The States-General were opened by the King at Versailles amid a vast concourse on May 5, 1789. There were about 1,200 deputies, of whom about 300 represented the clergy, 300 the nobility, and the other 600 the Third Estate. If the King wished to retain the direction of affairs, it was imperative for him at once to declare for a single chamber. The privileged orders could but involve the crown in their own ruin, whilst behind the deputies of the Third Estate was the nation. Louis, however, was not prepared to accept the change which the formation of a single chamber implied—the abolition of all class distinctions, and the swamping of the nobles in the Third Estate. Necker, though more alive to the necessity of seeking popular support, had as little comprehension of the real situation in which the government stood. He wanted ultimately to establish a constitution with two houses, and regarded as the most pressing work of the moment the restoration of the finances. He did not perceive that civil and political equality was what the deputies of the Third Estate had set their heart upon effecting; and that until they were convinced that the government would be on their side, they would pay no attention to mere financial or administrative reforms. At the opening of the States, after speaking at length on the subject of the finances, Necker advised the deputies to appoint commissioners to settle what questions they would discuss in common session, and what as three separate bodies.

The intention of the Minister probably was that the deputies of the three orders should sit and vote together only when financial and administrative questions were under discussion. All other subjects were to be debated by the three estates sitting apart; and in cases in which they failed to come to an agreement, the final decision was to be left to the King.

Experience, indeed, has been in favour of the belief that, in ordinary times, it is expedient that legislative assemblies should be divided into two chambers. But in 1789 the work before the States-General was not one of ordinary legislation. No good could be accomplished until the abolition of the privileged existence of nobles and clergy had been effected; and as an upper chamber could at that time only be composed of nobles and clergy, such a chamber was certain to thwart the Third Estate in doing that which the nation expected them to do. It was, therefore, the vainest hope that Necker’s policy should give satisfaction to the country and enable the King to retain authority. He could only obtain the leadership of the Assembly by declaring unreservedly for a single chamber. But to adopt this course Louis must have been other than he was. Though he wanted to overcome the opposition of the privileged orders to the crown, he regarded their existence as inseparable from the monarchy. He was unable to conceive a monarchy founded on democratic institutions, and strong in proportion to the trust reposed in it. Education, surroundings, habits, his sense of duty itself forbade him to break loose from his past and accept the position of the People’s King. Yet all vestiges of the old feudal order were doomed to perish, whatever attitude Louis assumed; and it would have been well, both for him and France, could he at once have resigned power or been deposed. For if he refused to lead the attack upon the privileged orders, it would be made with all the greater violence, and government, in the true sense of the word, there would be none. Already disorder and riot were rife in many parts of the country. Peasants refused to pay taxes and feudal dues. Educated men cast suspicion on the intentions of the government. Officials were powerless to act with rigour in opposition to the current of public opinion. Intense excitement everywhere prevailed. In every town and hamlet men waited with eagerness for the speedy accomplishment of the desires which had found expression in the cahiers drawn up to be laid before the States.

