Besides the Jacobin Club, other machinery existed at Paris by aid of which the ultra-democrats were gradually paving the way for their own advent to power. In September 1790, the commune of Paris was reorganised in accordance with a special law, being divided into 48 sections, each of which had its primary assembly, composed of active citizens. Out of a population of 800,000, 84,000 were entitled to vote. Each of the 48 primary assemblies, commonly known as the sections, had a permanent committee, whose business it was to execute the orders of the municipality, and to carry out police regulations within the section. The municipality itself, of which Bailly was re-elected mayor, consisted of a general council of 96 and an executive of 44 members. It did its best to maintain order and support the constitution. Its position, however, was a difficult one. Work was scarce, crime rife, the prisons crowded. Liberty of speech and of the press was on all sides abused. There were no laws by which political agitation, though it took the form of treason to the constitution, could be legally suppressed. In the sections, owing to the withdrawal into private life of men of moderate views, the ultra-democrats were often able to obtain the upper hand. The permanent committees, in place of obeying the municipality, sometimes disputed authority with it or took an independent course of their own. All the 48 primary assemblies were entitled to meet whenever eight of their number made the demand in legal form. In the poorer sections agitators, by unceasing hostile criticism, undermined amongst the lower classes the popularity of the Assembly, of the municipality, of Lafayette, and of the national guard. Amongst many popular clubs, founded in different parts of Paris, the Cordeliers south of the Seine acquired special notoriety. Here presided Danton, an orator distinguished among his fellows by the zeal and energy which he flung into the contest with the municipality.
Mirabeau’s policy and death.
As the revolution thus ran its course, and the ultra democratic party, with the populace behind it, threatened by its activity and unscrupulousness in time to make itself entire master of the political arena, the stronger had become Mirabeau’s desire to enter the ministry and direct the counsels of the King. From entrance into the council he was, however, for the time hopelessly debarred. To nip his ambition in the bud, Necker and his colleagues, shortly after the King’s arrival in Paris, had instigated the Assembly to decree that no deputy should be a minister. In the spring of 1790 the King and Queen were induced to enter into secret communication with the great orator. He tendered them advice in a written form, and the King in return for his services made him monthly payments. But Mirabeau soon experienced that except in trivial matters his advice was never followed. He demanded a far fuller and more generous acceptance of the principles of the revolution than it was possible for Louis to give. He accepted as absolute gain, both for the King and the nation, the fall of the parliaments, the abolition of privileges, the destruction of the orders of nobles and clergy, and the freeing of land and labour. Unceasingly he urged and implored Louis to win the confidence of the nation by turning his back wholly on the past, and separating the cause of the crown from that of the upper orders. ‘To accomplish a reaction,’ he wrote, ‘you must destroy at a blow a whole generation or make blank the memories of twenty-five millions of men.’ Mirabeau accepted also as the noblest fruits of the revolution freedom of worship, freedom of the press, and the freedom of the individual from arbitrary treatment in property and person. But while detesting government that was arbitrary, or which went astray through want of means to test public opinion, Mirabeau had little faith in the wisdom of collective bodies of men, or in the political intelligence of the middle and lower classes, of whom he believed that, in the long run, the one would sell political liberty for order, the other for bread. He, therefore, looked to the King to be the guide and leader of the nation. His belief was that if only the existing barriers of distrust were broken down, the middle-class, relieved from fear of reaction in favour of the nobility and the Church, would readily assent to the establishment of a strong executive and the repeal of the decrees making administrative bodies independent of the central government, and excluding ministers from the legislature. He had, moreover, the penetration to see that the abolition of aristocratic institutions, and the parcelling out of the country into equal divisions, without historical traditions, were measures destructive of variety and vigour in the national life, and thereby favourable to the exercise of power by the crown. Unless the course that he advised were followed he predicted the fall of the throne. ‘The mob,’ he repeatedly said of the King and Queen, ‘will trample on their corpses.’ In despair of getting the existing Assembly to repeal its decrees, Mirabeau advised the King to quit Paris, and after doing all in his power to win the middle-class to his side to make, if necessary, an appeal to arms. While, however, he was urging such projects on Louis his naturally strong constitution, overtaxed by his exertions, broke down, and he died at the age of forty-two (April 2, 1791). It is wrong to regard Mirabeau as having been false to his principles because he entered into a pecuniary transaction with the King. He was a monarchist before 1789, and he died one in 1791. But the low moral elevation of his character vitiated his judgment, and increased the difficulties in his path. By taking money of the King he was precluded from the possibility of obtaining his confidence. Louis and Marie Antoinette never regarded him otherwise than as a dangerous demagogue bought over. The distrust in which his fellow deputies held him was not without justification. He was quite unscrupulous as to what means he employed to gain his ends, and did not hesitate to speak words in direct opposition to his real opinion, nor to support measures which he deemed injurious, in order to lower the Assembly in the opinion of the country, and increase the possibility of bringing about a reaction in the royal favour. It is difficult to doubt that his intense mortification at being excluded from the ministry made him more ready to countenance the idea of civil war.
