V.
"I have meditated during six months, and even from the first day of the Revolution," said Brissot, the leader of the Gironde, "to what party I should give my support. It is by the force of reason, and by considering facts, that I have come to the conviction that a people, who, after ten centuries of slavery, have re-conquered liberty, have need of war. War is necessary to consolidate liberty, and to purge the constitution from all taint of despotism. War is necessary to drive from amongst us those men whose example might corrupt us. You have the power of chastising the rebels, and intimidating the world; have the courage to do so. The emigrés persist in their rebellion, the sovereigns persist in supporting them. Can we hesitate to attack them? Our honour, our public credit, the necessity of strengthening our revolution, all make it imperative on us. France would be dishonoured, did she tamely suffer the insolence and revolt of a few factions, and outrages that a despot would not bear for a fortnight. How shall we be looked upon? No! we must avenge ourselves, or become the opprobrium of all the other nations. We must avenge ourselves by destroying these herds of brigands, or consent to behold faction, conspiracy, and rebellion perpetuated, and the insolence of the aristocrats greater than ever. They rely on the army at Coblentz,—in that they put their trust. If you would at one blow destroy the aristocracy, destroy Coblentz, and the chief of the nation will be compelled to reign, according to the Constitution, with us and through us."
These words, pronounced by the statesman of the Gironde, awakened an echo in the breast of every man, from the Jacobin Club to the extremity of the country. The vehement applause of the tribunes was merely the expression of that impatience to know the final decision that pervaded all parties. Robespierre needed iron nerve and determination to confront his friends, his enemies, and public opinion; and yet he sustained this struggle of a single idea against all this passion for weeks. Great convictions are indefatigable; and Robespierre, by his own unaided exertions, balanced all France during a month. His very enemies spoke with respect of his firmness, and those who had not the courage to follow him, yet would have been ashamed not to esteem him. His eloquence, which had been dry, verbose, and dialectic, now became more elegant and more imposing. The public journals printed his speeches. "You, O people, who do not possess the means of procuring the speeches of Robespierre, I promise them to you," said the Orateur du Peuple, the Jacobin paper. "Preserve carefully the numbers that contain these speeches; they are masterpieces of eloquence, that should be preserved in every family, in order to teach future generations that Robespierre existed for the public good and the preservation of liberty."
After having exhausted every argument that philosophy, policy, and patriotism could suggest against an offensive war, commenced by the Gironde, and secretly fomented by the ministers, and carried on by the generals most suspected by the people, he mounted the tribune for the last time, against Brissot, on the night of the 13th January, and declared his conviction against war, in a speech as admirable as it was pathetic.
VI.
"Yes, I am vanquished; I yield to you," cried he, in a broken voice, "I also demand war. What do I say?—I demand a war, more terrible, more implacable than you demand. I do not demand it as an act of prudence, an act of reason, an act of policy, but as the resource of despair. I demand it on one condition, which doubtless you have anticipated,—for I do not think that the advocates of war have sought to deceive us. I demand it deadly—I demand it heroic—I demand it such as the genius of Liberty would declare against all despotism—such as the people of the Revolution, under their own leaders, would render it;—not such as intriguing cowards would have it, or as the ambitious and traitorous ministers and generals would carry it on.
"Frenchmen, heroes of the 14th of July, who, without guide or leader, yet acquired your liberty, come forth, and let us form that army which you tell us is destined to conquer the universe. But where is the general, who, imperturbable defender of the rights of the people, and born with a hatred to tyrants, has never breathed the poisonous air of the courts, and whose virtue is attested by the hatred and disgrace of the court; this general, whose hands, guiltless of our blood, are worthy to bear before us the banner of freedom; where is he, this new Cato, this third Brutus, this unknown hero? let him appear and disclose himself, he shall be our leader. But where is he? Where are these soldiers of the 14th of July, who laid down, in the presence of the people, the arms furnished them by despotism. Soldiers of Châteauvieux, where are you? Come and direct our efforts. Alas! it is easier to rob death of its prey, than despotism of its victims. Citizens! Conquerors of the Bastille, come! Liberty summons you, and assigns you the honour of the first rank! They are mute. Misery, ingratitude, and the hatred of the aristocracy, have dispersed them. And you, citizens, immolated at the Champ-de-Mars, in the very act of a patriotic confederation, you will not be with us. Ah, what crime had these females, these massacred babes, committed? Good God! how many victims, and all amongst the people—all amongst the patriots, whilst the powerful conspirators live and triumph. Rally round us, at least you national guards, who have especially devoted yourselves to the defence of our frontiers in this war with which a perfidious court threatens us. Come—but how?—you are not yet armed. During two whole years you have demanded arms, and yet have them not. What do I say? You have been refused even uniforms, and condemned to wander from department to department, objects of contempt to the minister, and of derision to the patricians, who receive you only to enjoy the spectacle of your distress. No matter; come, we will combat naked like the American savages.
"But shall we await the orders of the war office to destroy thrones? Shall we await the signal of the court? Shall we be commanded by these patricians, these eternal favourites of despotism, in this war against aristocrats and kings? No—let us march forward alone; let us be our own leaders. But see, the orators of war stop me! Here is Monsieur Brissot, who tells me that Monsieur le Comte de Narbonne must conduct this affair; that we must march under the orders of Monsieur le Marquis de La Fayette; that the executive power alone possesses the right of leading the nation to victory and freedom. Ah, citizens, this word has dispelled all the charm! Adieu, victory and the independence of the people; if the sceptres of Europe ever be broken, it will not be by such hands. Spain will continue for some time the degraded slave of superstition and royalism. Leopold will continue the tyrant of Germany and Italy, and we shall not speedily behold Catos or Ciceros replace the pope and the cardinals in the conclave. I declare openly, that war, as I understand the term—war, such as I have proposed, is impracticable. And if it be the war of the court, of the ministers, of the patricians who affect patriotism, that we must accept—oh, then, far from believing in the freedom of the world, I despair of your liberty. The wisest course left us is to defend it against the perfidy of those enemies at home who lull you with these heroic illusions.
"I continue calmly and sorrowfully. I have proved that liberty possesses no more deadly foe than war; I have proved that war, advised by men already objects of suspicion, was, in the hands of the executive power, nought save a means of annihilating the constitution, only the end of a plot against the Revolution. Thus to favour these plans of war, under what pretext soever, is to associate ourselves with these treasonable plots against the Revolution. All the patriotism in the world, all the pretended political commonplaces, cannot change the nature of things. To inculcate, like M. Brissot and his friends, confidence in the executive power, and to call down public favour on the generals, is to disarm the Revolution of its last hope—the vigilance and energy of the nation. In the horrible position in which despotism, intrigue, treason, and the general blindness have placed us, I consult alone my head and my heart. I respect nothing, save my country; I obey nought, save truth. I know that some patriots blame the frankness with which I present this discouraging future of our situation. I do not conceal my fault from myself. Is not the truth already sufficiently guilty because it is the truth? Ah! so that our slumbers be light, what matter, though we be awakened by the clash of chains?—and in the quietude of slavery let us no longer disturb the repose of these fortunate patriots. No, but let them know that we can measure with a firm eye and steady heart the depth of the abyss. Let us adopt the device of the palatine of Posnania—'I prefer the storms of liberty to the serenity of slavery.'
