History of the Girondists Part 17

XXI.

An example of this at this moment occurred. La Fayette resigned the command of the national guard into the hands of the council general of the commune. At this meeting blazed the last faint spark of popular favour. After he quitted the chamber a deliberation was held as to what mark of grat.i.tude and regard the city of Paris should offer him. The general addressed a farewell letter to the civic force, and affected to believe that the formation of the const.i.tution was the era of the Revolution, and reduced him, like Was.h.i.+ngton, to the rank of a simple citizen of a free country. "The time of revolution," said he, in this letter, "has given place to a regular organisation, owing to the liberty and prosperity it a.s.sures us. I feel it is now my duty to my country to return unreservedly into her hands all the force and influence with which I was intrusted for her defence during the tempests that convulsed her--such is my only ambition. Beware how you believe," added he, in conclusion, "that every species of despotism, is extinct!" And he then proceeded to point out some of those perils and excesses into which liberty might fall at her first outset.

This letter was received by the national guard with an enthusiasm rather feigned than sincere. They wished to strike a last blow against the factious by adhering to the principles of their general, and voted to him a sword forged from the bolts of the Bastille, and a marble statue of Was.h.i.+ngton. La Fayette hastened to enjoy this premature triumph, and resigned the dictators.h.i.+p at the moment when a dictators.h.i.+p was most necessary to his country. On his retirement to his estates in Auvergne, he received the deputation of the national guard, who brought him the _proces verbal_ of the debate. "You behold me once more amidst the scenes where I was born," said he; "I shall not again quit them, save to defend and confirm our new-formed liberty should it be menaced."

The different opinions of parties followed him in his retirement. "Now,"

said the _Journal de la Revolution_, "that the hero of two worlds has played out his part at Paris, we are curious to know if the ex-general has done more harm than good to the Revolution. In order to solve the problem, let us examine his acts. We shall first see that the founder of American liberty does not dare comply with the wishes of the people in Europe, until he had asked permission from the monarch. We shall see that he grew pale at the sight of the Parisian army on its road to Versailles--alike deceiving the people and the king; to the one he said, 'I deliver the king into your power,' to the other, 'I bring you my army.' We should have seen him return to Paris, dragging in his train those brave citizens who were alone guilty of having sought to destroy the keep of Vincennes as they had destroyed the Bastille, their hands bound behind their backs. We see him on he morrow of the _journee des poignards_, touch the hands of those whom he had denounced to public indignation the yesterday. And now we behold him quit the cause of liberty, by a decree which he himself had secretly solicited, and disappear for a moment in Auvergne to re-appear on our frontiers. Yet he has done us some service, let us acknowledge it. We owe to him to have accustomed our national guards to go through the civic and religious ceremonies; to bear the fatigue of the morning drill in the Champs Elysees; to take patriotic oaths and to give suppers. Let us then bid him adieu! La Fayette, to consummate the greatest revolution that a nation ever attempted, we required a leader, whose mind was on an equality with so great an event. We accepted you; the pliability of your features, your studied orations, your premeditated axioms--all those productions of art that nature disavows, seemed suspicious to the more clear-sighted patriots. The boldest of them followed you, tore the mask from your visage, and cried--Citizens, this hero is but a courtier, this sage but an impostor. Now, thanks to you, the Revolution can no longer bite, you have cut the lion's claws; the people is more formidable to its conductors; they have rea.s.sumed the whip and spur, and you fly. Let civic crowns strew your paths, though we remain; but where shall we find a Brutus?"

XXII.

Bailly, mayor of Paris, withdrew at the same time, abandoned by that party of whom he had been the idol, and whose victim he began to be; but his philosophic mind rated more highly the good done to the people than its favour, and more ambitious of being useful than of governing it, he already testified that heroic contempt for the calumnies of his enemies he afterwards displayed for death.

His voice was, however, lost in the tumult of the approaching munic.i.p.al elections; two men already disputed the dignity of mayor of Paris, for in proportion as the royal authority declined, and that of the const.i.tution was absorbed in the troubles of the kingdom, the mayor of Paris would become the real dictator of the capital.

