The first French Republic

by Horace Mann Conaway

On September 30th, the monarch made the closing speech to the Assembly and was greeted with repeated shouts of Vive le Roi. The President responded to the royal speech by an eulogy upon the monarch and a compliment upon the form of government inaugurated under the Constitution.[106] Though the Constituent Assembly had not laid sacrilegious hands upon the time-honored monarchy of France further than to divest it of some of its privileges and prerogatives, though the storm of displeasure, incurred by the ill-advised flight of June 20th, had apparently subsided and the Assembly and the king had exchanged expressions of mutual esteem, and had sworn to preserve the great document so laboriously wrought out by the French Lycurguses, yet the leaven had been engendered which, under favorable circumstances, would leaven the whole lump and transform the limited monarchy into a republic. Ideas have their origin in individual minds, are advocated by these individuals, and by and by the nucleus of devotees has grown into a party that serves as an organ of propagation and makes use of the instrumentalities of their age for the dissemination of their views and for the moulding of public opinion into conformity thereto. If the conditions are favorable, the new ideas secure acceptance and are embodied in institutions; but if the conditions are hostile, the conceptions are rejected and relegated to that vast repository where are accumulated the world’s Utopias; thence some ardent soul may bring forward the idea at a time which is propitious, and the Utopia may become a practical reality. It is our task to endeavor to discover the notion of a republic for France as it was conceived and promulgated by those individuals who may be called the precursors of French republicanism, to trace the formation of an organic body for its promulgation, and to find the means used in the formation of a public opinion sufficiently strong to secure the adoption of the Republic of 1792.

There were already in 1789 a few ardent natures enthusiastic over the transformation to be wrought in France, who harbored a vague desire to see the monarchy abolished and a more liberal government instituted. Whence had come this hazy notion which wrought up their feelings may only be conjectured. Perhaps the classic studies upon which the Jesuits and Oratorians nourished their pupils had made them familiar with the Greek and Roman Republics.[107] Either the Social Contract, or the example of the American colonies, may have given them their republican notions.

Camille Desmoulins, an ardent, impetuous son of liberty, gave unequivocal expression of republican sentiments as early as 1789, and even asserted that the republican form of government was best suited for France.[108] In May, 1793, in two addresses, made in answer to Brissot, he confirms his early preference for republicanism. He said: “In the month of July, 1789, the number of Republicans in Paris did not probably exceed ten: and this it is which crowns with eternal glory those old members of the Club of Cordeliers, who began building the edifice of the republic with such slight materials.”[109] In June, 1790, he used the term Congress of the Republic of France in speaking of the Constituent Assembly, and said that only four republicans had had the courage to resist the royal budget of 25,000,000 voted upon in the Assembly. Again in the Jacobin Club, October 21, 1791, at the time when France was big with hope that the new Constitution would work, Desmoulins pointed out its imperfections and favored republican institutions. Here then was one mind already thinking of a republic and claiming that in the Cordelier Club there were others who, at that early period, shared his opinions. Who these were he does not say.[110] The district of the city called the Cordeliers had formed a popular society which manifested a severely critical spirit toward the monarchical and aristocratic legislation. This district clamored for liberty of the press,[111] and championed the political rights of passive citizens.[112] It took the side of the sixty districts which kept up their popular electoral assemblies and which continued to meet in the interim of elections, as against the forty-eight sections, which convened only for elections. The ardent opposition of the Cordeliers to the Assembly and to the municipality doubtless provoked the enactment of the law which, on May 27, 1790, transformed these districts into the sections.[113] Then forming the Club of Cordeliers, the Society of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, this district continued its policy of aggression upon the conservatives, until their more democratic programme became an accomplished fact. Here then was a company of men, having a common interest in extreme radicalism, meeting frequently and fanning into fuller heat by their addresses the embers of opposition. This society, anti-aristocratic, anti-monarchical, occasionally uttered republican sentiments and indulged in the word republic. They remarked the inconsistency between the principles contained in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and an hereditary monarchy, resting upon the divine right of kings.[114] On June 22, 1791, the Club of Cordeliers issued an address to the Assembly showing its republican proclivities, much to the displeasure of the Jacobins. They said: “We conjure you, in the name of the country, either to declare immediately that France is no more a monarchy, that it is a republic, or at least to wait until all the departments, until all the primary assemblies, have expressed their wish upon this important question, before thinking of replacing a second time the most fair Empire of the world in chains and in the limits of monarchism.”[115] The flight of the king was the occasion that called for this expression of animosity to the monarchy and the preference for a republic. Even before the attempted escape, another newspaper had joined with Desmoulins in his strong anti-monarchical views and in the suggestion of a more suitable form of government for France. Prudhomme, the publisher of booklets and pamphlets of the liberal party previous to, and during the Revolution, had established a paper devoted to the new ideas, the Révolutions de Paris. The experienced publisher had discovered the practical sagacity and the sincere democratic proclivities of a young advocate from Bourdeaux, recently come to Paris, Loustallot, who had already in 1789 proved himself a good pamphleteer for the reformers. These two men began the issue of their sheet July 12, 1789. In its earlier numbers the slavery of the Frenchmen to the aristocracy was bitterly censured, but the king is not treated so much with hostility as with pity for his weakness.[116] Whether Loustallot would have continued to advocate liberal monarchical views had he lived,[117] we shall not venture to say; but in the spring of 1791,[118] the paper had changed its spirit toward the king. The issue of April 21-30 gave notice of a decree proposed to the National Assembly advocating the abolition of royalty. After citing a long list of considerations, chiefly of the evils of kings and of the inconsistency of such an institution with the rights of man, twenty-one articles were given proposing the abolition of royalty and the substitution of a President.[119] Subsequent numbers continued to discuss favorably the abolition of the monarchy. In No. 91 a letter was printed which suggested the placing of a ballot-box in each of the churches to receive the vote of the people upon the question at issue. The writer shows himself friendly to the change. Another friend of the proposal, in a letter printed in No. 92[120], opposed this mode of voting, lest the monarchists should take advantage of it. Instead, he proposed that the vote should be collected viva voce, a list made of those voting; this list should be sent to the Assembly, yet care should be taken to keep a duplicate in order to avoid any surprise. No. 96 contained an article upon “The White Elephant,” advocating, in a facetious manner, similar ideas. The same number entered into an examination of these three propositions, the first two of which it decided affirmatively, the last one negatively. I. Whether the elements and the principles of our Constitution are not in continual opposition to the form of our government. II. Whether every hereditary delegation is not a violation of rights and a contradiction in principles. III. Whether the illustrious citizen of Geneva is mistaken when he says that the monarchy is a government contrary to nature.