If Louis was unable to forecast the future, so too was the great mass of his subjects. Amongst the throng of deputies who met together at Versailles, there was but one, the Marquis of Mirabeau, who comprehended the real meaning of the revolution, and foresaw with accuracy the course which events would take. This remarkable man was endowed by nature with enormous energy, mental and physical. While still a youth, he had left his mark for good or for ill wherever he went. He had incurred debts, fought duels, kept order amongst hungry peasants, eating, drinking, and working with them, obtained the good-will of men prejudiced against him, and won the hearts of women. His father, according to the fashion of the time, supported paternal authority by obtaining lettres de cachet from the government, ordering the imprisonment of his son. Mirabeau was imprisoned, now in one fortress, now in another, for months at a time. In early manhood, at the age of twenty-eight, he entered the donjon of Vincennes, a state fortress, where he inhabited a dark, barely-furnished room, and had converse with none but his gaoler. His offences against social order had not been light, for he had deserted his own wife for the wife of another man. But in his vices Mirabeau was but a type of the generation to which he belonged, and the real ground of his imprisonment lay elsewhere. Books and paper were as a favour allowed him. ‘Without books,’ he wrote, ‘I should be dead or mad.’ He read and wrote for fifteen hours out of the twenty-four. After a confinement of more than three years, the quarrel between him and his father was patched up. In 1780 he was released, broken in health, harassed by debts, and blackened in fame, but possessed of a large store of knowledge, a ready pen, a fluent tongue, and a genius for statesmanship which no man in France could rival. Genius was, however, no ground for advancement. A man who had sufficiently powerful interest at court might rise to the highest dignities in Church or State, whatever his incapacity, or whatever the stains on his past life. Mirabeau had no interest at court, while by Louis and his councillors talent was distrusted, and the one statesman that France possessed occupied the position of an unscrupulous adventurer, seeking by whatever means came first to hand to force his way into the ministry. It was no matter of surprise that so signal a victim of arbitrary government should prove an inveterate enemy to the existing order. But Mirabeau did not, through resentment for personal injuries, desire to weaken or degrade the royal authority. He possessed too strong a capacity for the exercise of power. He saw, moreover, too directly into the heart of the situation. He comprehended what no man but himself comprehended at that time, that the real aim of the French people was the sweeping away of all class distinctions, and that the monarchy might be immensely strong if only the King could be brought to adopt new principles of government, in accordance with the democratic spirit of the age. Had he been at the head of affairs he would at once have summoned the States-General and led the way in opening the attack upon the privileged orders. Excluded from all share in the government, he revenged himself by attacking it on every side. The proposition was made to him that he should employ his pen to destroy the popularity of the Parliaments. ‘I will never,’ was his reply, ‘make war upon the Parliaments except in presence of the nation.’ The hesitating and shuffling policy of the ministers; their vain attempts to effect reform through the royal power alone; their efforts to avoid or defer the meeting of the States; and, finally, their refusal, after being driven to call the nation to their aid, to declare for a single chamber, excited his scorn and indignation. He had not only the clear perception that in order to maintain the monarchy the first thing to be done was to crush the privileged orders; he had also the clear perception that the second thing, if indeed it was not of equal importance, was the organisation of government, and that this was impracticable so long as distrust existed between the crown and the nation. When the elections were held, rejected by his own order, he took his seat as representative of the Third Estate of Aix. At Versailles he was the mark of all observers. The wildness of his youth, his long imprisonment, his quarrels with his father, his lawsuits with his wife, his writings, and his eloquence, had given him notoriety throughout France. With the meeting of the States Mirabeau knew that the opportunity had come of making his power felt. ‘At last,’ he said, ‘we shall have men judged by the value of their brains.’

The inevitable consequence of the King’s refusal to declare himself against the privileged orders at once ensued. Disputes arose between the deputies as to the form that the legislature should take. There was a small minority of nobles for union, and a large minority of clergy, composed almost entirely of parish priests, who had to choose between alliance with the Third Estate and dependence on their ecclesiastical superiors. The questions at stake were too vital for compromise to be possible, and thus, while the people impatiently awaited redress of grievances, the Third Estate refused to proceed to business until they were joined by the other two. Political excitement grew greater amongst the middle classes, irritation and discontent amongst the lower. The winter had been one of the coldest and longest on record. The price of bread was rising, and misery, which sufferers expected to vanish on the first meeting of the Estates, was on the increase. It had always been a difficult matter to prevent rioting at Paris in times of political excitement or of scarcity, and now both causes combined to create disorder. In the Faubourg St. Antoine and other poor quarters of the city existed a population including great numbers of ruffians, beggars, and destitute workmen, of whom many were strangers from the country, largely brought to Paris by hope of finding bread or labour, and whose passions might readily be worked on with dangerous effect; while pamphleteers and street orators, without sense of responsibility, and full of passionate desire to assure the triumph of the Third Estate, did not measure their words in seeking to rouse popular indignation against the upper orders. Deputies distinguished as opponents of union were mobbed and hustled at Versailles, and their names held up to execration in Paris. The attitude of the capital gave strength to the deputies of the Third Estate, who finally cut the knot by adopting the title of National Assembly, inviting nobles and clergy to join them, and declaring their purpose of proceeding to business without those who refused to do so (June 17).

