"The faction of the La Fayettes, Guadets, Brissots circumvent him. They call him the leader of a party! Robespierre chief of a party! They show his hand in the disgraceful columns of the Civil List. They make the people's confidence in him a crime, as if a simple citizen without fortune and power had any other means of acquiring the love of his fellow-countrymen but from his deserts! as if a man who has only his isolated voice in the midst of a society of intrigants, hypocrites, and knaves, could ever be feared! But this incorruptible censor annoys them. They say he has an understanding with me to offer him the dictatorship. This is my affair, and I declare that Robespierre is so far from controlling my pen, that I never had the slightest connection with him. I have seen him but once, and the sole conversation has convinced me that he was not the man whom I sought for the supreme and energetic power demanded by the Revolution.
"The first word he addressed to me was a reproach for having dipped my pen in the blood of the enemies of liberty,—for always speaking of the cord, the axe, and the poignard; cruel words, which unquestionably my heart would disavow, and my principles discredit. I undeceived him. 'Learn,' I replied to him, 'that my credit with the people does not depend on my ideas, but on my audacity, the daring impetuosity of my mind, my cries of rage, despair, and fury against the wretches who impede the action of the Revolution. I know the anger, the just anger, of the people, and that is why it listens to, and believes in, me. Those cries of alarm and fury, that you take for words in the air, are the most simple and sincere expression of the passions which devour my mind. Yes, if I had had in my hand the arms of the people after the decree against the garrison of Nancy, I would have decimated the deputies who confirmed it. After the information of the events of the 5th and 6th October, I would have immolated every judge on the pile; after the massacre of the Champ-de-Mars, had I but had 2000 men, animated with the same resentment as myself, I would have gone at their head to stab La Fayette in the midst of his battalion of brigands, burnt the king in his palace, and cut the throats of our atrocious representatives on their very seats!' Robespierre listened to me with affright, turned pale, and was for a long time silent. I left him. I had seen an honest man, but not a man of the state."
Thus the wretch had excited horror in the fanatic: Robespierre had obtained Marat's pity.
IV.
The first struggle between the Jacobins and the Girondists gave the skilful Dumouriez a double point d'appui for his policy. The enmity of Roland, Clavière, and Servan no longer disturbed him in council. He balanced their influence by his alliance with their enemies. But the Jacobins demanded wages; he proffered them in war. Danton, as violent but more politic than Marat, did not cease to repeat that the revolutionists and the despots were irreconcileable, and that France had no safety to expect except from its audacity and despair. War, according to Danton, was the baptism or the martyrdom which liberty was to undergo, like a new religion. It was necessary to replunge France into the fire, in order to purify it from the stains and shame of its past.
Dumouriez, agreeing with La Fayette and the Feuillants, was also anxious for war; but it was as a soldier, to acquire glory, and thus crush faction. From the first day of his ministry he negotiated so as to obtain from Austria a decisive answer. He had removed nearly all the members of the diplomatic body; he had replaced them by energetic men. His despatches had a martial accent, which sounded like the voice of an armed people. He summoned the princes of the Rhine, the emperor, the king of Russia, the king of Sardinia, and Spain, to recognise or oppose the constitutional king of France. But whilst these official envoys demanded from the various courts prompt and categorical replies, the secret agents of Dumouriez insinuated themselves into the cabinets of princes, and compelled some states to detach themselves from the coalition that was forming. They pointed out to them the advantages of neutrality for their aggrandisement: they promised them the patronage of France after victory. Not daring to hope for allies, the minister at least contrived for France secret understanding: he corrupted by ambition the states that he could not move by terror: he benumbed the coalition, which he trusted subsequently to crush.
V.
The prince on whose mind he operated most powerfully was the Duke of Brunswick, whom the emperor and the king of Prussia alike destined for the command of the combined armies against the French. This prince was in their hopes the Agamemnon of Germany.
Charles-Frederic-Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel, bred in combats and in pleasures, had inspired in the camps of the great Frederic the genius of war, the spirit of French philosophy, and the Machiavellianism of his master. He had accompanied this philosopher and soldier-king in all the campaigns of the seven years' war. At the peace he travelled in France and Italy. Received everywhere as the hero of Germany, and as the heir to the genius of Frederic, he had married a sister of George III., king of England. His capital, where his mistresses shone or philosophers harangued, united the epicureism of the court to the austerity of the camp. He reigned according to the precepts of sages; he lived after the example of the Sybarites. But his soldier's mind, which was but too easily given up to beauty, was not quenched in love; he only gave his heart to women, he reserved his head for glory, war, and the government of his states. Mirabeau, then a young man, had stayed at his court, on his way to Berlin, to catch the last glimpses of the shining genius of the great Frederic. The Duke of Brunswick had favourably received and appreciated Mirabeau. These two men, placed in such different ranks, resembled each other by their qualities and defects. They were two revolutionary spirits; but from their difference of situations and countries, the one was destined to create, and the other to oppose, a revolution.
Be this as it may, Mirabeau was seduced by the sovereign, whom he was sent to seduce.