"If the moment of emancipation be not yet arrived, at least we should have the patience to await it. If this generation was but destined to struggle in the quicksand of vice, into which despotism had plunged it; if the theatre of our revolution was destined but to present to the eyes of the universe a struggle between perfidy and weakness, egotism and ambition;—the rising generation would commence the task of purifying this earth, so sullied by vice. It would bring, not the peace of despotism or the sterile agitations of intrigue, but fire and sword to lay low the thrones and exterminate the oppressors. O more fortunate posterity, thou art not stranger to us! It is for thee that we brave the storms and the intrigues of tyranny. Often discouraged by the obstacles that environ us, we feel the necessity of struggling for thee. Thou shalt complete our work. Retain on thy memory the names of the martyrs of liberty." The sentiments of Rousseau were to be traced in these words.
VII.
Louvet, one of the friends of Brissot, felt their power, and mounted the tribune in order to move the man who alone arrested the progress of the Gironde. "Robespierre," said he, apostrophising him directly; "Robespierre—you alone keep the public mind in suspense—doubtless this excess of glory was reserved for you. Your speeches belong to posterity, and posterity will come to judge between you and me. But you Will mar a great responsibility by persisting in your opinions; you are accountable to your contemporaries, and even to future generations—yes, posterity will judge between us, unworthy as I may be of it. It will say, a man appeared in the Constituent Assembly—inaccessible to all passions, one of the most faithful defenders of the people—it was impossible not to esteem and cherish his virtues—not to admire his courage—he was adored by the people, whom he had constantly served, and he was worthy of it. A precipice opens. Fatigued by too much labour, this man imagined he saw peril where there was none, and did not see it where it really was. A man of no note was present, entirely occupied with the present moment, aided by other citizens, he perceived the danger, and could not remain silent. He went to Robespierre, and sought to make him touch it with his finger. Robespierre turned away his eyes, and withdrew his hand, the stranger persisted, and saved his country."
Robespierre smiled with disdain and incredulity at these words. The suppliant gestures of Louvet, and the adjurations of the tribunes found-him the next morning firm and unmoved. Brissot resumed the debate on war;—"I implore Monsieur Robespierre," said he, in conclusion, "to terminate so unworthy a struggle, which profits alone the enemies of the public welfare." "My surprise was extreme," cried Robespierre, "at seeing this morning, in the journal edited by M. Brissot, the most pompous eulogium on M. de La Fayette." "I declare," replied Brissot, "that I am utterly ignorant of the insertion of this letter in 'Le Patriots Français.'" "So much the better," returned Robespierre. "I am delighted to find that M. Brissot is not a party to any such apologies." Their words became as bitter as their hearts, and hate became more perceptible at every reply. The aged Dusaulx interfered, made a touching appeal to the patriots, and entreated them to embrace. They complied. "I have now fulfilled a duty of fraternity, and satisfied my heart," cried Robespierre. "I have yet a more sacred debt to pay my country. All personal regard must give place to the sacred interests of liberty and humanity. I can easily reconcile them here with the regard and respect I have promised to those who serve them; I have embraced M. Brissot, but I persist in opposing him: let our peace repose only on the basis of patriotism and virtue." Robespierre, by his very isolation, proved his force, and obtained fresh influence over the minds of the waverers. The papers began to side with him. Marat heaped invectives on Brissot; Camille Desmoulins, in his pamphlets, exposed the shameful association of Brissot, in London, with Morande, the dishonoured libellist. Danton himself, the orator of success, fearing to be deceived by fortune, hesitated between the Girondists and Robespierre. He remained silent for a long time, and then made a speech full of high-sounding words, beneath which was visible the hesitation of his convictions, and the embarrassment of his mind.
BOOK X.
I.
Whilst this was passing at the Jacobins, and the journals—those echoes of the clubs—excited in the people the same anxiety and the same hesitation, the underhand diplomacy of the cabinet of the Tuileries, and the emperor Leopold, who sought in vain to postpone the termination, were about to behold all their schemes thwarted by the impatience of the Gironde and the death of Leopold. This philosophic prince was destined to bear away with him all desire of reconciliation and every hope of peace, for he alone restrained Germany. M. de Narbonne, thwarted by public demonstrations the secret negotiations of his colleague M. de Lessart, who strove to temporise, and to refer all the differences of France and Europe to a congress.
The diplomatic committee of the Assembly, urged by Narbonne, and composed of Girondists, proposed decisive resolutions. This committee, established by the Assembly, and influenced by the ideas of Mirabeau, called the ministers to account for every thing that occurred: out of the kingdom diplomacy was thus unmasked—the negotiations broken off—all combination rendered impossible, for the cabinets of Europe were continually cited before the tribune of Paris. The Girondists, the actual leaders of this committee, possessed neither the skill nor the prudence necessary to handle without breaking the fine threads of diplomacy. A speech was in their eyes far more meritorious than a negotiation; and they cared not that their words should re-echo in foreign cabinets, provided they sounded well in the chamber or the tribune. Moreover, they were desirous of war, and looked on themselves as statesmen, because at one stroke they had disturbed the peace of Europe. Ignorant of politics, they yet deemed themselves masters of it, because they were unscrupulous; and because they affected the indifference of Machiavel, they deemed they possessed his depth.
The emperor Leopold, by a proclamation, on the 21st of December, furnished the Assembly with a pretext for an outbreak. "The sovereigns united," said the emperor, "for the maintenance of public tranquillity and the honour and safety of the crowns." These words excited the minds of all to know what could be their meaning; they asked each other how the emperor, the brother-in-law, and ally of Louis XVI., could speak to him for the first time of the sovereigns acting in concert? and against what, if not against the Revolution? And how could the ministers and ambassadors of the Revolution have been ignorant of its existence? Why had they concealed from the nation their knowledge, if they had known it? There was, then, a double diplomacy, each striving to outwit the other. The Austrian Alliance was, then, no dream of faction; there was either incompetence or treason in official diplomacy, perhaps both. A projected congress was spoken of—could it have any other object than that of imposing modifications on the constitution of France?—And all felt indignant at the idea of ceding even one tittle of the constitution to the demand of monarchical Europe.
II.
It was whilst the public mind was thus agitated that the diplomatic committee presented, through the Girondist Gensonné, its report on the existing state of affairs with the emperor. Gensonné, an advocate of Bordeaux, elected to the Legislative Assembly on the same day as Guadet and Vergniaud, his friends and countrymen, composed, with these deputies, that triumvirate of talent, opinion, and eloquence, afterwards termed the Gironde. An obstinate and dialectic style of oratory, bitter and keen irony, were the characteristics of the talents of the Gironde; it did not carry away by its eloquence, it constrained; and its revolutionary passions were strong, yet under the control of reason.
Before entering the Assembly, he had been sent as a commissioner with Dumouriez, afterwards so celebrated, to study the state of the popular feeling in the department of the west, and to propose measures likely to tend to the pacification of these countries, then distracted by religious differences. His clear and enlightened report had been in favour of tolerance and liberty—those two topics of all consciences. He was then, in common with the other Girondists, resolved to carry out the Revolution to its extreme and definite form—a republic, without, however, too soon destroying the constitutional throne, provided the constitution was in the hands of his party.
