotherhood or Death; but money always will buy money's worth: in
the wreck of human dubitations, this remains indubitable, that
Pleasure is pleasant. Aristocracy of Feudal Parchment has passed
away with a mighty rushing; and now, by a natural course, we
arrive at Aristocracy of the Moneybag. It is the course through
which all European Societies are at this hour travelling.
Apparently a still baser sort of Aristocracy? An infinitely
baser; the basest yet known!
In which however there is this advantage, that, like Anarchy
itself, it cannot continue. Hast thou considered how Thought is
stronger than Artillery-parks, and (_were it fifty years after
death and martyrdom, or were it two thousand years_) writes and
unwrites Acts of Parliament, removes mountains; models the World
like soft clay? Also how the beginning of all Thought, worth the
name, is Love; and the wise head never yet was, without first the
generous heart? The Heavens cease not their bounty: they send us
generous hearts into every generation. And now what generous
heart can pretend to itself, or be hoodwinked into believing,
that Loyalty to the Moneybag is a noble Loyalty? Mammon, cries
the generous heart out of all ages and countries, is the basest
of known Gods, even of known Devils. In him what glory is there,
that ye should worship him? No glory discernable; not even
terror: at best, detestability, ill-matched with
despicability!—Generous hearts, discerning, on this hand,
widespread Wretchedness, dark without and within, moistening its
ounce-and-half of bread with tears; and on that hand, mere Balls
in fleshcoloured drawers, and inane or foul glitter of such
sort,—cannot but ejaculate, cannot but announce: Too much, O
divine Mammon; somewhat too much!—The voice of these, once
announcing itself, carries fiat and pereat in it, for all things
here below.
Meanwhile, we will hate Anarchy as Death, which it is; and the
things worse than Anarchy shall be hated more! Surely Peace alone
is fruitful. Anarchy is destruction: a burning up, say, of Shams
and Insupportabilities; but which leaves Vacancy behind. Know
this also, that out of a world of Unwise nothing but an Unwisdom
can be made. Arrange it, Constitution-build it, sift it through
Ballot-Boxes as thou wilt, it is and remains an Unwisdom,—the new
prey of new quacks and unclean things, the latter end of it
slightly better than the beginning. Who can bring a wise thing
out of men unwise? Not one. And so Vacancy and general Abolition
having come for this France, what can Anarchy do more? Let there
be Order, were it under the Soldier's Sword; let there be Peace,
that the bounty of the Heavens be not spilt; that what of Wisdom
they do send us bring fruit in its season!—It remains to be seen
how the quellers of Sansculottism were themselves quelled, and
sacred right of Insurrection was blown away by gunpowder:
wherewith this singular eventful History called French Revolution
ends.
The Convention, driven such a course by wild wind, wild tide, and
steerage and non-steerage, these three years, has become weary of
its own existence, sees all men weary of it; and wishes heartily
to finish. To the last, it has to strive with contradictions: it
is now getting fast ready with a Constitution, yet knows no
peace. Sieyes, we say, is making the Constitution once more; has
as good as made it. Warned by experience, the great Architect
alters much, admits much. Distinction of Active and Passive
Citizen, that is, Money-qualification for Electors: nay Two
Chambers, 'Council of Ancients,' as well as 'Council of Five
Hundred;' to that conclusion have we come! In a like spirit,
eschewing that fatal self-denying ordinance of your Old
Constituents, we enact not only that actual Convention Members
are re-eligible, but that Two-thirds of them must be re-elected.
The Active Citizen Electors shall for this time have free choice
of only One-third of their National Assembly. Such enactment, of
Two-thirds to be re-elected, we append to our Constitution; we
submit our Constitution to the Townships of France, and say,
Accept both, or reject both. Unsavoury as this appendix may be,
the Townships, by overwhelming majority, accept and ratify. With
Directory of Five; with Two good Chambers, double-majority of
them nominated by ourselves, one hopes this Constitution may
prove final. March it will; for the legs of it, the re-elected
Two-thirds, are already there, able to march. Sieyes looks at his
Paper Fabric with just pride.
But now see how the contumacious Sections, Lepelletier foremost,
kick against the pricks! Is it not manifest infraction of one's
Elective Franchise, Rights of Man, and Sovereignty of the People,
this appendix of re-electing your Two-thirds? Greedy tyrants who
would perpetuate yourselves!—For the truth is, victory over
Saint-Antoine, and long right of Insurrection, has spoiled these
men. Nay spoiled all men. Consider too how each man was free to
hope what he liked; and now there is to be no hope, there is to
be fruition, fruition of this.
In men spoiled by long right of Insurrection, what confused
ferments will rise, tongues once begun wagging! Journalists
declaim, your Lacretelles, Laharpes; Orators spout. There is
Royalism traceable in it, and Jacobinism. On the West Frontier,
in deep secrecy, Pichegru, durst he trust his Army, is treating
with Conde: in these Sections, there spout wolves in sheep's
clothing, masked Emigrants and Royalists! (_Napoleon, Las Cases,
Choix des Rapports, xvii. 398-411._) All men, as we say, had
hoped, each that the Election would do something for his own
side: and now there is no Election, or only the third of one.
Black is united with white against this clause of the Two-thirds;
all the Unruly of France, who see their trade thereby near
ending.
Section Lepelletier, after Addresses enough, finds that such
clause is
a manifest infraction; that it, Lepelletier, for one, will simply
not conform thereto; and invites all other free Sections to join
it, 'in central Committee,' in resistance to oppression. (_Deux
Amis, xiii. 375-406._) The Sections join it, nearly all; strong
with their Forty Thousand fighting men. The Convention therefore
may look to itself! Lepelletier, on this 12th day of Vendemiaire,
4th of October 1795, is sitting in open contravention, in its
Convent of Filles Saint-Thomas, Rue Vivienne, with guns primed.
The Convention has some Five Thousand regular troops at hand;
Generals in abundance; and a Fifteen Hundred of miscellaneous
persecuted Ultra-Jacobins, whom in this crisis it has hastily got
together and armed, under the title Patriots of Eighty-nine.
Strong in Law, it sends its General Menou to disarm Lepelletier.
General Menou marches accordingly, with due summons and
demonstration; with no result. General Menou, about eight in the
evening, finds that he is standing ranked in the Rue Vivienne,
emitting vain summonses; with primed guns pointed out of every
window at him; and that he cannot disarm Lepelletier. He has to
return, with whole skin, but without success; and be thrown into
arrest as 'a traitor.' Whereupon the whole Forty Thousand join
this Lepelletier which cannot be vanquished: to what hand shall a
quaking Convention now turn? Our poor Convention, after such
voyaging, just entering harbour, so to speak, has struck on the
bar;—and labours there frightfully, with breakers roaring round
it, Forty thousand of them, like to wash it, and its Sieyes Cargo
and the whole future of France, into the deep! Yet one last time,
it struggles, ready to perish.
Some call for Barras to be made Commandant; he conquered in
Thermidor. Some, what is more to the purpose, bethink them of the
Citizen Buonaparte, unemployed Artillery Officer, who took
Toulon. A man of head, a man of action: Barras is named
Commandant's-Cloak; this young Artillery Officer is named
Commandant. He was in the Gallery at the moment, and heard it; he
withdrew, some half hour, to consider with himself: after a half
hour of grim compressed considering, to be or not to be, he
answers Yea.
And now, a man of head being at the centre of it, the whole
matter gets vital. Swift, to Camp of Sablons; to secure the
Artillery, there are not twenty men guarding it! A swift
Adjutant, Murat is the name of him, gallops; gets thither some
minutes within time, for Lepelletier was also on march that way:
the Cannon are ours. And now beset this post, and beset that;
rapid and firm: at Wicket of the Louvre, in Cul de Sac Dauphin,
in Rue Saint-Honore, from Pont Neuf all along the north Quays,
southward to Pont ci-devant Royal,—rank round the Sanctuary of
the Tuileries, a ring of steel discipline; let every gunner have
his match burning, and all men stand to their arms!
Thus there is Permanent-session through night; and thus at
sunrise of the morrow, there is seen sacred Insurrection once
again: vessel of State labouring on the bar; and tumultuous sea
all round her, beating generale, arming and sounding,—not ringing
tocsin, for we have left no tocsin but our own in the Pavilion of
Unity. It is an imminence of shipwreck, for the whole world to
gaze at. Frightfully she labours, that poor ship, within
cable-length of port; huge peril for her. However, she has a man
at the helm. Insurgent messages, received, and not received;
messenger admitted blindfolded; counsel and counter-counsel: the
poor ship labours!—Vendemiaire 13th, year 4: curious enough, of
all days, it is the Fifth day of October, anniversary of that
Menad-march, six years ago; by sacred right of Insurrection we
are got thus far.
