Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty

by Imbert de Saint-Amand

However, Lafayette was not yet discouraged. He wished to save the royal family in spite of themselves. He assembled several officers of the National Guard at his house. He represented to them the dangers into which the apathy of each plunged the affairs of all; he showed the urgent necessity of combining against the avowed enterprises of the anarchists, of inspiring the National Assembly with the firmness required to repress the intended attacks, and foretold the inevitable calamities which would result from the weakness and disunion of honest men. He wanted to march against the Jacobin Club and close it. But, in consequence of the instructions issued by the court, the royalists of the National Guard were indisposed to second him in this measure. Lafayette, having no one on his side but the constitutionals, an honest but scanty group who were suspected by both of the extreme parties, gave up the struggle. The next day, June 30, he beat a hasty retreat to the army, after writing to the Assembly another letter which was merely an echo of the first one. A moment since, the Jacobins were trembling. Now, they are reassured, they triumph. In his Chronique des Cinquante Jours, Roederer says: "If M. de Lafayette had had the will and ability to make a bold stroke and seize the dictatorship, reserving the power to relinquish it after the re-establishment of order, one could comprehend his coming to the Assembly with the sword of a dictator at his side; but, to show it only, without resolving to draw it from the scabbard, was a fatal imprudence. In civil commotions it will not answer to dare by halves."

XXIII.

THE LAMOURETTE KISS.

France had still its moments of enthusiasm and illusion before plunging into the abyss of woes. It seemed under an hallucination, or suffering from a sort of vertigo. A nameless frenzy, both in good and evil, agitated and disturbed it beyond measure in 1792, that year so fertile in surprises and dramas of every kind. Strange and bizarre epoch, full of love and hatred, launching itself from one extreme to the other with frightful inconstancy, now weeping with tenderness, and now howling with rage! Society resembled a drunken man who is sometimes amiable in his cups, and sometimes cruel. There were sudden halts on the road of fury, oases in the midst of scorching sands, beneath a sun whose fire consumed. But the caravan does not rest long beneath the shady trees. Quickly it resumes its course as if urged by a mysterious force, and soon the terrible simoom overwhelms and destroys it.

Madame Elisabeth wrote to Madame de Raigecourt, July 8, 1792: "It would need all Madame de Sévigné's eloquence to describe properly what happened yesterday; for it was certainly the most surprising thing, the most extraordinary, the greatest, the smallest, etc., etc. But, fortunately, experience may aid comprehension. In a word, here were Jacobins, Feuillants, republicans, and monarchists, abjuring all their discords and assembling near the tree of the Constitution and of liberty, to promise sincerely that they will act in accordance with law and not depart from it. Luckily, August is coming, the time when, the leaves being well grown, the tree of liberty will afford a more secure shelter."

What had happened on the day before Madame Elisabeth wrote this letter? There had been a very singular session of the Legislative Assembly. In the morning, a woman named Olympe de Gouges, whose mother was a dealer in second-hand clothing at Montauban, being consumed with a desire to be talked about, had caused an emphatic placard to be posted up, in which she preached concord between all parties. This placard was like a prologue to the day's session.

Among the deputies there was a certain Abbé Lamourette, the constitutional bishop of Lyons, who played at religious democracy. He was an ex-Lazarist who had been professor of theology at the Seminary at Toul. Weary of the conventual yoke, he had left his order, and at the beginning of the Revolution was the vicar-general of the diocese of Arras. He had published several works in which he sought to reconcile philosophy and religion. Mirabeau was one of his acolytes and adopted him as his theologian in ordinary. Finding him fit to "bishopize" (à evêquailler), to use his own expression, the great tribune recommended him to the electors of the Rhone department. It was thus that the Abbé Lamourette became the constitutional bishop of Lyons. After his consecration, he issued a pastoral instruction in such agreement with current ideas that Mirabeau, his protector, induced the Constituent Assembly to have it sent as a model to every department in France. In 1792, the Abbé Lamourette was fifty years old. Affable, unctuous, his mouth always full of pacific and gentle words, he naïvely preached moderation, concord, and fraternity in conversations which were like so many sermons.

For several days the discussions in the Assembly had been of unparalleled violence. Suspicion, hatred, rancor, wrath, were unchained in a fury that bordered on delirium. Right and left emulated each other in outrages and invectives. Lafayette's appearance and the fear of a foreign invasion had disturbed all minds. The National Assembly, sitting both day and night, was like an arena of gladiators fighting without truce or pity. It was this moment which the good Abbé Lamourette chose for delivering his most touching sermon from the tribune.