M. de Cazalès sent in his resignation, in order to go and fight (aller combattre). The most prominent members of the right side, amongst whom were Maury, Montlozier, the abbé Montesquieu, the abbé de Pradt, Virieu, &c. &c., to the number of two hundred and ninety, took a pernicious resolution, which, by removing all counterpoise from the extreme party of the Revolution, precipitated the fall of, and destroyed, the king, under pretext of a sacred respect for royalty. They remained in the Assembly, but they annulled their power, and would only be considered as a living protest against the violation of the royal liberty and authority. The Assembly refused to hear the reading of their protest, which was itself a violation of their elective power; and they then published it and circulated it profusely all over the kingdom. "The decrees of the Assembly," they said, "have wholly absorbed the royal power. The seal of state is on the president's table; the king's sanction is annihilated. The king's name is erased from the oath which is taken from the law. The commissioners convey the orders of the committees direct to the armies. The king is a captive; a provisional republic occupies the interregnum. Far be it from us to concur in such acts; we would not even consent to be witnesses of it, if we had not still the duty of watching over the preservation of the king. Excepting this sole interest, we shall impose on ourselves the most absolute silence. This silence will be the only expression of our constant opposition to all your acts."
These words were the abdication of an entire party, for any party that protests abdicates. On this day there was emigration in the Assembly. This mistaken fidelity, which deplored instead of combating, obtained the applause of the nobility and clergy; it merited the utmost contempt of politicians. Abandoning, in their struggle against the Jacobins, Barnave and the monarchical constitutionalists, it gave the victory to Robespierre, and by assuring the majority to his proposition for the non re-election of the members of the National Assembly to the Legislative Assembly, it sanctioned the convention. The royalists took away the weight of one great opinion from the balance, which consequently then leaned towards the disorders that ensued, and which in their progress carried off the head of the king and their own heads. A great opinion never lays down its arms with impunity for its country.
VI.
The Jacobins perceived this great error, and rejoiced at it. On seeing so large a body of the supporters of the constitutional monarchy withdraw from the contest voluntarily, they at once foresaw what they might dare, and they dared it. Their sittings became more significant in proportion as those of the Assembly grew more dull and impotent. The words of "forfeiture" and "republic" were heard there for the first time. Retracted at first, they were afterwards again pronounced: uttered at first like blasphemies, they were not long in being familiar as principles. Parties did not at first know what they themselves desired—they learnt it from success. The daring broached distempered ideas; if repulsed, the sagacious disavowed them—if caught up, the leaders resumed them. In conflicts of opinions reconnaissances are employed, as they are in the campaigns of armies. The Jacobins were the advanced guard of the Revolution, who measured the opposing obstacles of the monarchical feeling.
The club of Cordeliers sent to the Jacobins a copy of a proposed address to the National Assembly, in which the annihilation of royalty was openly demanded.
"We are free and without a king," said the Cordeliers, "as the day after the taking of the Bastille; it is only for us to decide whether or no we shall name another. We are of opinion that the nation should do every thing by itself or by agents removable by her. We think, that the more important an employ, the more temporary should be its tenure. We think that royalty, and especially hereditary royalty, is incompatible with liberty; we anticipate the crowd of opponents such a declaration will create, but has not the declaration of rights produced as many? In leaving his post the king virtually abdicated,—let us profit by the occasion and our right—let us swear that France is a republic."
This address, read to the club of Jacobins on the 22d, at first excited universal indignation. On the 23d, Danton mounted the tribune, demanded the positive forfeiture of the throne (la déchéance), and the nomination of a council of regency. "Your king," he said, "is an idiot, or a criminal. It would be a horrid spectacle to present to the world, if, having the option of declaring a king criminal or idiotic, you did not prefer the latter alternative."
On the 27th, Girey Dupré, a young writer who awaited the Gironde, mooted the judgment of Louis XVI. "We can punish a perjured king, and we ought;" such was the text of his discourse. Brissot opened the question as Pétion had done at the preceding sitting, "Can a perjured king be brought to trial (jugé)?
"Why," asked Brissot "should we divide ourselves into dangerous denominations? we are all of one opinion. What do they want who are here hostile to the republicans? They detest the turbulent assemblies of Athens and Rome; they fear the division of France into isolated federations. They only want the representative constitution, and they are right. What do they want who boast of the name of republicans? They fear, they abhor equally, the turbulent assemblies of Rome and Athens, and equally dread a federated republic. They desire a representative constitution—nothing more, nothing less—and thus, we all concur. The head of the executive power has betrayed his oath,—must we bring him to judgment? This is the only point on which we differ. Inviolability will else be impunity to all crimes, an encouragement for all treason—common sense demands that the punishment should follow the offence. I do not see an inviolable man governing the people, but a God and 25,000,000 of brutes! If the king had on his return entered France at the head of foreign forces, if he had ravaged our fairest provinces, and if, checked in his career, you had made him prisoner, what would you then have done with him? Would you have allowed his inviolability to have saved him? Foreign powers are held up before you as a threat; do not fear them: Europe in arms is impotent against a people who will be free."
In the National Assembly Muguer, in the name of the joint committees, brought up the report on the king's flight; he maintained the inviolability of Louis XVI. and the accusation of his accomplices. Robespierre opposed the inviolability; he avoided all show of anger in his language; and was careful to veil all his conclusions beneath the cover of mildness and humanity. "I will not pause to inquire," he said, "whether the king fled voluntarily, of his own act, or if from the extremity of the frontiers a citizen carried him off by his advice: I will not inquire either, whether this flight is a conspiracy against the public liberty. I shall speak of the king as of an imaginary sovereign, and of inviolability as a principle." After having combated the principle of inviolability by the same arguments which Girey Dupré and Brissot had applied, Robespierre thus concluded. "The measures you propose cannot but dishonour you; if you adopt them, I demand to declare myself the advocate of all the accused. I will be the defender of the three gardes du corps, the dauphine's governess, even of Monsieur de Bouillé. By the principles of your committees, there is no crime; yet, invariably, where there is no crime there can be no accomplices. Gentlemen, if it be a weakness to spare a culprit, to visit the weaker culprit when the greater one escapes, is cowardice—injustice. You must pass sentence on all the guilty alike, or pronounce a general pardon."