Meanwhile the Parliament had gained its point, the great baillie-courts were abolished; the same difficulty had been found in constituting them as in forming the plenary court; all the magistrates of the inferior tribunals refused to sit in them; the Breton deputies were let out of the Bastille; everywhere the sovereign courts were recalled. The return of the exiles to Paris was the occasion for a veritable triumph and the pretext for new disorders among the populace. It was the Parliament’s first duty to see to the extraordinary police (haute police) in its district; it performed the duty badly and weakly. The populace had applauded its return and had supported its cause during its exile; the first resolution of the court was directed against the excesses committed by the military in repressing the disorders. When it came to trying the men seized with arms in their hands and the incendiaries who had threatened private houses, all had their cases dismissed; by way of example, one was detained a few days in prison. Having often been served in its enterprises by the passions of the mob, the Parliament had not foreseen the day when those same outbursts would sweep it away like chaff before the wind with all that regimen of tradition and respect to which it still clung even in its most audacious acts of daring.
For an instant the return of M. Necker to power had the effect of restoring some hope to the most far-sighted. On his coming into office, the treasury was empty, there was no scraping together as much as five thousand livres. The need was pressing, the harvests were bad; the credit and the able resources of the great financier sufficed for all; the funds went up thirty percent. in one day, certain capitalists made advances, the chamber of the notaries of Paris paid six millions into the treasury, M. Necker lent two millions out of his private fortune. Economy had already found its way into the royal household; Louis XVI. had faithfully kept his promises; despite the wrath of courtiers, he had reduced his establishment. The Duke of Coigny, premier equerry, had found his office abolished. “We were truly grieved, Coigny and I,” said the king, kindly, “but I believe he would have beaten me had I let him.” “It is fearful to live in a country where one is not sure of possessing to-morrow what one had the day before,” said the great lords who were dispossessed; “it’s a sort of thing seen only in Turkey.” Other sacrifices and more cruel lessons in the instability of human affairs were already in preparation for the French noblesse.
The great financial talents of M. Necker, his probity, his courage, had caused illusions as to his political talents; useful in his day and in his degree, the new minister was no longer equal to the task. The distresses of the treasury had powerfully contributed to bring about, to develop the political crisis; the public cry for the States-general had arisen in a great degree from the deficit; but henceforth financial resources did not suffice to conjure away the danger; the discount-bank had resumed payment, the state honored its engagements, the phantom of bankruptcy disappeared from before the frightened eyes of stockholders; nevertheless the agitation did not subside, minds were full of higher and more tenacious concernments. Every gaze was turned towards the States-general. Scarcely was M. Necker in power, when a royal proclamation, sent to the Parliament returning to Paris, announced the convocation of the Assembly for the month of January, 1789.
The States-general themselves had become a topic of the most lively discussion. Amid the embarrassment of his government, and in order to throw a sop to the activity of the opposition, Brienne had declared his doubts and his deficiency of enlightenment as to the form to be given to the deliberations of that ancient assembly, always convoked at the most critical junctures of the national history, and abandoned for one hundred and seventy-five years past. “The researches ordered by the king,” said a decree of the council, “have not brought to light any positive information as to the number and quality of the electors and those eligible, any more than as to the form of the elections: the king will always try to be as close as possible to the old usages; and, when they are unknown, his Majesty will not supply the hiatus till after consulting the wish of his subjects, in order that the most entire confidence may hedge a truly national assembly. Consequently the king requests all the municipalities and all the tribunals to make researches in their archives; he likewise invites all scholars and well-informed persons, and especially those who are members of the Academy of Inscriptions and Literature, to study the question and give their opinion.” In the wake of this appeal a flood of tracts and pamphlets had inundated Paris and the provinces: some devoted to the defence of ancient usages; the most part intended to prove that the Constitution of the olden monarchy of France contained in principle all the political liberties which were but asking permission to soar; some, finally, bolder and the most applauded of all, like that of Count d’Entraigues, Note on the States-General, their Rights and the Manner of Convoking them; and that of Abbe Sieyes, What is the Third Estate? Count d’Entraigues’ pamphlet began thus: “It was doubtless in order to give the most heroic virtues a home worthy of them that heaven willed the existence of republics, and, perhaps to punish the ambition of men, it permitted great empires, kings, and masters to arise.” Sieyes’ pamphlet had already sold to the extent of thirty thousand copies; the development of his ideas was an audacious commentary upon his modest title. “What is the third estate?” said that able revolutionist. “Nothing. What ought it to be? Everything?” It was hoisting the flag against the two upper orders. “The deputies of the clergy and of the noblesse have nothing in common with national representation,” he said, “and no alliance is possible between the three orders in the States-general.”