These two men were La Fayette and Petion. La Fayette supported by the const.i.tutionalists and the national guard, Petion by the Girondists and the Jacobins. The royalist party, by p.r.o.nouncing for or against one of them, would decide the election. The king had no longer the influence of the government, which he had suffered to escape from his grasp, but he still possessed the occult powers of corruption over the leaders of the different parties. A portion of the twenty-five millions of francs (1,000,000_l._) was applied by M. de Laporte, the intendant de la liste civile, and by MM. Bertrand de Molleville and Montmorin, his ministers, in purchasing votes at the elections, motions at the clubs, applause or hisses in the a.s.sembly. These subsidies, which had commenced with Mirabeau, now descended to the lowest dregs of the factions; they bribed the royalist press, and found their way into the hands of the orators and writers apparently most inveterate against the court; and many false manoeuvres, to which the people were urged, arose from no other source. There was a ministry of corruption, over which perfidy presided. Many obtained from this source, under pretence of aiding the court, the power of moderating or betraying the people; then fearing lest their treachery should be discovered, they hid it by a second betrayal, and turned against the king his own motions. Danton was of this number. Sometimes, through motives of charity or peace, the king gave a monthly sum to be distributed amongst the national guard, and the _quartiers_ in which insurrection was most to be apprehended. M. de La Fayette, and Petion himself, often drew money from this source. Thus the king could, by employing those means, ensure the election, and by joining the const.i.tutionalist party determine the choice of Paris in favour of M. de La Fayette. M. de La Fayette was one of the first originators of this revolution which humbled the throne; his name was a.s.sociated with every humiliation of the court, with all the resentment of the queen, all the terrors of the king; he had been first their dread, then their protector, and, lastly, their guardian: could he be now their hope? Would not this post of mayor of Paris, this vast, civil, and popular dignity, after this long-armed dictators.h.i.+p in the capital, be to La Fayette but a second stepping-stone that would raise him higher than the throne, and cast the king and const.i.tution into the shade? This man, with his theoretically liberal ideas, was well-intentioned, and wished rather to dominate than to reign; but could any reliance be placed on these good intentions that had been so often overcome? Was it not full of these good intentions that he had usurped the command of the civic force--captured the Bastille with the insurgent Gardes Francaises--marched to Versailles at the head of the populace of Paris--suffered the chateau to be forced on the 6th of October--arrested the royal family at Varennes, and retained the king a prisoner in his own palace? Would he now resist should the people again command him?

Would he abandon the _role_ of the French Was.h.i.+ngton when he had half fulfilled it? The human heart is so const.i.tuted that we rather prefer to cast ourselves into the power of those who would destroy us than seek safety from those who humiliate us. La Fayette humiliated the king, and more especially the queen.

A respectful independence was the habitual expression of La Fayette's countenance in presence of Marie Antoinette. There was perceptible in the general's att.i.tude, it was to be seen in his words, distinguishable in his accent, beneath the cold and polished forms of the courtier, the inflexibility of the citizen. The queen preferred the factions. She thus plainly spoke to her confidents. "M. de La Fayette," she said, "will not be the mayor of Paris in order that he may the sooner become the _maire du Palais_. Petion is a Jacobin, a republican; but he is a fool, incapable of ever becoming the leader of a party: he would be a nullity as _maire_, and, besides, the very interest he knows we should take in his nomination might bind him to the king."

Petion was the son of a _procureur_ at Chartres, and a townsman of Brissot; was brought up in the same way as he,--in the same studies, same philosophy, same hatreds. They were two men of the same mind. The Revolution, which had been the ideal of their youth, had called them on the scene the same day, but to play very different parts. Brissot, the scribe, political adventurer, journalist, was the man of theory; Petion, the practical man. He had in his countenance, in his character, and his talents, that solemn mediocrity which is of the mult.i.tude, and charms it; at least he was a sincere man, a virtue which the people appreciate beyond all others in those who are concerned in public affairs. Called by his fellow citizens to the National a.s.sembly, he acquired there a name rather from his efforts than his success. The fortunate compeer of Robespierre, and then his friend, they had formed by themselves that popular party, scarcely visible at the beginning, which professed pure democracy and the philosophy of J. J. Rousseau; whilst Cazales, Mirabeau, and Maury, the n.o.bility, clergy, and _bourgeoisie_, alone disputed the government. The despotism of a cla.s.s appeared to Robespierre and Petion as odious as the despotism of a king. The triumph of the _tiers etat_ was of little consequence, so long as the people, that is to say, all human kind in its widest acceptation, did not prevail. They had given themselves as a task, not victory to one cla.s.s over another, but the victory and organisation of a divine and absolute principle--humanity. This was their weakness in the first days of the Revolution, and subsequently their strength. Petion was beginning to gather in its harvest.

He had gradually, by his doctrines and his speeches, insinuated himself into the confidence of the people of Paris; he connected himself with literary men by the cultivation of his mind; with the Orleans party by his intimacy with Madame de Genlis, the favourite of the prince, and governess to his children. He was spoken of in one place as a sage, who sought to embody philosophy in the const.i.tution; in another as a sagacious conspirator, who desired to sap the throne, or to place upon it the Duc D'Orleans, embodying the interests and dynasty of the people.

