The outbreak of war might probably have been postponed, but it could hardly have been definitely averted. The doctrines of social and political equality announced by the French revolutionists were not, as were the arguments from law and precedent which had in the seventeenth century risen to the surface in the English Long Parliament, adapted merely to the country in which they arose. They were applicable to all the states of Western Europe. Hence, they acquired all the force of a religious propaganda. As in the sixteenth century men were not asked whether they were Germans or Frenchmen, but whether they were Catholics or Protestants, so now they would be first asked whether they were on the side of the revolutionary opinions or not. Before that great division of opinions all national antagonisms sank into comparative insignificance. The French revolutionist could not long avoid being carried away by a fierce desire to give effectual aid to his brother revolutionist abroad, and the German or English anti-revolutionist could not long keep his hands out of the fray whilst the classes in France with whom he warmly sympathised were being borne down and oppressed.
Declaration of War.
The ministry at this important crisis was disunited and without the confidence of the Assembly. While the Assembly desired war, Delessart, minister of foreign affairs, sought to maintain peace. The minister of war, Narbonne, a friend of Lafayette, flung so much energy and enthusiasm into the work of making preparations for hostilities that he won support from both sides of the Assembly. Bertrand de Molleville, minister of marine, was a reactionary. Louis through aversion to Lafayette dismissed Narbonne from office. Brissot took advantage of the discontent that this step excited amongst constitutionalists to bring a charge of high treason against Delessart for betraying the interests of France to Austria (March 10). This attack led to a break-up of the cabinet, and Louis, whose one object now was to tide with safety over the next few months, till the arrival of the allies at Paris, put in office men who represented the opinions dominant in the Assembly. Roland and Clavière, respectively ministers of the interior and of finance, belonged to the Girondists. Dumouriez, minister of foreign affairs, was an able, self-confident and unscrupulous soldier, eager to obtain distinction and a career. On March 1, Leopold had died. His son and successor, Francis, a young man of four-and-twenty, who was some months later elected Emperor, cared less to avoid a rupture than his father had done. The new French ministry was above all a war ministry, and on the official proposition of the King, the Assembly amid loud applause, declared war against Francis, as King of Hungary and Bohemia (April 20). Wars have often been entered on with as little ground of offence, but rarely with more rashness than when the Assembly thus engaged France in hostilities with Austria, which would necessarily involve a war also with her ally Prussia. The French fortresses were out of repair and the army completely disorganised. Since 1789 hundreds of officers had resigned, deserted, or had been driven away by their men. According to the laws of the constituent Assembly under officers were elected out of the ranks, and officers generally advanced according to length of service. There were, however, hundreds of vacancies still unfilled, and desertions both in army and navy continued. Of the 150,000 troops of the line, 50,000 had yet to be recruited. The 97,000 volunteers ordered to be raised were for the most part unarmed and untrained.
Robespierre and the Jacobins.
The peril of the country excited on all sides suspicion and distrust, increasing the bitterness of party strife and threatening to undermine the standing ground alike of constitutionalists and Girondists. Girondists as little as constitutionalists had an interest in making further alterations in the bases of social order. If the Girondists held more democratic notions of life and government, yet by equality they understood equality of rights alone, and were to the full as zealous defenders of the principles of internal free trade and individual liberty. They were also political purists and precisians, who, while decrying the aristocracies of birth and wealth, were intent on founding one of talent and virtue. Hence no sooner had they obtained possession of the ministries than they came into sharp collision with whatever members of the ultra-democratic party did not share their genuine devotion to impracticable ideals. A spirit different from theirs was by this time rising into prominence amongst the Jacobins. The saddest result of the long exercise of arbitrary authority is that it renders mutual confidence impossible. The legacy of the old system of government to the new France was distrust. Man distrusted man, and class distrusted class. Thousands of persons who had embarked in the revolution full of sentimental hope and confidence were now rushing into the opposite extreme. They had known so little of their fellow creatures as to imagine that the new equality would be received with enthusiasm, even by those who had profited the most by the old inequality; and they now fancied that under every reluctance to accept the fullest results of the revolution was concealed a deep design to betray it. A perfect self-confidence easily leads to the most deep-rooted suspicion; and those who, after the long seclusion from all participation in practical politics to which most Frenchmen had been condemned for centuries, were inevitably ignorant how complicated modern society is, readily imagined all who differed from them to be traitors to their country. Not only was this suspicion directed against the King and those of the once privileged orders who remained in France, but it fastened upon all superiority of station or of intellect. Many who had been educated in the theories of Rousseau to believe unreasonably in the purity and intelligence of the masses, learned no less unreasonably to distrust every man who in any way rose above the common level, and offered himself with more or less qualification as a rallying point to the disorganised society around him.
