Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815

by H. Morse Stephens

The mania for election affected the reform of the ecclesiastical arrangements of France, and directly brought about the schism, which so largely contributed to the misfortunes of France during the revolutionary period. On 2d November 1789 it had been resolved, in the face of the financial distress, that the property of the Church in France should be confiscated or resumed, as it was represented by opposite parties, while acknowledging the duty of providing and paying curés and bishops. This implied the formation of a State Church, a measure which needed the most delicate handling. On 13th February 1790 all monasteries and religious houses were suppressed; but as there had already been a partial suppression a few years previously, this would not by itself have caused a schism. It was otherwise with regard to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. It was resolved to reduce the number of bishoprics to one for each department, and that all the beneficed clergy, from curés to bishops, should be elected. This violation of a fundamental principle of the Catholic Church could not be allowed to pass unchallenged, and when the Constituent Assembly found that opposition was raised, it drove matters to a crisis by ordering that every beneficed ecclesiastic should take an oath to observe the new Civil Constitution of the Clergy. This oath was generally refused by the bishops and dignitaries, and largely by the parochial clergy, and it was resolved by the Assembly, on 27th November 1790, that all who refused the oath within one week should be held to be dismissed from their offices. The King sanctioned this decree on 26th December 1790, and the great schism in France began. It was doubtful at first whether apostolical succession could be preserved in the new Church of France. Only four beneficed bishops, including Loménie de Brienne, Cardinal Archbishop of Sens, and Talleyrand, Bishop of Autun, out of one hundred and thirty-five, and three coadjutor bishops, or bishops in partibus, including Gobel, Bishop of Lydda, consented to take the oath, but by them the first of the elected bishops of departmental sees were consecrated.

The measures of the Constituent Assembly in abolishing the old provincial divisions and law courts, and substituting new and more modern arrangements for administration, were in the nature of great reforms, though marred by the mania for election; the attempt to establish a Gallican Church, though obviously opposed to the discipline of the Catholic Church, and seriously discounted by the same mania, was patriotic, if not very wise; but the arrangements for the central administration were utterly absurd. In their dislike of the system of the ancien régime, and their fear of a strong executive, the Constituent Assembly thought it could not do enough to hamper the authority of the throne and of the central administration. The King, under the new Constitution, was left powerless. He was to be the first functionary of the State, nothing more. His veto on the measures of the Legislature was to have effect for only six months; his guards were suppressed, and his position made untenable for a strong monarch, and unbearable for a weak one. The ministers were invested with supreme executive authority, but more regulations were made to ensure their responsibility and limit their actual power, than to define their functions. They were to be answerable to the Legislature, in which they were not allowed to sit; and their measures were to be criticised by an irresponsible representative assembly. Under such regulations the King and his ministers, that is, the executive, were put in a position of inferiority, which no vigorous man could be expected to accept, to the inevitable derangement of the whole administrative machine. In addition to the Constitution, the Constituent Assembly carried several measures of the greatest importance to a free state. All citizens, of whatever religion or class, were declared eligible for employment by the State; and on 13th April 1790 a noble decree, declaring the most absolute and entire toleration of every form of religion, was carried. The Constitution of 1791 was, on the whole, a praiseworthy effort of untried legislators to give their country a representative constitution. It was marred only by the fatal jealousy of giving due authority to the executive, and the mania for election. But it was in no way democratic. For the election to all offices was to be by at least two degrees, and no man was to have a vote unless he was an ‘active citizen.’ To be an active citizen, a man had to contribute to the direct taxation of the country an amount equivalent in value to three days’ wages in his locality. Further, to be eligible for office, a candidate had to pay taxes of the value of a ‘silver mark,’ which inevitably restricted all offices to the bourgeois, or very prosperous working men.

Other acts of the Constituent Assembly.

Though the main occupation of the Constituent Assembly was the building up of the Constitution of 1791, it interfered only too much in matters of current administration. It was soon obvious that its power exceeded that of the King, and it has been observed that Van der Noot announced the new Belgian Constitution alike to the King and the President of the Assembly, as to authorities of equal importance. The mischief produced by this constant interference was perceptible in every department of government. Mirabeau, who was a profound master of statecraft, saw through the fallacies of endeavouring to separate the legislative and executive powers in the State, and, what was implied in the preponderance of a legislature in which the ministers had no seat, to divorce authority from responsibility. He understood and approved of the English system, and as soon as the Constituent Assembly had removed to Paris in October 1789, after the establishment of the King at the Tuileries, and he had got the ear of the Court through his friend, La Marck, Mirabeau proposed the formation of a constitutional ministry, after the English fashion, from among the leading members of the Assembly. His scheme got noised abroad: the Assembly in its fear of the executive, which was afterwards consecrated in the Constitution of 1791, and stimulated by Lafayette, who dreaded the influence of a strong ministry, passed a motion on 7th November, that no member of the Assembly could take office as a minister while he remained a deputy, or for three years after his resignation.