The intimate friend of the minister Narbonne, his calumniators accused him of having sold himself to him. Nothing, however, bears out this suspicion; for if the soul of the Girondists was not free from ambition and intrigue, their hands at least were pure from corruption.
Gensonné, in his report in the name of the diplomatic committee, asked two questions; first, what was our political situation with regard to the emperor; secondly, should his last office be regarded as an act of hostility; and in this case was it advisable to accelerate this inevitable rupture by commencing the attack.
"Our situation with regard to the emperor," replied he to himself, "is, that the French interests are sacrificed to the house of Austria; our finances and our armies wasted in her service—our alliances broken, and what mark of reciprocity do we receive? The Revolution insulted; our cockade profaned; the emigrés permitted to congregate in the states dependent on Austria; and, lastly, the avowal of the coalition of the powers against us. When from the heart of Luxembourg our princes threaten us with an invasion, and boast of the support of the other powers, Austria remains silent, and thus tacitly sanctions the threats of our enemies. It is true she affects from time to time to blame the hostile demonstrations against France, but this was but an hypocritical peace. The white cockade and the counter-revolutionary uniform are openly worn in her states, whilst our national colours are proscribed. When the king threatened the elector of Trèves that he would march into his territories and disperse the emigrés by force, the emperor ordered general Bender to advance to the assistance of the elector of Trèves. This is but a slight matter: in the report drawn up at Pilnitz, the emperor declares, in concert with the king of Prussia, that the two powers would consider the steps to be taken, with regard to France, by the other European courts; and that should war ensue, they would mutually assist each other. Thus it is manifest that the emperor had violated the treaty of 1756, by contracting alliances without the knowledge of France; and that he has made himself the promoter and pivot of an anti-French system. What can be his aim but to intimidate and subdue us, in order to bring us to accept a congress, and the introduction of shameful modifications in our new institutions?
"Perhaps," added Gensonné, "this idea has germinated in France? Perhaps secret information induces the emperor to hope that peace may be maintained on such conditions. He is deceived: it is not at the moment when the flame of liberty is first kindled in a nation of twenty-four millions, that Frenchmen would consent to a capitulation, to which they would prefer death. Such is our situation, that war, which in other times would be a scourge to the human race, would now be useful to the public welfare. This salutary crisis would elevate the people to the level of their destiny; it would restore to them their pristine energy—it would re-establish our finances, and stifle the germ of intestine dissension. In a similar situation Frederic the Great broke the league formed against him by the court of Vienna, by forestalling it. Your committee propose that the preparations for war be accelerated. A congress would be a disgrace—war is necessary—public opinion wishes for it—and public safety demands it."
The committee concluded, by demanding clear and satisfactory explanations from the emperor; and that in case these explanations should not be given before the 10th of February, this refusal to reply should be considered as an act of hostility.
III.
Scarcely was the report terminated than Guadet, who presided that day at the Assembly, mounted the tribune, and began to comment on the report of his friend and colleague. Guadet, born at Saint Emelion, near Bordeaux, already celebrated as an advocate before the age at which men have generally made themselves a reputation, impatiently expected by the political tribunes, had at last arrived at the Legislative Assembly. A disciple of Brissot, less profound, but equally courageous and more eloquent than his master, he was intimately connected with Gensonné, Vergniaud, to whom he was bound by being of the same age, the same passions, and the same country; endowed with an undaunted and energetic mind and winning powers of oratory, equally fitted to resist the movement of a popular assembly, or to precipitate them to a termination; all these natural advantages were heightened by one of those southern casts of face and feature that serve so well to illustrate the working of the mind within.
"A congress has just been spoken of," said he; "what, then, is this conspiracy formed against us? How long shall we suffer ourselves to be fatigued by these manœuvres—to be outraged by these hopes? Have those who have planned them, well weighed this? The bare idea of the possibility of a capitulation of liberty might hurry into crime those malcontents who cherish the hope; and these are the crimes we should crush in the bud. Let us teach these princes that the nation is resolved to preserve its constitution pure and unchanged, or to perish with it. In one word, let us mark out the place for these traitors, and let that place be the scaffold. I propose that the decree pass at this instant; That the nation regards as infamous, as traitors to their country, and as guilty of leze-majesté, every agent of the executive power, every Frenchman (several voices, 'every legislator') who shall take part, directly or indirectly, at this congress, whose object is to obtain modifications in the constitution, or a mediation between France and the rebels."
At these words the Assembly rose as if by common consent. Every hand was raised in the attitude of men ready to take a solemn oath; the tribunes and the chamber confounded their applause, and the decree was passed.
M. de Lessart, whom the gesture and the allusion of Guadet seemed to have already designated as the victim to the suspicions of the people, could not remain silent under the weight of these terrible allusions. "Mention has been made," said he, "of the political agents of the executive power: I declare that I know nothing which can authorise us to suspect their fidelity. For my own part, I will repeat the declaration of my colleagues in the ministry, and adopt it for my own—the constitution or death."
Whilst Gensonné and Guadet aroused the Assembly by this preconcerted scene, Vergniaud aroused the crowd by the copy of an address to the French people, which had been spread abroad for the last few days amongst the masses. The Girondists remembered the effect produced two years previously by the proposed address to the king to dismiss the troops.
"Frenchmen," said Vergniaud, "war threatens your frontiers; conspiracies against liberty are rife. Your armies are assembling: mighty movements agitate the empire. Seditious priests prepare in the confessional, and even in the pulpit, a rising against the constitution; martial law becomes essential. Thus it appeared to us just. But we only succeeded in brandishing the thunderbolts for a moment before the eyes of the rebels—the king has refused to sanction our decrees; the German princes make their territories a stronghold for the conspirators against us. They favour the plots of the emigrés, and furnish them with an asylum, arms, horses, and provisions. Can patience endure this without becoming guilty of suicide? Doubtless you have renounced the desire of conquest; but you have not promised to suffer insolent provocation. You have shaken off the yoke of tyrants; surely, then, you will not bow the knee to foreign despots? Beware! you are surrounded by snares; traitors seek to reduce you through disgust or fatigue to a state of languor that enervates your courage; and soon perhaps they will strive to lead it astray. They seek to separate you from us; they pursue a system of calumny against the National Assembly to criminate the Revolution in your eyes. Oh, beware of these excessive terrors! Repulse indignantly these impostors, who, whilst they affect an hypocritical zeal for the constitution, yet unceasingly speak of the monarchy. The monarchy is to them the counter-revolution. The monarchy is the nobility; the counter-revolution—that is taxation, the feudal system, the Bastille, chains, and executions, to punish the sublime impulses of liberty. Foreign satellites in the interior of the state—bankruptcy, engulphing with your assignats your private fortunes and the national wealth—the fury of fanaticism, of vengeance, murder, rapine, conflagration, despotism, and slaughter, contending, in rivers of blood and over the heaps of dead, for the mastery of your unhappy country. Nobility; that is, two classes of men, one for greatness, the other for poverty; one for tyranny, the other for slavery. Nobility; ah! the very word is an insult to the human race.
