"There remained the king, whose rights had not been touched. He was asked: 'Will you accept France as we shall remodel it, with its three orders—the people, clergy, and nobility—each depending on the other; will you accept the constitution with the privileges which it accords you, the revenues it grants you, the duties it imposes on you? Reflect carefully. If you refuse, say No, and abdicate; if you accept, say Yes, and take the oath.'
"The king said Yes, and took the oath.
"The next day he left Paris; and so confident was he that all due precautions had been taken and that he could reach the frontier in safety, that he sent this message to the representatives of the nation, who had received his oath on the previous evening:
"'I have been compelled to take the oath; it was made with the lips and not the heart; I hold my duties in abeyance, and resume my rights and privileges; and I will return with the enemy to punish you for your revolt.'"
"You forget, general," said Fauche-Borel, "that those whom you call the enemy were his own family."
"Well," said Pichegru, "that is just the trouble. The king's family were the enemies of France. But how could it be otherwise? Half of the blood that flowed in the veins of Louis XVI., son of Louis XV. and a princess of Saxony, was not even French blood; he married an archduchess, and we have for the royal armorial bearings, the first and third quarters of Lorraine, the second of Austria, and the fourth only of France. The result is as you have said. When Louis XVI. quarrels with his people he appeals to his family; but as the family is the enemy of France, he appeals to the enemy, and as the enemy enters France at the summons of the king, he commits the crime of high treason against the nation—a crime as great as high treason against the king, if, indeed, it is not greater.
"Then a terrible state of affairs results. While the king prays for the success of the arms of his family—which means the disgrace of France—and while the queen, seeing the Prussians at Verdun, counts the days that it will take them to reach Paris, France, beside herself with hate and patriotism, rises as one man and recognizes that she has enemies on the frontier—Austrians and Prussians; enemies in her very capital—the king and the queen; secret enemies—nobles and aristocrats. She defeats the Prussians at Valmy, the Austrians at Jemmapes; she stabs her aristocrats in Paris, and beheads both king and queen on the Place de la Révolution. By means of this terrible convulsion she believes that she is saved, and breathes freely.
"But she is mistaken; for the family that made war under the pretext of replacing Louis XVI. on the throne, continues to make war under pretext of crowning Louis XVII., but in reality that France may be invaded and dismembered. Spain wishes to regain Roussillon; Austria wants Alsace and the Franche-Comté; Prussia the Margraviates of Anspach and Beyreuth. The nobles form three divisions; one attacks us on the Rhine, another on the Loire, and a third conspires. War within, war without! Foreign war and civil war! On the frontier thousands of men lying on the battlefields; in France itself thousands of men massacred in prison, thousands of men dragged to the guillotine. Why? Because the king, after taking the oath, did not keep it, and instead of trusting to his people, to France, threw himself into the arms of his family, the enemy."
"But then you approve of the massacres of September?"
"I deplore them. But what can you do against a people?"