It may be permissible to quote here a page or, so from the second volume of this history. “At the moment when France was electing the constituent assembly, a man, whose mind was more powerful than accurate, Abbe Sieyes, could say, ‘What is the third estate? Everything. What has it been hitherto in the body politic? Nothing. What does it demand? To be something.’ There were in these words three grave errors. In the course of the regimen anterior to 1789, so far was the third estate from being nothing that it had every day become greater and stronger. What was demanded for it in 1789 by M. Sieyes and his friends was not that it should become something, but that it should be everything. It was to desire what was beyond its right and its might; the Revolution, which was its victory, itself proved this. Whatever may have been the weaknesses and the faults of its adversaries, the third estate had to struggle terribly to vanquish them, and the struggle was so violent and so obstinate that the third estate was shattered to pieces in it and paid right dearly for its triumph. It first of all found despotism instead of liberty; and when the liberty returned, the third estate found itself face to face with a twofold hostility: that of its adversaries of the old regimen and that of absolute democracy, which, in its turn, claimed to be everything. Excessive pretension entails unmanageable opposition, and excites unbridled ambition. What there was in the words of Abbe Sieyes, in 1789, was not the truth as it is in history; it was a lying programme of revolution. Taking the history of France in its totality and in all its phases, the third estate has been the most active and most decisive element in French civilization. If we follow it in its relations with the general government of the country, we see it first of all allied during six centuries with the kingship, struggling pauselessly against the feudal aristocracy, and giving the prevalence in place of that to a central and unique power, pure monarchy to wit, closely approximating, though with certain often-repeated but vain reservations, to absolute monarchy. But, so soon as it has gained this victory and accomplished this revolution, the third estate pursues another: it attacks this unique power which it had contributed so much to establish, and it undertakes the task of changing pure monarchy into constitutional monarchy. Under whatever aspect we consider it in its two great and so very different enterprises, whether we study the progressive formation of French society itself or that of its government, the third estate is the most powerful and the most persistent of the forces which have had influence over French civilization. Not only is this fact novel, but it has for France quite a special interest; for, to make use of an expression which is much abused in our day, it is a fact eminently French, essentially national. Nowhere has burgessdom had a destiny so vast, so fertile as that which has fallen to it in France. There have been commons all over Europe, in Italy, in Spain, in Germany, in England, as well as in France. Not only have there been commons everywhere, but the commons in France are not those which, qua commons, under that name and in the middle ages, have played the greatest part and held the highest place in history. The Italian commons begot glorious republics. The German commons became free towns, sovereign towns, which have their own special history, and exercised throughout the general history of Germany a great deal of influence. The commons of England allied themselves with a portion of the English feudal aristocracy, formed with it the preponderating house in the British government, and thus played, full early, a powerful part in the history of their country. The French commons, under that name and in their season of special activity, were certainly far from rising to that importance in politics and that rank in history. And yet it is in France that the people of the commons, the burgessdom, became most completely, most powerfully developed, and ended by acquiring, in the general social body, the most decided preponderance. There have been commons throughout the whole of Europe; there has been in truth no third estate victorious save in France; it is in the French Revolution of 1789, assuredly the greatest, that the French third estate reached its ultimatum, and France is the only country where, in an excess of burgesspride, a man of great mind could say: ‘What is the third estate? Every thing.’”
So much excitement in men’s minds, and so much commotion amongst the masses, reasonably disquieted prudent folks. In spite of its natural frivolity, the court was at bottom sad and anxious. The time had passed for the sweet life at the manor-house of Trianon, for rustic amusements and the charity of youth and romance. Marie Antoinette felt it deeply and bitterly; in the preceding year, at the moment when M. de Calonne was disputing with the Assembly of notables, she wrote to the Duchess of Polignac who had gone to take the waters in England: “Where you are you can at least enjoy the pleasure of not hearing affairs talked about. Though in the country of upper and lower houses, of oppositions and motions, you can shut your ears and let the talk glide; but here there is a deafening noise, notwithstanding all I can do; those words opposition and motion are as firmly established here as in the Parliament of England, with this difference, that, when you go over to the opposition in London, you commence by relinquishing the king’s graces, whereas here many oppose all the wise and beneficent views of the most virtuous of masters and keep his benefits all the same; that perhaps is more clever, but it is not so noble. The time of illusions is over, and we are having some cruel experiences. Happily all the means are still in the king’s hands, and he will arrest all the mischief which the imprudent want to make.” The queen preserved some confidence: she only half perceived the abyss beginning to yawn beneath her feet, she had not yet criticised the weakness and insufficiency of the king her husband; she did not as yet write: “The personage over me is not fit, and as for me, whatever may be said and come what may, I am never anything but secondary, and, in spite of the confidence reposed by the first, he often makes me feel it.” She was troubled, nevertheless, and others more sagacious were more so than she. “When I arrived at Paris, where