Lepelletier has seized the Church of Saint-Roch; has seized the
Pont Neuf, our piquet there retreating without fire. Stray shots
fall from Lepelletier; rattle down on the very Tuileries
staircase. On the other hand, women advance dishevelled,
shrieking, Peace; Lepelletier behind them waving its hat in sign
that we shall fraternise. Steady! The Artillery Officer is steady
as bronze; can be quick as lightning. He sends eight hundred
muskets with ball-cartridges to the Convention itself; honourable
Members shall act with these in case of extremity: whereat they
look grave enough. Four of the afternoon is struck. (_Moniteur,
Seance du 5 Octobre 1795._) Lepelletier, making nothing by
messengers, by fraternity or hat-waving, bursts out, along the
Southern Quai Voltaire, along streets, and passages,
treble-quick, in huge veritable onslaught! Whereupon, thou bronze
Artillery Officer—? "Fire!" say the bronze lips. Roar and again
roar, continual, volcano-like, goes his great gun, in the Cul de
Sac Dauphin against the Church of Saint-Roch; go his great guns
on the Pont Royal; go all his great guns;—blow to air some two
hundred men, mainly about the Church of Saint-Roch! Lepelletier
cannot stand such horse-play; no Sectioner can stand it; the
Forty-thousand yield on all sides, scour towards covert. 'Some
hundred or so of them gathered both Theatre de la Republique;
but,' says he, 'a few shells dislodged them. It was all finished
at six.'
The Ship is over the bar, then; free she bounds shoreward,—amid
shouting and vivats! Citoyen Buonaparte is 'named General of the
Interior, by acclamation;' quelled Sections have to disarm in
such humour as they may; sacred right of Insurrection is gone for
ever! The Sieyes Constitution can disembark itself, and begin
marching. The miraculous Convention Ship has got to land;—and is
there, shall we figuratively say, changed, as Epic Ships are
wont, into a kind of Sea Nymph, never to sail more; to roam the
waste Azure, a Miracle in History!
'It is false,' says Napoleon, 'that we fired first with blank
charge; it had been a waste of life to do that.' Most false: the
firing was with sharp and sharpest shot: to all men it was plain
that here was no sport; the rabbets and plinths of Saint-Roch
Church show splintered by it, to this hour.—Singular: in old
Broglie's time, six years ago, this Whiff of Grapeshot was
promised; but it could not be given then, could not have profited
then. Now, however, the time is come for it, and the man; and
behold, you have it; and the thing we specifically call French
Revolution is blown into space by it, and become a thing that
was!—
Homer's Epos, it is remarked, is like a Bas-relief sculpture: it
does not conclude, but merely ceases. Such, indeed, is the Epos
of Universal History itself. Directorates, Consulates,
Emperorships, Restorations, Citizen-Kingships succeed this
Business in due series, in due genesis one out of the other.
Nevertheless the First-parent of all these may be said to have
gone to air in the way we see. A Baboeuf Insurrection, next year,
will die in the birth; stifled by the Soldiery. A Senate, if
tinged with Royalism, can be purged by the Soldiery; and an
Eighteenth of Fructidor transacted by the mere shew of bayonets.
(_Moniteur, du 5 Septembre 1797._) Nay Soldiers' bayonets can be
used a posteriori on a Senate, and make it leap out of
window,—still bloodless; and produce an Eighteenth of Brumaire.
(_9th November 1799, Choix des Rapports, xvii. 1-96._) Such
changes must happen: but they are managed by intriguings,
caballings, and then by orderly word of command; almost like mere
changes of Ministry. Not in general by sacred right of
Insurrection, but by milder methods growing ever milder, shall
the Events of French history be henceforth brought to pass.
It is admitted that this Directorate, which owned, at its
starting, these three things, an 'old table, a sheet of paper,
and an ink-bottle,' and no visible money or arrangement whatever,
(_Bailleul, Examen critique des Considerations de Madame de
Stael, ii. 275._) did wonders: that France, since the Reign of
Terror hushed itself, has been a new France, awakened like a
giant out of torpor; and has gone on, in the Internal Life of it,
with continual progress. As for the External form and forms of
Life,—what can we say except that out of the Eater there comes
Strength; out of the Unwise there comes not Wisdom! Shams are
burnt up; nay, what as yet is the peculiarity of France, the very
Cant of them is burnt up. The new Realities are not yet come: ah
no, only Phantasms, Paper models, tentative Prefigurements of
such! In France there are now Four Million Landed Properties;
that black portent of an Agrarian Law is as it were realised!
What is still stranger, we understand all Frenchmen have 'the
right of duel;' the Hackney-coachman with the Peer, if insult be
given: such is the law of Public Opinion. Equality at least in
death! The Form of Government is by Citizen King, frequently shot
at, not yet shot.
On the whole, therefore, has it not been fulfilled what was
prophesied, ex-postfacto indeed, by the Archquack Cagliostro, or
another? He, as he looked in rapt vision and amazement into these
things, thus spake: (_Diamond Necklace, p. 35._) 'Ha! What is
this? Angels, Uriel, Anachiel, and the other Five; Pentagon of
Rejuvenescence; Power that destroyed Original Sin; Earth, Heaven,
and thou Outer Limbo, which men name Hell! Does the EMPIRE Of
IMPOSTURE waver? Burst there, in starry sheen updarting,
Light-rays from out its dark foundations; as it rocks and heaves,
not in travail-throes, but in death-throes? Yea, Light-rays,
piercing, clear, that salute the Heavens,—lo, they kindle it;
their starry clearness becomes as red Hellfire!
'IMPOSTURE is burnt up: one Red-sea of Fire, wild-billowing
enwraps the World; with its fire-tongue, licks at the very Stars.
Thrones are hurled into it, and Dubois mitres, and Prebendal
Stalls that drop fatness, and—ha! what see I?—all the Gigs of
Creation; all, all! Wo is me! Never since Pharaoh's Chariots, in
the Red-sea of water, was there wreck of Wheel-vehicles like this
in the Sea of Fire. Desolate, as ashes, as gases, shall they
wander in the wind. Higher, higher yet flames the Fire-Sea;
crackling with new dislocated timber; hissing with leather and
prunella. The metal Images are molten; the marble Images become
mortar-lime; the stone Mountains sulkily explode. RESPECTABILITY,
with all her collected Gigs inflamed for funeral pyre, wailing,
leaves the earth: not to return save under new Avatar. Imposture,
how it burns, through generations: how it is burnt up; for a
time. The World is black ashes; which, ah, when will they grow
green? The Images all run into amorphous Corinthian brass; all
Dwellings of men destroyed; the very mountains peeled and riven,
the valleys black and dead: it is an empty World! Wo to them that
shall be born then!—A King, a Queen (_ah me!_) were hurled in;
did rustle once; flew aloft, crackling, like paper-scroll.
Iscariot Egalite was hurled in; thou grim De Launay, with thy
grim Bastille; whole kindreds and peoples; five millions of
mutually destroying Men. For it is the End of the Dominion of
IMPOSTURE (_which is Darkness and opaque Firedamp_); and the
burning up, with unquenchable fire, of all the Gigs that are in
the Earth.' This Prophecy, we say, has it not been fulfilled, is
it not fulfilling?
And so here, O Reader, has the time come for us two to part.
Toilsome was our journeying together; not without offence; but it
is done. To me thou wert as a beloved shade, the disembodied or
not yet embodied spirit of a Brother. To thee I was but as a
Voice. Yet was our relation a kind of sacred one; doubt not that!
Whatsoever once sacred things become hollow jargons, yet while
the Voice of Man speaks with Man, hast thou not there the living
fountain out of which all sacrednesses sprang, and will yet
spring? Man, by the nature of him, is definable as 'an incarnated
Word.' Ill stands it with me if I have spoken falsely: thine also
it was to hear truly. Farewell.
THE END. INDEX.
ABBAYE, massacres, Jourgniac, Sicard, and Maton's account of.
ACCEPTATION, grande, by Louis XVI.
AGOUST, Captain d', seizes two Parlementeers.
AIGUILLON, d', at Quiberon, account of, in favour, at death of
Louis XV.
AINTRIGUES, Count d'.
ALTAR of Fatherland in Champ-de-Mars, scene at, christening at.
AMIRAL, assassin, guillotined.
ANGLAS, Boissy d', President, First of Prairial.
ANGOULEME, Duchesse d', parts from her father.
ANGREMONT, Collenot d', guillotined.
ANTOINETTE, Marie, splendour of, applauded, compromised by
Diamond Necklace, griefs of, weeps, unpopular, at Dinner of
Guards, courage of, Fifth October, at Versailles, shows herself
to people, and Louis at Tuileries, and the Lorrainer, and
Mirabeau, previous to flight, flight from Tuileries, captured,
and Barnave, Coblentz intrigues, and Lamotte's Memoires, during
Twentieth June, during Tenth August, as captive, and Princess de
Lamballe, in Temple Prison, parting scene with King, to the
Conciergerie, trial of, guillotined.
ARGONNE Forest, occupied by Dumouriez, Brunswick at.
ARISTOCRATS, officers in French army, number in Paris, seized,
condition in 1794.
