I know my forces. Soon your chastisement will serve as a memorable example to posterity! That is how a man must speak to you in whom you at first inspired pity. Accuse no one of conspiracy against your infernal Constitution. The King did not give the orders that have been given: I alone have ordered everything. Against me, then, whet your daggers and prepare your poisons. You shall answer for the days of the King to all the Kings of the world. Touch a hair of his head, and there will not remain one stone upon another in Paris. I know the roads. I shall conduct the foreign armies. Farewell, messieurs; I end without comment. You know my sentiments.
MARQUIS OF BOUILLÉ.
These insults, these menaces, addressed to the Revolution, to France in the name of all the Kings of the world by a royalist confidant and accomplice of Louis XVI, by a general who, "knowing the roads, would lead the foreign armies upon Paris, of which he would not leave one stone upon another," unveiled, with brutal frankness, the plan of the federated sovereigns. Nevertheless, such was the blindness of the National Assembly that instead of declaring the deposition of Louis XVI and bringing him before their bar, they contented themselves with decreeing: "That a guard be given to the King to be responsible for his person, and that the accomplices of his flight be examined by the committee-men of the Assembly, who will also hear the statements of Louis XVI and the Queen."
We went, Victoria and I, to the Elysian Fields, about six in the evening of the 25th of June, to be present at the entry of Louis into his good city of Paris.
A vast concourse of people covered the Elysian Fields and Louis XV Place. After great effort we succeeded in drawing near to the double cordon formed by the National Guard to allow a free passage to the royal cortege. A murmur beginning in the distance and drawing nearer and nearer announced the arrival of the King. General Lafayette passed by at a gallop, escorted by a brilliant staff of blue-bonnets, on his way to meet the carriages.
The brave Santerre, so highly esteemed by the inhabitants of the St. Antoine suburb, also passed by on horseback to join the royal escort. He was accompanied by two patriots, Fournier the American, and the Marquis of St. Huruque, one of those aristocrats who embraced the revolutionary cause. Santerre advanced at the head of his battalion, recruited among the districts of St. Antoine. Nearly every citizen in that corps, too needy to purchase a uniform, was dressed in his workman's habiliments. The greater part of them bore pike-staffs in lieu of guns. The aspect of these men—their half-bared breasts, their honest, energetic and bluff faces, their resolute attitude, their every-day working clothes, and their proletarian woolen caps—offered a striking contrast to that of the "Bearskins," as were called, from their head-gear, the grenadiers of the National Guard from the districts in the center of Paris, nearly all constitutional monarchists.
Soon, repeated nearer and nearer, were heard the words: "Here comes the King! Here comes Capet! Here are Monsieur and Madam Veto!" All eyes were turned toward the royal equipages. As they drove by, a storm began to gather, the lightning flickered and the thunder growled; the heavens grew dark and lent a doleful illumination to the spectacle of which we were the witnesses. A battalion of the National Guard, preceded by Lafayette's staff-officers, led the way; then came the two royal coaches. Ah, this was no longer the time of monarchic splendors, paid for out of the sweat of an enslaved people! This was no longer the time of gilded coaches, surrounded by pages and lackeys, and fleetly drawn by eight horses richly caparisoned, preceded by outriders in dashing liveries, escorted by equerries, guards, and gentlemen loaded with gold and silver broideries, and flashing like a dazzling whirlwind along the avenues of the royal parks!
The first of the two carriages in which the royal family and its suite were riding under escort, was an enormous yellow berlin, which had served Louis in his flight. Covered with dust and mire, it was dragged by six post-horses harnessed on with ropes, and mounted by postillions whose hats bore long tricolored ribbons and cockades.
The carriage went by at a walk, giving all a good view of the royal family. Louis XVI was dressed in a maroon suit with a straight collar—his disguise as valet-de-chambre to the pretended Baroness of Korff. He occupied a seat at the right, in the bottom of the berlin, at the side of which General Lafayette strutted on horseback. The bloated face of Louis XVI, imprinted with the spineless inertia of his character, expressed neither fear, nor anger, nor surprise. With his elbow he nudged the Queen, who was seated beside him, and pointed out to her with his finger one of the placards, which bore in large letters the words: "Silence, and remain covered, citizens. The King is to pass before his judges."
In the front part of the carriage we saw the King's sister, Madam Elizabeth, her face sad and sweet. She seemed greatly afraid, and held her eyes cast down. Close beside her was Petion, one of the commissioners of the Assembly, grave and severe. The other commissioner, Barnave, one of the chiefs of the Girondin party, a fine-looking young man, attached at times a furtive but passionate gaze upon Marie Antoinette, with whom, according to report, he was already seriously smitten. Between his knees he held the Dauphin, Marie Antoinette's son, a pretty child with golden curly hair, who laughed and smiled with boyish carefreeness.