"And yet it is to ensure the success of this conspiracy against you that all Europe is in arms.—You must annihilate these guilty hopes by a solemn declaration. Yes, the representatives of France, free, and deeply attached to the constitution, will be buried beneath her ruins, rather than suffer a capitulation unworthy of them to be wrung from them. Rally yourselves, take courage! In vain do they strive to excite the nations against you, they will only excite the princes, for the hearts of the people are with you, and you embrace their cause by defending your own. Hate war: it is the greatest crime of mankind, and the most fearful scourge of humanity; but since it is forced on you, follow the course of your destiny. Who can foresee how far will extend the punishment of those tyrants who have forced you to take arms?" Thus, these three statesmen joined their voices to impel the nation to war.
IV.
The last words of Vergniaud gave the people a tolerably clear prospect of an universal republic. Nor were the constitutionalists less eager in directing the ideas of the nation towards war. M. de Narbonne, on his return from his hasty journey, presented a most encouraging report to the Assembly, of the state of the fortified towns.—He praised every one. He presented to the country the young Mathieu de Montmorency, one of the most illustrious names of France, and whose character was even more noble than his name, as the representative of the aristocracy devoting itself to liberty. He declared that the army, in its attachment to its country did not separate the King from the Assembly. He praised the commanders of the troops, nominated Rochambeau general-in-chief of the army of the north, Berthier at Metz, Biron at Lisle, Luckner and La Fayette on the Rhine. He spoke of plans for the campaign, concerted between the king and these officers; he enumerated the national guards, ready to serve as a second line to the active army, and solicited that they should be promptly armed; he described these volunteers, as giving the army the most imposing of all characters—that of national feeling; he vouched for the officers, who had sworn fidelity to the constitution, and exonerated from the charge of treason those who had not done so; he encouraged the Assembly to mistrust those that hesitated. "Mistrust," said he, "is, in these stormy times, the most natural, but the most dangerous feeling; confidence wins mens' hearts, and it is important that the people should show they have friends only." He ended by announcing that the active force of the army was 110,000 foot, and 20,000 cavalry, ready to take the field.
This report, praised by Brissot in his journal, and by the Girondists in the Assembly, afforded no longer any pretext for delaying the war. France felt that her strength was equal to her indignation, and she could be restrained no longer. The increasing unpopularity of the king augmented the popular excitement. Twice had he already arrested, by his royal veto, the energetic measures of the Assembly—the decree against the emigrés, and the decree against the priests who had not taken the oath. These two vetos, the one dictated by his honour, the other by his conscience, were two terrible weapons, placed in his hand by the constitution, yet which he could not wield without wounding himself. The Girondists revenged themselves for this resistance by compelling him to make war on the princes, who were his brothers, and the emperor, whom they believed to be his accomplice.
The pamphleteers and the Jacobin journalists constantly spoke of these two vetos as acts of treason. The disturbances in Vendeé were attributed to a secret understanding between the king and the rebellious clergy. In vain did the department of Paris, composed of men who respected the conscience of others, such as M. de Talleyrand, M. de la Rochefoucauld, and M. de Beaumetz, present to the king a petition in which the true principles of liberty protested against the revolutionary inquisition: counter-petitions poured in from the departments.
V.
Camille Desmoulins, the Voltaire of the clubs, lent to the petition of the citizens of Paris that insolent raillery, which made the success of his talent.
"Worthy representatives," ran the petition[13], "applauses are the civil list of the people, therefore do not reject ours. To collect the homages of good citizens, and the insults of the bad, is, to a National Assembly, to have combined all suffrages. The king has put his veto to your decree against the emigrants, a decree equally worthy of the majesty of the Roman people and the clemency of the French people. We do not complain of this act of the king, because we remember the maxim of the great politician Machiavel, which we beg of you to meditate upon profoundly—It is against nature to fall voluntarily from such a height. Penetrated with this truth, we do not then require from the king an impossible love for the constitution, nor do we find fault that he is opposed to your best decisions. But let public functionaries foresee the royal veto, and declare their rebellion against your decree, against the priests; let them carry off public opinion; let these men be precisely the same who caused to be shot in the Champ-de-Mars the citizens who were signing a petition against a decree which was not yet decided upon; let them inundate the empire with copies of this petition, which is nothing more than the first leaf of a great counter-revolutionary register and a subscription for civil war sent for signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all permanent slaves. Fathers of the country! there is here such complicated ingratitude and abuse of confidence, of contradiction and chicanery, of prevarication and treason, that profoundly indignant at so much wickedness concealed beneath the cloak of philosophy and hypocritical civism, we say to you—Your decree has saved the country, and if they are obstinate in refusing you permission to save the country, well, the nation will save itself, for, after all, the power of a veto has a termination—a veto does not prevent the taking of the Bastille.
"You are told that the salary of the priests was a national debt. But when you only request the priests to declare that they will not be seditious—are not they who refuse this declaration already seditious in their hearts? And these seditious priests, who have never lent anything to the state—who are only creditors of the state in the name of benevolence—have they not a thousand times forfeited the donation through their ingratitude? Away, then, with these miserable sophisms, fathers of the country, and have no more doubt of the omnipotence of a free people. If liberty slumbers, how can the arm act? Do not raise this arm again, do not again lift the national club to crush insects. Did Cato and Cicero proceed against Cethegus or Catiline? It is the chiefs we should assail: strike at the head."
A scornful laugh echoed from the tribunes of the Assembly to the populace. The procès-verbal of this sitting was ordered to be sent to the eighty-three departments. Next day the Assembly reconsidered this, and negatived its vote of the previous evening; but publicity was still given to it, and it echoed through the provinces, carrying with it the disquietude, derision, and hatred attached to the Royal Veto. The constitution, handed over to ridicule and hooted in full assembly, had now become the plaything of the populace.
For many months the state of the kingdom resembled the state of Paris. All was uproar, confusion, denunciation, disturbance in the departments. Each courier brought his riots, seditions, petitions, outbreaks, and assassinations. The clubs established as many points of resistance to the constitution as there were communes in the empire. The civil war hatching in La Vendée burst out by massacres at Avignon.
VI.
This city and comtal, united to France by the recent decree of the Constituent Assembly, had remained from this period in an intermediary state between two dominations, so favourable to anarchy. The partisans of the papal government, and the partisans of the reunion with France, struggled there in alternations of hope and fear, which prolonged and envenomed their hate. The king, from a religious scruple, had for too long suspended the execution of the decree of reunion. Trembling to infringe upon the domain of the church, he deferred his decision, and his impolitic delays gave time for crimes.
France was represented in Avignon by mediators. The provisional authority of these mediators was supported by a detachment of troops of the line. The power, entirely municipal, was confided to the dictatorship of the municipality. The populace, excited and agitated, was divided into the French or revolutionary party, and the party opposed to the reunion by France and the Revolution. The fanaticism of religion with one, the fanaticism of liberty with the other, impelled the two parties even to crimes. The warmth of blood, the thirst of private vengeance, the heat of the climate, all added to civil passions. The violences of Italian republics were all to be seen in the manners of this Italian colony, of this branch establishment of Rome on the banks of the Rhone. The smaller states are, the more atrocious are their civil wars. There opposite opinions become personal hatreds; contests are but assassinations. Avignon commenced these wholesale assassinations by private murders.
