The 20th June.
Sense of danger made the Assembly the more eager to resort to repressive measures against the emigrants and the nonjurors. The property, real and personal, of the emigrants, was put under charge of the administrative bodies, and their revenues confiscated by the state. A decree, to which, however, the King refused his sanction, authorised the directories of the departments to banish nonjurors who refused to take an oath of fidelity to the nation, the law, and the King (May 27). Sanguine expectations of victory had been rapidly dissipated. In April the Belgian frontier was crossed; but the troops on their first meeting with the enemy fled in disorder, disobeying their officers, whom they accused of treason. Servan, the minister of war, proposed the formation of an armed camp for the protection of Paris. Much opposition was however, raised to the project, and the Assembly decreed (June 6) that 20,000 volunteers, recruited in the departments, should meet at Paris to take part in the celebration of a federal festival on July 14, the third anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. The real object of those who supported the decree was to have a force at Paris with which to maintain mastery over the city should the Allies penetrate into the interior. Louis left the decree unsanctioned, as he had the one directed against nonjurors. The agitators of the sections sought to get up an armed demonstration against this exercise of the King’s constitutional prerogative. Though armed demonstrations were illegal, the municipality offered but a perfunctory and half-hearted resistance. Bailly had resigned office in the autumn of the preceding year. The new mayor, Pétion, was a Girondist. During the winter half of the municipal officers had been re-elected, and of the new members many were ultra-democrats. Lafayette, no longer at the head of the national guard, commanded on the eastern frontier. The officers of the guard were mostly constitutionalists, but there was so little confidence in the King that few were prepared to act with vigour or could answer for the conduct of their men. Louis, irritated at the pressure put on him by Roland, Clavière, and Servan to sanction the two decrees, dismissed the three ministers from office (June 13). Dumouriez, who had quarrelled with his colleagues, supported the King in taking this step, but in face of the hostility of the Assembly himself resigned office (June 15). Three days later a letter from Lafayette was read in the Assembly. The general denounced the Jacobins as the authors of all disorders, called on the Assembly to maintain the prerogatives of the crown, and intimated that his army would not submit to see the constitution violated (June 18). Possibly the dismissal of the ministers and the writing of this letter were measures concerted between the King and Lafayette. In any case the King’s motive was to excite division between the constitutionalists and the Girondists, so as to weaken the national defence. The dismissal of the ministers was, however, regarded by the Girondists as a proof of the truth of their worst suspicions, and no measures were taken to prevent an execution of the project of making an armed, and therefore illegal demonstration against the royal policy. On June 20, thousands of persons, carrying pikes or whatever weapon came to hand, and accompanied by several battalions of the national guard, marched from St. Antoine to the hall of the Assembly. A deputation read an address demanding the recall of the ministers. Afterwards the whole of the procession, men, women, and children, dancing, singing, and carrying emblems, defiled through the chamber. Instigated by their leaders they broke into the Tuileries. The King, who took his stand on a window seat, was mobbed for four hours. To please his unwelcome visitors, he put on his head a red cap, such as was now commonly worn at the Jacobins as an emblem of liberty, in imitation of that which was once worn by the emancipated Roman slave. He declared his intention to observe the constitution, but neither insult nor menace could prevail on him to promise his sanction to the two decrees. The Queen, separated from the King, sat behind a table on which she placed the Dauphin, exposed to the gaze and taunts of the crowds which slowly traversed the palace apartments. At last, but not before night, the mob left the Tuileries without doing further harm, and order was again restored.
This insurrection and the slackness, if not connivance, of the municipal authorities, excited a widespread feeling of indignation amongst constitutionalists. Lafayette came to Paris, and at the bar of the Assembly demanded in person what he had before demanded by letter (June 28). With him, as with other former members of the constituent Assembly, it was a point of honour to shield the persons of the King and Queen from harm. Various projects for their removal from Paris were formed, but policy and sentiment alike forbade Marie Antoinette to take advantage of them. There was hazard in their execution, and the aims of their authors were not hers. The one gleam of light on the horizon of this unhappy Queen was the advance of the Allies. ‘Better die,’ she one day bitterly exclaimed, ‘than be saved by Lafayette and the constitutionalists!’
Country declared in danger.
There was, no doubt, a possibility of the Allies reaching Paris that summer, but this enormously increased the danger of the internal situation. There were 80,000 Austrians and Prussians collecting on the other side of the Rhine. To oppose their advance there were but 40,000 men stationed at Metz and Sedan, half of whom were recruits who had never seen fire. The new ministers were constitutional monarchists of weak type, who had neither energy nor a decided policy. It was known that the army was not in a fit state to repel the enemy. The Girondist orators unnerved the Assembly by asking whether the King and his ministers desired that it should be in such a state? Both in Paris and in the departments thousands of honest and patriotic men, disgusted with party violence, and not knowing which side to take, withdrew wholly into private life, or went to serve on the frontier. To rouse the nation to a sense of peril the Assembly caused public proclamation to be made in every municipality that the country was in danger. The appeal was responded to with enthusiasm, and within six weeks more than 60,000 volunteers enlisted. The Duke of Brunswick, the commander-in-chief of the allied forces, published a manifesto, drawn up by the emigrants. If the authors of this astounding proclamation had deliberately intended to serve the purpose of those Frenchmen who were bent on kindling zeal for the war, they could not have done anything more likely to serve their purpose. The powers required the country to submit unconditionally to Louis’s mercy. All who offered resistance were to be treated as rebels to their King, and Paris was to suffer military execution if any harm befell the royal family.
