"Citizens,—You have passed a law against those cowards who have fled their country in the moment of danger. The circumstance I have to lay before you is peculiar. My daughter, fifteen years of age, passed over to England in the month of October, 1791, with her governess and two companions of her studies. Her governess, Madame de Genlis, has early initiated them in liberal views and republican virtues. The English language forms a part of the education which she has given to my daughter. One of the motives of this journey has been to acquire the pronunciation of that tongue. Besides that, the chalybeate waters of England were recommended as restoratives of my daughter's health. It is impossible, under these circumstances, to regard the journey of my daughter as emigration. I feel assured that the law is not applicable in this case. But the slightest doubt is sufficient to distress a father. I beg, therefore, fellow-citizens, that you will relieve me from this uneasiness."
Domestic discord.
But by this time the Convention began to look upon the Duke of Orleans with suspicion. Rumors were in circulation that many of the people, tired of republicanism—which was crowding the prisons, and causing blood to gush in an incessant flow—wished to reinstate the monarchy, and to place the Duke of Orleans upon the throne. The Duchess of Orleans, the child of one of the highest nobles, was not in sympathy with her husband in his democratic views. His boundless profligacy had also alienated her affections, so that there was no domestic happiness to be found in the gorgeous saloons of the Palais Royal.
Robespierre wished to banish the Duke of Orleans from France, as a dangerous man, around whom the not yet extinct spirit of royalty might rally. He moved in the Convention, "That all the relatives of Bourbon Capet should be obliged, within eight days, to quit the territory of France and the countries then occupied by the Republican armies."
The motion was, for the time, frustrated by the following expostulation by M. Lamarque:
"Would it not be the extreme of injustice to exile all of the Capets, without distinction? I have never spoken but twice to Egalité. I am, therefore, not open to the suspicion of partiality, but I have closely observed his conduct in the Revolution. I have seen him deliver himself up to it entirely, a willing victim for its promotion, not shrinking from the greatest sacrifices; and I can truly assert that but for Egalité we never should have had the States-General—we should never have been free."
Flight of General Dumouriez.
Thus public sentiment fluctuated. An event soon occurred which brought matters to a crisis. General Dumouriez, a former minister of Louis XVI., was in command of the army on the northern frontier. Disgusted with the violence of the Convention, which was silencing all opposition with the slide of the guillotine, and apprehensive of personal danger, from the consciousness that he was suspected of not being very friendly to the Government, he resolved to abandon the country which he thought doomed to destruction, and to seek safety in flight. Louis Philippe, the eldest son of the Duke of Orleans, then a lad of about 16, was on his staff. They fled together. This aroused popular indignation in Paris to the highest pitch. This young prince, Louis Philippe, then entitled the Duke of Chartres, and who, as subsequently King of the French, is the subject of this memoir, had written in a letter to his father, which was intercepted, these words: "I see the Convention utterly destroying France." It was believed that Dumouriez had entered into a plot for placing the Duke of Orleans on the throne, and that the duke was cognizant of the plan.
Arrest of the Duke of Orleans.