ARLES, state of.
ARMS, smiths making, search for, at Charleville, manufacture, in
1794, scarcity in 1792, Danton's search for.
ARMY, French, after Bastille, officered by aristocrats, to be
disbanded, demands arrears, general mutiny of, outbreak of, Nanci
military executions, Royalists leave, state of, in want,
recruited, Revolutionary, fourteen armies on foot.
ARRAS, guillotine at.
ARRESTS in August 1792.
ARSENAL, attempted destruction of.
ARTOIS, M. d', ways of, unpopularity of, memorial by, flies, at
Coblentz, refusal to return.
ASSEMBLIES, Primary and Secondary.
ASSEMBLY, National, Third Estate becomes, to be extruded, stands
grouped in the rain, occupies Tennis-Court, scene there, joined
by clergy, doings on King's speech, ratified by King, cannon
pointed at, regrets Necker, after Bastille.
ASSEMBLY, Constituent, National, becomes, pedantic, Irregular
Verbs, what it can do, Night of Pentecost, Left and Right side,
raises money, on the Veto, Fifth October, women, in Paris
Riding-Hall, on deficit, assignats, on clergy, and riot, prepares
for Louis's visit, on Federation, Anacharsis Clootz, eldest of
men, on Franklin's death, on state of army, thanks Bouille, on
Nanci affair, on Emigrants, on death of Mirabeau, on escape of
King, after capture of King, completes Constitution, dissolves
itself, what it has done.
ASSEMBLY, Legislative, First French Parliament, book of law,
dispute with King, Baiser de Lamourette, High Court, decrees
vetoed, scenes in, reprimands King's ministers, declares war,
declares France in danger, reinstates Petion, nonplused,
Lafayette, King and Swiss, August Tenth, becoming defunct,
September massacres, dissolved.
ASSIGNATS, origin of, false Royalist, forgers of, coach-fare in.
AUBRIOT, Sieur, after King's capture.
AUBRY, Colonel, at Jales.
AUCH, M. Martin d', in Versailles Court.
AUSTRIA quarrels with France.
AUSTRIAN Committee, at Tuileries.
AUSTRIAN Army, invades France, defeated at Jemappes, Dumouriez
escapes to, repulsed, Watigny.
AVIGNON, Union of, described, state of, riot in church at,
occupied by Jourdan, massacre at.
BACHAUMONT, his thirty volumes.
BAILLE, involuntary epigram of.
BAILLY, Astronomer, account of, President of National Assembly,
Mayor of Paris, receives Louis in Paris, and Paris Parlement, on
Petition for Deposition, decline of, in prison, at Queen's trial,
guillotined cruelly.
BAKERS', French in tail at.
BARBAROUX and Marat, Marseilles Deputy, and the Rolands, on Map
of France, demand of, to Marseilles, meets Marseillese, in
National Convention, against Robespierre, cannot be heard, the
Girondins declining, arrested, and Charlotte Corday, retreats to
Bourdeaux, farewell of, shoots himself.
BARDY, Abbe, massacred.
BARENTIN, Keeper of Seals.
BARNAVE, at Grenoble, member of Assembly, one of a trio, Jacobin,
duel with Cazales, escorts the King from Varennes, conciliates
Queen, becomes Constitutional, retires to Grenoble, treason, in
prison, guillotined.
BARRAS, Paul-Francois, in National Convention, commands in
Thermidor, appoints Napoleon in Vendemiaire.
BARRERE, Editor, at King's trial, peace-maker, levy in mass,
plot, banished.
BARTHOLOMEW massacre.
BASTILLE, Linguet's Book on, meaning of, shots fired at, summoned
by insurgents, besieged, capitulates, treatment of captured,
Queret-Demery, demolished, key sent to Washington, Heroes.
BAZIRE, of Mountain, imprisoned.
BEARN, riot at.
BEAUHARNAIS in Champ-de-Mars, Josephine, imprisoned, and
Napoleon, at La Cabarus's.
BEAUMARCHAIS, Caron, his lawsuit, his 'Mariage de Figaro,'
commissions arms from Holland, his distress.
BEAUMONT, Archbishop, notice of.
BEAUREPAIRE, Governor of Verdun, shoots himself.
BENTHAM, Jeremy, naturalised.
BERLINE, towards Varennes.
BERTHIER, Intendant, fled, arrested and massacred.
BERTHIER, Commandant, at Versailles.
BESENVAL, Baron, Commandant of Paris, on French Finance, in riot
of Rue St. Antoine, on corruption of Guards, at Champ-de-Mars,
apparition to, decamps, and Louis XVI.
BETHUNE, riot at.
BEURNONVILLE, with Dumouriez, imprisoned.
BILLAUD-VARENNES, Jacobin, cruel, at massacres, September 1792,
in Salut Committee, and Robespierre's Etre Supreme, accuses
Robespierre, accused, banished.
BLANC, Le, landlord at Varennes, escape of family.
BLOOD, baths of.
BONCHAMPS, in La Vendee War.
BONNEMERE, Aubin, at Siege of Bastille.
BOUILLE, at Metz, account of, character of, troops mutinous, and
Salm regiment, intrepidity of, marches on Nanci, quells Nanci
mutineers, at Mirabeau's funeral, expects fugitive King, would
liberate King, emigrates.
BOUILLE, Junior, asleep at Varennes, flies to father.
BOURDEAUX, priests hanged at, for Girondism.
BOYER, duellist.
BREST, sailors revolt, state of, in 1791, Federes in Paris, in
1793.
BRETEUIL, Home-Secretary.
BRETON Club, germ of Jacobins.
BRETONS, deputations of, Girondins.
BREZE, Marquis de, his mode of ushering, and National Assembly,
extraordinary etiquette.
BRIENNE, Lomenie, anti-protestant, in Notables, incapacity of,
failure of, arrests Paris Parlement, secret scheme, scheme
discovered, arrests two Parlementeers, bewildered, desperate
shifts by, wishes for Necker, dismissed, and provided for, his
effigy burnt.
BRISSAC, Duke de, commands Constitutional Guard, disbanded.
BRISSOT, edits 'Moniteur,' friend of Blacks, in First Parliament,
plans in 1792, active in Assembly, in Jacobins, at Roland's,
pelted in Assembly, arrested, trial of, guillotined.
BRITTANY, disturbances in.
BROGLIE, Marshal, against Plenary Court, in command, in office,
dismissed.
BRUNSWICK, Duke, marches on France, advances, Proclamation, at
Verdun, at Argonne, retreats.
BUFFON, Mme. de, and Duke d'Orleans, at d'Orleans execution.
BUTTAFUOCO, Napoleon's letter to.
BUZOT, in National Convention, arrested, retreats to Bourdeaux,
end of.
CABANIS, Physician to Mirabeau.
CABARUS, Mlle., and Tallien, imprisoned.
CAEN, Girondins at.
CALENDAR, Romme's new, comparative ground-scheme of.
CALONNE, M. de, Financier, character of, suavity and genius of,
his difficulties, dismissed, marriage and after-course.
CALVADOS, for Girondism.
CAMUS, Archivist, in National Convention, with Dumouriez,
imprisoned.
CANNON, Siamese, wooden, fever, Goethe on.
CARMAGNOLE, costume, what, dances in Convention.
CARNOT, Hippolyte, notice of, plan for Toulon, discovery in
Robespierre's pocket.
CARPENTRAS, against Avignon.
CARRA, on plots for King's flight, in National Convention.
CARRIER, a Revolutionist, in National Assembly, Nantes noyades,
guillotined.
CARTAUX, General, fights Girondins, at Toulon.
CASTRIES, Duke de, duel with Lameth.
CATHELINEAU, of La Vendee.
CAVAIGNAC, Convention Representative.
CAZALES, Royalist, in Constituent Assembly.
CAZOTTE, author of 'Diable Amoureux,' seized, saved for a time by
his daughter.
CERCLE, Social, of Fauchet.
CERUTTI, his funeral oration on Mirabeau.
CEVENNES, revolt of.
CHABOT, of Mountain, against Kings, imprisoned.
CHABRAY, Louison, at Versailles, October Fifth.
CHALIER, Jacobin, Lyons, executed, body raised.
CHAMBON, Dr., Mayor of Paris, retires.
CHAMFORT, Cynic, arrested, suicide.
CHAMP-DE-MARS, Federation, preparations for, accelerated by
patriots, anecdotes of, Federation-scene at, funeral-service,
Nanci, riot, Patriot petition, 1791, new Federation, 1792.
CHAMPS Elysees, Menads at, festivities in.
CHANTILLY Palace, a prison.
CHAPT-RASTIGNAC, Abbe de, massacred.
CHARENTON, Marseillese at.
CHARLES I., Trial of, sold in Paris.
CHARLEVILLE Artillery.
CHARTRES, grain-riot at.
CHATEAUBRIANDS in French Revolution.
CHATELET, Achille de, advises Republic.