The second coach contained the personages of the court who had participated in the King's escape. Next came a little open carriage trimmed with green twigs from which floated the tricolored flag. In this vehicle, standing erect, in an attitude of triumph, rode Drouet the post-keeper and his postillion William, both of whom had helped bring about the arrest of the King at Varennes.
The procession was closed by the St. Antoine battalion, commanded by Santerre. As it came in sight the people cried with one voice, "Long live the law! Long live the Nation!" Then the storm broke over Paris, and amidst such exclamations, mingled with the crashing of thunder, Louis XVI entered as a prisoner the palace of his fathers.
Such was the blindness of the Assembly in its bourgeois egotism, in its mistrust of the people, in its absurd hatred of republican government, that it still thought to impose upon France the authority of this King, disgraced, despised even by his own partisans, and convicted of perjury, treason, and conspiracy with the foreigner.
CHAPTER V.
THE DAY OF THE FIELD OF MARS.
July 17, 1791 (Midnight).—I have just returned to our lodging, my spirits still in the grip of horror and affright. I have been at the massacre of the Field of Mars. Curses upon Lafayette!
The recital of this mournful event, which must be charged to the bourgeoisie, will be of service to the sons of Joel.
From early morning, the weather was magnificent. Not a cloud flecked the azure of the sky. A great mass of people, myself among them, directed their steps toward the Field of Mars, men, women and children in holiday apparel. Every face breathed joy, and on all countenances shone satisfaction. At least as many women as citizens were in the throng. They, also, felt a legitimate pride in being able to prove their devotion to civic duty by affixing their names to a petition destined for the National Assembly.
About half after eight in the morning, as I reached Great Rock, near one of the gates of the esplanade of the Field of Mars, I heard shouts, and almost immediately the crowd before me turned and fell away on either side, as if a prey to some unspeakable horror. Then I saw approaching the giant Lehiron, marching at the head of a band of his brigands—Lehiron, whom I had thought killed by Franz of Gerolstein, but who, recovered from his wound, reappeared before my eyes. On the end of a pike the villain carried a freshly severed head; one of his disciples carried a second head likewise transfixed on a pike-staff, and shouted: "Death to the aristocrats! To the lamp-post with the enemies of the people!" Several vixens, drunk and in tatters, had joined the assassins and echoed their cries of death. In the group I recognized, through their feminine masquerade, Abbot Morlet and his god-son, little Rodin.
The band of murderers with their frightful trophies passed before me like a horrid vision.
At last, about two o'clock in the afternoon, a deputation of Jacobins arrived. The spokesman informed the eager and attentive crowd that an address proposed the evening before had been withdrawn by the club, as it might be construed as a rebellion against the Assembly. The people were for an instant rendered dumb by disappointment. A number of voices cried out:
"Then draw us up another petition. We will sign it!"
The Jacobin spokesman and four chosen from among his fellow delegates, Citizens Peyre, Vachart, Robert, and Demoy, drew up on the instant an address, which Citizen Demoy read, as follows:
"ON THE ALTAR OF THE COUNTRY,
"FIELD OF MARS, JULY 17 OF THE YEAR III OF LIBERTY.
"Representatives of the Nation:
"You are approaching the end of your labors. A great crime has been committed. Louis XVI flees, unworthily abandons his post. The citizens arrest him at Varennes. He is brought back to Paris. The people of the capital immediately demand that the fate of the guilty one be left undecided until an expression of opinion be obtained from the eighty-three departments of France. A multitude of addresses demanded of you that you pass judgment on Louis XVI. You, gentlemen, have prejudged him innocent and inviolable!
"Legislators, such was not the opinion of the people. Justice must be done.
"Everything compels us to demand of you, in the name of all France, that you reconsider your decision, that you hold that the offense of Louis XVI is proven; that the King, by the very fact of his flight, has abdicated.
"Receive, then, his abdication.
"Legislators, convoke a new constituent power, which will proceed in a truly national manner to deal with this guilty King, and above all to the organization of a new executive power.
"Signed:
"PEYRE,
"VACHART,
"ROBERT,
"DEMOY."
The reading of the petition, concise, measured in terms, but marked with energy, was received with unanimous applause. Its summary tenor, repeated from mouth to mouth down the whole length of the Field of Mars, received the assent of everyone. Then began an admirable scene. The petitioners, men, women and children, forming in long files, in perfect order, to the left of the staging, stopped one by one at the foot of the Altar of the Country, placing their signatures upon the thick book, whose many pages were bound together with lacings, and then descended on the other side of the stage; and all without confusion, without outcry, as if each were deeply conscious of the importance of the civic act.
