Mirabeau was the master-spirit of the Revolution. After his death there were multitudes struggling for the leadership, with no man of sufficient prominence to attain and retain it. The funeral of Mirabeau was the funeral of emancipated France. From that hour the Revolution was on the rush to ruin.
"Time," writes Michelet, "which reveals every thing, has revealed nothing that really proves the reproach of treason to be well founded. Mirabeau's real transaction was an error, a serious, fatal error, but one that was then shared by all in different degrees. At that time all men, of every party, from Cazalès and Maury down to Robespierre, and even to Marat, believed France to entertain Royalist opinions. All men wanted a king. The number of Republicans was truly imperceptible. Mirabeau believed that it was necessary to have a king with power, or no king at all. It is true that Mirabeau appears to have received sums to defray the expense of his immense correspondence with the Departments—a sort of ministry that he was organizing at his own house. He makes use of this subtle expression—this excuse which does not excuse him—that he had not been bought; that he was paid, not sold."[268]
FUNERAL OF MIRABEAU.
The death of Mirabeau seemed to paralyze the hopes of the king, and he now resolved to spare no endeavors to secure his escape. On the 18th of April the king took his carriage at Versailles, intending to ride to St. Cloud. A rumor spread through the city that he was contemplating flight. The populace collected and stopped the horses. La Fayette immediately hastened to the spot with a company of the guards, dispersed the mob, who offered no other violence than to obstruct the departure of the king, and cleared a passage. The king, however, who now wished to have it appear that he was held a prisoner, as most certainly he virtually was, refused to go, and returned indignantly into the palace.
By the advice of his ministers he repaired to the Assembly, and complained warmly of the insult he had encountered. The king was received with the utmost kindness by the Assembly, cordially greeted, and was assured that every thing should be done to prevent the possible occurrence of another similar outrage.
To disarm suspicion and appease the public mind the king, on the 23d of April, sent a letter to the foreign embassadors declaring that he had no intention of leaving France, that he was resolved to be faithful to the oath which he had taken to the Constitution, and that all those who intimated any thing to the contrary were his enemies and the enemies of the country. He soon after, however, declared to an envoy sent to him from the Emperor Leopold, that this letter by no means contained his real sentiments, but that it was wrung from him by the peril of his situation.[269]
A conference of the foreign powers was held on the 20th of May, 1791, at Mantua, in Italy, where Leopold, Emperor of Austria, and brother of Marie Antoinette, then chanced to be. At this conference Count d'Artois appeared in behalf of the emigrants. Prussia was represented by Major Bischofverder, England by Lord Elgin, and Louis XVI. by the Count de Durfort. Several other of the kingdoms and principalities of Europe were represented on the occasion. The Count de Durfort returned from this conference to Louis XVI. in Paris, and brought him the following secret declaration in the name of the Emperor Leopold:[270]
Austria engaged to assemble thirty-five thousand men on the frontiers of Flanders. At the same time fifteen thousand men from the smaller German States would attack Alsace. Fifteen thousand Swiss troops were to be marched on Lyons, and the King of Sardinia, whose daughter the Count d'Artois had married, was to assail Dauphiné. The king of Spain, cousin of Louis XVI., was to gather twenty thousand troops upon the slopes of the Pyrenees, to fall like an avalanche down upon southern France. Prussia engaged to co-operate cordially. The King of England, notwithstanding the eloquence of Burke's pamphlet, could not yet venture to call upon the liberty-loving English to engage in this infamous crusade against the independence and the liberty of a sister kingdom. But the king, as Elector of Hanover, engaged to take an active part in the war. A protest against the Revolution was to be drawn up in the name of the whole house of Bourbon, whose divine right to despotism in France had been questioned by the French people, and this protest was to be signed by those branches of the Bourbons who were occupying the thrones of Spain, Naples, and Parma.[271]