But the most venomous assault upon the king and upon royalty appeared in the number of June 18-25, which reported the king’s flight. Denunciatory epithets were heaped upon the faithless monarch. “Julius Cæsar, poigniarded by the Romans; Charles I., decapitated by the English, were innocent, if we compare them to Louis XVI.... If the President of the National Assembly had put to vote upon the question whether we should have a republican form of government, in the Place de Grève, in the Garden of Tuileries and in the Palace of Orléans, France would no more be a monarchy.” Such were some of the contents of this liberal Parisian paper.[121] The next issue (No. 103) found fault with the National Assembly for not dealing severely with the king, and said that, inasmuch as war would come anyway, it had better come under a republic than under a monarch or a regent. Here also appeared an announcement of the propagandism of liberty, of which the Girondists spoke so enthusiastically a year later.[122] A few numbers later, an article censured the indifference of the people in regard to the elections for the coming Legislative Assembly, saying that upon the composition of this body would depend the safety of the republic. The Constituent Assembly is not spared criticism for making the Constitution unalterable by the Legislative Assembly.[123] In subsequent numbers of the autumn of 1791, the monarchical features of the Constitution were pointed out and criticised.[124] Later on, the republic was mentioned less frequently, nevertheless royalty was still attacked. The issue which gave an account of the events of August 10, 1792, the determination of the Legislative Assembly to suspend the king and to call a National Convention to determine the nature of the executive office, referred to the king as “Louis XVI., whom we shall call no more the king of the French.” The number following advised the members of the convention that their first work should be to dethrone the monarch, but a republic was not explicitly recommended.[125] That this paper exercised considerable influence in arousing hostility to the king and to the monarchy, and in suggesting a republic, seems quite reasonable, when we remember that its weekly circulation reached nearly two hundred thousand copies.[126]

We have deemed it advisable to follow the Révolutions de Paris through to the proclamation of the republic, in order to give a connected account of the direction in which this popular publication attempted to sway public opinion. Having noted that its positive republicanism was manifest in April, two months before Louis XVI’s unsuccessful attempt at exodus, we shall endeavor to see what was the strength which this party possessed in the summer of 1791.