This two-fold reputation was equally advantageous to him. Honest men believed him to be an honest man,--malcontents to be a malcontent: the court disdained to fear him; it saw in him only an innocent Utopian, and had for him that contemptuous indulgence which aristocrats have invariably for men of political creed; besides, Petion ridded it of La Fayette. To change its foe was to give it breathing time.

These three elements of success gave Petion an immense majority; he was nominated mayor of Paris by more than 6000 votes. La Fayette had but 3000. He might at this moment, from the depth of his retreat, have fairly measured by these figures the decline of his popularity. La Fayette represented the city, Petion the nation. The armed _bourgeoisie_ quitted public affairs with the one, and the people a.s.sumed them with the other. The Revolution marked with a proper name the fresh step she had made.

Petion, scarcely elected, went in triumph to the Jacobins, and was thus carried in the arms of patriots into the tribune. Old Dusault, who occupied it at the moment, stammered out a few words, interrupted by his sobs, in honour of his pupil. "I look on M. Petion," said he, "as my son; it is very bold no doubt." Petion overcome, embraced the old man with ardour; the tribunes applauded and wept.

The other nominations were made in the same spirit. Manuel[11] was named _procureur de la commune_;--Danton, his deputy, which was his first step in popularity; he did not owe it, like Petion, to the public esteem, but to his own intriguing. He was appointed in spite of his reputation. The people are apt to excuse the vices they find useful.

The nomination of Petion to the office of _maire_ of Paris gave the Girondists a constant _point d'appui_ in the capital. Paris, as well as the a.s.sembly, escaped from the king's hands. The work of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly crumbled away in three months. The wheels gave way before they were set in motion. All presaged an approaching collision between the executive power and the power of the a.s.sembly. Whence arose this sudden decomposition? It is now the moment for throwing a glance over this labour of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly and its framers.

BOOK VII.

I.

The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly had abdicated in a storm.

This a.s.sembly had consisted of the most imposing body of men that had ever represented, not only France, but the human race. It was in fact the oec.u.menical council of modern reason and philosophy. Nature seemed to have created expressly, and the different orders of society to have reserved, for this work, the geniuses, characters, and even vices most requisite to give to this focus of the lights of the age the greatness, _eclat_, and movement of a fire destined to consume the remnants of an old society, and to illumine a new one. There were sages, like Bailly and Mounier; thinkers, like Sieyes; factious partisans, like Barnave; statesmen like Talleyrand; men, epochs, like Mirabeau, and men, principles like Robespierre. Each cause was personified by what most distinguished each party. The very victims were ill.u.s.trious. Cazales, Malouet, Maury, sounded forth in bursts of grief and eloquence the successive falls of the throne, the aristocracy, and the clergy. This active centre of the thoughts of a century, was sustained during the whole time by the storm of perpetual political conflict. Whilst they were deliberating within, the people were acting without, and struck at the doors. These twenty-six months of consultations were one uninterrupted sedition. Scarcely had one inst.i.tution crumbled to pieces in the tribune, than the nation swept it away to clear the s.p.a.ce for another inst.i.tution. The anger of the people was only its impatience of obstacles, its madness was only the excitement of its reason. Even in its fury it was always a truth that agitated it. The tribunes only blinded, by dazzling it. The unique characteristic of this a.s.sembly was that pa.s.sion for the ideal which it always felt itself irresistibly urged on to accomplish. An act of perpetual faith in reason and justice: a holy pa.s.sion for the good and right, which possessed it, and made it devote itself to its work; like the statuary who seeing the fire in the furnace, where he was casting his bronze, on the point of being extinguished, threw his furniture, his children's bed, and even his house into the flame, preferring rather that all should perish than that his work should be lost.

Thus it is that the Revolution has become a date in the human mind, and not merely an event in the history of the people. The men of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly were not Frenchmen, they were universal men. We mistake, we vilify them when we consider them only as priests, aristocrats, plebeians, faithful subjects, malcontents or demagogues.

They were, and they felt themselves to be, better than that,--workmen of G.o.d; called by him to restore social reason, and found right and justice throughout the universe. None of them, except those who opposed the Revolution, limited the extent of its thought to the boundaries of France. The declaration of the Rights of Man proves this. It was the decalogue of the human race in all languages. The modern Revolution called the Gentiles, as well as the Jews, to partake of the light and reign of Fraternity.

II.