Toward three o'clock I saw three municipal officers, girt in their sashes, mount the stage. They were Leroux, Hardy, and Renaud. The Jacobin delegation having given them notice of the petition, one of the three, after reading it to his colleagues, addressed the multitude as follows:
"Citizens, your petition is perfectly legal. We are charmed at the sight presented to us. Everything here is being carried on in admirable order. Some have told us there was a riot on the Field of Mars; we are now convinced that the report is baseless. Far from interfering with the signing of your petition, we shall aid you with the public powers if anyone attempts to trouble you in the exercise of your rights."
The words of the committee of the Commune of Paris were applauded by the crowd. The committee left, and the people continued to pour towards the Altar of the Country to sign the lists.
The day drew to its close. The sun disappeared behind the hill of Meudon. The hour of eight sounded from the clock of the Military School. A part of the vast throng which surrounded me, setting out to regain their homes, turned their steps toward that entrance to the Field of Mars which gives upon Great Rock. Each one rejoiced that he had assisted at the great demonstration.
Suddenly, from the neighborhood of the Great Rock gate, towards which we were proceeding, we heard the sound of a large corps of drums, beaten at the double-quick; then, in the pauses of the march, the heavy rumbling of several pieces of artillery; almost at the same instant, but further off, in the direction of the gate near the Military School, sounded the trumpet calls of cavalry; and finally, more distant still, the snarl of other drums from the quarter of the bridge leading across the Seine from the end of the field. The vast parade-ground, surrounded by walls whose perpendicular sides overhung great moats, was thus being invaded by an armed force advancing at once toward the three outlets through which the people intended to return to Paris. The immense deploy of troops, infantry, cavalry and artillery, converging in unison upon the Field of Mars, filled with an inoffensive multitude at the point of leaving it, caused great and general surprise, but at first aroused neither fear nor suspicion. The groups around me, yielding to innocent curiosity and to the love of sight-seeing native in the Parisian, quickened their steps "to see the soldiers go by," all the while asking themselves what could be the object of this massing of military forces. The advance guard of the column which entered by the Great Rock gate, was composed of the battalion of the National Guard called, from their district, the Daughters of St. Thomas. Then followed General Lafayette, surrounded by his brilliant staff, and finally Bailly, the Mayor of Paris, accompanied by several municipal officers. One of these carried a staff around which was furled a piece of red cloth, hardly visible, for I had not noticed it except for the exclamation of an old man in front of me:
"Meseems they hoist the red flag! I believe that is not done except in the presence of public danger, in case of insurrection, or when martial law has been proclaimed from the City Hall!"
"In that case," anxiously queried the spectators, "can they have proclaimed martial law in the interior of Paris?" "Is there, then, trouble, or a tumult of the people, or an insurrection in the city? What about?"
While these words were being anxiously exchanged around me, the apparition of the almost invisible bit of red bunting, the expression of sinister glee I had just remarked on the faces of several inebriated National Guardsmen who, marching past the crowd, tapped their guns, crying "We shall send a few pills into the Jacobins;"—all these circumstances connected themselves in my mind and forced upon me all too clear a premonition of what was about to occur. The batteries of artillery had commenced to disgorge through the Great Rock gate when the bourgeois guard which was in line halted, and, deploying before its banner, advanced, with leveled guns and quickened pace, upon the multitude, which recoiled before it. At the same instant the cavalry entered at a rapid trot by the gate near the Military School, while the other column poured in by the bridge over the Seine. By this simultaneous manoeuvre the forty thousand persons or thereabouts who still remained in the Field of Mars, surrounded by embankments and walls, saw themselves hemmed in on every side by the troops who occupied the gates.
Vain would be any attempt on my part to give an idea of the stupor, then the fright, and soon the panic, which seized the helpless multitude. Great God, what a picture! What heartrending cries! What shrieks of children, of women, mingling with the imprecations of men whose energy became paralyzed, either by the physical impossibility of doing anything in the crush, or by their preoccupation to safeguard a wife, a mother, a daughter, or children of tender age, exposed to smothering, or to being trampled under foot!
Suddenly I saw appear, on top of one of the embankments, Lehiron and about a score of his cut-throat band, accompanied by some tattered, bare-headed urchins who cried:
"Down with the National Guard! Down with the blue-bonnets! Down with Lafayette!"
While his followers rained a hail of rocks at the city guard, Lehiron drew a pistol from his pocket, and, without even taking aim, discharged his weapon in the direction of the General's staff, shouting:
"Death to Lafayette!"
