Historical Characters: Mackintosh, Talleyrand, Canning, Cobbett, Peel

by Baron Henry Lytton Bulwer Dalling and Bulwer

A military festival at Versailles, which the royal family imprudently attended, and in which it perhaps idly delighted to excite a profitless enthusiasm amongst its guards and adherents, alarmed the multitude at Paris, already irritated by an increasing scarcity of food, and dreading an appeal to the army on the part of the sovereign, as the sovereign dreaded an appeal to the people on the part of the popular leaders. The men of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the women of the market-place, either impelled by their own pressing wants and indefinite fears, or guided (as it was then—I believe falsely—reported) by the secret influence of the Duc d’Orléans, were soon seen pouring from the dark corners of the capital, and covering the broad and stately road which leads to the long-venerated palace, where, since the time of the “Great Monarch,” his descendants had held their court. In the midst of an accidental tumult, this lawless rabble entered the royal residence, massacreing its defenders.

The King was rescued from actual violence, though not from insult, and escorted with a sort of decorum to the Tuileries, which he henceforth inhabited, nominally as the supreme magistrate of the State, but in reality as a prisoner. The National Assembly followed him to Paris.

XVII.

The events of which I have been speaking took place on the 5th and 6th of October; and were, to the advocates of constitutional monarchy, what the previous insurrection, in July, had been to the advocates of absolute power. Moderate men began to fear that it was no longer possible to ally the dignity and independence of the crown with the rights and liberties of the people: and MM. Mounier and Lally-Tollendal, considered the leaders of that party which from the first had declared the desire to establish in France a mixed constitutional government, similar to that which prevailed in England—disheartened and disgusted—quitted the Assembly. Hitherto, M. de Talleyrand had appeared disposed to act with these statesmen, but he did not now imitate their conduct: on the contrary, it was precisely at the moment when they separated themselves from the Revolution, that he brought forward a motion which connected him irrevocably with it.

Had affairs worn a different aspect, it is probable that he would not have compromised himself so decidedly in favour of a scheme which was certain to encounter a determined and violent opposition: still it is but just to observe that his conduct in this instance was in perfect conformity with the course he had previously pursued, and the sentiments he had previously expressed, both with respect to the exigencies of the State and the property of the Church. I have shown, indeed, the interest he had manifested in maintaining the public credit, first by supporting a loan of eighty millions of francs, and secondly by voting a property tax of twenty-five per cent. But the one had proved merely a temporary relief, and the other had not given an adequate return; for, as the whole administration of the country had been disorganized, so the collection of taxes was precarious and difficult. Some new resource had to be sought for. There was but one left. The clergy had already resigned their tithes, which at first had only been declared purchasable, and had also given up their plate. When M. de Juisné, Archbishop of Paris, made the two first donations in the name of his brethren, he had been seconded by the Bishop of Autun; and it was the Bishop of Autun who now proposed (on the 10th of October) that all that remained to the clergy—their land—should, on certain conditions, be placed at the disposal of the nation.

XVIII.

M. Pozzo di Borgo, a man in no wise inferior to M. de Talleyrand, though somewhat jealous of him, once said to me, “Cet homme s’est fait grand en se rangeant toujours parmi les petits, et en aidant ceux qui avaient le plus besoin de lui.”[11]

The propensity which M. Pozzo di Borgo somewhat bitterly but not inaccurately described, and which perhaps was in a certain degree the consequence of that nice perception of his own interests which guided the person whom I designate as “politic” through life almost like an instinct, was especially visible in the present instance. No one can doubt that, at the moment when every other institution was overturned in France, a great change in the condition of the French church, against which the spirit of the eighteenth century had been particularly directed, was an event not to be avoided. Alone amidst the general prodigality, this corporation by its peculiar condition had been able to preserve all its wealth, whilst it had lost almost all its power.

The feeble and the rich in times of commotion are the natural prey of the strong and the needy; and, therefore, directly the nation commenced a revolution to avoid a bankruptcy, the ecclesiastical property was pretty sure, a little sooner or a little later, to be appropriated to the public exigencies. Such an appropriation, nevertheless, was not without difficulties; and what the laity most wanted was a churchman of position and consideration who would sanction a plan for surrendering the property of the church. The opinions expressed by a man of so high a rank amongst the nobility and the clergy as the Bishop of Autun, were therefore of considerable importance, and likely to give him—those opinions being popular—an important position, which was almost certain (M. Necker’s influence being already undermined) to lead—should a new ministry be formed on the liberal side—to office. Mirabeau, in fact, in a note written in October, which proposes a new ministerial combination, leaves M. Necker as the nominal head of the government “in order to discredit him,” proposes himself as a member of the royal council without a department, and gives the post of minister of finance to the Bishop of Autun, saying, “His motion on the clergy has won him that place.”[12]