Thus, not one of its apostles who did not proclaim peace amongst nations. Mirabeau, La Fayette, Robespierre himself erased war from the symbol which they presented to the nation. It was the malcontent and ambitious who subsequently demanded it, and not the leading Revolutionists. When war burst out the Revolution had degenerated. The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly took care not to place on the frontiers of France the boundaries of its truths, and to limit the sympathising soul of the French Revolution to a narrow patriotism. The globe was the country of its dogmata. France was only the workshop; it worked for all other people. Respectful of, or indifferent to, the question of national territories, from the first moment it forbade conquest. It only reserved to itself the property, or rather the invention of universal truths which it brought to light. As vast as humanity, it had not the selfishness to isolate itself. It desired to give, and not to deprive.

It sought to spread itself by right, and not by force. Essentially spiritual, it sought no other empire for France than the voluntary empire which imitation by the human mind conferred upon it.

Its work was prodigious, its means a nullity; all that enthusiasm can inspire, the a.s.sembly undertook and perfected, without a king, without a military leader, without a dictator, without an army, without any other strength than deep conviction. Alone, in the midst of an amazed people, with a disbanded army, an emigrating aristocracy, a despoiled clergy, a conspiring court, a seditious city, hostile Europe--it did what it designed. Such is the will, such the real power of a people--and such is truth, the irresistible auxiliary of the men who agitate themselves for G.o.d. If ever inspiration was visible in the prophet or ancient legislator, it may be a.s.serted that the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly had two years of sustained inspiration. France was the inspired of civilisation.

III.

Let us examine its work. The principle of power was entirely displaced: royalty had ended by believing that it was the exclusive depositary of power. It had demanded of religion to consummate this robbery in the eyes of the people, by telling them that tyranny came from G.o.d, and was responsible to G.o.d only. The long heirs.h.i.+p of throned races had made it believed that there was a right of reigning in the blood of crowned families. Government instead of being a function had become a possession; the king master instead of being chief. This misplaced principle displaced everything. The people became a nation, the king a crowned magistrate. Feudality, subaltern royalty, a.s.sumed the rank of actual property. The clergy, which had had inst.i.tutions and inviolable property, was now only a body paid by the state for a sacred service. It was from this only one step to receiving a voluntary salary for an individual service. The magistracy ceased to be hereditary. They left it its unremoveability to confirm its independence. It was an exception to the principle of offices when a dismissal was possible, a semi-sovereignty of justice--but it was one step towards the truth. The legislative power was distinct from the executive power. The nation in an a.s.sembly freely chosen, declared its will, and the hereditary and irresponsible king executed it. Such was the whole mechanism of the Const.i.tution--a people--a king--a minister. But the king irresponsible, and consequently pa.s.sive, was evidently a concession to custom, the respectful fiction of suppressed royalty.

IV.

He was no longer will; for to will is to do. He was not a functionary; for the functionary acts and replies. The king did not reply. He was but a majestic inutility in the const.i.tution. The functions destroyed, they left the functionary. He had but one attribute, the _suspensive veto_, which consisted of his right to suspend, for three years, the execution of the a.s.sembly's decrees. He was an obstacle; legal, but impotent for the wishes of the nation. It was evident that the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, perfectly convinced of the superfluity of the throne in a national government, had only placed a king at the summit of its inst.i.tutions to check ambition, and that the kingdom should not be called a republic.

The only part of such a king was to prevent the truth from appearing, and to make a show in the eyes of a people accustomed to a sceptre. This fiction, or this nullity cost the people 30,000,000 (of francs) a year in the civil list, a court, continual jealousies, and the interminable corruption practised by the court on the organs of the nation. This was the real vice of the const.i.tution of 1791: it was not consistent.

Royalty embarra.s.sed the const.i.tution; and all that embarra.s.ses injures.

The motive of this inconsistency was less an error of its reason than a respectful piety for an ancient prejudice, and a generous tenderness towards a race which had long worn the crown. If the race of the Bourbons had been extinct in the month of September 1791, certainly the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly would not have invented a king.

V.

However, the royalty of '91, very little different from the royalty of to-day, could work for a century, as well as a day. The error of all historians is to attribute to the vices of the const.i.tution the brief duration of the work of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly. In the first place, the work of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly was not princ.i.p.ally to perpetuate this wheelwork of useless royalty, placed out of complaisance to the people's eyes, in machinery which did not regulate it. The work of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly was the regeneration of ideas and government, the displacing of power, the restoration of right, the abolition of all subjugation even of the mind, the freedom of consciences, the formation of an administration; and this work lasts, and will endure as long as the name of France. The vice of the inst.i.tution of 1791 was not in any one particular point. It has not perished because the _veto_ of the king was suspensive instead of absolute; it has not perished, because the right of peace or war was taken from the king, and reserved to the nation; it has not perished, because it did not place the legislative power in one chamber only instead of in two: these a.s.serted vices are to be found in many other const.i.tutions, which still endure. The diminution of the royal power was not the main danger to royalty in '91; it was rather its salvation, if it could have been saved.

