“Thirteen years had rolled by since King Louis XV. had descended to a dishonored grave, and on the mighty current which was bearing France towards reform, whilst dragging her into the Revolution, King Louis XVI., honest and sincere, was still blindly seeking to clutch the helm which was slipping from his feeble hands. Every day his efforts were becoming weaker and more inconsistent, every day the pilot placed at the tiller was less and less deserving of public confidence. From M. Turgot to M. Necker, from Calonne to Lomenie de Brienne, the fall had been rapid and deep. Amongst the two parties which unequally divided the nation, between those who defended the past in its entirety, its abuses as well as its grandeurs, and those who were marching on bewildered towards a reform of which they did not foresee the scope, the struggle underwent certain moments of stoppage and of abrupt reaction towards the old state of things. In 1781, the day after M. Necker’s fall, an ordinance of the minister of war, published against the will of that minister himself, had restored to the verified and qualified noblesse (who could show four quarterings) the exclusive privilege of military grades. Without any ordinance, the same regulation had been applied to the clergy. In 1787, the Assembly of notables and its opposition to the king’s projects presented by M. de Calonne were the last triumph of the enthusiastic partisans of the past. The privileged classes had still too much influence to be attacked with success by M. de Calonne, who appeared to be in himself an assemblage of all the abuses whereof he desired to be the reformer. A plan so vast, however ably conceived, was sure to go to pieces in the hands of a man who did not enjoy public esteem and confidence; but the triumph of the notables in their own cause was a fresh warning to the people that they would have to defend theirs with more vigor.” [Memoires de Malouet, t. i. p. 253]. We have seen how monarchy, in concert with the nation, fought feudality, to reign thenceforth as sovereign mistress over the great lords and over the nation; we have seen how it slowly fell in public respect and veneration, and how it attempted unsuccessfully to respond to the confused wishes of a people that did not yet know its own desires or its own strength; we shall henceforth see it, panting and without sure guidance, painfully striving to govern and then to live. “I saw,” says M. Malouet in his Memoires, “under the ministry of the archbishop (of Toulouse, and afterwards of Sens), all the avant-couriers of a revolution in the government. Three parties were already pronounced: the first wanted to take to itself all the influence of which it despoiled the king, whilst withstanding the pretensions of the third estate; the second proclaimed open war against the two upper orders, and already laid down the bases of a democratic government; the third, which was at that time the most numerous, although it was that of the wisest men, dreaded the ebullience of the other two, wanted compromises, reforms, and not revolution.” By their conflicts the two extreme parties were to stifle for a while the party of the wise men, the true exponent of the national aspirations and hopes, which was destined, through a course of cruel vicissitudes and long trials, to yet save and govern the country.
The Assembly of notables had abdicated; contenting itself with a negative triumph, it had left to the royal wisdom and responsibility the burden of decisions which Louis XVI. had hoped to get sanctioned by an old and respected authority. The public were expecting to see all the edicts, successively presented to the notables as integral portions of a vast system, forthwith assume force of law by simultaneous registration of Parliament. The feebleness and inconsistency of governors often stultify the most sensible foresight. M. de Brienne had come into office as a support to the king’s desires and intentions, for the purpose of obtaining from the notables what was refused through their aversion for M. de Calonne; as soon as he was free of the notables as well as of M. de Calonne, he hesitated, drew back, waited, leaving time for a fresh opposition to form and take its measures. “He had nothing but bad moves to make,” says M. Mignet. Three edicts touching the trade in grain, forced labor, and the provincial assemblies, were first sent up to the Parliament and enregistered without any difficulty; the two edicts touching the stamp-tax and equal assessment of the impost were to meet with more hinderance; the latter at any rate united the sympathies of all the partisans of genuine reforms; the edict touching the stamp-tax was by itself and first submitted for the approval of the magistrates: they rejected it, asking, like the notables, for a communication as to the state of finance. “It is not states of finance we want,” exclaimed a councillor, Sabatier de Cabre, “it is States-general.” This bold sally became a theme for deliberation in the Parliament. “The nation represented by the States-general,” the court declared, “is alone entitled to grant the king subsidies of which the need is clearly demonstrated.” At the same time the Parliament demanded the impeachment of M. de Calonne; he took fright and sought refuge in England. The mob rose in Paris, imputing to the court the prodigalities with which the Parliament reproached the late comptroller-general. Sad symptom of the fatal progress of public opinion! The cries heretofore raised against the queen under the name of Austrian were now uttered against Madame Deficit, pending the time when the fearful title of Madame Veto would give place in its turn to the sad name of the woman Capet given to the victim of October 16, 1793.