At the same moment, without unfurling the red flag, without Mayor Bailly having issued a single order, a company of the city guard opened fire, but shot in the air in the direction of the bank occupied by Lehiron and his pack. This first fusillade, although harmless, nevertheless threw the populace into inexpressible terror. Almost immediately, we were pierced by volleys from the whole platoon, this time deadly. I saw the face of the fine old man who had stood in front of me blanch under the blood which poured from his riddled forehead. A young woman who held her four or five-year-old son above her head lest he be smothered in the press, felt her child grow rigid and heavy; he had been shot through the body. Piercing cries or suppressed moans uttered on all sides of me told that other shots also had taken effect. The fusillade continued. A frenzy of flight, of everyone for himself, fell upon the huddled mass; the people elbowed and trod upon one another. In the midst of this frightful pell-mell, I lost my balance and fell over the body of the old man, which had until then been supported erect by the crowding of my neighbors. The aged body saved my life; it prevented me from being crushed under the feet of the throng. Nevertheless, I received several deep wounds on the head. I felt the blood flow copiously from them. My senses swam, and I completely lost consciousness.
When I came to myself, the clock of the Military School was striking ten. The moon, from the midst of a cloudless and star-strewn sky, lighted up the Field of Mars. The coolness of the night revived me. My first thought was for my sister—what anguish must have been hers! I saw, here and there, the wandering lights of several lanterns, by aid of which men and women had come to seek out among the dead and dying those whom they had left behind them.
Soon, some distance from me, I perceived a woman, tall and slender, in a white robe. This woman bore no lantern; she came and went hurriedly; halting and bending over, she contemplated the victims, she seemed to interrogate their features. My heart bounded; I divined that it was Victoria.
"Sister!" I cried, weakly.
I was not deceived. Learning by the popular rumor of the massacre which had taken place, Victoria had run to the Field of Mars to find me. Her tender cares summoned back my strength. She stanched the blood from my wounds, dressed them, and, supporting me on her arm, assisted me to the gate opening on Great Rock. We passed by the scaffolding on which had been erected the Altar of the Country. The steps were buried under corpses.
Arrived home with Victoria, I wished, after an hour's rest, to inscribe in my journal this very night the record of this fatal day of the 17th of July, 1791.
I have added to my record the following fragment of an article from the paper of Camille Desmoulins, explaining the causes of the massacre of the Field of Mars. Desmoulins's account, save in one point noted by me, is scrupulously exact. I copy it literally:
"Camille Desmoulins, sending to Lafayette his resignation as journalist:
| "'Tis wrong we were, the thing is far too clear, |
| And our good guns have settled this affair. |
"Lafayette, liberator of two worlds! Flower of janissary chieftains! Phoenix of constable-majors! Don Quixote of the Capets and the two chambers! Constellation of the White Horse! I improve the first moment that I touch a land of liberty to send you the resignation as journalist and as national censor which you have for so long been demanding of me. I place it also at the feet of Monsieur Bailly and his red flag. I feel that my voice is too feeble to raise itself above that of thirty thousand cowards and also of your satellites, above the din of your four hundred drums and your hundreds of cannon....
"You and your accomplices in the City Hall and the Assembly feared the expression of the views of the people of Paris, which will soon become those of all France. You feared to hear your sentence pronounced by the nation in person, seated on its bed of justice, in the Field of Mars. 'What shall we do?' you asked yourselves.
"'Eh, call to our aid martial law!' Against peaceful and unarmed petitioners, who were quietly practising their right of assemblage!
"Or, that is what the Constitutionals imagined, to the end of gratifying us a second time with martial law; and, instead of hanging one man (as the baker Francis), they massacred two."
At this point Camille Desmoulins recounts the arrest of two individuals found during the morning hiding under the Altar of the Country, and continues:
"The cowards, the back-sliding bandits, counterfeiting the appearance of exaggerated patriots, threw themselves upon the two unfortunates, tore them to pieces, cut off their heads, and went to promenade them about Paris.
"Thus sought they to prepare the citizens, by the horror of the spectacle, to support the declaration of martial law. Immediately the news spread in the city, with the rapidity of lightning—'Two heads have been struck off in the Field of Mars.' Then, 'Out upon the petitioners, the Jacobins and the Cordeliers!' Thus were the municipal officers bewitched."
Here Desmoulins forgets or passes over in silence the honorable conduct of a minority of the council of the Commune of Paris. The three councilmen, learning on their return from the Field of Mars of the proclamation of martial law, were astounded, and affirmed and testified on their honor that the most admirable order reigned on the concourse, that they had looked into the address to the Representatives of the people; that it was perfectly in place and legitimate; that they had assured the petitioners that, far from troubling them in the exercise of their duty, the municipal authority would protect them with all care. In fine, the three officers, deeply moved and indignant, exclaimed with tears in their eyes that it would disgrace them, ruin them, to march against petitioners to whom they had pledged and guaranteed complete security. But in spite of the generous words of the three officers, Lafayette excited his pretorians; they cried, goes on Camille Desmoulins:
"'There is the red flag already flung out. The most difficult thing is done. Now, if all the clubs, all the fraternal societies would meet at the Field of Mars to sign the petition for the abdication of Louis XVI, what a bowl of nectar that Jacobin blood would be to our palates!'