On the 16th of October a gloomy agitation betrayed itself by the mobs of people collecting on various points, particularly consisting of persons enemies of the Revolution. The walls of the church were covered with placards, calling on the people to revolt against the provisional authority of the municipality. There were bruited about rumours of absurd miracles, which demanded in the name of Heaven vengeance for the assaults made against religion. A statue of the Virgin worshipped by the people in the church of the Cordeliers had blushed at the profanations of her temple. She had been seen to shed tears of indignation and grief. The people, educated under the papal government in such superstitious credulities, had gone in a body to the Cordeliers to avenge the cause of their protectress. Animated by fanatical exhortations, confiding in the divine interposition, the mob, on quitting the Cordeliers, and increasing as it went, hurried to the ramparts, closed the doors, turned the cannon on the city, and then spread themselves through the streets, demanding with loud clamours the overthrow of the government. The unfortunate Lescuyer, notary of Avignon, secretary (greffier) of the municipality, more particularly pointed out to the fury of the mob, was dragged violently from his residence, and along the pavement to the altar of the Cordeliers, where he was murdered by sabre-strokes and blows from bludgeons, trampled under foot, his dead body outraged and cast as an expiatory victim at the feet of the offended statue. The national guard, having despatched a detachment with two pieces of cannon from the fort, drove back the infuriated populace, and picked from the pavement the naked and lifeless carcase of Lescuyer. The prisons of the city had been broken open, and the miscreants they contained came to offer their assistance for other murders. Horrible reprisals were feared, and yet the mediators, absent from the city, were asleep, or closed their eyes upon the actual danger. The understanding between the leaders of the Paris clubs and the rioters of Avignon became more fearfully intimate.
VII.
One of those sinister persons who seem to smell blood and presage crime, reached Avignon from Versailles: his name was Jourdan. He is not to be confounded with another revolutionist of the same name, born at Avignon. Sprung from the arid and calcined mountains of the south, where the very brutes are more ferocious; by turns butcher, farrier, and smuggler, in the gorges which separate Savoy from France; a soldier, deserter, horse-jobber, and then a keeper of a low wine shop in the suburbs of Paris; he had wallowed in all the lowest vices of the dregs of a metropolis. The first murders committed by the people in the streets of Paris had disclosed his real character. It was not that of contest but of murder. He appeared after the carnage to mangle the victims, and render the assassination fouler. He was a butcher of men, and he boasted of it. It was he who had thrust his hands into the open breasts and plucked forth the hearts of Foulon and Berthier.[14] It was he who had cut off the head of the two gardes du corps, de Varicourt and des Huttes, at Versailles, on the 6th of October. It was he who, entering Paris, bearing the two heads at the end of a pike, reproached the people with being content with so little, and having made him go so far to cut off only two heads! He hoped for better things at Avignon, and went thither.
There was at Avignon a body of volunteers called the army of Vaucluse, formed of the dregs of that country, and commanded by one Patrix. This Patrix having been assassinated by his troop, whose excesses he desired to moderate, Jourdan was elevated to the command by the claims of sedition and wickedness. The soldiers, when reproached with their robberies and murders, similar to those of the Gueux of Belgium, and the sans-culottes of Paris, received the reproach as an honour, and called themselves the brave brigands of Avignon. Jourdan at the head of this band, ravaged and fired le Comtal, laid siege to Carpentras, was repulsed, lost five hundred men, and fell back upon Avignon, still shuddering at the murder of Lescuyer. He resolved on lending his arm and his troop to the vengeance of the French party. On the 30th of August Jourdan and his myrmidons closed the city-gates, dispersed through the streets, going to the houses noted as containing enemies to the Revolution, dragging out the inhabitants—men, women, aged persons, and children,—all, without distinction of age, sex or innocence, and shut them up in the palace. When night came, the assassins broke down the doors and murdered with iron crow-bars these disarmed and supplicating victims. In vain did they shriek to the national guard for aid: the city hears the massacre without daring to give any signs of animation. The daring of the crime chilled and paralysed every citizen. The murderers preluded the death of the females by derision and insults which added shame to terror, and the agonies of modesty to the pangs of murder. When there were no more to be slain they mutilated the carcases, and swept the blood into the sewer of the palace. They dragged the mutilated corpses to La Glacière, walled them up, and the vengeance of the people was stamped upon them. Jourdan and his satellites offered the homage of this night to the French mediators and the National Assembly. The scoundrels of Paris admired—the Assembly shook with indignation, and considered this crime as an outrage; whilst the president fainted on reading the recital of this night at Avignon. The arrest of Jourdan and his accomplices was commanded. Jourdan fled from Avignon, pursued by the French; he dashed his horse in to the river of the Sargue: caught in the middle of the river, by a soldier, he fired at him and missed. He was seized and bound, and punishment awarded him, but the Jacobins compelled the Girondists to agree to an amnesty for the crimes of Avignon. Jourdan making sure of impunity, and proud of his iniquities, went thither to be revenged on his denouncers.
The Assembly shuddered for a moment at the sight of this blood, and then hastily turned its eyes away. In its impatience to reign alone, it had not the time to display pity. There was, besides, between the Girondists and the Jacobins a contest for leadership, and a rivalry in going a-head of the Revolution, which made each of the two factions afraid that the other should be in advance. Dead bodies did not make them pause, and tears shed for too long a time might have been taken for weakness.
VIII.
However, victims multiplied daily, and disasters followed disasters. The whole empire seemed ready to fall and crush its founders. San Domingo, the richest of the French colonies, was swimming in blood. France was punished for its egotism. The Constituent Assembly had proclaimed, in principle, the liberty of the blacks, but, in fact, slavery still existed. Two hundred thousand slaves served as human cattle to some thousands of colonists. They were bought and sold, and cut and maimed, as if they were inanimate objects. They were kept by speculation out of the civil law, and out of the religious law. Property, family, marriage, all was forbidden to them. Care was taken to degrade them below men, to preserve the right of treating them as brutes. If some unions furtive, or favoured by cupidity, were formed amongst them, the wife and children belonged to the master. They were sold separately, without any regard to the ties of nature, all the attachments with which God has formed the chain of human sympathies were rent asunder without commiseration.
This crime en masse, this systematic brutality, had its theorists and apologists; human faculties were denied to the blacks. They were classed as a race between the flesh and the spirit. Thus the infamous abuse of power, which was exercised over this inert and servile race, was called necessary guardianship. Tyrants have never wanted sophists: on the other hand, men of right feeling towards their fellows, who had, like Grégoire, Raynal, Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, La Fayette, embraced the cause of humanity, and formed the "Society of the Friends of the Blacks" had circulated their principles in the colonies, like a vengeance rather than as justice. These principles had burst forth without preparation, and unanticipated in colonial society, where truth had no organ but insurrection. Philosophy proclaims principles; politics administer them; the friends of the blacks were contented with proclaiming them. France had not had courage to dispossess and indemnify her colonists: she had acquired liberty for herself alone: she adjourned, as she still adjourns at the moment I write these lines, the reparation for the crime of slavery in her colonies: could she be astonished that slavery should seek to avenge herself, and that liberty, warmly proclaimed in Paris, should not become an insurrection at San Domingo? Every iniquity that a free society allows to subsist for the profit of the oppressor, is a sword with which she herself arms the oppressed. Right is the most dangerous of weapons; woe to him who leaves it to his enemies!
IX.