The king summoned the Parliament to Versailles, and on the 6th of August, 1787, the edicts touching the stamp-tax and territorial subvention were enregistered in bed of justice. The Parliament had protested in advance against this act of royal authority, which it called “a phantom of deliberation.” On the 13th of August, the court declared “the registration of the edicts null and without effect, incompetent to authorize the collection of imposts, opposed to all principles;” this resolution was sent to all the seneschalties and bailiwicks in the district. It was in the name of the privilege of the two upper orders that the Parliament of Paris contested the royal edicts and made appeal to the supreme jurisdiction of the States-general; the people did not see it, they took out the horses of M. d’Espremesnil, whose fiery eloquence had won over a great number of his colleagues, and he was carried in triumph. On the 15th of August the Parliament was sent away to Troyes.
Banishment far away from the capital, from the ferment of spirits, and from the noisy centre of their admirers, had more than once brought down the pride of the members of Parliament; they were now sustained by the sympathy ardently manifested by nearly all the sovereign courts. “Incessantly repeated stretches of authority,” said the Parliament of Besancon, “forced registrations, banishments, constraint and severity instead of justice, are astounding in an enlightened age, wound a nation that idolizes its kings, but is free and proud, freeze the heart and might break the ties which unite sovereign to subjects and subjects to sovereign.” The Parliament of Paris declared that it needed no authority for its sittings, considering that it rendered justice wherever it happened to be assembled. “The monarchy would be transfigured into a despotic form,” said the decree, “if ministers could dispose of persons by sealed letters (lettres de cachet), property by beds of justice, criminal matters by change of venue (evocation) or cassation, and suspend the course of justice by special banishments or arbitrary removals.”
Negotiations were going on, however; the government agreed to withdraw the new imposts which it had declared to be indispensable; the Parliament, which had declared itself incompetent as to the establishment of taxes, prorogued for two years the second twentieth. “We left Paris with glory upon us, we shall return with mud,” protested M. d’Espremesnil in vain; more moderate, but not less resolute, Duport, Robert de St. Vincent, and Freteau sought to sustain by their speeches the wavering resolution of their colleagues. The Parliament was recalled to Paris on the 19th of September, 1787.
The state of Europe inclined men’s minds to reciprocal concessions; a disquieting good understanding appeared to be growing up between Russia and Austria. The Emperor Joseph II. had just paid a visit to the Crimea with the czarina. “I fancy I am still dreaming,” wrote the Prince of Ligne, who had the honor of being in the trip, “when in a carriage with six places, which is a real triumphal car adorned with ciphers in precious stones, I find myself seated between two persons on whose shoulders the heat often sets me dozing, and I hear, as I wake up, one of my comrades say to the other ‘I have thirty’ millions of subjects, they say, counting males only.’ ‘And I twenty-two,’ replies the other, ‘all included.’ ‘I require,’ adds the former, ‘an army of at least six hundred thousand men between Kamtchatka and Riga.’ ‘With half that,’ replies the other, ‘I have just what I require.’ God knows how we settle all the states and great personages. ‘Rather than sign the separation of thirteen provinces, like my brother George,’ says Catherine II. sweetly, ‘I would have put a bullet through my head.’ ‘And rather than give in my resignation like my brother and brother-in-law, by convoking and assembling the nation to talk over abuses, I don’t know what I wouldn’t have done,’ says Joseph II.” Before the two allies could carry out their designs against Turkey, that ancient power, enfeebled as it was, had taken the offensive at the instigation of England; the King of Sweden, on his side, invaded Russia; war burst out in all directions. The traditional influence of France remained powerless in the East to maintain peace; the long weakness of the government was everywhere bearing fruit.
