Magistrats dont l'audace étonna l'univers,
Calmes dans la tempête et grands dans les revers,
Vous sûtes, par l'effet d'une sage harmonie,
Enfanter des vertus, un peuple, une patrie.
And in a kind of postscript, the author, commenting on the events related in his play, observed with truth: "The great American Revolution has been the first result of one greater still which had taken place in the empire of opinion." Of any animosity against the English, the same comment offers no trace.
Gloomy days succeeded radiant ones. Past abuses, danger from abroad, general suffering, passions let loose, were not conducive to that coolness and moderation which Washington had recommended from the first. Ternant had been succeeded as representative of France by that famous citizen Genet, who, in spite of his having some diplomatic experience gathered as Chargé d'Affaires in Russia, and being in a way a man of parts, an authority on Swedes and Finns, had his head turned the moment he landed, so completely, indeed, that it is impossible, in spite of the gravity of the consequences involved, not to smile when reading his high-flown, self-complacent, self-advertising, beaming despatches: "My journey (from Charleston to Philadelphia) has been an uninterrupted succession of civic festivities, and my entry in Philadelphia a triumph for liberty. True Americans are at the height of joy."[206]
In his next letters he insists and gloats over his own matchless deeds: "The whole of America has risen to acknowledge in me the minister of the French Republic.... I live in the midst of perpetual feasts; I receive addresses from all parts of the continent. I see with pleasure that my way of negotiating pleases our American brothers, and I am founded to believe, citizen minister, that my mission will be a fortunate one from every point of view. I include herewith American gazettes in which I have marked the articles concerning myself."
Encouraged by the Anti-Federalists, who thought they could use him for their own purposes, Genet shows scant respect for "old Washington, who greatly differs from him whose name has been engraved by history, and who does not pardon me my successes"; a mere "Fayettist," he disdainfully calls him elsewhere. But Genet will have the better of any such opposition: "I am in the meantime provisioning the West Indies, I excite Canadians to break the British yoke, I arm the Kentukois, and prepare a naval expedition which will facilitate their descent on New Orleans."[207]
He had, in fact, armed in American waters, quite a fleet of corsairs, revelling in the bestowal on them of such names as the Sans-Culotte, the Anti-George, the Patriote Genet, the Vainqueur de la Bastille, La Petite Démocrate.
His triumphs, his lustre, his listening to addresses in his own honor, and reading articles in his own praise, his being "clasped in the arms of a multitude which had rushed to meet him," his naval and military deeds were short-lived. Contrary to the current belief, the too well-founded indignation of "Fayettist" Washington had nothing to do with his catastrophe. On receipt of the very first letter of the citizen-diplomat, and by return of mail, the foreign minister of the French Republic took the initiative and wrote him:
"I see that you have been received by an hospitable and open-hearted people with all the manifestations of friendship of which your predecessors had also been the recipients.... You have fancied, thereupon, that it belonged to you to lead the political actions of this people and make them join our cause. Availing yourself of the flattering statements of the Charleston authorities, you have thought fit to arm corsairs, to organize recruiting, to have prizes condemned, before even having been recognized by the American Government, before having its assent, nay, with the certitude of its disapproval. You invoke your instructions from the 'Conseil exécutif' of the Republic; but your instructions enjoin upon you quite the reverse: they order you to treat with the government, not with a portion of the people; to be for Congress the spokesman of the French Republic, and not the leader of an American party." The diplomat's relations with Washington are the opposite of what France desires: "You say that Washington does not pardon you your successes, and that he hampers your moves in a thousand ways. You are ordered to treat with the American Government; there only can you attain real successes; all the others are illusory and contrary to the interests of your country. Dazzled by a false popularity, you have estranged the only man who should represent for you the American people, and if your action is hampered, you have only yourself to blame."[208]
While this letter was slowly crossing the ocean, others from Genet were on the way to France, written in the same beaming style. He continued to gloat over his successes and mercilessly to abuse all Federalists, those confessed partisans of "monocracy."
People were not for half-measures at Paris, in those terrible days. Instead of prolonging a useless epistolary correspondence, the Committee of Public Safety rendered a decree providing that a commission would be sent to Philadelphia, with powers to disavow the "criminal conduct of Genet," to disarm his Sans-Culotte and other corsairs, to revoke all consuls who had taken part in such armaments, and, as for Genet himself, to have him arrested and sent back to France. What such an arrest meant was made evident by the signatures at the foot of the decree: "Barère, Hérault, Robespierre, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, Saint-Just."[209]