San Domingo proved this. Fifty thousand black slaves rose in one night at the instigation, and under the command, of the mulattoes, or men of colour. The men of colour, the intermediary race, springing from white colonists and black slaves, were not slaves, neither were they citizens. They were a kind of freedmen, with the defects and virtues of the two races; the pride of the whites, the degradation of the blacks: a fluctuating race who, by turning sometimes to the side of the slaves, sometimes to that of the masters, inevitably produced those terrible oscillations which inevitably superinduce the overthrow of society.
The mulattoes, who themselves possessed slaves, had begun by making common cause with the colonists, and by opposing the emancipation of the blacks more obstinately than even the whites themselves. The nearer they were to slavery, the more doggedly did they defend their share in tyranny. Man is thus made: none is more ready to abuse his right than he who, with difficulty, has acquired it; there are no tyrants worse than slaves, and no men prouder than parvenus.
The men of colour had all the vices of parvenus of liberty. But when they perceived that the whites despised them as a mingled race, that the Revolution had not effaced the tinge of their skin, and the injurious prejudices which were attached to their colour; when they in vain claimed for themselves the exercise of civil rights, which the colonists opposed, they passed with the impetuosity and levity of their conduct from one passion to another, from one party to the other, and made common cause with the oppressed race. Their habits of command, fortune, intelligence, energy, boldness, naturally pointed them out as the leaders of the blacks. They fraternised with them, they became popular amongst the blacks, from the very tinge of skin for which they had recently blushed, when in company with the whites. They secretly fomented the germs of insurrection at the nightly meetings of the slaves. They kept up a clandestine correspondence with the friends of the blacks in Paris. They spread widely in the huts, speeches and papers from Paris, which instructed the colonists in their duties and informed the slaves of their indefeasible rights. The rights of man, commented upon by vengeance, became the catechism of all dwellings.
The whites trembled; terror urged them to violence. The blood of the mulatto Ogé and his accomplices, shed by M. de Blanchelande, governor of San Domingo and the colonial council, sowed every where despair and conspiracy.
X.
Ogé, deputed to Paris by the men of colour to assert their rights in the Constituent Assembly, had become known to Brissot, Raynal, Grégoire, and was affiliated with them to the Society of the Friends of the Blacks. Passing thence into England, he became known to the admirable philanthropist, Clarkson. Clarkson and his friend at this time were pleading the cause of the emancipation of the negroes: they were the first apostles of that religion of humanity who believed that they could not raise their hands purely towards God, so long as those hands retained a link of that chain which holds a race of human beings in degradation and in slavery. The association with these men of worth expanded Ogé's mind. He had come to Europe only to defend the interest of the mulattoes; he now took up with warmth the more liberal and holy cause of all the blacks; he devoted himself to the liberty of all his brethren. He returned to France, and became very intimate with Barnave; he entreated the Constituent Assembly to apply the principles of liberty to the colonies, and not to make any exception to Divine law, by leaving the slaves to their masters; excited and irritated by the hesitation of the committee, who withdrew with one hand what it gave with the other, he declared that if justice could not suffice for their cause, he would appeal to force. Barnave had said, "Perish the colonies rather than a principle!" The men of the 14th of July had no right to condemn, in the heart of Ogé, that revolt which was their own title to independence. We may believe that the secret wishes of the friends of the blacks followed Ogé, who returned to San Domingo. He found there the rights of men of colour and the principles of liberty of the blacks more denied and more profaned than ever. He raised the standard of insurrection, but with the forms and rights of legality. At the head of a body of two hundred men of colour, he demanded the promulgation in the colonies of the decrees of the National Assembly, despotically delayed until that time. He wrote to the military commandant at the Cape, "We require the proclamation of the law which makes us free citizens. If you oppose this, we will repair to Leogane, we will nominate electors, and repel force by force. The pride of the colonists revolts at sitting beside us: was the pride of the nobility and clergy consulted when the equality of citizens was proclaimed in France?"
The government replied to this eloquent demand for liberty by sending a body of troops to disperse the persons assembled, and Ogé drove them back.
XI.
A larger body of troops being despatched, they contrived, after a desperate resistance, to disperse the mulattoes. Ogé escaped, and found refuge in the Spanish part of the island. A price was set upon his head. M. de Blanchelande in his proclamations imputed it as a crime to him that he had claimed the rights of nature in the name of the Assembly, which had so loudly proclaimed the rights of the citizen. They applied to the Spanish authorities to surrender this Spartacus, equally dangerous to the safety of the whites in both countries. Ogé was delivered up to the French by the Spaniards, and sent for trial to the Cape. His trial was protracted for two months, in order to afford time to cut asunder all the threads of the plot of independence, and intimidate his accomplices. The whites, in great excitement, complained of these delays, and demanded his head with loud vociferations. The judges condemned him to death for a crime which in the mother-country had constituted the glory of La Fayette and Mirabeau.
He underwent torture in his dungeon. The rights of his race, centred and persecuted in him, raised his soul above the torments of his executioners. "Give up all hope," he exclaimed, with unflinching daring; "give up all hope of extracting from me the name of even one of my accomplices. My accomplices are everywhere where the heart of a man is raised against the oppressors of men." From that moment he pronounced but two words, which sounded like a remorse in the ears of his persecutors—Liberty! Equality! He walked composedly to his death; listened with indignation to the sentence which condemned him to the lingering and infamous death of the vilest criminals. "What!" he exclaimed; "do you confound me with criminals because I have desired to restore to my fellow-creatures the rights and titles of men which I feel in myself! Well! you have my blood, but an avenger will arise from it!" He died on the wheel, and his mutilated carcase was left on the highway. This heroic death reached even to the National Assembly, and gave rise to various opinions. "He deserved it," said Malouet; "Ogé was a criminal and an assassin." "If Ogé be guilty," replied Grégoire, "so are we all; if he who claimed liberty for his brothers perished justly on the scaffold, then all Frenchmen who resemble us should mount there also."
XII.
Ogé's blood bubbled silently in the hearts of all the mulatto race. They swore to avenge him. The blacks were an army all ready for the massacre; the signal was given to them by the men of colour. In one night 60,000 slaves, armed with torches and their working tools, burnt down all their masters' houses in a circuit of six leagues round the Cape. The whites were murdered; women, children, old men—nothing escaped the long-repressed fury of the blacks. It was the annihilation of one race by the other. The bleeding heads of the whites, carried on the tops of sugar canes, were the standards which guided these hordes, not to combat, but to carnage. The outrages of so many centuries, committed by the whites on the blacks, were avenged in one night. A rivalry of cruelty seemed to arise between the two colours. The negroes imitated the tortures so long used upon them, and invented new ones. If certain noble and faithful slaves placed themselves between their old masters and death, they were sacrificed together. Gratitude and pity are virtues which civil war never recognises. Colour was a sentence of death without exception of persons; the war was between the races, and no longer between men. The one must perish for the other to live! Since justice could not make itself understood by them, there was nothing but death left for them. Every gift of life to a white was a treason which would cost a black man's life. The negroes had no longer any pity: they were men no longer, they were no longer a people, but a destroying element which spread over the land, annihilating every thing.