The man who most represented this prevailing distrust of all superiority would in the end gain for a time that very superiority which he himself denied to be desirable, but which was required by the very necessities of human nature. Such a man was Maximilien Robespierre. A lawyer from Arras, he had been so far influenced by the teaching of Rousseau as to throw up a lucrative judicial post, lest he should be compelled to condemn a fellow-creature to death. From such feelings of pity for the human race to cruelty towards individuals there is in times of revolution, but a short step. The few who stood in the way of the entrance of the people into the promised land, where liberty, equality, and fraternity were to become the accepted rule of life, soon came to be regarded as monsters of wickedness, whom it was the duty of every good citizen to sweep away from the earth for very kindness’ sake. The time for such a proscription had not yet come. But Robespierre, though he was now excluded from the Legislature, as having been a member of the last Assembly, was always on the alert in the Jacobins, ready in dry and acrid tones to draw attention to every delinquency of those who were struggling to build up authority. The social and political formulas of Rousseau alone had taken root in his mind. He cared for equality, and he cared for democracy. For individual liberty he ceased to care as soon as he found himself in a position to get the better of his adversaries by resorting to the arms of absolute and despotic governments. He was certain to be a dangerous and a cruel opponent. His mind was logical and narrow, he was ambitious and envious of all above himself, cunning and hypocritical, yet earnest in pursuit of his aims, incapable of strong affection, of a generous act or a magnanimous resolution, and wholly devoid of moral sense. Whoever stood in his light he regarded at once as a personal enemy and a traitor to the people’s cause. By temperament he was nervous and cautious. He never set himself at the head of popular movements, always guarded his statements so as to mean much or little, according to circumstances; and in case of danger, delayed till the last moment to take a decided part. Robespierre opposed the war because he divined that both constitutionalists and Girondists entered upon it with the aim of obtaining for themselves mastery over France. While the Girondists accused him of making himself the people’s idol, he accused them of seeking power for party purposes. In the end he entirely destroyed the popularity originally enjoyed by Brissot, Guadet, and others in the Jacobins. The society had become even more democratic in character since the constitutionalists abandoned it in July 1791. The galleries were opened to the public, and were ordinarily filled by the most ardent revolutionists belonging to the lower and lower middle classes. Of this audience Robespierre won the entire confidence. He put himself forward as the special representative of the people, whose wisdom and goodness formed his constant theme. He personified the distrust felt by the lower classes towards the possessors of rank, wealth, and talent. He was himself indifferent to the enjoyments that wealth can give, absolutely incorruptible, an orator without brilliant qualities of any kind, but in appearance and language always respectable. Behind Robespierre, frequenters of the Jacobins and joining in the attack on the Girondists, were Desmoulins and others, to whom the preciseness and exclusiveness of Roland and Brissot gave offence, besides adventurers and agitators of the lowest type, whose sole object was to pave the way for their own advent to power and office. Marat, in his journal, openly accused the Girondists as well as the constitutionalists of being sold to the court, and included both in the general proscription which he unceasingly urged on the people of Paris.
Administrative anarchy.
The party conflicts waged in the capital were repeated in the departments. The central government was powerless to impose uniform action. Roland, the minister of the interior, issued circulars, inculcating the duty of obedience to the laws, but words were powerless to restrain the passions which the revolution had let loose. Each administrative body followed its own course, according as it was under the dominion of constitutionalist or Girondist opinions. In the departments round Paris small armies of peasants and brigands, often with municipal officers at their head, went about fixing a maximum price of corn and other articles of food. In Languedoc and Guienne insurgent bands extorted money and pillaged country houses. But nowhere was administrative anarchy so great and crime so rife as in the four departments of Gard, Bouches-du-Rhône, Vaucluse, and Lozère, where reactionary and revolutionary elements came into violent collision. In Lozère attempts were being made to excite amongst the peasantry a Catholic reaction, and an armed camp, in communication with the emigrants, was formed at Jalès. On the other hand, the municipality at Marseilles, composed of violent ultra-democrats, raised a force of 4,000 men, and disarmed a Swiss regiment at Aix, and the national guard of Arles. Avignon, under mob rule, witnessed the commission of horrible crimes. The Comtat Venaissin had belonged to the Pope since 1273, and Avignon, its chief town, since 1348. After the meeting of the States-General civil war broke out within this small territory between the supporters and opponents of revolutionary principles and of union with France. The constituent Assembly sent mediators who patched up a peace in January 1791. In September 1791 it at last decreed the union of Avignon and the Comtat to France. But it had been too late to prevent the perpetration of the most atrocious deeds. The force raised by the French party, which had been recruited from the lowest sources, quarrelled with its employers, the municipality of Avignon. A number of persons were imprisoned without regard to age or sex. One of the insurgent officers was in revenge brutally murdered in the streets. His comrades, led by Jourdan, a brigand by profession, retaliated by killing in cold blood sixty and more prisoners—men, women, and children—whose bodies they flung into a dungeon beneath a tower of the Papal palace (October, 1791). The assassins, though they were at first imprisoned, afterwards obtained their release in right of an amnesty, which the constituent Assembly before its dispersion had passed, covering all crimes attaching to the revolution.
Position of Girondists.
The undisguised enmity of Robespierre, the cry raised for a maximum price of corn, the tragedy of Avignon, the illegalities and crimes incessantly committed, alarmed the Girondists, and tended to restrain them from coming to open breach with the constitutionalists; but they continued to regard domestic treason as far more dangerous than mob violence, both to themselves and to France, and fearing to give the executive the least vantage ground whence to facilitate the advance of the Allies, opposed with vehemence the employment of coercive measures, either to suppress political agitation on the part of the clubs, or to restrain administrative bodies from passing beyond their legal functions. They still entertained the belief that the people would be brought to obey the voice of reason, and thought that were Louis’s treachery once set in a clear light, the storm of revolution would pass over with the establishment of a republican government, and the country return without effort to paths of law and amity.