The assumption of this title was held an act of usurpation by the opponents of union. Court nobles and ecclesiastics appealed to the King to maintain the authority of his crown by interfering in support of their rights. The deputies of the Third Estate had, it was said, grasped at sovereign power to which they had no claim. As yet there had been no direct collision between the Crown and the deputies of the Third Estate. The long inefficiency of the King had, indeed, destroyed belief in the royal power as an instrument of government. Men believed in themselves, and they believed in the nation. They demanded liberty for individuals, and they demanded that the nation should govern itself. Yet, however democratic were the theories that prevailed, the great body of the French people was deeply attached to monarchy as a form of government, and thoroughly loyal to the person of the King. If desire for the establishment of a democratic constitution was intensely strong, there appeared no other means in the first place of destroying the upper orders; in the second, of preventing their resurrection. Had Louis taken the side of the nation, he might, as Mirabeau foresaw, have exercised immense influence over the course of affairs. If he refused, nominal sovereignty would be left to him, but men would be careful that he should have no real power in his hands. Louis was honestly prepared to cede constitutional rights to the country, which should set limits to the royal authority, and secure the persons and properties of his subjects against arbitrary usage. But he would not, so far as he could prevent it, suffer the abolition of class distinctions, or allow the real governing power to pass from himself and his council to the representatives of the nation. Thus, although the deputies of the Third Estate sought to conceal the fact from themselves, they had to contend against the Crown as well as against the nobility. Louis, in alarm for his authority, now thought to maintain it by openly taking the part of nobles and clergy. Marie Antoinette, less patient than her husband, witnessed with extreme resentment and indignation the conduct of the Third Estate. To excited courtiers it seemed as easy a matter for the King to impose his will on the representatives of the nation as it had been for his predecessors in times past to impose theirs on the Parliament of Paris. It was determined that the King should hold a royal sitting or séance, and declare his intentions to the assembled Estates. Meanwhile the deputies of the Third Estate were excluded from their hall on pretext that preparations had to be made for the reception of the King. Fully expecting a dissolution, they repaired to a neighbouring tennis court, where with one voice and hands raised to the sky they swore an oath never to separate before they had established constitutional government. There was a dense crowd outside. All approaches to the court were blocked, and the one deputy who refused to take the oath was with difficulty saved from outrage (June 20). The cause of the upper orders was now weakened by desertions from their ranks. A large number of curés as well as a few nobles joined the deputies of the Third Estate. This in itself, had Louis been well advised, might have warned him against the course that he proposed to take. On June 23 he came in state to the hall, where the whole body of deputies was by his injunction assembled. There, by the mouths of his ministers, he told them that they were to meet as three separate orders. With his consent first obtained, they might form one assembly for the discussion of matters of common interest; from which, however, all the burning questions of the day, ecclesiastical, social, and constitutional, were expressly excepted. Necker, who disapproved the arbitrary form in which the royal will was signified, saved his popularity by refusing to be present on the occasion. Before retiring, Louis ordered all to disperse and assemble next day in their separate chambers. In case of disobedience he would undertake by himself to secure the happiness of his subjects. ‘Seul,’ he said, ‘je ferai le bien de mes peuples.’ After he had gone, most of the nobility and the upper clergy left the hall; but the deputies of the Third Estate as well as many curés kept their seats. The Master of the Ceremonies, De Brézé, asked Bailly, the President, whether he had heard the orders of the King. ‘Yes, sir, we have heard the orders put in the King’s mouth,’ retorted Mirabeau, in words repeated and applauded throughout France, ‘and let me inform you that if your business is to turn us out, you had better ask orders to employ force, for we shall only quit our seats at the bayonet’s point.’ Before dispersing the recalcitrants declared their persons inviolable for all that they said or did as deputies.

After this defiance of the royal authority, the Queen and the court would gladly have obtained the dissolution of the States. Difficulties, however, stood in the way. The financial embarrassments of the Government were still unrelieved. Further, it was clearly impossible for the King to cause his commands to be obeyed, unless he was prepared to appeal to military force, and the consequences of so doing were exceedingly doubtful. Class distinctions prevailed in the army as in other institutions of the old system. The officers, who were all noble, lived in luxury, largely on perquisites made at the men’s expense. The men, cheated of their pay, badly fed, and subjected to a harsh discipline, bitterly resented their wrongs, and despised and hated their officers. If an attempt were made to use intimidation there was great probability that resistance would be offered, that Paris would rise, and that the troops would refuse to fire on the insurgents. Louis was never willing to take decided action, and, for the time, the deputies of the Third Estate were left in enjoyment of victory. The King himself requested the nobles and ecclesiastics, who still kept aloof, to abandon further struggle, and thus after a delay of seven weeks the three Estates were finally constituted as one assembly.

The evil consequences of that delay were already but too plainly apparent. Since the meeting of the Estates agitation in Paris had spread from day to day. The Government, unable to use arbitrary and violent means of obtaining order, could no longer effectively perform its duties, because no trust was reposed in it. Political liberty threatened to degenerate rapidly into anarchy. No moral restraints existed amongst a people for centuries unaccustomed to self-government. There was no political organisation, and no standard of political morality. There were no recognised leaders weighted with a sense of responsibility, nor journals with a character to maintain. Appeals were made to the lowest passions, rumours and libels circulated without question of their truth or justice. The fiercer and more bitter his language, the more sure was the orator or journalist to gain a hearing and exert influence.