"And so the pretorians pushed their measures. They assembled ten thousand troops: infantry, cavalry, artillery. The night, the time set for marching, having come, Lafayette's three aides-de-camp spread themselves in the public places, declaring that their General had been assassinated by a Jacobin. But properly to judge of the fury of these idolaters, these blue-bonnets of the Nero of two worlds, one should have seen them in one moment pour furiously from their pens, or, rather, from their dens. They loaded with ball in plain view of the people; on all sides the drums beat the assembly; the twenty-seven battalions most heavily composed of aristocrats received the order to march upon the Field of Mars. They inflamed themselves to the massacre. As they loaded their muskets they were heard to say: We shall send some pills into the Jacobins. The cavalry flourished their sabers. It was half after eight in the evening when the red flag was unrolled as the signal for the massacre of inoffensive petitioners. The battalions arrived at the Field of Mars, not by one sole entrance, in order that the citizens might disperse, but by all the three issues at once, that the petitioners might be enclosed from all sides. And here is the final perfidy, that which caps the climax of the horrors of the day. These volleys—all delivered without orders—were fired upon petitioners, who seeing death advancing from all sides, and unable to flee, received them as they embraced the Altar of the Country, which in an instant was heaped with the corpses of the slain."
Such was the melancholy day of the Field of Mars. And yet the will of the petitioners—the forfeiture of Louis XVI's right to the crown and consequently the establishment of the Republic—was so sane, so logical, so inevitable by the march of events and the force of affairs, that the following year saw Louis suspended from the throne upon accusation of high treason, and saw the National Convention proclaim the Republic. But alas! how many victims!
CHAPTER VI.
WAR AND COUNTER-WAR.
After the massacre of the Field of Mars, the reaction thought itself all-powerful, and entered pitilessly upon its career of repression. The presses of the patriot journals were destroyed, their writers forced to flee or go into hiding. The clubs, under the weight of intimidation, remained almost silent.
Re-established in full power, Louis XVI immediately renewed his intrigues, within France with the enemies of the Revolution, the nobility and priesthood, and without, with the Emigrant nobles, and foreign sovereigns.
The Constituent Assembly, having finished its labors, submitted the Constitution to the royal sanction, and declared itself dissolved on September 29, 1791. Although covertly resolved to tear the Constitution to shreds, the King solemnly swore to uphold it. The Constituent Assembly gave place to the Legislative Assembly. According to its own enactment, none of the old members could be re-elected. Robespierre and the other minority leaders no longer held their seats, therefore, among the Representatives of the people; but the principles which inspired the minority in the Constituent, became, through the majority of the Legislative Assembly, the expressed general opinion of France. The spirit of the Revolution was resuscitated by the elections. The Right of the new Assembly was not composed, as that of the Constituent, of grand seigneurs, cardinals, bishops, bourgeois aristocrats, men of the court or the sword, defenders of the old régime; the Right of the Legislative Assembly was occupied by the Constitutional party, represented outside the Assembly by the Club of the Feuillants. The heads of this party, Lafayette, Mathieu, Dumas, Ramond, Vaublanc, Beugnot, and others, sought the continuance in power of Louis XVI and the Constitution. The leaders of the Left were, to a great extent, from the department of the Gironde, whence the name of Girondins, applied to Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Ducos and their companions. Their leanings were either purely republican, or were on the way to become so. Finally Bazire, Chabot and Merlin sat at the extreme Left; but this faction, as well as that of the Girondins, was devoted to the Revolution, and determined to defend it by all means. The Center of the Assembly, undecided and watery, voted as the spirit moved them, sometimes with the Left, sometimes with the Right. In short, the majority of the body, no longer able to doubt the treason of Louis XVI or his secret understanding with the foreign coalition, was undisguisedly hostile to royalty. It even decided, at its first session, to suppress, in the reports of the representatives of the sovereign people and its executive committee, those ridiculous appellations of Sire and Majesty, the superannuated relics of monarchical fetichism.
