BOOK XVI
I.
In proportion as power snatched from the hands of the king by the Assembly disappeared, it passed into the commune of Paris. The municipality, that first element of nations which are forming themselves, is also the last asylum of authority when they are crumbling to pieces. Before it falls quite to the people, power pauses for a moment in the council-chamber of the magistrates of the city. The Hôtel de Ville had become the Tuileries of the people; after La Fayette and Bailly, Pétion reigned there: this man was the king of Paris. The populace (which has always the instinct of position) called him King Pétion. He had purchased his popularity, first by his private virtues, which the people almost always confound with public virtues, and subsequently by his democratic speeches in the Constituent Assembly. The skilful balance which he preserved at the Jacobins between the Girondists and Robespierre had rendered him respectable and important. Friend of Roland, Robespierre, Danton, and Brissot, at the same time suspected of too close connection with Madame de Genlis and the Duc d'Orleans' party, he still always covered himself with the mantle of proper devotion to order and a superstitious reverence for the constitution. He had thus all the apparent titles to the esteem of honest men and the respect of factions; but the greatest of all was in his mediocrity. Mediocrity, it must be confessed, is almost always the brand of these idols of the people: either that the mob, mediocre itself, has only a taste for what resembles it; or that jealous contemporaries can never elevate themselves sufficiently high towards great characters and great virtues; or that Providence, which distributes gifts and faculties in proportion, will not allow that one man should unite in himself, amidst a free people, these three irresistible powers, virtue, genius, and popularity; or rather, that the constant favour of the multitude is a thing of such a nature that its price is beyond its worth in the eyes of really virtuous men, and that it is necessary to stoop too low to pick it up, and become too weak to retain it. Pétion was only king of the people on condition of being complaisant to its excesses. His functions as mayor of Paris, in a time of trouble, placed him constantly between the king, the Assembly, and the revolts. He bearded the king, flattered the Assembly, and pardoned crime. Inviolable as the capital which he personified in his position of first magistrate of the commune, his unseen dictatorship had no other title than his inviolability, and he used it with respectful boldness towards the king, bowed before the Assembly, and knelt to the malcontents. To his official reproaches to the rioters, he always added an excuse for crime, a smile for the culprits, encouragement to the misled citizens. The people loved him as anarchy loves weakness; it knew it could do as it pleased with him. As mayor, he had the law in his hand; as a man, he had indulgence on his lips and connivance in his heart: he was just the magistrate required in times of the coups d'état of the faubourgs.
Pétion allowed them to make all their preparations without appearing to see them, and legalised them whenever they were completed.
II.
His early connection with Brissot had drawn him towards Madame Roland. The ministry of Roland, Clavière, and Servan obeyed him more than even the king, he was present at all their consultations, and although their fall did not involve him, it wrested the executive power from his grasp. The expelled Girondists had no need to infuse their thirst of vengeance into the mind of Pétion. Unable any longer to conspire legally against the king, with his ministers, he yet could conspire with the factions against the Tuileries. The national guards, the people, the Jacobins, the faubourgs, the whole city, were in his hands; thus he could give sedition to the Girondists to aid this party to regain the ministry; and he gave it them with all the hazards—all the crimes that sedition carries with it. Amongst these hazards was the assassination of the king and his family: this event was beforehand accepted by those who provoked the assembly of the populace, and their invasion of the king's palace. Girondists, Orleanists, Republicans, Anarchists, none of these parties perhaps actually meditated this crime, but they looked upon it as an eventuality of their fortune. Pétion, who doubtless did not desire it, at least risked it; and if his intention was innocent, his temerity was a murder. What distance was there between the steel of twenty thousand pikes and the heart of Louis XVI.? Pétion did not betray the lives of the king, the queen, and the children, but he placed them at stake. The constitutional guard of the king had been ignominiously disbanded by the Girondists; the Duc de Brissac, its commander, was sent to the high court of Orleans, for imaginary conspiracies,—his only conspiracy was his honour; and he had sworn to die bravely in defence of his master and his friend. He could have escaped, but though even the king advised him to fly, he refused. "If I fly," replied he, to the king's entreaties, "it will be said that I am guilty, and that you are my accomplice; my flight will accuse you: I prefer to die." He left Paris for the national court of Orleans: he was not tried, but massacred at Versailles, on the 6th of September, and his head with its white hairs was planted on one of the palisades of the palace gates, as if in atrocious mockery of that chivalrous honour that even in death guarded the gate of the residence of his king.
III.
The first insurrections of the Revolution were the spontaneous impulses of the people: on one side was the king, the court and the nobility; on the other the nation. These two parties clashed by the mere impulse of conflicting ideas and interests. A word—a gesture—a chance—the assembling a body of troops—a day's scarcity—the vehement address of an orator in the Palais Royal, sufficed to excite the populace to revolt, or to march on Versailles. The spirit of sedition was confounded with the spirit of the Revolution. Every one was factious—every one was a soldier—every one was a leader. Public passion gave the signal, and chance commanded.
Since the Revolution was accomplished, and the constitution had imposed on each party legal order, it was different. The insurrections of the people were no longer agitations, but plans. The organised factions had their partisans—their clubs—their assemblies—their army and their pass-word. Amongst the citizens, anarchy had disciplined itself, and its disorder was only external, for a secret influence animated and directed it unknown even to itself. In the same manner as an army possesses chiefs on whose intelligence and courage they rely; so the quartiers and sections of Paris had leaders whose orders they obeyed. Secondary popularities, already rooted in the city and faubourgs, had been founded behind those mighty national popularities of Mirabeau, La Fayette, and Bailly. The people felt confidence in such a name, reliance in such an arm, favour for such a face; and when these men showed themselves, spoke, or moved, the multitude followed them without even knowing whither the current of the crowd would lead; it was sufficient for the chiefs to indicate a spot on which to assemble, to spread abroad a panic terror, infuse a sudden rage, or indicate a purpose, to cause the blind masses of the people to assemble on the appointed spot ready for action.