In the garden, surrounded by book and coffee shops, which was attached to the Palais Royal, a palace belonging to the Duke of Orleans—who, although distantly related to the King, had taken the popular side—agitators, mounted on chairs and tables, discoursed to excited throngs on the sovereignty of the people, and denounced the opponents of a single chamber to popular wrath. Here neither police officers nor supporters of the claims of nobles and clergy could enter except at peril of violent and brutal usage. This licence was the more dangerous because the hard times made the people more ready for the commission of criminal actions. Nevertheless, the tradesmen, merchants, and other persons in the middle class of life, who under ordinary circumstances are the first to feel the effects of mob violence, regarded the designs of the court as far more dangerous than the oratory of the Palais Royal. For while the court demanded the maintenance of class distinctions, the demagogues of the Palais Royal demanded their abolition, guaranteed by the establishment of a free and democratic constitution.

The government, on the pretext of maintaining order, quartered round and in Paris and Versailles regiments of Swiss and German troops in the service of France. The Queen and the Court desired, if not immediately to dissolve the Assembly, to compel its removal to some provincial town, where the deputies might more readily be forced to accept the terms offered by the King on June 23. Necker, supported by a minority of his fellow-councillors, was opposed to any plans for the intimidation of the Assembly; but he had no influence with the King, and was detested by the Queen and the King’s brothers, the Counts of Provence and Artois, of whose projects he was left in ignorance. Louis relied on the troops to overawe the capital, but was averse to resort to military force unless in self-defence. Meanwhile, their neighbourhood increased excitement in Paris, and the middle classes found themselves between two fires. On the one side they feared an armed occupation of the town, and the proclamation of martial law; on the other a rising of the populace, which might end in the dissolution of all authority. The elections of deputies of the Third Estate had been by two degrees. Paris had been divided into sixty districts, returning 120 electors, who had elected twenty deputies to sit in the States-General. These electors, wishing to induce the Government to remove the troops, proposed the establishment of a civic guard for the maintenance of order. It was not, however, an easy matter to obtain the sanction of the Government to a measure that would put an armed force at the disposition of the capital. The National Assembly, agitated by fear lest violence should be exercised against itself, repeatedly besought the King to order the withdrawal of the troops. Louis refused, and at the same time dismissed Necker from office, ordering him to leave the kingdom immediately (July 11). It was on the presence of Necker in the council that the popular party relied as security that force would not be employed against the Assembly or the capital. Accordingly, the news of his dismissal, reported the next morning, set Paris in motion. All believed that troops would immediately advance, and the revolution be suppressed in blood. In the Palais Royal a young man, Camille Desmoulins, leaping on a table, exclaimed, ‘Citizens, they have driven Necker from office. They are preparing a St. Bartholomew for patriots. To arms! To arms! For a rallying sign take green cockades, the colour of hope.’ The leaves were torn from the surrounding trees to serve as cockades. There was, in fact, but one course which Louis could consistently pursue after he had dismissed Necker from office. He must use force to suppress opposition, taking whatever risk there was. But of decisive action there was no chance. The King had dismissed Necker without making up his mind what he would do afterwards. There was no plan formed, and no understanding between different authorities. A regiment of German cavalry charged, first, into a procession parading the streets with a bust of Necker, and afterwards into the Tuileries gardens, dispersing the throngs which excitement and curiosity had brought together. After blood had thus been shed, and the alarm and rage of the populace had increased, no further attempt was made to suppress the insurrection. Officers of the army were afraid to act without authorisation, and could not trust their men, many of whom deserted their regiments. The French guards, 3,600 strong, went over in a body to the people. Paving stones were torn up to erect barricades. The cry was raised for arms; pikes were fabricated by thousands; gunsmiths’ shops were ransacked, military storehouses broken open, and muskets and powder carried off in triumph.