In a few hours eight hundred habitations, sugar and coffee stores, representing an immense capital, were destroyed. The mills, magazines, utensils, and even the very plant which reminded them of their servitude and their compulsory labour, were cast into the flames. The whole plain, as far as eye could reach, was covered with nothing but the smoke and the ashes of conflagration. The dead bodies of whites, piled in hideous trophies of heads and limbs, of men, women, and infants assassinated, alone marked the spot of the rich residences, where they were supreme on the previous night. It was the revenge of slavery: all tyranny has such fearful reverses.
Some whites, warned in time of the insurrection by the generous indiscretion of the blacks, or protected in their flight by the forests and the darkness, had taken refuge at the Cape Town; others, concealed with their wives and children in caves, were fed and attended to by attached slaves, at the peril of their lives. The army of blacks increased without the walls of the Cape Town, where they formed and disciplined a fortified camp. Guns and cannons arrived by the aid of invisible auxiliaries. Some accused the English, others the Spaniards; others, the "friends of the blacks," with being accomplices of this insurrection. The Spaniards, however, were at peace with France; the revolt of the blacks menaced them equally with ourselves. The English themselves possessed three times as many slaves as the French: the principle of the insurrection, excited by success, and spreading with them, would have ruined their establishments, and compromised the lives of their colonists. These suspicions were absurd; there was no one culpable but liberty itself, which is not to be repressed with impunity in a portion of the human race. It had accomplices in the very heart of the French themselves.
The weakness of the resolutions of the Assembly on the reception of this news proved this. M. Bertrand de Molleville, minister of marine, ordered the immediate departure of 6000 men as reinforcement for the isle of San Domingo.
Brissot attacked these repressive measures in a discourse in which he did not hesitate to cast the odium of the crime on the victims, and to accuse the government of complicity with the aristocracy of the colonists.
"By what fatality does this news coincide with a moment when emigrations are redoubled? when the rebels assembled on our frontiers warn us of an approaching outbreak? when, in fact, the colonies threaten us, through an illegal deputation, with withdrawing from the rule of the mother-country? Has not this the appearance of a vast plan combined by treason?"
The repugnance of the friends of the blacks, numerous in the Assembly, to take energetic measures in favour of the colonists, the distance from the scene of action, which weakens pity, and then the interior movement which attracted into its sphere minds and things, soon effaced these impressions, and allowed the spirit of independence amongst the blacks to form and expand at San Domingo, which showed itself in the distance in the form of a poor old slave—Toussaint-Louverture.
XIII.
The internal disorder multiplied at every point of the empire. Religious liberty, which was desire of the Constituent Assembly, and the most important conquest of the Revolution, could not be established without this struggle in face of a displaced worship, and a schism which spread far and wide amongst the people. The counter-revolutionary party was allied every where with the clergy. They had the same enemies, and conspired against the same cause. The nonjuring priests had assumed the character of victims, and the interest of a portion of the people, especially in the country, attached to them. Persecution is so odious to the public feeling that its very appearance raises generous indignation against it. The human mind has an inclination to believe that justice is on the side of the proscribed. The priests were not as yet persecuted, but from the moment that they were no longer paramount they believed themselves humiliated. The ill-repressed irritation of the clergy has been more injurious to the Revolution than all the conspiracies of the emigrated aristocracy. Conscience is man's most sensitive point. A superstition attacked, or a faith disturbed in the mind of a people, is the fellest of conspiracies. It was by the hand of God, invisible in the hand of the priesthood, that the aristocracy roused La Vendée. Frequent and bloody symptoms already betrayed themselves in the west, and in Normandy, that concealed focus of religious war.
The most fearful of these symptoms burst out at Caen. The Abbé Fauchet was constitutional bishop of Calvados. The celebrity of his name, the elevated patriotism of his opinions, the éclat of his revolutionary renown, his eloquence, and his writings, disseminated widely in his diocese, were the causes of greater excitement throughout Calvados than elsewhere.
Fauchet, whose conformity of opinions, honesty of feelings for renovation, and even whose somewhat fanciful imagination, which were subsequently destined to associate him in acts, and even on the scaffold, with the Girondists, was born at Domes, in the ancient province of Nivernais. He embraced the Catholic faith, entered into the free community of the priests of Saint Roch, at Paris, and was for some time preceptor to the children of the marquis de Choiseul, brother of the famous duke de Choiseul, the last minister of the school of Richelieu and Mazarin. A remarkable talent for speaking gave him a distinguished reputation in the pulpit. He was appointed preacher to the king, abbé of Montfort, and grand-vicaire of Bourges. He advanced rapidly towards the first dignities of the church; but his mind had imbibed the spirit of the times. He was not a destructive, but a reformer of the church, in whose bosom he was born. His work, entitled De l'Eglise Nationale, proves in him as much respect for the principles of the Christian faith as boldness of desire to change its discipline. This philosophic faith, which so closely resembles the Christian Platonism which was paramount in Italy under the Medici, and even in the palace of the popes themselves under Leo X., breathed throughout his sacred discourses. The clergy was alarmed at these lights of the age shining in the very sanctuary. The Abbé Fauchet was interdicted, and, struck off the list of the king's preachers.
But the Revolution already opened other tribunes to him. It burst forth, and he rushed headlong into it, as imagination rushes towards hope. He fought for it from the day of its birth, and with every kind of weapon. He shook the people in the primary assemblies, and in the sections; he urged with voice and gesture the insurgent masses under the cannon of the Bastille. He was seen, sword in hand, to lead on the assailants. Thrice did he advance, under fire of the cannon, at the head of the deputation which summoned the governor to spare the lives of the citizens, and to surrender.[15] He did not soil his revolutionary zeal with any blood or crime. He inflamed the mind of the people for liberty; but with him liberty was virtue; nature had endowed him with this twofold character. There were in his features the high-priest and the hero. His exterior pleased and attracted the populace. He was tall and slender, with a wide chest, oval countenance, black eyes, and his dark brown hair set off the paleness of his brow. His imposing but modest appearance inspired at the first glance favour and respect. His voice clear, impressive, and full-toned; his majestic carriage, his somewhat mystical style, commanded the reflection, as well as the admiration, of his auditors. Equally adapted to the popular tribune or the pulpit, electoral assemblies or cathedral were alike too circumscribed in limits for the crowds who flocked to hear him. It seemed as though he were a revolutionary saint—Bernard preaching political charity, or the crusade of reason.
His manners were neither severe nor hypocritical. He; himself confessed that he loved with legitimate and pure; affection Madame Carron, who followed him every where, even to churches and clubs. "They calumniated me with respect to her," he said, "and I attached myself the more strongly to her, and yet I am pure. You have seen her, even more lovely in mind than face, and who for the ten years I have known her seems to me daily more worthy of being loved. She would lay down her life for me; I would resign my life for her; but I would never sacrifice my duty to her. In spite of the malignant libels of the aristocrats, I shall go every day at breakfast-time to taste the charms of the purest friendship in her society. She comes to hear me preach! Yes, no doubt of it; no one knows better than herself the sincerity with which I believe in the truths I profess. She comes to the assemblies of the Hôtel-de-Ville! Yes, no doubt of it: it is because she is convinced that patriotism is a second religion, that no hypocrisy is in my soul, and that my life is really devoted to God, to my country, and friendship."