CHATILLON-SUR-SEVRE, insurrection at.
CHAUMETTE, notice of, signs petition, in governing committee, at
King's trial, demands constitution, arrest and death of.
CHAUVELIN, Marquis de, in London, dismissed.
CHENAYE, Baudin de la, massacred.
CHENIER, Poet, and Mlle. Theroigne.
CHEPY, at La Force in September.
CHOISEUL, Duke, why dismissed.
CHOISEUL, Colonel Duke, assists Louis's flight, too late at
Varennes.
CHOISI, General, at Avignon.
CHURCH, spiritual guidance, of Rome, decay of.
CITIZENS, French, demeanour of.
CLAIRFAIT, Commander of Austrians.
CLAVIERE, edits 'Moniteur,' account of, Finance Minister,
arrested, suicide of.
CLERGY, French, in States-General, conciliators of orders, joins
Third Estate, lands, national, power of, &c.
CLERMONT, flight of King through, Prussians near.
CLERY, on Louis's last scene.
CLOOTZ, Anacharsis, Baron de, account of, disparagement of, in
National Convention, universal republic of, on nullity of
religion, purged from the Jacobins, guillotined.
CLOVIS, in the Champ-de-Mars.
CLUB, Electoral, at Paris, becomes Provisional Municipality,
permanent.
CLUGNY, M., as Finance Minister.
COBLENTZ, Emigrants at.
COBOURG and Dumouriez.
COCKADES, green, tricolor, black, national, trampled, white.
COFFINHAL, Judge, delivers Henriot.
COIGNY, Duke de, a sinecurist.
COMMISSIONERS, Convention, like Kings.
COMMITTEE of Defence, Central, of Watchfulness, of Public
Salvation, Circular of, of the Constitution, Revolutionary.
COMMUNE, Council-General of the, Sovereign of France, enlisting.
CONDE, Prince de, attends Louis XV., departure of.
CONDE, Town, surrender of.
CONDORCET, Marquis, edits 'Moniteur,' Girondist, prepares
Address, on Robespierre, death of.
CONSTITUTION, French, completed, will not march, burst in pieces,
new, of 1793.
CONVENTION, National, in what case to be summoned, demanded by
some, determined on, Deputies elected, constituted, motions in,
work to be done, hated, politeness, effervescence of, on
September Massacres, guard for, try the King, debate on trial,
invite to revolt, condemn Louis, armed Girondins in, power of,
removes to Tuileries, besieged, June 2nd, 1793, extinction of
Girondins, Jacobins and, on forfeited property, Carmagnole,
Goddess of Reason, Representatives, at Feast of Etre Supreme, end
of Robespierre, retrospect of, Feraud, Germinal, Prairial,
termination, its successor.
CORDAY, Charlotte, account of, in Paris, assissinates Marat,
examined, executed.
CORDELIERS, Club, Hebert in.
COURT, Chevalier de.
COUTHON, of Mountain, in Legislative, in National Convention, at
Lyons, in Salut Committee, his question in Jacobins, decree of,
arrest and execution.
COVENANT, Scotch, French.
CRUSSOL, Marquise de, executed.
CUISSA, massacre of, at La Force.
CUSSY, Girondin, retreats to Bourdeaux.
CUSTINE, General, takes Mentz, retreats, censured, guillotined,
his son guillotined.
CUSTOMS and morals.
DAMAS, Colonel Comte de, at Clermont, at Varennes.
DAMPIERRE, General, killed.
DAMPMARTIN, Captain, at riot in Rue St. Antoine, on condition of
army, on state of France, at Avignon, on Marseillese.
DANDOINS, Captain, Flight to Varennes.
DANTON, notice of, President of Cordeliers, and Marat, served
with writs, in Cordeliers Club, elected Councillor, Mirabeau of
Sansculottes, in Jacobins, for Deposition, of Committee, August
Tenth, Minister of Justice, after September massacre, after
Jemappes, and Robespierre, in Netherlands, at King's trial, on
war, rebukes Marat, peace-maker, and Dumouriez, in Salut
Committee, breaks with Girondins, his law of Forty sous, and
Revolutionary Government, and Paris Municipality, retires to
Arcis, and Robespierre, arrested, tried, and guillotined.
DAVID, Painter, in National Convention, works by, hemlock with
Robespierre.
DEMOCRACY, on Bunker Hill, spread of, in France.
DEPARTMENTS, France divided into.
DESEZE, Pleader for Louis.
DESHUTTES massacred, Fifth October.
DESILLES, Captain, in Nanci.
DESLONS, Captain, at Varennes, would liberate the King.
DESMOULINS, Camille, notice of, in arms at Cafe de Foy, on
Insurrection of Women, in Cordeliers Club, and Brissot, in
National Convention, on Sansculottism, on plots, suspect, for a
committee of mercy, ridicules law of the suspect, his Journal,
trial of, guillotined, widow guillotined.
DIDEROT, prisoner in Vincennes.
DINNERS, defined.
DOPPET, General, at Lyons.
DROUET, Jean B., notice of, discovers Royalty in flight, raises
Varennes, blocks the bridge, defends his prize, rewarded, to be
in Convention, captured by Austrians.
DUBARRY, Dame, and Louis XV., flight of, imprisoned.
DUBOIS Crance bombards and captures Lyons.
DUCHATEL votes, wrapped in blankets, at Caen.
DUCOS, Girondin.
DUGOMMIER, General, at Toulon.
DUHAMEL, killed by Marseillese.
DUMONT, on Mirabeau.
DUMOURIEZ, notice by, account of him, in Brittany, at Nantes, in
La Vendee, sent for to Paris, Foreign Minister, dismissed, to
Army, disobeys Luckner, Commander-in-Chief, his army, Council of
War, seizes Argonne Forest, Grand Pre, and mutineers, and Marat
in Paris, to Netherlands, at Jemappes, in Paris, discontented,
retreats, beaten, will join the enemy, arrests his arresters,
escapes to Austrians.
DUPONT, Deputy, Atheist.
DUPORT, Adrien, in Paris Parlement, in Constituent Assembly, one
of a trio, law-reformer.
DUPORTAIL, in office.
DUROSOY, Royalist, guillotined.
DUSAULX, M., on taking of Bastille, notice of.
DUTERTRE, in office.
EDGEWORTH, Abbe, attends Louis, at execution of Louis.
EGLANTINE, Fabre d', in National Convention, assists in New
Calendar, imprisoned.
ELIE, Capt., at Siege of Bastille, after victory.
ELIZABETH, Princess, flight to Varennes, August 10th, in Temple
Prison, guillotined.
ENGLAND declares war on France, captures Toulon.
ENRAGED Club, the.
EQUALITY, reign of.
ESCUYER, Patriot l', at Avignon.
ESPREMENIL, Duval d', notice of, patriot, speaker in Paris
Parlement, with crucifix, discovers Brienne's plot, arrest and
speech of, turncoat, in Constituent Assembly, beaten by populace,
guillotined, widow guillotined.
ESTAING, Count d', notice of, National Colonel, Royalist, at
Queen's Trial.
ESTATE, Fourth, of Editors.
ETOILE, beginning of Federation at.
FAMINE, in France, in 1788-1792, Louis and Assembly try to
relieve, in 1792, and remedy, remedy by maximum, &c.
FAUCHET, Abbe, at siege of Bastille, his Te-Deums, his harangue
on Franklin, his Cercle Social, in First Parliament, motion by,
doffs his insignia, King's death, lamentation, will demit, trial
of.
FAUSSIGNY, sword in hand.
FAVRAS, Chevalier, execution of.
FEDERATION, spread of, of Champ-de-Mars, deputies to, human
species at, ceremonies of, a new, 1792.
FERAUD, in National Convention, massacred there.
FERSEN, Count, gets Berline built, acts coachman in King's
flight.
FEUILLANS, Club, denounce Jacobins, decline, extinguished,
Battalion, Justices and Patriotism.
FINANCES, serious state of, how to be improved.
FLANDERS, how Louis XV. conquers.
FLANDRE, regiment de, at Versailles.
FLESSELLES, Paris Provost, shot.
FLEURIOT, Mayor, guillotined.
FLEURY, Joly de, Controller of Finance.
FONTENAI, Mme.
FORSTER (_FOSTER_), and French soldier, account of.
FOUCHE, at Lyons.
FOULON, bad repute of, sobriquet, funeral of, alive, judged,
massacred.
FOURNIER, and Orleans Prisoners.
FOY, Cafe de, revolutionary.
FRANCE, abject, under Louis XV., Kings of, early history of,
decay of Kingship in, on accession of Louis XVI., and Philosophy,
famine in, 1775, state of, prior Revolution, aids America, in
1788, inflammable, July 1789, gibbets, general overturn, how to
reform, riotousness of, Mirabeau and, after King's flight,
petitions against Royalty, warfare of towns in, European league
against, terror of, in Spring 1792, decree of war, France in
danger, general enlisting, rage of, Autumn 1792, Marat's
Circular, September, Sansculottic, declaration of war, Mountain
and Girondins divide, communes of, coalition against, levy in
mass.