The spirit, which lay at the root of this decree, showed itself in other ways. The fear of the influence of the Crown extended itself to the army and navy, as the natural instruments of the Crown for re-establishing its former authority. The army, already disorganised by the emigration of many of its officers, was practically destroyed in its efficiency as a fighting machine by the relaxation of discipline among the soldiers, caused not only by the actual decrees of the Assembly, but by the impunity allowed to desertion and mutiny. The Marquis de Bouillé, the general commanding at Metz, did indeed put down a military mutiny at Nancy on 31st August 1790, but his action, though applauded by the Assembly, which could not openly encourage mutiny, was isolated and not imitated. In the navy matters were even more desperate, for a larger proportion of officers deserted, resigned, or emigrated than in the army, and loss of discipline is even more disastrous in a naval than in a military force. The weakness of the army was intended to be compensated by the enrolment of national guards. But these citizen soldiers could not be treated with the strictness of regular troops. They were chiefly of the bourgeois class, and had the prejudices of that class, caring more for the protection of their property than for military efficiency. In Paris they were of the most importance, owing to their numbers, and their commander-in-chief, Lafayette, probably the most powerful man in France in 1790. The framing of the Constitution, and the disorganisation of the central authority and its instruments were the chief results of the labours of the Constituent Assembly in 1790; but among its minor acts should be noted the abolition of titles of nobility, liveries and other relics of social pre-eminence on 13th July 1790, as an evidence of its desire to extirpate even the outward signs of the ancien régime.

Mirabeau.

Only one man seems to have understood the dangers to which France was drifting owing to the policy of the Constituent Assembly, and that man was Mirabeau. He had done more than any man to assure the victory of the Tiers État in June 1789; he was the greatest orator and greatest statesman the revolutionary crisis had produced. Mirabeau, however, hated anarchy as much as he did despotism. He saw the absolute necessity of establishing a strong executive, if the crisis of 1789, the dissolution of the old authorities, the unpunished riots in towns, and the jacquerie in the rural districts were not to lead to anarchy. Foiled in his prudent scheme of selecting a strong ministry from the Constituent Assembly[6] by the vote of 7th November 1789, Mirabeau saw that it was impossible to overcome the distrust of the Assembly for the executive. He therefore turned to the Court, and in May 1790 he became the secret adviser of the King through the mediation of his friend La Marck. In a series of memoirs or notes for the Court of surpassing political wisdom, Mirabeau analysed the situation of affairs and proposed remedies. The two main dangers were the state of the finances and the fear of foreign intervention. Mirabeau’s horror of national bankruptcy was as great as his personal extravagance in expenditure. In September 1789 he advocated Necker’s scheme of a general contribution, though it was accompanied by stipulations which were certain to make it almost entirely unproductive, and he personally disapproved of it; in December 1789 he grudgingly acquiesced in the first issue of ‘assignats’ or promises to pay, based on the value of the property of the Church, resumed or confiscated by the Assembly, and to be extinguished as this property was sold. In August 1790 he went yet further. Comprehending that men are mainly influenced by their pecuniary interests, he advocated a wide extension of the system of assignats, down to small sums, on the grounds that they would then be able to reach the hands of the poorer classes and give them an interest in their maintaining their value, and would also frustrate the machinations of speculators, who began to make money by depreciating the exchange of specie against the new paper currency. But he also wisely proposed and successfully carried severe regulations for the extinction of assignats as the national property was realised, regulations which, unfortunately, were not strictly observed. His decree was followed in September 1790 by the retirement of Necker from office, and it is a significant proof of the change in popular opinion that the final retirement of the minister, whose dismissal in July 1789 had brought about the capture of the Bastille, was received without excitement.

The other great danger which France incurred, by the disorganising policy of the Constituent Assembly, was the possibility of the armed intervention of foreign powers. Mirabeau thought that if national bankruptcy and the interference of foreigners could be avoided, the anarchy, which was making itself felt, might soon be quelled. He did not fear civil war; indeed, he argued that it might be a positive advantage, and that as long as the King did not retract his concession of a representative constitution, a large portion of his subjects would support him in winning back the legitimate authority of the executive. But foreign war was to him an evil to be feared as much as national bankruptcy. He knew the spirit of his countrymen well, and that they would in case of national disaster submit to any despotism rather than submit to the dictation or the interference of a foreign power in their internal affairs. Success in a foreign war owing to the state of the army was not to be expected, but if it did come, it would with almost equal certainty lead to the despotism of the conquering government, whether it were the reigning monarch, his successor, or a victorious general. To avoid a foreign war it was necessary as far as possible to leave the conduct of foreign affairs in the hands of the King. This was Mirabeau’s intention in the great debate on the right of declaring peace and war in May 1790, and he succeeded in getting the Assembly to sanction the initiation of peace or war as part of the duties of the King. But at this period Louis XVI. was too weak or too unwilling to understand the paramount necessity of maintaining peace. Mirabeau, therefore, got himself elected to a special Diplomatic Committee of the Constituent Assembly, and as its reporter endeavoured throughout the year 1790 to keep France clear of international complications.

Mirabeau and the Court.

Unfortunately neither Louis XVI. nor his ministers, and still less Marie Antoinette, grasped the truth of Mirabeau’s memoirs for the Court. On the contrary, the one idea of the Queen was to get her brother, the Emperor Leopold, to interfere, and, if necessary, by force of arms to restore the power of the French monarch. The King, too, was startled at Mirabeau’s ideas; he felt no horror at the notion of a foreign war, but would suffer anything rather than engage in a civil war. The wise advice of the great statesman went unheeded; both King and Queen regarded their connection with him as the clever muzzling of a dangerous revolutionary leader. They could not comprehend his desire to establish a strong executive for the sake of France, and looked on it as a bit of personal ambition. The King was not sufficiently far-seeing, nor the Queen sufficiently patriotic to understand his views. If the Constituent Assembly distrusted the Court, the King and Queen no less strongly distrusted Mirabeau.