The French Revolution
by
Thomas Carlyle
Part 9 out of 16
anathema marantha. (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 befel 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 recals 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 my 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 Paris 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 buz 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
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