FRANKLIN, Ambassador to France, his death lamented, bust in
Jacobins.
FRENCH Anglomania, character of the, literature, in 1784,
Parlements, nature of, Mirabeau, type of the, mob, character of.
FRERON, notice of, renegade, Gilt Youth of.
FRETEAU, at Royal Session, arrested, liberated.
FREYS, the Jew brokers, imprisoned.
GALLOIS, to La Vendee.
GAMAIN, Sieur, informer.
GARAT, Minister of Justice.
GENLIS, Mme., account of, and D'Orleans, to Switzerland.
GENSONNE, Girondist, to La Vendee, arrested, trial of.
GEORGES-CADOUDAL, in La Vendee.
GEORGET, at taking of Bastille.
GERARD, Farmer, Rennes deputy.
GERLE, Dom, at Theot's.
GERMINAL Twelfth, First of April 1795.
GIRONDINS, origin of term, in National Convention, against
Robespierre, on King's trial, and Jacobins, formula of, favourers
of, schemes of, to be seized? break with Danton, armed against
Mountain, accuse Marat, departments, commission of twelve,
commission broken, arrested, dispersed, war by, retreat of
eleven, trial and death of.
GOBEL, Archbishop to be, renounces religion, arrested,
guillotined.
GOETHE, at Argonne, in Prussian retreat, at Mentz.
GOGUELAT, Engineer, assists Louis's flight, intrigues.
GONDRAN, captain of Guard.
GORSAS, Journalist, pleads for Swiss, in National Convention, his
house broken into, guillotined.
GOUJON, Member of Convention, in riot of Prairial, suicide of.
GOUPIL, on extreme left.
GOUVION, Major-General, at Paris, flight to Varennes, death of.
GOVERNMENT, Maurepas's, bad state of French, French
revolutionary, Danton on.
GRAVE, Chev. de, War Minister, loses head.
GREGOIRE, Cure, notice of, in National Convention, detained in
Convention, and destruction of religion.
GUADET, Girondin, cross-questions Ministers, arrested,
guillotined.
GUARDS, Swiss, and French, at Reveillon riot, French refuse to
fire, come to Palais-Royal, fire on Royal-Allemand, to Bastille,
name changed, National origin of, number of, Body at Versailles,
October Fifth, fight, fly in Chateau, Body, and French, at
Versailles, National, at Nanci, French, last appearance of,
National, how commanded, 1791, Constitutional, dismissed,
Filles-St.-Thomas, routed, Swiss, at Tuileries, ordered to cease,
destroyed, eulogy of, Departmental, for National Convention.
GUILLAUME, Clerk, pursues King.
GUILLOTIN, Doctor, summoned by Paris Parlement, invents the
guillotine, deputed to King.
GUILLOTINE invented, described, in action, to be improved, number
of sufferers by.
HASSENFRATZ, in War-office.
HEBERT, Editor of 'Pere Duchene,' signs petition, arrested, at
Queen's trial, quickens Revolutionary Tribunal, arrested, and
guillotined, widow guillotined.
HENAULT, President, on Surnames.
HENRIOT, General of National Guard, and the Convention, to
deliver Robespierre, seized, rescued, end of.
HERBOIS, Collot d', notice of, in National Convention, at Lyons
massacre, in Salut Committee, attempt to assassinate, bullied at
Jacobins, President, night of Thermidor, accused, banished.
HERITIER, Jerome l', shot at Versailles.
HOCHE, Sergeant Lazare, General against Prussia, pacifies La
Vendee,
HONDSCHOOTEN, Battle of.
HOTEL des Invalides, plundered.
HOTEL de Ville, after Bastille taken, harangues at.
HOUCHARD, General, unsuccessful.
HOWE, Lord, defeats French.
HUGUENIN, Patriot, tocsin in heart, 20th June 1792.
HULIN, half-pay, at siege of Bastille.
INISDAL'S, Count d', plot.
INSURRECTION, most sacred of duties, of Women, of August Tenth,
difficult, of Paris, against Girondins, sacred right of, last
Sansculottic, of Baboeuf.
ISNARD, Max, notice of, in First Parliament, on Ministers, to
demolish Paris.
JACOB, Jean Claude, father of men.
JACOBINS, Society, beginning of, Hall, described, and members,
Journal &c., of, daughters of, at Nanci, suppressed, Club
increases, and Mirabeau, prospers, 'Lords of the Articles,'
extinguishes Feuillans, Hall enlarged, described, and
Marseillese, and Lavergne, message to Dumouriez, missionaries in
Army, on King's trial, on accusation of Robespierre, against
Girondins, National Convention and, Popular Tribunals of, purges
members, to become dominant, locked out by Legendre, begs back
its keys, decline of, mobbed, suspended, hunted down.
JALES, Camp of, Royalists at, destroyed.
JAUCOURT, Chevalier, and Liberty.
JAY, Dame le.
JONES, Paul, equipped for America, at Paris, account of, burial
of.
JOUNNEAU, Deputy, in danger in September.
JOURDAN, General, repels Austria.
JOURDAN, Coupe-tete, at Versailles, leader of Brigands, supreme
in Avignon, massacre by, flight of, guillotined.
JULIEN, Sieur Jean, guillotined.
KAUNITZ, Prince, denounces Jacobins.
KELLERMANN, at Valmy.
KLOPSTOCK, naturalised.
KNOX, John, and the Virgin.
KORFF, Baroness de, in flight to Varennes.
LAFARGE, President of Jacobins, Madame Lavergne and.
LAFAYETTE, bust of, erected, against Calonne, demands by, in
Notables, Cromwell-Grandison, Bastille time, Vice-President of
National Assembly, General of National Guard, resigns and
reaccepts, Scipio-Americanus, thanked, rewarded, French Guards
and, to Versailles, Fifth October, at Versailles, swears the
Guards, Feuillant, on abolition of Titles, at Champ-de-Mars
Federation, at De Castries' riot, character of, in Day of
Poniards, difficult position of, at King's going to St. Cloud,
resigns and reaccepts, at flight from Tuileries, after escape of
King, moves for amnesty, resigns, decline of, doubtful against
Jacobins, journey to Paris, to be accused, flies to Holland.
LAFLOTTE, poison-plot, informer.
LAIS, Sieur, Jacobin, with Louis Philippe.
LALLY, death of.
LAMARCHE, guillotined.
LAMARCK'S, illness of Mirabeau at.
LAMBALLE, Princess de, to England, intrigues for Royalists, at La
Force, massacred.
LAMETH, in Constituent Assembly, one of a trio, brothers, notice
of, Jacobins, Charles, Duke de Castries, brothers become
constitutional, Theodore, in First Parliament.
LAMOIGNON, Keeper of Seals, dismissed, effigy burned, and death
of.
LAMOTTE, Countess de, and Diamond Necklace, in the Salpetriere,
'Memoirs' burned, in London, M. de, in prison.
LAMOURETTE, Abbe, kiss of, guillotined.
LANJUINAIS, Girondin, clothes torn, arrested, recalled.
LAPORTE, Intendant, guillotined.
LARIVIERE, Justice, imprisoned.
LA ROCHEJACQUELIN, in La Vendee, death of.
LASOURCE, accuses Danton, president, and Marat, arrested,
condemned.
LATOUR-MAUBOURG, notice of.
LAUNAY, Marquis de, Governor of Bastille, besieged, unassisted,
to blow up Bastille, massacred.
LAVERGNE, surrenders Longwi.
LAVOISIER, Chemist, guillotined.
LAW, Martial, in Paris, Book of the.
LAWYERS, their influence on the Revolution, number of, in Tiers
Etat, in Parliament First.
LAZARE, Maison de St., plundered.
LEBAS at Strasburg, arrested,
LEBON, Priest, in National Convention, at Arras, guillotined.
LECHAPELIER, Deputy, and Insurrection of Women.
LECOINTRE, National Major, will not fight, active, in First
Parliament.
LEFEVRE, Abbe, distributes powder.
LEGENDRE, in danger, at Tuileries riot, in National Convention,
against Girondins, for Danton, locks out Jacobins, in First of
Prairial.
LENFANT, Abbe, on Protestant claims, massacred.
LEPELLETIER, Section for Convention, revolt of, in Vendemiaire.
LETTRES-DE-CACHET, and Parlement of Paris.
LEVASSEUR, in National Convention, Convention Representative.
LIANCOURT, Duke de, Liberal, not a revolt, but a revolution.
LIES, Philosophism on, to be extinguished, how.
LIGNE, Prince de, death of.
LILLE, Colonel Rouget de, Marseillese Hymn.
LILLE, besieged.
LINGUET, his 'Bastille Unveiled,' returns.
LOISEROLLES, General, guillotined for his son.
LONGWI, surrender of, fugitives at Paris.
LORDS of the Articles, Jacobins as.
