"And so the pretorians pushed their measures. They assembled ten thousand troops: infantry, cavalry, artillery. The night, the time set for marching, having come, Lafayette's three aides-de-camp spread themselves in the public places, declaring that their General had been assassinated by a Jacobin. But properly to judge of the fury of these idolaters, these blue-bonnets of the Nero of two worlds, one should have seen them in one moment pour furiously from their pens, or, rather, from their dens. They loaded with ball in plain view of the people; on all sides the drums beat the assembly; the twenty-seven battalions most heavily composed of aristocrats received the order to march upon the Field of Mars. They inflamed themselves to the massacre. As they loaded their muskets they were heard to say: We shall send some pills into the Jacobins. The cavalry flourished their sabers. It was half after eight in the evening when the red flag was unrolled as the signal for the massacre of inoffensive petitioners. The battalions arrived at the Field of Mars, not by one sole entrance, in order that the citizens might disperse, but by all the three issues at once, that the petitioners might be enclosed from all sides. And here is the final perfidy, that which caps the climax of the horrors of the day. These volleys—all delivered without orders—were fired upon petitioners, who seeing death advancing from all sides, and unable to flee, received them as they embraced the Altar of the Country, which in an instant was heaped with the corpses of the slain."
Such was the melancholy day of the Field of Mars. And yet the will of the petitioners—the forfeiture of Louis XVI's right to the crown and consequently the establishment of the Republic—was so sane, so logical, so inevitable by the march of events and the force of affairs, that the following year saw Louis suspended from the throne upon accusation of high treason, and saw the National Convention proclaim the Republic. But alas! how many victims!
CHAPTER VI.
WAR AND COUNTER-WAR.
After the massacre of the Field of Mars, the reaction thought itself all-powerful, and entered pitilessly upon its career of repression. The presses of the patriot journals were destroyed, their writers forced to flee or go into hiding. The clubs, under the weight of intimidation, remained almost silent.
Re-established in full power, Louis XVI immediately renewed his intrigues, within France with the enemies of the Revolution, the nobility and priesthood, and without, with the Emigrant nobles, and foreign sovereigns.
The Constituent Assembly, having finished its labors, submitted the Constitution to the royal sanction, and declared itself dissolved on September 29, 1791. Although covertly resolved to tear the Constitution to shreds, the King solemnly swore to uphold it. The Constituent Assembly gave place to the Legislative Assembly. According to its own enactment, none of the old members could be re-elected. Robespierre and the other minority leaders no longer held their seats, therefore, among the Representatives of the people; but the principles which inspired the minority in the Constituent, became, through the majority of the Legislative Assembly, the expressed general opinion of France. The spirit of the Revolution was resuscitated by the elections. The Right of the new Assembly was not composed, as that of the Constituent, of grand seigneurs, cardinals, bishops, bourgeois aristocrats, men of the court or the sword, defenders of the old régime; the Right of the Legislative Assembly was occupied by the Constitutional party, represented outside the Assembly by the Club of the Feuillants. The heads of this party, Lafayette, Mathieu, Dumas, Ramond, Vaublanc, Beugnot, and others, sought the continuance in power of Louis XVI and the Constitution. The leaders of the Left were, to a great extent, from the department of the Gironde, whence the name of Girondins, applied to Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Ducos and their companions. Their leanings were either purely republican, or were on the way to become so. Finally Bazire, Chabot and Merlin sat at the extreme Left; but this faction, as well as that of the Girondins, was devoted to the Revolution, and determined to defend it by all means. The Center of the Assembly, undecided and watery, voted as the spirit moved them, sometimes with the Left, sometimes with the Right. In short, the majority of the body, no longer able to doubt the treason of Louis XVI or his secret understanding with the foreign coalition, was undisguisedly hostile to royalty. It even decided, at its first session, to suppress, in the reports of the representatives of the sovereign people and its executive committee, those ridiculous appellations of Sire and Majesty, the superannuated relics of monarchical fetichism.
Louis XVI, on his part, believing himself sure of the assistance of the foreign sovereigns, and counting, within, on the activity of the clergy and the complicity of the generals and officers of the National Guard, obstinately defied the Assembly. The King chose his ministry from the Feuillant Club, notoriously counter-revolutionary. In vain did the Assembly render its decrees against the priests, who were fanning the fires of civil war; against the aristocrats, who were flocking to join the body of Emigrants gathered in arms on the frontier. Louis XVI opposed his veto to the execution of these decrees. Soon there came to light the odious plot of the foreign war, organized between the King, the ministers, the court party, and the despots of Europe. The Emigrants made open preparations on the frontiers for an armed invasion under the protection of the German princes bordering on France, and were to serve as advance guard to the troops of the coalition. These threatening preparations aroused the Representatives. Isnard mounted the tribunal and exclaimed:
"Representatives of the people, let us rise to the height of our office. Let us speak to the King, to his ministers, to Europe, with the firmness that befits us. Let us say to the King: You reign but by the people and for the people. The people alone is sovereign! Let us say to the ministers: Choose between public gratitude and the vengeance of the laws. Let us say to Europe: France draws her sword; the scabbard she will fling away. Then she will wage to the death the war of the peoples against the Kings, and soon the people will embrace before the spectacle of their dethroned tyrants; the earth will be consoled, the heavens satisfied!"
Meanwhile Louis cloaked himself in a well-feigned submission to the orders of the Assembly. He promised to hold off the German princes firmly and with dignity. 'Twas the promise of a King! Under the pretext of possible eventualities of war, he chose as Minister of War the Count of Narbonne, a young courtier crammed with ambition and audacity. The latter organized three army corps, placing the first under the command of the Marquis of Lafayette, and giving the other two to the Marquis of Rochambeau and Marshal Lukner, two enemies of the Revolution.
Robespierre, Danton, and Billaud-Varenne were farsighted enough to detect the conspiracy hidden beneath these ostensible preparations for war. In the memorable meeting of the Jacobins, of the 12th of December, 1791, several orators of the republican party gave utterance to their sentiments.