[240] Madame de Staël, in her Considérations sur la Révolution Française (ed. 1818, tom. ii. ch. x.), describes her appearance before Robespierre at the Hôtel de Ville in the Place de Grève, and attributes her escape, on September 2-3, 1792, to Manuel.
[241] Marie Thérèse de Savoie-Carignan married, in 1767, Louis de Bourbon-Penthièvre, Prince de Lamballe. She was murdered at La Force in the September massacres of 1792, and her head, raised on a pike, was paraded before the windows of the Temple where the queen was confined. The Swiss Guard, nearly eight hundred in number, were massacred in the attack upon the Tuileries on August 10, 1792. Of the few who escaped, fifty-four were murdered in the Abbaye at the September massacres. Their death is commemorated by Thorwaldsen's lion at Lucerne.
[242] See letter of May 30, 1792.
[243] On September 21, 1792, without any declaration of war, Montesquieu entered Savoy, seized Montmélian and Chambéry, and in a few days overran the whole duchy. In Piedmont the French troops under General Anselme, supported by Admiral Truguet and the Toulon fleet, captured Nice and Villa Franca. The Duchy of Savoy was incorporated with France in November, 1792, as the Department of Mont-Blanc, and the Comté of Nice as the Department of the Maritime Alps.
[244] Etienne Clavière (1735-1793), formerly a banker in Geneva, had been banished in 1784 for his writings. As a member of the Executive Council, he urged upon his colleagues the attack upon Geneva, and orders to that effect were given to Montesquieu by Servan, the Minister of War. Geneva appealed for aid to Zurich and Berne under a treaty of 1584, and prepared for defence. A treaty was signed, October 22, 1792, between Montesquieu and the Republic of Geneva, slightly modified by a fresh treaty signed on November 2. By its terms the French troops were to withdraw, and the Swiss troops, sent by the cantons of Zurich and Berne, were to evacuate Geneva by December 1, 1792. Clavière committed suicide in 1793.
[245] At Geneva.
[246] At Geneva the Government was vested in the two hundred and fifty citizens who composed the Petit Conseil and the Conseil des Deux-Cents. Against this hereditary oligarchy Rousseau gave the signal of revolt by his Lettres de la Montagne (1764). Two parties were formed: one, the Représentants, demanding a revision of the constitution; the other, Négatifs, opposing it. In 1781 the popular party gained the upper hand. The aristocratic party, appealing to the treaty of 1738, which only allowed constitutional changes to be made with the sanction of France and Sardinia, demanded the help of those two powers. A combined Swiss, French, and Sardinian force was sent, and in July, 1782, the popular party, who had promised to emulate the citizens of Saguntum, surrendered the city without a struggle, and the aristocratic constitution was restored. Brissot de Warville, as le Philadelphien à Genève, and Mallet du Pan were both eye-witnesses of the events of the revolution.
[247] Albert, the second son of Madame de Staël, was born at this time.
[248] Adam de Custine (1740-1794), a veteran of the Seven Years' and American Wars, commanded part of the French army of the Rhine. He made himself master of Spire, Worms, Mayence, and Frankfort; but was afterwards driven out of the two latter places by the Prussians. He was executed at Paris January 3, 1794.
[249] The Prussian army, entangled in the wood of Argonne between the Meuse and the Marne, were outgeneralled by Dumouriez and Kellerman. The Duke of Brunswick, after the battle of Valmy (September 20), opened negotiations with Dumouriez (September 22-28) at Ste. Menehould, and then (October 1) retreated across the French frontier. The Austrians failed to take Lille, and, at the approach of Dumouriez, retired into the Low Countries (October 8). Dumouriez, following them, won the battle of Jemappes (November 6), and overran Belgium. At the same time the French troops were masters of Savoy and Nice, and of the country between the Rhine and the Maine. Fox rejoiced at the flight of the invaders. "No public event, not excepting Saratoga and York Town, ever happened that gave me so much delight" (C. J. F. to Lord Holland, October 12, 1792).