VI.

The more power was given to the king, and action to the monarchical principle, the quicker the king and the principle would have fallen; for the greater would have been the distrust and hatred against him. Two chambers, instead of one, would not have preserved any thing. Such divisions of power would have no value, but in proportion as they are sacred. They are only sacred in proportion as they are the representatives of real existing force in the nation. Would a revolution which had not paused before the iron gates of the Chateau of Versailles have respected the metaphysical distinction of power of two kinds!

Besides, where were, and where would be now, the const.i.tutive elements of two chambers, in a nation whose entire revolution is but a convulsion towards unity? If the second chamber be democratic and temporary, it is but a twofold democracy with but one common impulse. It can only serve to r.e.t.a.r.d the common impulse, or destroy the unity of the public will.

If it be hereditary and aristocratic, it supposes an aristocracy pre-existent in, and acknowledged by, the state. Where was this aristocracy in 1791? Where is it now? A modern historian says, "In the n.o.bility, in the presence of social inequalities." But the Revolution was made against the n.o.bility, and in order to level social hereditary inequalities. It was to ask of the Revolution itself to make a counter-revolution. Besides, these pretended divisions of power are always fictions; power is never really divided. It is always here or there, in reality and in its integrity,--it is not to be divided. It is like the will, it is _one_ or it is not. If there be two chambers, it is in one of the two; the other complies or is dissolved. If there be one chamber and a king, it is in the king or the chamber. In the king, if he subjugates the a.s.sembly by force, or if he buys it by corruption; in the chamber if it agitates the public mind, and intimidates the court and the army by the power of its language, and the superiority of its opinions. Those who do not see this have no eyes. In this _soidisant_ balance of power there is always a controlling weight; equilibrium is a chimera. If it did exist, it would produce mere immobility.

VII.

The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly had then done a good work; wise, and as durable as are the inst.i.tutions of a people in travail, in an age of transition.

The const.i.tution of '91 had written all the truths of the times, and reduced all human reason to its epoch. All was true in its work except royalty, which had but one wrong, which was making the monarchy the depository of its code.

We have seen that this very fault was an excess of virtue. It receded before the deposing from the throne the family of its kings; it had the superst.i.tion of the past without having its faith, and desired to reconcile the republic and the monarchy. It was a virtue in its intentions; it was a mistake in its results; for it is an error in politics to attempt the impossible. Louis XVI. was the only man in the nation to whom the const.i.tuent royalty could not be confided, since it was he from whom the absolute monarchy had just been s.n.a.t.c.hed: the const.i.tution was a shared royalty, and but a few days previously, and he had possessed it entire. With any other person this royalty would have been a gift, for him alone it was an insult. If Louis XVI. had been capable of this abnegation of supreme power which makes disinterested heroes (and he was one), the deposed party, of which he was the natural head, was not like him; we may expect an act of sublime disinterestedness from a virtuous man, never from a party _en ma.s.se_.

Party is never magnanimous; they never abdicate, they are extirpated.

Heroic acts come from the heart, and party has no heart; they have only interests and ambition. A body is a thing of unvarying selfishness.

Clergy, n.o.bility, court, magistracy, all abuses, all falsehoods, all contumelies, every injustice of a monarchy, are personified, in spite of Louis XVI., in the king. Degraded with him, they must desire to rise with him. The nation, which well perceived this fatal connection between the king and the counter-revolution, could not confide in the king, however it might venerate the man; it saw, in him, of necessity, the accomplice of every conspiracy against itself. The _parvenus_ of liberty are as thinskinned as the _parvenus_ of fortune. Jealousies must arise, suspicions would produce insults, insults resentments, resentments factions, factions shocks and overthrows: the momentary enthusiasm of the people, the sincere concessions of the king, avert nothing. The situations were false on both sides.

If there were in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly more statesmen than philosophers, it must have perceived that an intermediate state was impossible, under the guardians.h.i.+p of a half-dethroned king. We do not confide to the vanquished the care and management of the conquests. To act as she acts, was to drive the king, without redemption, to treason or the scaffold. An absolute party is the only safe party in great crises. The tact consists in knowing when to have recourse to extreme measures at the critical minute. We say it unhesitatingly--history will hereafter say as we do. Then came a moment when the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly had the right to choose between the monarchy and the republic, and when she had to choose the republic. There was the safety of the Revolution and its legitimacy. In wanting resolution it failed in prudence.