LORRAINE Federes and the Queen, state of, in 1790.
LOUIS XIV., l'etat c'est moi, booted in Parlement, pursues
Louvois.
LOUIS XV., origin of his surname, last illness of, dismisses Dame
Dubarry, Choiseul, wounded, has small-pox, his mode of conquest,
impoverishes France, his daughters, on death, on ministerial
capacity, death and burial of.
LOUIS XVI., at his accession, good measures of, temper and
pursuits of, difficulties of, commences governing, and Notables,
holds Royal Session, receives States-General Deputies, in
States-General procession, speech to States-General, National
Assembly, unwise policy of, dismisses Necker, apprised of the
Revolution, conciliatory, visits Assembly, Bastille, visits
Paris, deserted, will fly, languid, at Dinner of Guards,
deposition of, proposed, October Fifth, women deputies, to fly or
not? grants the acceptance, Paris propositions to, in the Chateau
tumult, appears to mob, will go to Paris, his wisest course,
procession to Paris, review of his position, lodged at Tuileries,
Restorer of French Liberty, no hunting, locksmith, schemes,
visits Assembly, Federation, Hereditary Representative, will fly,
and D'Inisdal's plot, Mirabeau, useless, indecision of, ill of
catarrh, prepares for St. Cloud, hindered by populace, effect,
should he escape, prepares for flight, his circular, flies,
letter to Assembly, manner of flight, loiters by the way,
detected by Drouet, captured at Varennes, indecision there,
return to Paris, reception there, to be deposed? reinstated,
reception of Legislative, position of, proposes war, with tears,
vetoes, dissolves Roland Ministry, in riot of, June 20, and
Petion, at Federation, with cuirass, declared forfeited, last
levee of, Tenth August, quits Tuileries for Assembly, in
Assembly, sent to Temple prison, in Temple, to be tried, and the
Locksmith Gamain, at the bar, his will, condemned, parting scene,
and execution of, his son.
LOUIS-PHILIPPE, King of the French, Jacobin door-keeper, at
Valmy, bravery at Jemappes, and sister, with Dumouriez to
Austrians, to Switzerland.
LOUSTALOT, Editor.
LOUVET, his 'Chevalier de Faublas,' his 'Sentinelles,' and
Robespierre, in National Convention, Girondin accuses
Robespierre, arrested, retreats to Bourdeaux, escape of,
recalled.
LUCKNER, Supreme General, and Dumouriez, guillotined.
LUNEVILLE, Inspector Malseigne at.
LUX, Adam, guillotined.
LYONS, Federation at, disorders in, Chalier, Jacobin, executed
at, capture of magazine, massacres at.
MAILHE, Deputy, on trial of Louis.
MAILLARD, Usher, at siege of Bastille, Insurrection of Women,
drum, Champs Elysees, entering Versailles, addresses National
Assembly there, signs Decheance petition, in September Massacres.
MAILLE, Camp-Marshal, at Tuileries, massacred at La Force.
MAILLY, Marshal, one of Four Generals.
MALESHERBES, M. de, in King's Council, defends Louis.
MALSEIGNE, Army Inspector, at Nanci, imprisoned, liberated.
MANDAT, Commander of Guards, August, 1792.
MANUEL, Jacobin, slow-sure, in August Tenth, in Governing
Committee, haranguing at La Force, in National Convention,
motions in, vote at King's trial, in prison, guillotined.
MARAT, Jean Paul, horseleech to D'Artois, notice of, against
violence, at siege of Bastille, summoned by Constituent, not to
be gagged, astir, how to regenerate France, police and, on
abolition of titles, would gibbet Mirabeau, bust in Jacobins,
concealed in cellars, in seat of honour, signs circular, elected
to Convention, and Dumouriez, oaths by, in Convention, on
sufferings of People, and Girondins, arrested, returns in
triumph, fall of Girondins.
MARECHAL, Atheist, Calendar by.
MARECHALE, the Lady, on nobility.
MARSEILLES, Brigands at, on Decheance, the bar of iron, for
Girondism.
MARSEILLESE, March and Hymn of, at Charenton, at Paris,
Filles-St.-Thomas and, barracks.
MASSACRE, Avignon, September, number slain in, compared to
Bartholomew.
MATON, Advocate, his 'Resurrection.'
MAUPEOU, under Louis XV., and Dame Dubarry.
MAUREPAS, Prime Minister, character of, government of, death of.
MAURY, Abbe, character of, in Constituent Assembly, seized
emigrating, dogmatic, efforts fruitless, made Cardinal.
MEMMAY, M., of Quincey, explosion of rustics.
MENOU, General, arrest of.
MENTZ, occupied by French, siege of, surrender of.
MERCIER, on Paris revolting, Editor, the September Massacre, in
National Convention, King's trial.
MERLIN of Thionville in Mountain, irascible, at Mentz.
MERLIN of Douai, Law of Suspect.
METZ, Bouille at, troops mutinous at.
MEUDON tannery.
MIOMANDRE de Ste. Marie, Bodyguard, October Fifth, left for dead,
revives, rewarded.
MIRABEAU, Marquis, on the state of France in 1775, and his son,
his death.
MIRABEAU, Count, his pamphlets, the Notables, Lettres-de-Cachet
against, expelled by the Provence Noblesse, cloth-shop, is Deputy
for Aix, king of Frenchmen, family of, wanderings of, his future
course, groaned at, in Assembly, his newspaper suppressed,
silences Usher de Breze, at Bastille ruins, on Robespierre, fame
of, on French deficit, populace, on veto, Mounier, October Fifth,
insight of, defends veto, courage, revenue of, saleable? and
Danton, on Constitution, at Jacobins, his courtship, on state of
Army, Marat would gibbet, his power in France, on D'Orleans, on
duelling, interview with Queen, speech on emigrants, the 'trente
voix,' in Council, his plans for France, probable career of, last
appearance in Assembly, anxiety of populace for, last sayings of,
death and funeral of, burial-place of, character of, last of
Mirabeaus, bust in Jacobins, bust demolished.
MIRABEAU the younger, nicknamed Tonneau, in Constituent Assembly,
breaks his sword.
MIRANDA, General, attempts Holland.
MIROMENIL, Keeper of Seals.
MOLEVILLE, Bertrand de, Historian, minister, his plan, frivolous
policy of, and D'Orleans, Jesuitic, concealed.
MOMORO, Bookseller, agrarian, arrested, guillotined, his Wife,
'Goddess of Reason.'
MONGE, Mathematician, in office, assists in new Calendar.
MONSABERT, G. de, President of Paris Parlement, arrested.
MONTELIMART, covenant sworn at.
MONTESQUIOU, General, takes Savoy.
MONTGAILLARD, on captive Queen, on September Massacres.
MONTMARTRE, trenches at.
MONTMORIN, War-Secretary.
MOORE, Doctor, at attack of Tuileries, at La Force.
MORANDE, De, newspaper by, will return, in prison.
MORELLET, Philosophe.
MOUCHETON, M. de, of King's Bodyguard.
MOUDON, Abbe, confessor to Louis XV.
MOUNIER, at Grenoble, proposes Tennis-Court oath, October Fifth,
President of Constituent Assembly, deputed to King, dilemma of.
MOUNTAIN, members of the, re-elected in National Convention,
Gironde and, favourers of the, vulnerable points of, prevails,
Danton, Duperret, after Gironde dispersed, in labour.
MULLER, General, expedition to Spain.
MURAT, in Vendemiaire revolt.
NANCI, revolt at, description of town, deputation imprisoned,
deputation of mutineers, state of mutineers in, Bouille's fight,
Paris thereupon, military executions at, Assembly Commissioners.
NANTES, after King's flight, massacres at.
NAPOLEON Buonaparte (_Buonaparte_) studying mathematics, pamphlet
by, democratic, in Corsica, August Tenth, under General Cartaux,
at Toulon, Josephine and, at La Cabarus's, Vendemiaire.
NARBONNE, Louis de, assists flight of King's Aunts, to be
War-Minister, demands by, secreted, escapes.
NAVY, Louis XV. on French.
NECKER, and finance, account of, dismissed, refuses Brienne,
recalled, difficulty as to States-General, reconvokes Notables,
opinion of himself, popular, dismissed, recalled, returns in
glory, his plans, becoming unpopular, departs, with difficulty.
NECKLACE, Diamond.
NERWINDEN, battle of.
NIEVRE-CHOL, Mayor of Lyons.
NOBLES, state of the, under Louis XV., new, join Third Estate.
NOTABLES, Calonne's convocation of, assembled 22nd February 1787,
members of, effects of dismissal of, reconvoked, 6th November
1788, dismissed again.
NOYADES, Nantes.
OCTOBER Fifth, 1789
OGE, condemned.
ORLEANS, High Court at, prisoners massacred at Versailles.
ORLEANS, a Duke d', in Louis XV.'s sick-room.