During the following night and day (July 13) the barriers where the excise was levied were set on fire, the prisons opened, and bakers and wine shops pillaged. There were none in authority, and none who obeyed. The electors, sitting at the Hôtel de Ville, usurped what authority they could, which they exercised surrounded by a raging mob at imminent peril of their lives. At their appeal the bourgeoisie began promptly to raise an organised militia force in each of the sixty districts. Early next morning, July 14, the fury of the people was directed against the Bastille, the great State fortress and prison in the Faubourg St. Antoine, the ‘Tower’ of Paris, where for centuries past prisoners, often without charge of crime, had wasted their lives away. Its commander, the Marquis de Launay, had long since pulled up his drawbridges and made ready for defence as he watched the insurrection grow. His garrison was small, consisting only of thirty-two Swiss and eighty-two old French soldiers or Invalides. But the massive walls of the fortress and its double moat would effectually guard it against the assault of an undisciplined multitude. Summoned to surrender by a deputation from the Hôtel de Ville, De Launay replied that he would rather set fire to the powder magazine and blow the place to the skies. The population streamed by thousands to the spot, and the fortress was soon surrounded by a surging mob. An old soldier succeeded in cutting the chain which held up the drawbridge of the outer moat. A shout of triumph was raised. The assailants rushed over the fallen bridge, but only to be confronted by the second moat and unscaleable walls of the fortress. The French guards, bringing with them cannon, joined the besiegers, but all efforts to force the passage of the moat were frustrated. For five hours an incessant fire of musketry had been kept up. A hundred of the assailants lay dead, and but one of the garrison, when the Bastille unexpectedly and suddenly succumbed. The Invalides refused longer to resist, and compelled De Launay to surrender. Hulin, an officer leading the French guards, accepted the terms proposed—pardon and immunity for all. But he could not enforce their observance. The mass of human beings behind knew nothing of what those in front did. Enraged and uncontrollable, the mob broke into the fortress, those behind pushing aside those who went before, and striking blows at random. Six of the garrison were killed. De Launay was sent with an escort of French guards to the Hôtel de Ville. On the way the escort was hustled aside and the old man savagely murdered. His head, fixed on a pike, was carried in triumph about the streets. Late at night the news reached Versailles that the Bastille had fallen. ‘But,’ said Louis, ‘that is a revolt.’ ‘Sire,’ replied his informant, the Duke of Liancourt, ‘it is not a revolt, it is a revolution.’

A great revolution had indeed been accomplished. The fall of the Bastille indicated the fall of the old monarchy, in which the King alone represented the nation. Louis had said to the Assembly that, unless he were obeyed, he would secure the happiness of his subjects without its aid, and Paris had replied by rising in support of the Assembly against himself. The falling away of the army had unmistakably revealed his weakness and powerlessness to resist the national will. His brother, the Count of Artois, and other unpopular courtiers, known to be especially hostile to the people’s cause, fled the country in disgust and alarm. Louis himself had no choice but to yield all that was demanded of him. He ordered the withdrawal of the troops, and recalled Necker to office. The Assembly sent eighty-eight of its members to announce the good news to Paris. They were received with enthusiasm, and escorted by thousands of national guards to the Hôtel de Ville, where the electors exercised the functions of a provisional municipality. Two deputies were singled out for special honours. A young and popular nobleman, Lafayette, who had fought in America against the English, and since the meeting of the Assembly had supported the cause of the Third Estate, was by acclamation chosen commander-in-chief of the new militia or national guard. Bailly, a mathematician, who had been president of the Third Estate when the oath was taken in the tennis court, was after the same fashion chosen mayor of Paris. To the blue and red, the colours of Paris first worn by the national guard, was subsequently, on Lafayette’s suggestion, added white, the colour of France. This new flag would, he magniloquently said, make the round of the world. Thus was instituted the famous tricolour, the emblem to France of the revolution.

It only remained for Louis to recognise these new revolutionary authorities, which made the capital of his kingdom independent of him and of his government. Leaving the Queen weeping at Versailles in alarm for his safety, he drove to Paris, attended merely by some members of the Assembly and a few national guards. At the barrier of Passy, the mayor, Bailly, presented him with the keys of the city, the same which, on an occasion dissimilar to this had been presented to Henri IV., when Paris had surrendered to him, ‘He,’ said Bailly to Louis, ‘had made conquest of his people. Now the people have made conquest of their King.’ Arrived at the Hôtel de Ville, Louis fixed a tricolour cockade on his hat and appeared on a balcony in front of the building. The thousands assembled outside applauded him loudly, and shouts of ‘Vive le Roi’ mingled with shouts of ‘Vive la Nation.’ The enthusiasm exhibited in his favour was not unreal. Amongst the multitude present, no stronger desire existed than that of accomplishing the revolution in accordance with the crown.

While political strife was raging at Paris, in the provinces the people, impatient for relief, were taking upon themselves the work of redressing their wrongs. Since the meeting of the States riots had broken out by scores over the face of the country. Taxes were refused, barriers for the collection of custom and excise duties burnt, the collectors driven off, markets pillaged, municipal officers forced at peril of their lives to fix a price for corn and bread. The news of the great insurrection of July 14 gave courage to agitators, and added fuel to the flame. In Paris, street mobs, goaded by hunger, were not easily restrained from hanging objects of suspicion on the nearest lamp-post. Foulon, an officer of the Government, accused truly or falsely of having said that the people if hungry might eat grass, was savagely murdered. His son-in-law, Berthier, suffered a like fate. Many other persons escaped but narrowly with their lives. Nevertheless, owing to the exertions of the new municipality and the national guard, life and property were more secure in the capital than in many provinces. Risings accompanied by pillage and murder took place in Strasbourg, Rouen, Besançon, Lyons, and other provincial towns. In the east, through Alsace, Franche-Comté, Lorraine, Burgundy and Dauphiny, the rural population sought to settle the question of feudal services by burning together the residences and the title-deeds of the seigneurs. In the Maconnais and Beaujolais, bands of peasants sacked and burned seventy-two country-houses in a fortnight. A panic spread through the country on the report that brigands, instigated by the enemies of the revolution, were on the march to destroy the crops. A general cry was raised for arms; the example set by Paris was followed; the middle classes combined to restore order; provisional municipalities were established and national guards instituted. The order obtained, however, was still most precarious. Municipal officers were in constant danger of falling victims to mob violence, while in country districts national guards often made common cause with the rioters.

Thus the result of the insurrection of July 14, and of the risings in the provinces, was the utter disorganisation of all the old machinery of government. Royal officers where they remained could not exercise authority. The army was in mutiny; the people were armed. New popular authorities had, as it were, of themselves sprung up over the face of the country, and the National Assembly, in place of the royal council, became the centre of government, so far as any government existed.

The Assembly was far more disquieted by the risings in the provinces than by the insurrection of July 14. The fall of the Bastille assured political power to the middle classes. This burning of country-houses and the refusal to pay taxes and feudal dues struck at all alike, and sapped the base on which the whole framework of society rested. As yet, in the south-west and centre, where feudal dues were less burdensome, riots were isolated and bloodshed rare, but there was every probability that the movement, if unchecked, would spread over the whole country. The injustice of the existing order, by which provinces, towns, and individuals were privileged without regard to public utility, the injury inflicted on agriculture by feudal dues, and the oppressive nature of many rights exercised by seigneurs had been demonstrated over and over again, and were admitted on all sides. In an evening sitting on August 4, the Assembly laid the axe to the root of the old order by adopting decrees based on the principles of unity of State institutions, equality before the law, and individual liberty. There was no province, town, class, or corporation whose special interests these decrees did not touch. They were in part the work of design, in part of the enthusiasm of the moment. No voices were raised in opposition. Nobles, bishops, curés, representatives of towns and provinces, vied with one another in proposing the abolition of privileges and rights which stood in the way of the common good. The decrees declared the feudal order destroyed, deprived seigneurs of the exclusive right of hunting and of keeping rabbits and pigeons, and abolished serfdom and servile dues off-hand; abolished also all special privileges belonging to provinces, towns, and corporations, and laid open to all citizens, without regard to birth, civil, military, and ecclesiastical preferment; and, finally, abolished tithes paid to the Church, and made promise of ecclesiastical reform in the future.

These decrees were not practical laws, but little more than an enunciation of general principles in accordance with which reform was afterwards to be effected. Thus the mass of feudal dues had still to be rendered until compensation had been given to the proprietors; the old taxes were to be paid until a new system of taxation based on principles of equality had been introduced. This hasty legislation could not, therefore, allay discontent, but excited a stronger reluctance on the part of the people to endure burdens, the injustice of which the National Assembly itself publicly proclaimed.

The Assembly, on which rested the task of founding a new order amid the ruins of the old, was without political experience or recognised principles of action. It contained about 290 representatives of the nobility, of whom 140 were provincial noblemen, 20 judges in the upper courts, and 125 belonged to the court aristocracy. The clergy had returned 200 curés and only 100 bishops, abbés, and other dignitaries. A few more than 600 deputies represented the Third Estate, of whom 4 were ecclesiastics and 15 noblemen. The great majority were men independent of the Government. The profession by far the most largely represented was the law. There were 360 judges, barristers, and law officers of various kinds. The chamber was fitted up like a theatre, with a semi-circle of seats facing the president’s chair, beneath which was a tribune whence all set speeches were made.