Bonneville’s paper, Bouche de fer, in June, 1791, pronounced against a monarchy, a protectorate, and a regency, and urged an united declaration to the effect that they wanted no more of these.[127] A placard was posted at the door of the Assembly, July 1st, announcing that a society of republicans had resolved to publish a paper, Le Republican, for pointing out the abuses of monarchy and for enlightening the minds of the people upon republicanism. This was signed by Duchastellet.[128] A few copies of this paper were published within this month.[129] Montlosier mentions the existence of a republican party after the flight of the king,[130] and Gouverneur Morris wrote, July 13, 1791, what confirms the same fact. Here is what he said: “This step was a very foolish one.... His departure changed everything, and now the general wish seems to be for a republic, which is quite in the natural order of things.”[131] On the eve of the convening of the Legislative Assembly, September 30, 1791, Morris wrote to Washington the following explicit observations upon the status of the republican movement: “The new Assembly, as far as can at present be determined, is deeply imbued with republican or, rather, democratic principles. The southern part of the kingdom is in the same disposition; the eastern is attached to Germany and would gladly be united to the empire; Normandy is aristocratical, and so is part of Brittany; the interior part of the kingdom is monarchal. This map is (you may rely on it) just, for it is the result of great and expensive investigation made by the Government.”[132] Brissot’s paper, Patriote français, of June 25, 1791, in analyzing the proposals then made for the executive department of the government, said: “The first opinion which has been presented to the public is decisive,—No more kings, let us be republicans,—such has been the cry of the Palais Royal, of some societies, of some writers.”[133] Thomas Paine’s letter in response to Siéyès, published in the Patriote français, July 11, declares the American system of government superior to every other, and closes the letter with these suggestive words: “Enfin c’est à tout l’enfer de la monarchie que j’ai déclaré la guerre.”[134]

From these accumulated statements, we infer that about Paris, in the spring of 1791, especially after the 20th of June, there was much agitation in favor of the dethronement of Louis XVI, some for the change of the royal family, and a perceptible tendency in favor of a republic. After the acceptance of the Constitution by the king and by the Legislative Assembly, the constitutional question of the kingship is little discussed till in the summer of 1792. Then the Legislative Assembly was frightened over the defeat of the French army at Lille and at Tournay, the disastrous defeat of Biron’s army at Mons, and the probable advance of the Austrian army upon Paris. The king, following the advice of Montmorin and Malouet, had sent Mallet du Pan on a mission to the German courts to secure a manifesto of intimidation against the factious Frenchmen.[135] The Austrian committee was denounced boldly in the journals and in the Assembly.[136]

Incited by this array of reverses, royal intrigues, and threatened invasion, the Assembly passed three decrees for the protection of the country: May 27, the deportation of the non-juring priests; May 29, the dismissal of the king’s guard; June 8, the formation of a camp of 20,000 fédérés at Paris. The king opposed his veto to the first and last of these. The Girondin ministry was dismissed early in June.[137] The invasion of the Tuileries, June 20, was the result of these aggravations. The petition presented to the Legislative Assembly by the crowd on that day does not solicit the establishment of a republic, but urges that the king should fulfill his constitutional function of protecting liberty.[138] The king continued to be disturbed by the people. The manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick, July 27, greatly excited the Parisians, already much aroused. Then from the sections of Paris, from administrative bodies, and from communes, addresses were sent in asking for the suspension or the dethronement of the king.[139] The significant fact about this outcry for the removal of Louis is the silence about what is to supersede him. The commune representing the forty-eight sections of Paris, through Pétion, presented at the bar of the Assembly, August 3, a petition most vehement in its denunciation of the faithless monarch and most startling in the picture presented of the country’s danger; but this commune, the most radical, perhaps, in France, invoked the Constitution in praying for his dethronement.[140]

The Legislative Assembly hesitated to take upon itself the work of deposition. The sections gave it till midnight of the 9th of August to decide; if at that time the dethronement had not been voted, the tocsin should sound and the générale should beat for the insurrection. The Assembly adjourned at 7 o’clock without deciding the question. The 10th of August the King was driven from the Tuileries, and took refuge in the Assembly. Even then the legislators only suspended the King until “the National Convention should pronounce upon the measures which it believes ought to be adopted for assuring the sovereignty of the people and the reign of liberty and equality.”[141]