Madame Roland: A Biographical Study

by Ida M. Tarbell

Suddenly, on July 14th, the Parisians, terrified at the rumors of a conspiracy on the part of the Court which had for its object the overthrow of the pet minister, Necker, the adjournment of the National Assembly, the abandonment of reforms, and the coercion of the people by the foreign soldiers who had been massed in and around the capitol, razed the Bastille.

With the falling of the Bastille a new ideal arose, full-winged, before Madame Roland. Before the 14th of July she had no idea that out of the events she watched so eagerly anything more than a reform of the existing régime would grow; the old régime, stripped of its abuses and regulated by a liberal constitution, was all she had asked. Now all was changed; compromise, half-way measures, were at an end. Instead of reforms she demanded “complete regeneration.” She saw in the sudden uprising of the people the “sovereign” exercising “the divine right of insurrection.” It was what Jean Jacques Rousseau had declared in the Social Contract the people had the right to do if the government under which they were living was unjust. She seems to have gone at once to the conclusion that, since the rightful “sovereign,” had at last asserted itself, an immediate regeneration was to follow, abuses were to be wiped out, tyranny destroyed, selfishness annihilated, equality created, and the world to run at last with precision and to the satisfaction of all concerned. To her the fall of the Bastille was the revolution of society. “Friends of humanity, lovers of liberty,” she wrote afterwards, “we believed it had come to regenerate the human kind, to destroy the terrible misery of that unhappy class over which we had so often mourned. We welcomed it with transports.”

Their transports soon turned to irritation; for the immediate regeneration she had pictured was replaced by struggles more fierce than ever before.

To those of her liberal aspirations, determined on a constitutional government, recognizing the sovereignty of the people and the equality of men, two political courses were open at that moment. They could unite with the liberal party of reform in a struggle to frame a constitution; could insist while this was doing upon respect for the National Assembly; could recognize the difficulty of the situation; could respect the laws and be patient;—or they could refuse alliance with this party on the ground that reforms were no longer the need of France, but that complete regeneration must be demanded; could suspect, and induce others to suspect, the sincerity of all those who applied the doctrines less vigorously than they did; could encourage by excuses or tacit sympathy the riotous party which with incredible fecundity was spreading over France, explaining its actions as the lawful efforts of the sovereign people to get rid of its oppressors and to take possession of its own rights.

Madame Roland did not approve of the first party. It attempted nothing but reforms. She wanted every vestige of the old régime wiped out. She suspected it, hated it. It had proved itself unworthy and must be abolished. The real sovereign must be allowed to prepare a government. She had no particular idea of what this government should be; certainly she did not suggest a republic. She was convinced, however, that it would be a simple matter to arrange something where happiness and justice and prosperity should be the lot of all.

To obtain this ideal condition she believed riot and civil war justifiable; indeed she believed them necessary now that the fall of the Bastille had not been enough. They were necessary to keep the usurper in terror and the people suspicious. For her part, even if she were a woman and for that reason excluded from public activities, she meant to keep her friends aroused to the necessity of insurrection.

There is no doubt that the policy of Roland in the Revolution and the relations which he formed and which shaped his course of action were due to this determination of Madame Roland to use her influence in agitation. All their contemporaries remark her ascendency over her husband. But she did not content herself with inspiring Roland. The two friends with whom she had been so long in regular correspondence, Bosc and Lanthenas, she strove, with all her eloquence, to urge to action. “I write you now but little of personal affairs. Who is the traitor who has other interest to-day than that of the nation?” Once Bosc wrote her a story of an interesting adventure; she replied: “I do not know whether you are in love or not; but I do know this, that in the situation where we now are, no honest man can follow the torch of love without having first lit it at the sacred fire of country.” She formed new political relations—the first, with Brissot de Warville, was of particular importance to them.

The Rolands had had a slight correspondence with Brissot before the Revolution; for he, having been attracted by Roland’s writings, had sent him certain of his manuscripts as a mark of his esteem. This had led to an exchange of courteous letters, and, through one of their common friends in Paris, the relation was still further cemented, and a regular correspondence had grown up. When the Revolution came, Brissot started Le patriote français and the Rolands sent him “all,” said Madame Roland, “which, under the circumstances, seemed to us to be useful to publish.” A large number of these letters were published in the Patriote français.

It was not only in Paris that her letters inspired by their ardent patriotism. They were in relation with a young man at Lyons, called Champagneux. The 1st of September, 1789, he started the Courrier de Lyon, a journal something in the style of Brissot’s, intended to preach the principles of 1789, and to show what was passing in the National Assembly. Madame Roland wrote often to this journal.

The most important correspondence which she carried on at this time was with Bancal des Issarts, a lawyer, formerly of Clermont, who had left his profession for politics. Bancal had been a deputy to the National Assembly, and, after the closing of the session, had returned to Clermont, where he had established a society of Friends of the Constitution. Returning to Paris, he made the acquaintance of Lanthenas and the two had planned a community in which they wished to associate the Rolands. Their idea was to buy a quantity of national property and found a retreat where they could together prosecute the work of regenerating France, while at the same time having the delights and the stimulus of intelligent companionship.