I had not been for more than three years,” says M. Malouet, for a long while the king’s commissioner in the colonies, and latterly superintendent of Toulon, “observing the heat of political discussions as well as of the pamphlets in circulation, M. d’Entraigues’ work and Abbe Sieyes’, the troubles in Brittany and those in Dauphiny, my illusions vanished; I was seized with all the terrors confided to me by Abbe Raynal on my way to Marseilles. I found M. Necker beginning to be afraid, but still flattering himself that he would have means of continuing, directing, and bringing everything right.” The Parliament was still more affrighted than M. Malouet and M. Necker. Summoned, on the 28th of September, to enregister the king’s proclamation relative to the convocation of the States-general, it added this clause: “According to the forms observed in 1614.” It was a reply in the negative on the part of the magistracy to all the new aspirations to the vote by polling (vote par tete) as well as to the doubling of the third already gained in principle amongst the provincial assemblies; the popularity of the Parliament at once vanished. M. d’Espremesnil, hardly returned from the Isles of St. Marguerite, and all puffed up with his glory, found himself abandoned by those who had been loudest in vaunting his patriotic zeal. An old councillor had but lately said to him, when he was calling for the States-general with all his might, “Providence will punish your fatal counsels by granting your wishes.” After the triumph of his return to Paris, amidst the desert which was forming around the Parliament, “the martyr, the hero of liberty,” as his enthusiastic admirers had been wont to call him, had to realize that instability of human affairs and that fragility of popularity to which he had shut his eyes even in his prison, when Mirabeau, ever biting and cynical, wrote to one of his friends:—
“Neighborhood will doubtless procure you a visit from that immense D’Espremesnil, the sage commentator upon Mesmer, who, from the Isles of St. Marguerite even unto this place, has made everybody laugh at the ostentation with which he shook his fetters to make them clank.”
The troubles amongst the populace had subsided, but agitation amongst the thoughtful went on increasing, and the embarrassments of M. Necker increased with the agitation amongst the thoughtful. Naturally a stranger to politics properly so called, constantly engaged as he was in finance or administration, the minister’s constitutional ideas were borrowed from England; he himself saw how inapplicable they were to the situation of France. “I was never called upon,” he says in his Memoirs, “to examine closely into what I could make, at the time of my return to office, of my profound and particular esteem for the government of England, for, if at a very early period my reflections and my conversation could not but show symptoms of the opinions I held, at a very early period, also, I perceived how averse the king was from anything that might resemble the political practices and institutions of England.” “M. Necker,” says M. Malouet, “showed rare sagacity in espying in the greatest detail and on the furthest horizon the defects, the inconveniences of every measure, and it was this faculty of extending his observations to infinity which made him so often undecided.” What with these doubts existing in his own mind, and what with the antagonistic efforts of parties as well as individual wills, the minister conceived the hope of releasing himself from the crushing burden of his personal responsibility; he convoked for the second time the Assembly of notables.
Impotent as it was in 1787, this assembly was sure to be and was even more so in 1788. Mirabeau had said with audacious intuition: “It is no longer a question of what has been, but of what has to be.” The notables clung to the past like shipwrecked mariners who find themselves invaded by raging waters. Meeting on the 6th of November at Versailles, they opposed in mass the doubling of the third (estate); the committee presided over by Monsieur, the king’s brother, alone voted for the double representation, and that by a majority of only one-voice. The Assembly likewise refused to take into account the population of the circumscriptions (outlying districts) in fixing the number of its representatives; the seneschalty of Poitiers, which numbered seven hundred thousand inhabitants, was not to have more deputies than the bailiwick of Dourdan, which had but eight thousand. The liberality on which the notables plumed themselves as regarded the qualifications required in respect of the electors and the eligible was at bottom as interested as it was injudicious. The fact of domicile and payment of taxes did not secure to the electors the guaranty given by property; the vote granted to all nobles whether enfeoffed or not, and to all members of the clergy for the elections of their orders, was intended to increase the weight of those elected by the number of suffrages; the high noblesse and the bishops reckoned wrongly upon the influence they would be able to exercise over their inferiors. Already, on many points, the petty nobles and the parish priests were engaged and were to be still more deeply engaged on the popular side.
At the very moment when the public were making merry over the Assembly of notables, and were getting irritated at the delay caused by their useless discussions in the convocation of the States-general, the Parliament, in one of those sudden fits of reaction with which they were sometimes seized from their love of popularity, issued a decree explanatory of their decision on the 24th of September. “The real intentions of the court,” said the decree, “have been distorted in spite of their plainness. The number of deputies of each order is not determined by any law, by any invariable usage, and it depends upon the king’s wisdom to adjudge what reason, liberty, justice, and the general wish may indicate.” The Parliament followed up this strange retractation with a series of wise and far-sighted requests touching the totality of the public administration. Its part was henceforth finished, wisdom in words could not efface the effect of imprudent or weak acts; when the decree was presented to the king, he gave the deputation a cold reception. “I have no answer to make to the prayers of the Parliament,” he replied; “it is with the States-general that I shall examine into the interests of my people.”