Nowhere was this grievous impotence more painfully striking than in Holland. Supported by England, whose slavish instrument he had been for so long, the stadtholder William V. was struggling, with the help of the mob, against the patriotic, independent, and proud patricians. For the last sixty years the position of Holland had been constantly declining in Europe. “She is afraid of everything,” said Count de Broglie in 1773; “she puts up with everything, grumbles at everything, and secures herself against nothing.” “Holland might pay all the armies of Europe,” people said in 1787, “she couldn’t manage to hold her own against any one of them.” The civil war imminent in her midst and fomented by England had aroused the solicitude of M. de Calonne; he had prepared the resources necessary for forming a camp near Givet; his successor diverted the funds to another object. When the Prussians entered Dutch territory, being summoned to the stadtholder’s aid by his wife, sister of the young King Frederick William II., the French government afforded no assistance to its ally; it confined itself to offering an asylum to the Dutch patriots, long encouraged by its diplomatists, and now vanquished in their own country, which was henceforth under the yoke of England. “France has fallen, I doubt whether she will get up again,” said the Emperor Joseph II. “We have been caught napping,” wrote M. de La Fayette to Washington; “the King of Prussia has been ill advised, the Dutch are ruined, and England finds herself the only power which has gained in the bargain.”
The echo of humiliations abroad came to swell the dull murmur of public discontent. Disturbance was arising everywhere. “From stagnant chaos France has passed to tumultuous chaos,” wrote Mirabeau, already an influential publicist, despite the irregularity of his morals and the small esteem excited by his life; “there may, there should come a creation out of it.” The Parliament had soon resumed its defiant attitude; like M. de La Fayette at the Assembly of notables, it demanded the convocation of the States-general at a fixed epoch, in 1792; it was the date fixed by M. de Brienne in a vast financial scheme which he had boldly proposed for registration by the court. By means of a series of loans which were to reach the enormous total of four hundred and twenty millions, the States-general, assembled on the conclusion of this vast operation, and relieved from all pecuniary embarrassment, would be able to concentrate their thoughts on the important interests of the future. At the same time with the loan-edict, Brienne presented to the Parliament the law-scheme, for so long a time under discussion, on behalf of Protestants.
The king had repaired in person to the palace in royal session; the keeper of the seals, Lamoignon, expounded the necessity of the edicts. “To the monarch alone,” he repeated, “belongs the legislative power, without dependence and without partition.” This was throwing down the gauntlet to the whole assembly as well as to public opinion. Abbe Sabatier and Councillor Freteau had already spoken, when Robert de St. Vincent rose, an old Jansenist and an old member of Parliament, accustomed to express his thoughts roughly. “Who, without dismay, can hear loans still talked of?” he exclaimed “and for what sum? four hundred and twenty millions! A plan is being formed for five years? But, since your Majesty’s reign began, have the same views ever directed the administration of finance for five years in succession? Can you be ignorant, sir (here he addressed himself to the comptroller-general), that each minister, as he steps into his place, rejects the system of his predecessor in order to substitute that which he has devised? Within only eight months, you are the fourth minister of finance, and yet you are forming a plan which cannot be accomplished in less than five years! The remedy, sir, for the wounds of the state has been pointed out by your Parliament: it is the convocation of the States-general. Their convocation, to be salutary, must be prompt. Your ministers would like to avoid this assembly whose surveillance they dread. Their hope is vain. Before two years are over, the necessities of the state will force you to convoke the States-general.”
M. d’Espremesnil was overcome; less violent than usual, he had, appealed to the king’s heart; for a moment Louis XVI. appeared to be moved, and so was the assembly with him; the edicts were about to be enregistered despite the efforts of the opposition; already the premier president was collecting the votes; the keeper of the seals would not, at this grave moment, renounce any kingly prerogative. “When the king is at the Parliament, there is no deliberation; his will makes law,” said the legal rule and the custom of the magistracy. Lamoignon went up to the throne; he said a few words in a low voice. “Mr. Keeper of the seals, have the edicts enregistered,” said Louis XVI. The minister immediately repeated the formula used at beds of justice. A murmur ran through the assembly; the Duke of Orleans rose; he had recently become the head of his house through his father’s death, and found himself more than ever involved in intrigues hostile to the court. “Sir,” said he in a broken voice, “this registration appears to me illegal. . . . It should be distinctly stated that the registration is done by the express command of your Majesty.” The king was as much moved as the prince. “It is all the same to me,” he replied. “You are master, of course.” “Yes,—it is legal, because I so will.” The edict relative to non-Catholics was read, and Louis XVI. withdrew.