"And you dare to assert that you are chaste," retorted the faithful and indignant priests, by the Abbé de Valmeron. "How absurd! Chaste, at the moment when you confess the most unpardonable inclinations; when you attract a woman from the bed of her husband—her duties as a mother—when you take about every where this infatuated female, attached to your footsteps, in order to display her ostentatiously to the public gaze! And who follow, sir! A troop of ruffians and abandoned women. Worthy pastor of this foul populace, which celebrates your pastoral visit by the only rejoicings that can give you pleasure—your progress is marked by every excess of rapine and debauchery." These bitter reproaches resounded in the provinces, and caused great excitement. The conforming and nonconforming priests were disputing the altars. A letter from the minister of the interior came to authorise the nonjuring priests to celebrate the holy sacrifice in the churches where they had previously done duty. Obedient to the law, the constitutional priests opened to them their chapels, supplied them with the ornaments necessary for divine worship; but the multitude, faithful to their ancient pastors, threatened and insulted the new clergy. Bloody struggles took place between the two creeds on the very threshold of God's house. On Friday, November the 4th, the former curé of the parish of Saint Jean, at Caen, came to perform the mass. The church was full of Catholics. This meeting offended the constitutionalists and excited the other party. The Te Deum, as a thanksgiving, was demanded and sung by the adherents of the ancient curé, who, encouraged by this success, announced to the faithful that he should come again the next day at the same hour to celebrate the sacrament. "Patience!" he added; "let us be prudent, and all will be well."
The municipality, informed of these circumstances, entreated the curé to abstain from celebrating the mass the next day, as he had announced; and he complied with their wishes. The multitude, not informed of this, filled the church, and clamoured for the priest and the promised Te Deum. The gentry of the neighbourhood, the aristocracy of Caen, the clients and numerous domestics of the leading families in the neighbourhood, had arms under their clothes. They insulted the grenadiers; an officer of the national guard reprimanded them. "You come to seek what you shall get," replied the aristocrats: "we are the stronger, and will drive you from the church." At these words some young men rushed on the national guards to disarm them: a struggle ensued, bayonets glittered, pistol shots resounded in the cathedral, and they made a charge, sword in hand. Companies of chasseurs and grenadiers entered the church, cleared it, and followed the crowd, step by step, who fired again upon them when in the street. Some killed and others wounded, were the sad results of the day. Tranquillity seemed restored. Eighty-two persons were arrested, and on one of them was found a pretended plan of counter-revolution, the signal for which was to be given on the following Monday. These documents were forwarded to Paris. The nonjuring priests were suspended from the celebration of the holy mysteries in the churches of Caen until the decision of the National Assembly. The Assembly heard with indignation the recital of these troubles, occasioned by the enemies of the constitution, and the adherents of fanaticism and the aristocracy. "The only part we have to take," said Cambon, "is to convoke the high national court, and send the accused before it." They deferred pronouncing on this proposition until the moment when they should be in possession of all the papers relative to the troubles in Caen.
Gensonné detailed the particulars of similar disturbances in La Vendée: the mountains of the south, La Lozère, l'Herault, l'Ardèche, which were but ill repressed by the recent dispersion of the camp of Jalès, the first act of the counter-revolutionary army, were now greatly agitated by the two-fold impulse of their priests and gentry. The plains, furnished with streams, roads, towns, and easily kept down by the central force, submitted without resistance to the contre-coups of Paris. The mountains preserve their customs longer, and resist the influence of new ideas as to a conquest by armed strangers. It seems as though the appearance of these natural ramparts gave their inhabitants confidence in their strength, and a solid conviction of the unchangeableness of things, which prevents them from being so easily carried away by the rapid currents of alteration.
The mountaineers of these countries felt for their nobles that voluntary and traditional devotion which the Arabs have for their sheiks, and the Scots for the chieftains of their clans. This respect and this attachment form part of the national honour in these rural districts. Religion, more fervent in the south, was in the eyes of these people a sacred liberty, on which revolution made attempts in the name of political liberty. They preferred the liberty of conscience to the liberty as citizens. Under all these titles the new institutions were odious: faithful priests nourished this hatred, and sanctified it in the hearts of the peasantry, whilst the nobility kept up a royalism, which pity for the king's misfortunes and the royal family made more full of sympathy at the daily recital of fresh outrages.
Mende, a small village hidden at the bottom of deep valleys, half way between the plains of the south and those of the Lyonnais, was the centre of counter-revolutionary spirit. The bourgeoisie and the nobility, mingled together from the smallness of their fortunes, the familiarity of their manners, and the frequent unions of their families, did not entertain towards each other that intestine envy, hatred, and malice, which was favourable to the Revolution. There was neither pride in the one nor jealousy in the other: it was as it is in Spain, one single people, where nobility is only, if we may say so, but a right of first birth of the same blood. These people had, it is true, laid down their arms after the insurrection of the preceding year in the camp of Jalès: but hearts were far from being disarmed. These provinces watched with an attentive eye for the favourable moment in which they might rise en masse against Paris. The insults to the dignity of the king, and the violence done to religion by the Legislative Assembly, excited their minds even to fanaticism. They burst out again, as though involuntarily, on the occasion of a movement of troops across their valleys. The tricoloured cockade, emblem of infidelity to God and the king, had entirely disappeared for several months in the town of Mende, and they put up the white cockade, as a souvenir and a hope of that order of things to which they were secretly devoted.
The directory of the department, consisting of men strangers to the country, resolved on having the emblem of the constitution respected, and applied for some troops of the line. This the municipality opposed, in a resolution addressed to the directory, and made an insurrectional appeal to the neighbouring municipalities, and a kind of federation with them to resist together the sending of any troops into their districts. However, the troops sent from Lyons at the request of the directory approached; on their appearance, the municipality dissolved the ancient national guard, composed of a few friends of liberty, and formed a fresh national guard, of which the officers were chosen by itself from amongst the gentry and most devoted royalists of the neighbourhood. Armed with this force, the municipality compelled the directory of the department to supply them with arms and ammunition.
Such were the movements of the town of Mende, when the troops entered the place. The national guard, under arms, replied to the cry of Vive la nation, uttered by the troops, by the cry of Vive le roi. Then they followed the soldiers to the principal square in the city, and there took, in presence of the defenders of the constitution, an oath to obey the king only, and to recognise no one but the king. After this audacious display, the national guard, in parties, paraded the town, insulting, braving the soldiers: swords were drawn, and blood flowed. The troops pursued made a stand, and took to their weapons. The municipality, having the directory in check, and holding it as hostage, compelled it to send the troops orders to withdraw to their quarters. The commandant of the forces obeyed. This victory emboldened the national guard; and during the night it compelled the directory to send the troops an order to leave the city and evacuate the department. The national guard, drawn up in a line of battle in the square of Mende, saw hourly its ranks increase by detachments of the neighbouring municipalities, who came down from the mountains, armed with fowling pieces, scythes, and ploughshares. The troops would have been massacred if they had not retired under cover of the night. They retreated from the city amidst victorious cries from the royalists. The following day was a series of fêtes, in which the royalists of the town and those of the city celebrated their common triumph, and fraternised together. They insulted all the emblems of the Revolution; hooted the constitution; plundered the hall of the Jacobins; burnt down the houses of the principal members of this hateful club—put some in prison. But their vengeance confined itself to outrage. The people, controlled by the gentlemen and the curés, spared the blood of their enemies.