Louis XVI, on his part, believing himself sure of the assistance of the foreign sovereigns, and counting, within, on the activity of the clergy and the complicity of the generals and officers of the National Guard, obstinately defied the Assembly. The King chose his ministry from the Feuillant Club, notoriously counter-revolutionary. In vain did the Assembly render its decrees against the priests, who were fanning the fires of civil war; against the aristocrats, who were flocking to join the body of Emigrants gathered in arms on the frontier. Louis XVI opposed his veto to the execution of these decrees. Soon there came to light the odious plot of the foreign war, organized between the King, the ministers, the court party, and the despots of Europe. The Emigrants made open preparations on the frontiers for an armed invasion under the protection of the German princes bordering on France, and were to serve as advance guard to the troops of the coalition. These threatening preparations aroused the Representatives. Isnard mounted the tribunal and exclaimed:
"Representatives of the people, let us rise to the height of our office. Let us speak to the King, to his ministers, to Europe, with the firmness that befits us. Let us say to the King: You reign but by the people and for the people. The people alone is sovereign! Let us say to the ministers: Choose between public gratitude and the vengeance of the laws. Let us say to Europe: France draws her sword; the scabbard she will fling away. Then she will wage to the death the war of the peoples against the Kings, and soon the people will embrace before the spectacle of their dethroned tyrants; the earth will be consoled, the heavens satisfied!"
Meanwhile Louis cloaked himself in a well-feigned submission to the orders of the Assembly. He promised to hold off the German princes firmly and with dignity. 'Twas the promise of a King! Under the pretext of possible eventualities of war, he chose as Minister of War the Count of Narbonne, a young courtier crammed with ambition and audacity. The latter organized three army corps, placing the first under the command of the Marquis of Lafayette, and giving the other two to the Marquis of Rochambeau and Marshal Lukner, two enemies of the Revolution.
Robespierre, Danton, and Billaud-Varenne were farsighted enough to detect the conspiracy hidden beneath these ostensible preparations for war. In the memorable meeting of the Jacobins, of the 12th of December, 1791, several orators of the republican party gave utterance to their sentiments.
"Far be it from me to raise my voice against the cruel necessity of an inevitable war," declared Billaud-Varenne. "No! For when in 1789 people were congratulating themselves, saying that never had a revolution cost so little blood, I always answered: A people which breaks the yoke of tyranny can never seal its liberty irrevocably save by tracing the decree which consecrates it with the points of their bayonets! These must be plunged at least into the breasts of our enemies! Only by combating them can we be freed of them forever!"
"If it were a question of deciding whether, actually, we were to have war, I would answer, Yes," declared Danton in turn. "Yes, the clarions of war resound; yes, the exterminating angel of liberty will smite the satellites of despotism. But when are we to have the war? Is it not after having well judged our situation, after having weighed everything, after having deeply scrutinized the intentions of the King who is going to propose war to us? Let us be on our guard against the Executive."
Thus did Billaud-Varenne denounce at the Jacobins the plan of the counter-revolution, of which war was the mask. Thus did Danton, while sharing the same suspicion, nevertheless incline toward war, asking only that before the declaration of hostilities, the Assembly should scan closely the intentions of Louis XVI. Brissot took the floor and spoke for war, but a revolutionary war.
Robespierre finally arose to the tribunal:
"It seems to me that those who desire to provoke war have only adopted that opinion through insufficient scrutiny of the nature of the war we are about to embark upon, and of the circumstances with which we find ourselves surrounded. What sort of a war is it proposed that we declare? Is it a war of one nation against other nations? Is it a war of one king against other kings? Is it a war of revolution by a free people against the tyrants who override other peoples? No! What they propose to us, citizens, is the war of all the enemies of the French Revolution against the Revolution itself! This I shall prove by examining what has occurred up to this day, from the administration of the Duke of Broglie who in 1789 proposed to annihilate the National Assembly, up to that of the last successors of this minister....
"Behold what tissues of prevarication and perfidy, of violence and of ruse! Behold the subsidized sedition! Behold the conduct of the court and of the ministry! And is it to that ministry, is it to those agents of the executive power, that you would entrust the conduct of the war? Is it thus you would abandon the safety of the country to those who wish to destroy you?
"The thing which you have most cause to fear, is war. War is the greatest scourge which can, in our present circumstances, menace liberty! For it is in no wise a war kindled by the enmity of peoples. It is a war concerted by the enemies of our Revolution. What are their probable designs? What use would they make of these military forces, this augmentation of power which they ask of you under the pretext of war? They seek, in strengthening the powers of the crown, to force us to a deal! If we refuse, these royalists will then attempt to fasten it upon us by the force of the arms which you will have put into their hands.
"What, there are rebels to punish? The Representatives of the people aimed at them with a decree, and the King opposed his veto to the decree! Instead of allowing the punishment, imposed by the Assembly upon the Emigrants, to take its course, the King proposes a declaration of war, a sham war, whose only aim is to place a formidable military force at the disposal of the enemies of the Revolution, or to open to them our frontiers, thanks to the treason of the aristocratic generals still at the head of our armies! There you have the secret workings of this cabinet intrigue! There is the heart of this complot in which we shall be lost if we allow ourselves to be taken by the snare so craftily colored with patriotism and martial ardor, sentiments so strong in the French spirit."