August 10.
The Jacobins openly proposed to depose the King. Those who shared their views in the Assembly, however, consisted of but a small body of members, who were called the Mountain, because they occupied the topmost benches on the left. Unhappily the majority refused to take into consideration a question the solution of which in the sense indicated by the Jacobins would have spared much future misery to both King and people. In the house of Roland, the dismissed Girondist minister of the interior, projects were discussed of defending the line of the Loire in case of the Allies reaching the capital. Madame Roland, a talented, enthusiastic woman, who directed the actions of her husband, was the centre of a small, and uncompromising circle, which was ready to abet the destruction of the throne by violence. But the leading Girondists—Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, and Gensonné—unwilling that the republic should owe its origin to violence, were prepared to give support to the throne had Louis assented to make the executive dependent on the Legislature, and to restore the late ministers to office. Their overtures to this effect were, however, rejected; and, meanwhile, a second insurrection, which had for its object the King’s deposition, was in preparation. The Assembly, after declaring the country in danger, had authorised the sections of Paris, as well as the administrative authorities throughout France, to meet at any moment. The sections had, in consequence, been able to render themselves entirely independent of the municipality. In each of the sectional or primary assemblies from 700 to 3,000 active citizens had the right to vote, but few cared to attend, and thus it constantly happened that a small active minority spoke and acted in the name of an apathetic constitutional majority. Thousands of volunteers passed through Paris on their way to the frontier, some of whom were purposely retained to take part in the insurrection. The municipality of Marseilles, at the request of Barbaroux, a young friend of the Rolands, sent up a band of 500 men, who first sung in Paris the verses celebrated as the ‘Marseillaise.’ The danger was the greater since every section had its own cannon and a special body of cannoneers, who nearly to a man were on the side of the revolutionists. The terrified and oscillating Assembly made no attempt to suppress agitation, but acquitted (August 8) Lafayette, by 406 against 280 votes, of a charge of treason made against him by the left, on the ground that he had sought to intimidate the Legislature. This vote was regarded as tantamount to a refusal to pass sentence of deposition on Louis. On the following night the insurrection began. Its centre was in the Faubourg of St. Antoine, and it was organised by but a small number of men. Mandat, the commander-in-chief of the national guard, was an energetic constitutionalist, who had taken well concerted measures for the defence of the Tuileries. But the unscrupulousness of the conspirators was more than a match for his zeal. Soon after midnight commissioners from twenty-eight sections met together at the Hôtel de Ville, and forced the Council-General of the Municipality to summon Mandat before it, and to send out orders to the officers of the guard in contradiction to those previously given. Mandat, unaware of what was passing, obeyed the summons, and on his arrival was arrested and murdered. After this the commissioners dispersed the lawful council and usurped its place. At the Tuileries were about 950 Swiss and more than 4,000 national guards. Early in the morning the first bands of insurgents appeared. On the fidelity of the national guards it was impossible to rely; and the royal family, attended by a small escort, left the palace, and sought refuge with the Assembly. Before their departure orders had been given to the Swiss to repel force by force, and soon the sound of firing spread alarm through Paris. The King sent the Swiss instructions to retire, which they punctually obeyed. One column, passing through the Tuileries gardens, was shot down almost to a man. The rest reached the Assembly in safety, but several were afterwards massacred on their way to prison. For twenty-four hours the most frightful anarchy prevailed. Numerous murders were committed in the streets. The assailants, some hundreds of whom had perished, sacked the palace, and killed all the men whom they found there. Of the 749 deputies only 284 ventured to attend the sitting. The Assembly was flooded by dense crowds calling for the deposition of the King. A decree was passed pronouncing Louis provisionally suspended, and summoning a National Convention to decide on the future form of government. The distinction between active and passive citizens was abolished, and manhood suffrage ordained. Roland, Clavière, and Servan were restored to office, and the candidate of the Mountain, Danton, appointed minister of justice.
The throne which had for so many centuries been the symbol of law and order for the French nation, had fallen in a day before the attack of a disorganised mob. Yet the very ease with which the insurgents succeeded in their task carries conviction with it that the catastrophe was the result of causes which had been long at work. In truth, the throne of Louis had, since the meeting of the States-General, ceased to be the symbol of law and order. Unable to guide the people whom he had once called his subjects, Louis had become an obstacle in their path. It was but natural that he should feel dissatisfied with the course of events which had reduced him to that nullity for which alone his character fitted him. Even in time of peace his existence in a place of nominal authority would have been irritating alike to himself and to those who still called him King. With the outbreak of war his position became absolutely untenable. He could not but wish well to the invaders, whose advent would free him from degradation and personal constraint. The mere suspicion that such a wish was entertained by him—and such a suspicion would be hard to silence—would arm against him all who most prized the independence of their country, or would make them indifferent to his fall. Even if he did nothing to assist the invaders, his continuance on the throne would paralyse the national defence. To remove the cause of that paralysis was the first step to that reorganisation of anarchical France which the invasion had made imperative. Though Louis had been struck down by a violent and unruly mob, the submission of France to the act done in its name was more than the outcome of that helplessness to which Frenchmen had been condemned by centuries of despotic government. It was the silent acknowledgment that Louis was out of place upon the throne.
CHAPTER VI.
THE FALL OF THE GIRONDISTS.
Submission of the country.