History of the Girondists, Volume I / Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution

by Alphonse de Lamartine

BOOK III.

I.

There is for a people, as for individuals, an instinct of conservation which warns and "gives them pause," even under the impulses of the most blind passions, before the dangers into which they are about to fling themselves headlong. They seem suddenly to recede at the aspect of this abyss, into which but now they were hastening precipitately. The intermissions of human passions are short and fugitive, but they give time to events, returns to wisdom, and opportunities to statesmen. These are moments in which they seize the hesitating and intimidated spirit of the people, in order to make them create a reaction against their own excesses, and to lead them back by the very revulsion of the passions that have already urged them too far. The day after the 25th of June, 1791, France experienced one of those throes of repentance which save a people. There was only the statesman wanting.

Never had the National Assembly presented a spectacle so imposing and so calm as during the five days which had succeeded the king's departure. It would appear as though it felt the weight of the whole empire resting on it, and it sustained its attitude in order to bear it with dignity. It accepted the power without desiring either to usurp or to retain it. It covered with a respectful fiction the king's desertion—called the flight a carrying off, and sought for the guilty around the throne—regarding the throne itself as inviolable. The man disappeared, for it, in Louis XVI.:—in the irresponsible chief of the state. These three months may be considered as an interregnum, during which public reason was her sole constitution. There was no longer a king, for he was a captive, and his sanction was taken from him: there was no longer law, for the constitution was incomplete: there was no longer a minister, for the executive power was suspended; and yet the kingdom was standing erect, was acting, organising, defending itself, preserving itself—and what is still more marvellous, controlled itself. It held in reserve in a palace the principal machinery of the constitution,—Royalty; and the day when the work is accomplished, it puts the king in his place, and says to him, "Be free and reign."

II.

One thing only dishonours this majestic interregnum of the nation—the temporary captivity of the king and his family. But we must remember that the nation had the right to say to its chief; "If thou wilt reign over us, thou shalt not quit the kingdom, thou shalt not convey the royalty of France amongst our enemies." And as to the forms of that captivity in the Tuileries, we must remember too that the National Assembly had not prescribed them,—that in fact it

had risen with indignation at the word imprisonment,—that it had commanded a political resistance and nothing more, and that the severity and odium of the precautionary measures used were occasioned by the zealous responsibility of the national guard, more than to the irreverence of the Assembly. La Fayette guarded, in the person of the king, the dynasty, its proper head, and the constitution—a hostage against the republic and royalty at the same time. Maire du palais, he intimidated by the presence of a weak and degraded monarch, the discouraged royalists and the restrained republicans. Louis XVI. was his pledge.

Barnave and the Lameths had within the Assembly the attitude of La Fayette without. They required the king, in order to defend themselves from their enemies. So long as there was a man (Mirabeau) between the throne and themselves, they had played with the republic and sapped the throne in order to crush a rival. But Mirabeau dead and the throne shaken, they felt themselves weak against the very impulse they had given. They sustained, therefore, this wreck of monarchy in order to be sustained in their turn. Founders of the Jacobins, they trembled before their own handiwork:—they took refuge in the constitution which they themselves had dilapidated, and passed from the character of destructives to that of statesmen. But for the first part there is only violence needed; for the second genius is required. Barnave had talent only. He had something more, however—he had a heart, and he was a good man. The first excesses of his language were in him but the excitements of the tribune; he was desirous of tasting the popular applause, and it was showered upon him beyond his real merit. Hereafter it was not with Mirabeau he was about to measure his strength; it was with the Revolution in all its force. Jealousy took from him the pedestal which it had lent, and he was about to appear as he really was.

III.

But a sentiment more noble than that of his personal safety impelled Barnave to side with the monarchical party. His heart had passed before his ambition to the side of weakness, beauty, and misfortune. Nothing is more dangerous than for a sensitive man to know those against whom he contends. Hatred against the cause shrinks before the feeling for the persons. We become partial unwittingly. Sensibility disarms the understanding, and we soften instead of reasoning, whilst the sensitiveness of a commiserating man soon usurps the place of his opinion.