The sagacity of Robespierre thus tore the veil off the double project of Louis and the Austrian Committee, that perennial hotbed of conspiracy. The soul of this Committee was the Queen, and its numerous emissaries maintained relations with the Emigrant nobles and the foreign Kings; but Louis XVI and his court, by the sublimation of duplicity, carried treason within treason. They deceived even their accomplices.
Louis XVI wanted war because he reckoned on a victory by the allied Kings, and upon their early entry into Paris. Lafayette and his party never mingled in this machination against the country; hence, in order to obtain their support for the declaration of hostilities, Louis had to feign to conspire with them for the triumph of the constitutional kingdom and monarchic institutions.
The Girondins, scenting peril and treachery, sought to conjure away the dangers of the situation by imposing on Louis XVI three ministers whom they thought worthy of their confidence: General Dumouriez was charged with Foreign Affairs; Servan with the Department of War; and Roland with the ministry of the Interior. Dumouriez was a man of war, resourceful, bold and fiery, cunning and subtle of policy, but already grown old in underground intrigue and occult diplomacy; ambitious, cynical, intemperate of habit, covetous to the point of exaction, unreasonable in pride, without virtues, without principles, capable of serving valiantly the Republic and the Revolution, or of shamefully betraying both, according to the exigencies of his interest or ambition. Servan, an officer of genius, was a soldier of integrity, industry and modesty. He was capable and upright, and devoted to the Revolution. Roland was one of the purest and most beautiful characters of the time—simple, stoical, austere, disinterested, of scrupulous honesty, and with a firmness of will equal to the rigidity of his republican convictions, which were shared by his young and charming wife, the soul of the Girondin party, where she reigned as much by the loftiness of her spirit as by her qualities of heart and the attraction of her person.
On April 19, 1792, the Assembly declared war on Austria. Some days after the opening of the campaign the army corps under Count Theobald of Dillon, was, at the first engagement, stampeded before the armies of the coalition. The royalist officers gave the cry "Each for himself!" and provoked a panic among the troops. The army fled in full rout. The enemy crossed our frontiers and the heart of France fell under the menace of the foreign cohorts.
The Girondins recognized the trap into which their patriotism had led them, and spurred by the realization took three active revolutionary measures. They pronounced a sentence of exile upon the fractious priests, the promoters of civil war, who refused to stand by the Constitution; they had the Assembly decree the dissolution of the paid guard of Louis XVI; and they ordered the establishment of a camp of twenty thousand men around Paris, to form a reserve army and to cover the threatened capital. But Louis entered upon an open war with the Assembly, maintained his veto in the matter of the refractory priests, and refused to sanction the organization of the camp at Paris. Roland and Servan, the two patriot ministers, were unseated the 13th of June, and Louis formed a new cabinet, choosing its members from among the enemies of the people.
Still in the dark as to the designs of Louis XVI, and believing that the moment for a coup-d'-etat had arrived, Lafayette wrote from his camp a threatening letter to the Assembly, under date of June 16. The Assembly summoned Lafayette before its bar. He refused to appear. His trial was carried on without him, and he was acquitted by an immense majority. The clubs were thrown into a ferment. Danton at the Cordeliers, Robespierre at the Jacobins, organized for the 20th of June a peaceful demonstration to celebrate the anniversary of the oath of the Tennis Court, and to give Louis XVI a solemn warning. A huge multitude, swelled by women and children, gathered and marched down from the suburbs. The men were in arms; each district dragged its cannon with it. The delegates of the demonstration appeared at the bar of the Assembly. The spokesman delivered himself of his message:
"Legislators, the people comes this day to make you share its fears and its disquietudes. This day recalls to us the memorable date of the twentieth of June, 1789, at the Tennis Court, when the Representatives of the nation met and vowed before heaven not to abandon our cause, to die in its defense. The people is up and alive to what is occurring; it is ready to take decisive measures to avenge its outraged majesty. These rigorous measures are justified by Article II of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, Resistance to Oppression."
While part of the manifestants stationed themselves in the vicinity of the meeting hall of the Assembly, a large body of them planted a tree, symbolic of Liberty, in the garden of the Tuileries. The invasion of the palace gardens was accomplished with perfect order. Louis stood upon a chair in the recess of a window, surrounded by a detachment of National Guards.
One citizen, bearing a red cap on the end of a pole, passing in turn before the King, stopped for an instant and cried "Long live the Nation!" Then Louis XVI, leaning over and making a sign to the citizen to approach his pole nearer, voluntarily took the red cap and placed it on his head. A burst of fervid applause, from everyone who witnessed it, greeted the King's act.
