It ordered the election of bishops and priests to be conducted after the fashion of the primitive church: that is to say, that they were to be elected by a majority of votes; all the salaries of the clergy were to be paid from the King’s treasury; perquisites were abolished.
The clergy were desired to take an oath to maintain that constitution; those who would not, were compelled to resign their benefices in favor of those who would.
If, after being dismissed, they attempted to renew their functions, they were prosecuted as disturbers of the public peace.
From this arose the troubles in the Church, and the division between the constitutional priests and those who refused to take the oath.
If one looks back on that great epoch, and on the two remarkable years of ’89 and ’90, one cannot fail to be astonished. Can any one explain the precautions taken by nature, that the men and the events should arrive at the same time for that awful result which followed?
In 1762, M. de Choiseul suppressed the order of the Jesuits; that is to say, deprived the Church of its wisest and most powerful supporters.
Afterwards, in the years ’68, ’69, and ’70, the Revolution produced Chateaubriand, Bonaparte, Hoch, Marceau, Joubert, Cuvier, Saint Martin, Saint Simon, Lesneur, Les Cheniers, Geoffrey Saint Hilaire, Bichat, Lainancourt, all of whom, in 1792, were in the bloom of life and genius.
Whence came those births sublime and terrible, produced in the space of three or four years? Whence came that burst of genius prepared twenty-four or twenty-five years before to second political eruption? Whence came that body of superior men who closed the eighteenth and opened the nineteenth century? Whence came that phalanx more than human, and who raised the hand to swear to the constitution before the altar of their country?
Let us forget the death of Mirabeau, the last upholder of the monarchy, whom heaven struck in an unexpected manner, at the moment he forsook the cause of the people; and who, in dying, counselled the flight of the king—a flight which, had it succeeded, would have saved the life of his Majesty; but successful or unsuccessful, must inevitably have brought the monarchy to the ground.