Lectures on the French Revolution

by Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton Acton

XV

THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY

The calculations of the Girondins were justified by the event. Four months after the declaration of war the throne had fallen, and the king was in prison. Next to Dumouriez the principal members of the new ministry were the Genevese Clavière, one of Mirabeau's advisers, and the promoter of the assignats, Servan, a meritorious officer, better known to us as a meritorious military historian; and Roland, whose wife shared, on a lower scale, the social influence and intellectual celebrity of Madame de Staël.

Dumouriez, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is one of the great figures of the Revolution. He was excessively clever rather than great, agreeable, and abounding in resource, not only cool in danger, as a commander should be, but steadfast and cheerful when hope seemed lost, and ready to meet the veterans of Frederic with undisciplined volunteers, and officers who were the remnant of the royal army. Without principle or conviction or even scruple, he had none of the inhumanity of dogmatic revolutionists. To the king, whom he despised, he said, "I shall often displease you, but I shall never deceive you." He was not an accomplice of the conspiracy to compromise him and to ruin him by war, and would have saved him if the merit and the reward had been his own. He did not begin well, in the arts either of war or peace. He employed all his diplomacy, all his secret service money, in the endeavour to make Prussia neutral. Nothing availed against the indignation of the Prussians at French policy, and their contempt for French arms. The officers received orders to make ready for a march to Paris, and were privately told that it would be a mere parade. The first encounter with Austrians on Belgian soil confirmed this persuasion, for the French turned and fled, and murdered one of their generals.

Dumouriez's credit was shaken, and the Girondin leaders, who could not rely on him to make the coming campaign turn towards the execution of their schemes, revived the question of the clergy. On May 27 Vergniaud carried a decree placing nonjurors at the mercy of local authorities, and threatening them with arbitrary expulsion as public enemies in time of national peril. If the king sanctioned, he would be isolated and humiliated. If the king vetoed, they would have the means of raising Paris against him, without waiting for the vicissitudes of war or the co-operation of Dumouriez. Madame Roland wrote a letter to the king, and her husband signed it, on June 10, representing that it was for the safety of the priests themselves that they should be sent out of the way of danger. Roland, proud of the composition, sent it to the papers. The Girondin ministry was at once dismissed. Dumouriez remained, attempted to form an administration without the Girondin colleagues, but could not overcome the king's resistance to the act of banishment. On June 15 he resigned office, and took a command on the frontier. The majority in the Assembly was still faithful to the Constitution of 1791, and opposed to further change; but the rejection of their decree against the royalist clergy alienated them at the critical moment. Lewis had lost ground with his friends; he had angered the Girondins; and he had lost the services of the last man who was strong enough to save him.

On June 15 a high official in the administration of the department was at Maubeuge, on a visit to Lafayette. His name was Roederer, and we shall meet him again. He rose high under Napoleon, and is one of those to whom we owe our knowledge of the Emperor's character, as well as of the events I am about to relate. His interview with the general was interrupted by a message from Paris. Lafayette was called away; and Roederer, from the next room, heard the joyful exclamations of the officers. The news was the fall of the Girondin ministry; and Lafayette, to strengthen the king's hands, wrote to the Assembly remonstrating against the illiberal and unconstitutional tendencies of the hour. His letter was read on the 18th. A new ministry had been forming, consisting of Feuillants and men friendly to Lafayette, one of whom, Terrier de Montciel, enjoyed the confidence of the king. On the opposition side were the Girondins angry and alarmed at their fall from power, the more uncompromising Jacobins, Pétion at the head of the Commune, and behind Pétion, the real master of Paris, Danton, surrounded by a group of his partisans, Panis and Sergent in the police, Desmoulins and Fréron in the press, leaders of the populace, such as Santerre and Legendre, and above them all, the Alsatian soldier, Westermann.

With Danton and his following we reach the lowest stage of what can still be called the conflict of opinion, and come to bare cupidity and vengeance, to brutal instinct and hideous passion. All these elements were very near the surface in former phases of the Revolution. At this point they are about to prevail, and the man of action puts himself forward in the place of contending theorists. Robespierre and Brissot were politicians who did not shrink from crime, but it was in the service of some form of the democratic system. Even Marat, the most ghastly of them all, who demanded not only slaughter but torture, and whose ferocity was revolting and grotesque, even Marat was obedient to a logic of his own. He adopted simply the state of nature and the primitive contract, in which thousands of his contemporaries believed. The poor had agreed to renounce the rights of savage life and the prerogative of force, in return for the benefits of civilisation; but finding the compact broken on the other side, finding that the upper classes governed in their own interest, and left them to misery and ignorance, they resumed the conditions of barbaric existence before society, and were free to take what they required, and to inflict what punishment they chose upon men who had made a profit of their sufferings. Danton was only a strong man, who wished for a strong government in the interest of the people, and in his own. In point of doctrine, he cared for little but the relief of the poor by taxing the rich. He had no sympathy with the party that was gathering in the background, whose aim it was not only to reduce inequalities, but to institute actual equality and the social level. There was room beyond for more extreme developments of the logic of democracy; but the greatest change in the modern world was wrought by Danton, for it was he who overthrew the Monarchy and made the Republic.

When Lewis dismissed his ministers, Danton exclaimed that the time had come to strike terror, and on June 20 he fulfilled his threat. It was the anniversary of the Tennis Court. A monster demonstration was organised, to plant a tree of liberty or to present a petition—in reality to overawe the Assembly and the king. There was an expectation that the king would perish in the tumult, but nothing definite was settled, and no assassin was designated. It was enough that he should give way, abandon his priests, and receive his ministers from the populace. That was all the Girondins required, and they would assent to no more. The king would have to choose between them and their temporary confederates, the Cordeliers. If he gave way, he would be spared; if he resisted, he would be slain. It was not to be apprehended that he would resist and would yet come out alive. The king understood the alternative before him, made his choice, and prepared to die. After putting his house in order, he wrote, on the 19th, that he had done with this world.

Lewis XVI. had not ability to devise a policy or vigour to pursue it, but he had the power of grasping a principle. He felt at last that the ground beneath his feet was firm. He would drift no longer, sought no counsel, and admitted no disturbing inquiries. If he fell, he would fall in the cause of religion and for the rights of conscience. The proper name for the rights of conscience is liberty, and therefore he was true to himself, and was about to end as he had begun, in the character of a liberal and reforming king. When the morning came, there was a moment of hesitation. The pacific rioters asked what would happen if the guards fired upon them. Santerre, who was at their head, replied, "March on, and don't be afraid; Pétion will be there." They presented their petition, defiled before the Assembly, and made their way to the palace. It was not to be thought of that, after they had been admitted by the representatives of the nation, an inferior power should deny them access. One barrier after another yielded, and they poured into the room where the king awaited them, in the recess of a window, with four or five guards in front of him. They shielded him well, for although there were men in the crowd who struck at him with sword and pike, he was untouched. Their cry was that he should restore Roland and revoke his veto, for this was the point in common between the Girondins and their violent associates. Legendre read an insulting address, in which he called the king a traitor. The scene lasted more than two hours. Vergniaud and Isnard appeared after some time, and their presence was a protection. At last Pétion came in, borne aloft on the shoulders of grenadiers. He assured the mob that the king would execute the will of the people, when the country had shown that it agreed with the capital; he told them that they had done their duty, and then, with lenient arts, turned them out.