It was a day of suffocating heat; and Louis, seeing a National Guardsman with a water-gourd, indicated by signs that he wished to drink. The guard with alacrity offered his gourd to the King, who slowly quaffed its contents.
But the demonstration of the 20th of June changed in nothing the disposition of the court. Louis XVI continued his shady machinations, and, on the 25th of July, the Duke of Brunswick, generalissimo of the armies of the coalition, issued, in the name of the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Austria, and the Germanic Confederation, a manifesto against France.
The plans of the court were that the Duke of Brunswick, at the head of the Prussians, should cross the Rhine at Coblenz, ascend the left bank of the Moselle, attack that point, and march upon Paris by way of Longwy, Verdun and Chalons. The Prince of Hohenlohe, commanding the troops of the duchy of Hesse and a body of Emigrants, was to march on Thionville and Metz. General Clairfayt, at the head of the troops of the Emperor of Austria and another corps of Emigrants, was to cross the Meuse and make his way to Paris by Rheims and Soissons. Other bodies of the hostile army, placed on the northern frontier and along the Rhine, were to attack the French troops and assist the convergent march of the coalition upon the capital, which they were to seize.
The publication of the manifesto of the tyrants, so far from crushing the energy of the Revolution, exalted it to the pitch of heroism. The journal The Revolutions of Paris renders in glowing terms its account of the spirit in Paris and the departments:
"The National Assembly has at last pronounced the terrible formula, the signal of peril, the appeal to the courage of the people: The nation is in danger! The danger is, in fact, immense. The Directorate of the department of Paris is the most potent instrument the court has served itself with to beat down liberty. The majority of the other Directorates of departments, all the administrators, all the tribunals of justice, all the constituted authorities, are also either openly or covertly the accomplices of Louis XVI, of Marie Antoinette the Austrian, and of the courts of Berlin and Vienna. Louis XVI affords striking protection to all the fanatics, the artificers of civil war. This enemy, disguised under the name of the Constitutional King of France, does more harm of himself than all the other despots of Europe ever could. France is fallen into a state of convulsion, which will precipitate her into either slavery or anarchy. The country is in danger; the people is in insurrection! Frenchmen, you have at last become free!
"France has but two dangerous enemies: Lafayette and Louis XVI; and if the latter were stricken down, Lafayette would no longer exist.
"Then let Louis XVI be driven forever from the throne, and the nation is saved! People, to arms!"
Indeed, an insurrection alone could save public affairs. On August 4 Danton said at the Cordeliers: "The people must be appealed to, they must be shown that the Assembly can not save them. There is no safety save in a general rebellion."
"There is but one question to solve," said Robespierre on the 9th of the same month, at the Jacobins; "That question is the deposition of Louis XVI."
From the beginning of the month of August, the ferment in Paris was on the increase. Every patriot instinctively felt the approach of grave public danger, and vied with his comrades in the effort to overcome it.
The Sections of Paris met nightly to deliberate on public matters. The Section of the Blind Asylum, or "Quinze-Vingts," in the suburb of St. Antoine which was the most influential of all, took the initiative in the measures for insurrection, with this manifesto:
MINUTES OF THE SECTION OF THE BLIND ASYLUM, AUGUST, 9, 1792.
The Section received the commissioners of the following Sections: Fish-Wife, Good-News, Carpet-Shop, Montreuil, Gravillieurs, Beaubourg, Red-Cross, Culvert, Lombards, Ill-Counsel, Popincourt, the Arsenal, the Tuileries, etc., etc. All have adopted the decisions of the Section of the Blind Asylum, recognizing that they were armed solely for the safety of public affairs and the regeneration of France.
An address was read from the federates of the eighty-two departments, asking the Sections of Paris to assemble in arms.
On the motion of its members, the Section decided that each of the Sections of Paris shall name three committee-men, the same to meet at the City Hall of Paris, replace the present Municipal Council, and consider the means necessary for the public weal.
The Sections shall receive no orders other than those coming from a majority of their committee-men, forming the Commune of Paris.
The committee-men named to represent at the Commune the Section of the Blind Asylum are Huguenin, Rossignol, and Balin.
Each Section formulated the powers given by it to its committee-men in the new council of the Commune of Paris. Thus, the formula of the Blind Asylum Section read: "The Section gives to its committee-men unlimited power to do everything to save the country." Prominent among the committee-men elected by the Sections to the new council were Robespierre, Billaud-Varenne, Fabre D'Eglantine, Chaumette, and Fouquier-Tinville.
The first act of the members of this revolutionary Commune was to march to the City Hall on the night of the 9th of August, and in the name of the sovereign people, whose representatives they were, to depose the old Municipal Council from its functions, with the following decree: