Almost the next vessel from Europe rebuked these unfair expressions, by confirming the most gloomy anticipations of Morris. Anarchy had seized upon unhappy France. From the head of his army at Maubeuge, Lafayette had sent a letter to the National Assembly, denouncing in unmeasured terms the conduct of the Jacobin club as inimical to the king and constitution; but it was of no avail. Day after day the disorder in the capital increased; and on the twentieth of June the populace, one hundred thousand in number, professedly incensed because the king had refused to sanction a decree of the National Assembly against the priesthood, and another for the establishment of a camp of twenty thousand men near Paris, marched to the Tuilleries with pikes, swords, muskets, and artillery, and demanded entrance. The gates were finally thrown open, and at least forty thousand armed men went through the palace and compelled the king, in the presence of his family, to put the bonnet rouge, or red cap of liberty, upon his head.
Hearing of these movements, Lafayette hastened to Paris, presented himself at the bar of the National Assembly, and in the name of the army demanded the punishment of those who had thus insulted the king in his palace and violated the constitution. But he was powerless. A party had determined to abolish royalty. On the third of August, Pelíon, in the Assembly, demanded that the king should be excluded from the throne. The unhappy monarch, perceiving the destructive storm that was impending, endeavored on the sixth to escape from the Tuilleries in the garb of a peasant. He was discovered by a sentinel, and all Paris was thrown into the greatest commotion. Two days afterward the Assembly, by a handsome majority, acquitted Lafayette of serious charges made against him by the Jacobins. The populace were dissatisfied, and, as they could not touch the general, they determined that the king whom he supported should be deposed. Members of the assembly who had voted in favor of Lafayette were insulted by armed men who surrounded the legislative hall; and the national legislature declared their sitting permanent until order should be restored.
At midnight on the ninth of August the tocsin was sounded in every quarter, and the generale was beat. Early the next morning the Tuilleries were attacked by the populace, and the king and his family, attended by the Swiss guard, fled for protection to the National Assembly. In the conflict that ensued nearly every man of that guard was butchered, and the National Assembly decreed the suspension of the king's authority.
Monarchy in France was now overthrown, and with it fell Lafayette and the constitutional party. All were involved in one common ruin. The Jacobins denounced the marquis in the National Assembly, procured a decree for his arrest, and sent emissaries to seize him. Then the Reign of Terror was inaugurated.
At first Lafayette resolved to go to Paris and boldly confront his accusers. It would have been madness. He perceived it, and, yielding to the force of circumstances, set off from his camp at Sedan, with a few faithful friends, to seek a temporary asylum in Holland until he could make his way to the United States. But he and his companions were first detained at Rochefort, the first Austrian post, and afterward cast into a dungeon at Olmutz.
When intelligence of these events reached Washington he was greatly shocked, and the sad fate of his friend grieved him sorely. Every arrival from Europe brought tidings still more dreadful than the last. “We have had a week of unchecked murders,” Morris wrote to Jefferson on the tenth of September, “in which some thousands have perished in this city. It began with two or three hundred of the clergy, who had been shut up because they would not take the oaths prescribed by the law, and which they said were contrary to their conscience. Thence these executors of speedy justice went to the Abbaye, where the persons were confined who were at court on the tenth of August. These were despatched also, and afterward they visited the other prisons. All those who were confined either on the accusation or suspicion of crimes were destroyed.”
Morris then detailed other horrors; yet Mr. Jefferson, looking upon the whole movement against monarchy and aristocracy as essentially right, and based upon the same principles as that of the American Revolution, persisted in regarding the Jacobins, who were the chief promoters of these bloody deeds, and who had laid violent hands on the constitution and its supporters, as “republican patriots.” He was shocked, but was neither disappointed nor very sorrowful. He looked upon the whole affair as an indispensable struggle of freemen in the abolition of monarchy and all its prerogatives and injustice; and he deplored the death of the innocent who had fallen, but only as he should have done “had they fallen in battle.” “The liberty of the whole earth,” he said, “was depending on the issue of the contest; and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause,” he continued; “but rather than that it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam and Eve left in every country, and left free, it would have been better than it now is.”
When fully assured of Lafayette's fate, Washington felt an ardent desire to befriend his family, consisting of his wife and young children. He knew that their situation, in the raging storm, must be dreadful at the best; and on the first information of their probable residence, at the close of January, 1793, he addressed the following letter to the marchioness:—
“If I had words that could convey to you an adequate idea of my feelings on the present situation of the Marquis de Lafayette, this letter would appear to you in a different garb. The sole object in writing to you now is, to inform you that I have deposited in the hands of Mr. Nicholas Van Staphorst, of Amsterdam, two thousand three hundred and ten guilders, Holland currency, equal to two hundred guineas, subject to your orders.
“This sum is, I am certain, the least I am indebted for services rendered to me by the Marquis de Lafayette, of which I never yet have received the account. I could add much; but it is best, perhaps, that I should say little on this subject. Your goodness will supply my deficiency.