Four main lines of opinion divided the Assembly roughly into four sections. The majority of nobles and the upper clergy sat together on the president’s right hand, forming the right side of the Assembly. Their standpoint was reactionary, in favour of the privileged orders. The fusion of the three orders having been accomplished against their will and in defiance of the royal authority, they regarded the Assembly’s work as resting on no justifiable foundation, and looked forward to reversing it on the first occasion. Here an officer, Cazalès, eloquently and loyally defended monarchical principles of government; the Abbé Maury, with vehemence and ability, the cause of the upper clergy; and D’Espréménil, a judge in the Parliament of Paris, the institutions of the old order.

The second section comprised deputies of all three orders. They were defenders of individual liberty and parliamentary control, but were bitterly opposed to the establishment of democratic institutions. They did not believe in the endurance of monarchy without an aristocracy and aristocratical institutions, and aimed at replacing the effete nobility by an aristocracy of wealth. For the exercise of political rights they would have required a high property qualification; and, copying the constitution of the English parliament, would have established a legislature composed of two houses, in both of which the landed interest was to predominate. They detested insurrection as a weapon, and were thoroughly alive to the danger in which since July 14 all authorities stood—of falling beneath the sway of mob violence. The restoration of order was, from their point of view, the matter of first moment, and they accordingly desired that the Assembly, in place of discussing constitutional questions, should at once turn its attention to the reform of the taxes and to other remedial laws, and that at the same time ministers should be empowered to use coercive measures for the punishment of rioters and the maintenance of the public tranquillity. The upholders of these views, who sat next the reactionary right, were but a small minority. Their most able speakers were two deputies of the Third Estate—Mounier and Malouet, and two nobles—Clermont-Tonnerre and Lally-Tollendal.

The third and most numerous section, forming the centre and left of the Assembly, consisted of curés and deputies of the Third Estate, with a sprinkling of nobles and upper clergy. Though considerable differences of opinion prevailed in this body of seven to eight hundred men, two sentiments were common to all—passion for equality and desire for self-government. Hence no schemes calculated to vest power in the hands of large landed proprietors found favour with them. They were not, however, pure democrats, nor by sentiment republicans. Their real aim was government by the middle classes. To monarchy as a form of government they were not only attached, but regarded its maintenance as necessary to give stability to the constitution they were about to establish. Amongst the most prominent men on this side of the house were Thouret, Merlin of Douai, and other eminent lawyers, the Marquis of Mirabeau, Lafayette, the Abbé Siéyès, two brothers, the Lameths—both of them nobles and officers—and a young and eloquent barrister, Barnave.

The fourth section, sitting on the extreme left—which must be distinguished from the left—was formed of a few deputies, some twenty or thirty in all, who were pure democrats, and whose programme included manhood suffrage, and the eligibility of all citizens to office without property or other qualifications. A republic was their ideal form of government, which they held alone compatible with free and democratic institutions. At the same time they entertained no thought of establishing such a government in France. The possibility of getting rid of the throne had not yet suggested itself to their minds. In the Assembly their opinions were regarded as exaggerated, and their influence was small. Amongst them sat Pétion and Robespierre, whose names afterwards rose into notoriety.

None of these four groups, except the last, properly speaking formed a party of which the members ordinarily voted in a body. There was no concerted action, no party discipline, no recognised leaders. The galleries were often filled by an excited and noisy audience, which interrupted debates and menaced unpopular speakers. Each deputy voted independently, and was subject to be swayed by whatever influence at the moment predominated—were it eloquence, enthusiasm, fear, or prejudice. The provincial nobility followed but sullenly in the wake of the court nobility, and on every opportunity made its hostility manifest. Deputies belonging to the centre and left constantly voted on opposite sides. According to the special point at issue, more or less democratic opinions were entertained by the same person. Thus Lafayette, although as a rule he was found in opposition to Malouet, wished like him for the establishment of a legislature composed of two houses, having become strongly convinced of the advantages of that system through his affection to American institutions. The most advanced group of the whole centre and left, headed by Barnave and the Lameths, sat furthest left, next to Buzot and Robespierre, with whom they not seldom voted.