ORLEANS, Philippe (_Egalite_), Duc d', Duke de Chartres (_till
1785_), waits on Dauphin, Father, with Louis XV., not Admiral,
wealth, debauchery, Palais-Royal buildings, in Notables (_Duke
d'Orleans now_), looks of, Bed-of-Justice, 1787, arrested,
liberated, in States-General Procession, joins Third Estate, his
party, in Constituent Assembly, Fifth October and, shunned in
England, Mirabeau, cash deficiency, use of, in Revolution,
accused by Royalists, at Court, insulted, in National Convention,
decline of, in Convention, vote on King's trial, at King's
execution, arrested, imprisoned, condemned, and executed.
ORMESSON, d', Controller of Finance.
PACHE, Swiss, account of, Minister of War, Mayor, dismissed,
reinstated, imprisoned.
PAN, Mallet du, solicits for Louis.
PANIS, Advocate, in Governing Committee, and Beaumarchais,
confidant of Danton.
PANTHEON, first occupant of.
PARENS, Curate, renounces religion.
PARIS, origin of city, police in 1750, ship Ville-de-Paris, riot
at Palais-de-Justice, beautified, in 1788, election, 1789, troops
called to, military preparations in, July Fourteenth, cry for
arms, search for arms, Bailly, mayor of, trade-strikes in,
Lafayette patrols, October Fifth, propositions to Louis, Louis
in, Journals, bill-stickers, undermined, after Champ-de-Mars
Federation, on Nanci affair, on death of Mirabeau, on flight to
Varennes, on King's return, Directory suspends Petion, enlisting,
1792, on forfeiture of King, Sections, rising of, August Tenth,
prepares for insurrection, Municipality supplanted, statues
destroyed, King and Queen to prison, September, 1792, names
printed on house-door, in insurrection, Girondins, May 1793,
Municipality in red caps, brotherly supper, Sections to be
abolished.
PARIS, Guardsman, assassinates Lepelletier.
PARIS, friend of Danton.
PARLEMENT, patriotic, against Taxation, remonstrates, at
Versailles, arrested, origin of, nature of, corrupt, at Troyes,
yields, Royal Session in, how to be tamed, oath and declaration
of, firmness of, scene in, and dismissal of, reinstated,
unpopular, summons Dr. Guillotin, abolished.
PARLEMENTS, Provincial, adhere to Paris, rebellious, exiled,
grand deputations of, reinstated, abolished.
PELTIER, Royalist Pamphleteer, 'Pere Duchene,' Editor of.
PEREYRA (_Peyreyra_), Walloon, account of, imprisoned.
PETION, account of, Dutch-built, and D'Espremenil, to be mayor,
Varennes, meets King, and Royalty, at close of Assembly, in
London, Mayor of Paris, in Twentieth June, suspended, reinstated,
welcomes Marseillese, August Tenth, in Tuileries, rebukes
Septemberers, in National Convention, declines mayorship, against
Mountain, retreat to Bourdeaux, end of.
PETION, National-Pique, christening of.
PETITION of famishing French, at Fatherland's altar, of the Eight
Thousand.
PETITIONS, on capture of King, for deposition, &c.
PHELIPPEAUX, purged out of the Jacobins.
PHILOSOPHISM, influence of, on Revolution, what it has done with
Church, with Religion.
PICHEGRU, General, account of, in Germinal.
PILNITZ, Convention at.
PIN, Latour du, War-Minister, dismissed.
PITT, against France, and Girondins, inflexible.
PLOTS, of King's flight, various, of Aristocrats, October Fifth,
Royalist, of Favras and others, cartels, Twelve bullies from
Switzerland, D'Inisdal, will-o'-wisp, Mirabeau and Queen,
poniards, Mallet du Pan, Narbonne's, traces of, in
Armoire-de-Fer, against Girondins, Desmoulins on, prison.
POLIGNAC, Duke de, a sinecurist, dismissed, at Bale, younger, in
Ham.
POMPIGNAN, President of National Assembly.
POPE PIUS VI., excommunicates Talleyrand, his effigy burned.
PRAIRIAL First to Third, May 20-22, 1795.
PRECY, siege of, Lyons.
PRIESTHOOD, disrobing of, costumes in Carmagnole.
PRIESTLEY, Dr., riot against, naturalised, elected to National
Convention.
PRIESTS, dissident, marry in France, Anti-national, hanged, many
killed near the Abbaye, number slain in September Massacre, to
rescue Louis, drowned at Nantes.
PRISONS, Paris, in Bastille time, full, August 1792, number of,
in France, state of, in Terror, thinned after Terror.
PRISON, Abbaye, refractory Members sent to, Temple, Louis sent
to, Abbaye, Priests killed near, massacres at La Force, Chatelet,
and Conciergerie.
PROCESSION, of States-General Deputies, of Necker and D'Orleans
busts, of Louis to Paris, again, after Varennes, of Louis to
trial, at Constitution of 1793.
PROVENCE Noblesse, expel Mirabeau.
PRUDHOMME, Editor, on assassins, on Cavaignac.
PRUSSIA, Fritz of, against France, army of, ravages France, King
of, and French Princes.
PUISAYE, Girondin General, at Quiberon.
QUERET-DEMERY, in Bastille.
QUIBERON, debarkation at.
RABAUT, St. Etienne, French Reformer, in National Convention, in
Commission of Twelve, arrested, between two walls, guillotined.
RAYNAL, Abbe, Philosophe, his letter to Constituent Assembly.
REBECQUI, of Marseilles, in National Convention, against
Robespierre, retires, drowns himself.
REDING, Swiss, massacred.
RELIGION, Christian, and French Revolution, abolished, Clootz on,
a new.
REMY, Cornet, at Clermont.
RENAULT, Cecile, to assassinate Robespierre, guillotined.
RENE, King, bequeathed Avignon to Pope.
RENNES, riot in.
RENWICK, last of Cameronians.
REPAIRE, Tardivet du, Bodyguard, Fifth October, rewarded.
REPRESENTATIVES, Paris, Town.
REPUBLIC, French, first mention of, first year of, established,
universal, Clootz's, Girondin, one and indivisible, its triumphs.
RESSON, Sieur, reports Lafayette to Jacobins.
REVEILLON, house destroyed.
REVOLT, Paris, in, of Gardes Francaises, becomes Revolution,
military, what, of Lepelletier section.
REVOLUTION, French, causes of the, Lord Chesterfield on the, not
a revolt, meaning of the term, whence it grew, general
commencement of, prosperous characters in, Philosophes and, state
of army in, progress of, duelling in, Republic decided on,
European powers and, Royalist opinion of, cardinal movements in,
Danton and the, changes produced by the, effect of King's death
on, Girondin idea of, suspicion in, Terror and, and Christian
religion, Revolutionary Committees, Government doings in,
Robespierre essential to, end of.
RHEIMS, in September massacre.
RICHELIEU, at death of Louis XV., death of.
RIOT, Paris, in May 1750, Cornlaw (_in 1775_), at Palais de
Justice (_1787_), triumph, of Rue St. Antoine, of July Fourteenth
(_1789_), and Bastille, at Strasburg, Paris, on the veto,
Versailles Chateau, October Fifth (_1789_), uses of, to National
Assembly, Paris, on Nanci affair, at De Castries' Hotel, on
flight of King's Aunts, at Vincennes, on King's proposed journey
to St. Cloud, in Champ-de-Mars, with sharp shot, Paris, Twentieth
June, 1792, August Tenth, 1792, Grain, Paris, at Theatre de la
Nation, selling sugar, of Thermidor, 1794, of Germinal, 1795, of
Prairial, final, of Vendemiaire.
RIOUFFE, Girondin, to Bourdeaux, in prison, on death of
Girondins, on Mme. Roland.
ROBESPIERRE, Maximilien, account of, derided in Constituent
Assembly, Jacobin, incorruptible, on tip of left, elected public
accuser, after King's flight, at close of Assembly, at Arras,
position of, plans in 1792, chief priest of Jacobins, invisible
on August Tenth, reappears, on September Massacre, in National
Convention, accused by Girondins, accused by Louvet, acquitted,
King's trial, Condorcet on, at Queen's trial, in Salut Committee,
and Paris Municipality, embraces Danton, Desmoulins and, and
Danton, Danton on, at trial, his three scoundrels, supreme, to be
assassinated, at Feast of Etre Supreme, apocalyptic, Theot, on
Couthon's plot-decree, reserved, his schemes, fails in
Convention, applauded at Jacobins, accused, rescued, at Townhall,
declared out of law, half-killed, guillotined, essential to
Revolution.
ROBESPIERRE, Augustin, decreed accused, guillotined.
ROCHAMBEAU, one of Four Generals, retires.
ROCHE-AYMON, Grand Almoner of Louis XV.
ROCHEFOUCAULT, Duke de la, Liberal, President of Directory,
killed.
ROEDERER, Syndic, Feuillant, 'Chronicle of Fifty Days,' on
Federes Ammunition, dilemma at Tuileries, August 10th.
ROHAN, Cardinal, Diamond Necklace.
ROLAND, Madame, notice of, at Lyons, narrative by, in Paris,
after King's flight, and Barbaroux, public dinners and business,
character of, misgivings of, accused, Girondin declining,
arrested, condemned and guillotined.
ROLAND, M., notice of, in Paris, Minister, letter, and dismissal
of, recalled, decline of, on September Massacres, and Pache,
doings of, resigns, flies, suicide of.
ROMME, in National Convention, in Caen prison, his new Calendar,
in riot of Prairial, 1795, suicide.
ROMOEUF, pursues King.
RONSIN, General of Revolutionary Army, arrested and guillotined.
ROSIERE, Thuriot de la, summons Bastille, in First Parliament, in
National Convention, President at Robespierre's fall.
ROSSIGNOL, in September Massacre, in La Vendee.
ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques, Contrat Social of, Gospel according to,
burial-place of, statue decreed to.
ROUX, M., 'Histoire Parlementaire.'
ROYALTY, signs of demolished, abolition of.
RUAMPS, Deputy, against Couthon.
RUHL, notice of, in riot of Prairial, suicide.
SABATIER de Cabre, at Royal Session, arrested, liberated.
ST. ANTOINE to Versailles, Warhorse supper, Nanci affair, at
Vincennes, at Jacobins, and Marseillese, August Tenth.
ST. CLOUD, Louis prohibited from.
ST. DENIS, Mayor of, hanged.
ST. FARGEAU, Lepelletier, in National Convention, at King's
trial, assassinated, burial of.
ST. HURUGE, Marquis, bull-voice, imprisoned, at Versailles, and
Pope's effigy, at Jacobins, on King's trial.
ST. JUST in National Convention, on King's trial, in Salut
Committee, at Strasburg, repels Prussians, on Revolution, in
Committee-room, Thermidor, his report, arrested.
ST. LOUIS Church, States-General procession from.
ST. MEARD, Jourgniac de, in prison, his 'Agony' at La Force.
ST. MERY, Moreau de, prostrated.
SALLES, Deputy, guillotined.
SANSCULOTTISM, apparition of, effects of, growth of, at work,
origin of term, and Royalty, above theft, a fact, French Nation
and, Revolutionary Tribunal and, how it lives, consummated, fall
of, last rising of, death of.
SANTERRE, Brewer, notice of, at siege of Bastille, at Tuileries,
June Twentieth, meets Marseillese, Commander of Guards, how to
relieve famine, at King's trial, at King's execution, fails in La
Vendee, St. Antoine disarmed.
SAPPER, Fraternal.
SAUSSE, M., Procureur of Varennes, scene at his house, flies from
Prussians.
SAVONNIERES, M., de, Bodyguard, October Fifth, loses temper.
SAVOY, occupied by French.
SECHELLES, Herault de, in National Convention, leads Convention
out, arrested and guillotined.
SECTIONS, of Paris, denounce Girondins, Committee of.
SEIGNEURS, French, compelled to fly.
SERGENT, Agate, Engraver, in Committee, nicknamed 'Agate,' signs
circular.
SERVAN, War-Minister, proposals of.
SEVRES, Potteries, Lamotte's 'Memoires' burnt at.
SICARD, Abbe, imprisoned, in danger near the Abbaye, account of
massacre there.
SIDE, Right and Left, of Constituent Assembly, Right and Left,
tip of Left, popular, Right after King's flight, Right quits
Assembly, Right and Left in First Parliament.
SIEYES, Abbe, account of, Constitution-builder, in Champ-de-Mars,
in National Convention, of Constitution Committee, 1790, vote at
King's trial, making fresh Constitution.
SILLERY, Marquis.
SIMON, Cordwainer, Dauphin committed to, guillotined.
SIMONEAU, Mayor of Etampes, death of, festival for.
SOMBREUIL, Governor of Hotel des Invalides, examined, seized,
saved by his daughter, guillotined, his son shot.
SPAIN, at war with France, invaded by France.
STAAL, Dame de, on liberty.
STAEL, Mme. de, at States-General procession, intrigue for
Narbonne, secretes Narbonne.
STANHOPE and Price, their club and Paris.
STATES-GENERAL, first suggested, meeting announced, how
constituted, orders in, Representatives to, Parlements against,
Deputies to, in Paris, number of Deputies, place of Assembly,
procession of, installed, union of orders.
STRASBURG, riot at, in 1789.
SUFFREN, Admiral, notice of.
SULLEAU, Royalist, editor, massacred.
SUSPECT, Law of the, Chaumette jeered on.
SWEDEN, King of, to assist Marie Antoinette, shot by Ankarstrom.
SWISS Guards at Brest, prisoners at La Force.
TALLEYRAND-PERIGORD, Bishop, notice of, at fatherland's altar,
his blessing, excommunicated, in London, to America.
TALLIEN, notice of, editor of 'Ami des Citoyens,' in Committee of
Townhall, August 1792, in National Convention, at Bourdeaux, and
Madame Cabarus, recalled, suspect, accuses Robespierre,
Thermidorian.
TALMA, actor, his soiree.
TANNERY of human skins, improvements in.
TARGET, Advocate, declines King's defence.
TASSIN, M., and black cockade.
TENNIS-COURT, National Assembly in, Club of, and procession to,
master of, rewarded.
TERROR, consummation of, reign of, designated, number guillotined
in.
THEATINS Church, granted to Dissidents.
THEOT, Prophetess, on Robespierre.
THERMIDOR, Ninth and Tenth, July 27 and 28, 1794.
THEROIGNE, Mlle., notice of, in Insurrection of Women, at
Versailles (_October Fifth_), in Austrian prison, in Jacobin
tribune, armed for insurrection (_August Tenth_), keeps her
carriage, fustigated, insane.
THIONVILLE besieged, siege raised.
THOURET, Law-reformer, dissolves Assembly, guillotined.
THOUVENOT and Dumouriez.
TINVILLE, Fouquier, revolutionist, Jacobin, Attorney-General in
Tribunal Revolutionnaire, at Queen's trial, at trial of
Girondins, at trial of Mme. Roland, at trial of Danton, and Salut
Public, his prison-plots, his batches, the prisons under, mock
doom of, at trial of Robespierre, accused, guillotined.
TOLLENDAL, Lally, pleads for father, in States-General, popular,
crowned.
TORNE, Bishop.
TOULON, Girondin, occupied by English, besieged, surrenders.
TOULONGEON, Marquis, notice of, on Barnave triumvirate, describes
Jacobins Hall.
TOURNAY, Louis, at siege of Bastille.
TOURZELLE, Dame de, escape of.
TRONCHET, Advocate, defends King.
TUILERIES, Louis XVI. lodged at, a tile-field, Twentieth June at,
tickets of entry, 'Coblentz,' Marseillese chase
Filles-Saint-Thomas to, August Tenth, King quits, attacked,
captured, occupied by National Convention.
TURGOT, Controller of France, on Corn-law, dismissed, death of.
TYRANTS, French people rise against.
UNITED STATES, declaration of Liberty, embassy to Louis XVI.,
aided by France, of Congress in.
USHANT, battle off.
VALADI, Marquis, Gardes Francaises and, guillotined.
VALAZE, Girondin, on trial of Louis, plots at his house, trial
of, kills himself.
VALENCIENNES, besieged, surrendered.
VARENNE, Maton de la, his experiences in September.
VARIGNY, Bodyguard, massacred.
VARLET, 'Apostle of Liberty,' arrested.
VENDEE, La, Commissioners to, state of, in 1792, insurrection in,
war, after King's death, on fire, pacificated.
VENDEMIAIRE, Thirteenth, October 4, 1795.
VERDUN, to be besieged, surrendered.
VERGENNES, M. de, Prime Minister, death of.
VERGNIAUD, notice of, August Tenth, orations of, President at
King's condemnation, in fall of Girondins, trial of, at last
supper of Girondins.
VERMOND, Abbe de.
VERSAILLES, death of Louis XV. at, in Bastille time, National
Assembly at, troops to, march of women on, of French Guards on,
insurrection scene at, the Chateau forced, prisoners massacred
at.
VIARD, Spy.
VILATE, Juryman, guillotined, book by.
VILLARET-JOYEUSE, Admiral, defeated by Howe.
VILLEQUIER, Duke de, emigrates.
VINCENNES, riot at, saved by Lafayette.
VINCENT, of War-Office, arrested, guillotined.
VOLTAIRE, at Paris, described, burial-place of.
WAR, civil, becomes general.
WASHINGTON, key of Bastille sent to, formula for Lafayette.
WATIGNY, Battle of.
WEBER, in Insurrection of Women, Queen leaving Vienna.
WESTERMANN, August Tenth, purged out of the Jacobins, tried and
guillotined.
WIMPFEN, Girondin General.
YORK, Duke of, besieges Valenciennes and Dunkirk.
YOUNG, Arthur, at French Revolution.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The French Revolution: A History" ***
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