At this first period of the Revolution, when hostilities had not yet broken out amongst the ranks of society, the language of the aristocracy was exactly the same as that of the other classes, distinguished only by going greater lengths and taking a higher tone. Their opposition had something republican about it: it was the same feeling animating prouder men and souls more accustomed to live in contact with the world’s greatness.
A man who had till then been a violent enemy of the privileged orders, having been present at one of the meetings where the opposition was organised and where the nobles had made a sacrifice of all their rights amidst the applause of the commons, relates this scene in a letter to a friend and exclaims with enthusiasm, ‘Our nobility (how truly a nobility!) has come down to point out our rights, to defend them with us: I have heard it with my own ears; free elections, equality of numbers, equality of taxation—every heart was touched by their disinterestedness and kindled by their patriotism.’[116]
When public rejoicings took place at Grenoble upon the news of the dismissal of the Archbishop of Sens, August 29th, 1788, the city was instantly illuminated and covered with transparencies, on one of which the following lines were read:—
‘Nobles, vous méritez le sort qui vous décore,
De l’État chancelant vous êtes les soutiens.
La nation, par vous, va briser ses liens;
Déjà du plus beau jour on voit briller l’aurore.’
In Brittany the nobles were ready to arm the peasants, in order to resist the Royal authorities; and at Paris when the first riot broke out (August 24th, 1788) which was feebly and indecisively repressed by the army, several of the officers, who belonged, as is well known, to the nobility, resigned their commissions rather than shed the blood of the people. The Parliament complimented them on their conduct, and called them ‘those noble and generous soldiers whom the purity and delicacy of their sentiments had compelled to resign their commissions.’[117]
The opposition of the clergy was not less decided though more discreet. It naturally assumed the forms appropriate to the clerical body. When the Parliament of Paris was exiled to Troyes and received the homage of all the public bodies of that city, the Chapter of the Cathedral, as the organ of the clergy, complimented the Parliament in the following terms:—‘The vigour restored to the constitutional maxims of the monarchy has succeeded in defeating the territorial subsidy, and you have taught the Treasury to respect the sacred rights of property.’ ‘The general mourning of the nation and your own removal from your duties and from the bosom of your families were to us a poignant spectacle, and whilst these august walls echoed the sounds of public grief, we carried into the Sanctuary our private sorrow and our prayers.’—(Official Papers, 1787.)