Although long before his death ultra-democrats had accused Mirabeau of playing a double game, they could not prove the truth of their words, and to the last the great orator retained his popularity amongst the people. His remains were interred in the Panthéon, a large church lately built on the south side of the Seine, which the Assembly had reserved for the special burial-place of Frenchmen who by their services had won the honour and gratitude of their country. A vast crowd formed his funeral procession. A lady, annoyed by the dust, complained of the municipality for neglecting to water the boulevard. ‘Madam,’ replied a fishwoman, ‘they reckoned on our tears.’ Whether true or not, the story bears witness to the feelings of the time.
Position of Constitutionalists.
When Mirabeau died a significant change of temper was drawing over the Assembly. As the framers of the constitution approached its completion the truth began to press home on them that its stability was imperilled by the continuance of disorder. They saw taxes refused, administrative bodies pursuing whatever course was right in their own eyes, peasants pillaging corn, street mobs persecuting nonjurors, soldiers refusing obedience to officers, their own popularity waning, clubs usurping authority, ultra-democratic journals discrediting the constitution, and incessantly urging on the people the duty of insurrection. Now that a free constitution was established, and reform effected in every branch of the public service, justification for this state of things from their point of view vanished. Lafayette, Barnave, the Lameths, and other deputies of the left, who in 1790 had purposely sought to render the executive weak, in 1791 began to fear lest they had overshot their mark. Yet for them to change their course was no easy matter. They still sought for popular support, and clung to the principles on which the constitution of which they had themselves been the authors was based. Fear of reaction, moreover, still weighed heavily on them. The reactionary press, in coarse and violent language condemned the entire work of the Assembly, and threatened with the axe or the gallows all who from the opening of the States had at any time given support to revolutionary principles. Such threats were not without meaning at a time when emigrants were collecting in armed bands at Basel and Coblentz, threatening invasion; and the King’s brother, the Count of Artois, was calling on foreign powers to restore by force of arms the authority of the throne.
The primary assemblies for the election of the constitutional legislature were already meeting, when an event took place which brought into clearer light the relations existing between all parties.
CHAPTER V.
THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY.
Flight of the Royal Family.
To the King and Queen their position had long since become intolerable. They regarded the constitution as a monstrous work, based on principles subversive of all good government. To the laws establishing the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and imposing an oath on beneficed ecclesiastics, Louis had given his official consent with reluctance, but as he was unable to obtain the sanction of the Pope to what he had done, his peace of conscience was gone. The Queen was greatly suspected of using her influence to incite her husband against the revolution. She was intensely unpopular. Up to the middle of the century France had pursued a policy of opposition to Austria. In 1756 jealousy of England, and of England’s ally, the rising state of Prussia, had brought about an offensive and defensive alliance between France and Austria. The national feeling of hostility had, however, not died out, and the insignificant part that France took in foreign affairs was ascribed not to the decadence of the monarchy, but to the Austrian alliance. To make firm the bond, the partisans of the new system had accomplished, in 1770, a marriage between Louis, then Dauphin, and Marie Antoinette, daughter of the Empress Queen, Maria Theresa. Thus, from her first entrance into the country, Marie Antoinette had been regarded with disfavour, as the pledge of an unpopular alliance. Courtiers and intriguers, opposed to the faction which had brought about her marriage, had accused her of sacrificing French to Austrian interests, and had bruited false and scandalous tales against her name. By the revolutionary journalists she was now held up to execration as the untrue wife and false Queen, the betrayer of France, who was seeking by aid of Austrian troops to put down the revolution in blood. Now that trouble had destroyed her love of dissipation and brought into relief the strong side of her character, Marie Antoinette devoted all the energy of which her mind was capable to the task of recovering for her husband and bequeathing to her son the reins of government. She found her chief pleasure in the fulfilment of her duties as wife and mother, and by her dignified bearing impressed those who came into contact with her with a high idea of her daring and intellect. Less ready, however, than her husband to make concessions, and far more so to practise deceit, she proved an evil councillor to Louis. Both desired that the constitution should fail, and regarded the increase of disorder with indifference, under the idea that suffering would speedily recall their penitent subjects to the foot of the throne. Meanwhile, Louis made repeated and public avowals of his satisfaction with the constitution, intending hereafter to withdraw his words on the plea that he was not at liberty to express his true opinion. Since the winter a plan of flight to the eastern frontier was projected, but its execution was delayed owing to want of money and troops. The Queen relied on her brother, the Emperor Leopold, to place whatever Austrian troops were in Luxemburg at her disposal in case of need. She thought that if the King were once in safety on the frontier, and able to protect his supporters, a large portion of the nation would rally round him, and that it would be possible to make a settlement which, while leaving to the country some form of constitutional government, would set the royal authority above the heads of all subjects. Rumours that the King intended flight had for months been floating about. In April, the national guard, in spite of Lafayette’s remonstrances, detained by force the royal carriages when on the point of starting for the Palace of St. Cloud, a short distance outside the city.