In the chamber thus constituted, a variety of causes often gave ascendancy to the group which followed Barnave and the Lameths. The events of June 23 (p. 39) had destroyed confidence in the King, and though not expressed in words fear always prevailed that Louis would hereafter use whatever powers were given to him to effect a restoration of the old order. The reactionary right also refused to work with the advocates of the system of two chambers, such as Malouet and Mounier, thus alienating the less democratic members of the centre and propelling them towards the left. Nobles and ecclesiastics, who had opposed the union of the three orders, in place of seeking to establish a constitution based on monarchical principles, made it their policy to vitiate the Assembly’s work and so increase the elements of disorder as the surest and speediest means of producing reaction. Sometimes they abstained from voting or attending debates; sometimes they interrupted debates; at others they voted with the left against the constitutional right. The ministry was too feeble and too divided to exercise influence over the Assembly. It was without the first requisite for acquiring confidence, a declared and open policy. Necker, whose principles and aims coincided for the most part with those of Malouet and Mounier, always received hearty support from them and their friends. But, proud and irritable, accustomed to command and not to lead, he did not take advantage of the opportunities which he had for forming a ministerial party. While devising expedients for avoiding bankruptcy, he failed even to lay before the Assembly any complete account of the state of the finances. The reactionary right, which never forgave him for recommending the double representation of the Third Estate, and the extreme left, which distrusted him, concurred in attacking him on every opportunity. His popularity rapidly decreased, and his position in the ministry grew weak in proportion as his relations to the Assembly became strained. Mirabeau, the most powerful man in the house, was his enemy. The mass of deputies, without trust in the Government and menaced by the right, looked to the people for support, and through desire of maintaining popularity were the more ready to adopt measures urged on them by the ultra democratic press. Their minds were undisturbed, either by the violent language of Parisian demagogues, or by the existence of riots and bloodshed in many provinces. The one object that they kept steadily in view was the establishment of constitutional government on foundations that should make reaction hopelessly impossible; and compared with this the restoration of order was to them a matter of secondary importance. They had no fear of the people. Following the one-sided philosophy of their day, and leaving out of account the dense ignorance of the lower classes, the pride and prejudices of the upper, they believed that the establishment of a free constitution, followed by remedial legislation, would bring the revolution to an end within the course of a few months, and render the country law-abiding, prosperous, and contented.

How vain was this dream, entertained by those with whom he sat and voted, Mirabeau was well aware. He saw the people ignorant and credulous, without confidence in the middle class, and ready to follow the guidance of whoever promised them most; the middle class unaccustomed to take part in government and divided into factions, which were united merely by common hatred of aristocratic institutions. Under such conditions Mirabeau gave small credit to his countrymen for political capacity, and had no faith in the endurance of any constitution which cast upon the nation the entire work of administration and government. But, on the other hand, he did not seek, like Malouet, to found a strong monarchy on aristocratic institutions. No real aristocracy existed, and the passion for equality was irresistible, for the very reason that it was justified by the incapacity of those classes which had hitherto claimed to rise above their fellow countrymen. The government which Mirabeau regarded as alone suited to the requirements of the time was constitutional monarchy, based on principles of equality and individual liberty, upheld by the confidence of the middle class, and exercising influence over the direction of public opinion. Local administration was to be under the control of the central government; ministers were to have seats in the legislative body; and the king, in case of difference between himself and the legislature, was to have the right of refusing his consent to bills and of appealing by a dissolution to the constituencies. Mirabeau prophesied that unless the distrust which the Assembly felt towards Louis were dissipated, the throne would be overturned by the Parisian populace. His sense of danger quickened his desire to obtain a place in the council. He had many qualities fitting him to the task to which he aspired of at once domineering over Louis, and obtaining a majority in the Assembly to follow his guidance. He had insight into character, was master of his temper, and able to inspire men with his own belief, and to fascinate those who were prejudiced against him. As an orator he was unrivalled. The effect that he produced on his hearers was so powerful that his very opponents applauded him. But there were many drawbacks in his way. He came to the Assembly with an ill reputation that told heavily against him. His life even now was riotous and profligate, and he was known to be harassed by debts and unscrupulous in action. His fellow deputies, afraid of the crown acquiring influence over the Assembly by corruption, even whilst they were under the spell of his genius, were mistrustful of his political integrity. Lafayette refused to have dealings with a man whom he contemned as a libertine. Barnave and the Lameths were Mirabeau’s rivals for popularity, and jealous of the influence that his superior eloquence at times allowed him to exercise. On the side of the Government, which had no chance of surmounting the crisis under any other guidance, he received no encouragement. Necker feared and hated him as a dangerous and unprincipled demagogue, and repelled his overtures; while the aversion of the Queen to all noblemen who took the popular side was intense. ‘I trust,’ she one day said, ‘we shall never be reduced to the painful extremity of seeking aid of Mirabeau.’

Thus circumstanced, Mirabeau did his best to weaken and degrade the Government, expecting that in the course of a few months the King would be compelled to recognise his claims to office. He never missed an opportunity of undermining Necker’s popularity, and while defending with vehemence what he held to be the essential prerogatives of monarchy, maintained sway over the Assembly and the populace by fierce attacks directed against the nobles, the clergy, and the court.