THE PRUSSIANS CROSSING THE FRONTIERS OF FRANCE.
The Duke of Brunswick was to pass the Rhine at Coblentz, ascend the left bank of the Moselle, and march upon Paris by the route of Longwy, Verdun, and Chalons. His immense force of cavalry, infantry, and artillery, with its enormous array of heavy guns and its long lines of baggage and munition wagons, covered a space of forty miles. The Prince of Hohenlohe, marching in a parallel line some twenty miles on his left, led a division of the emigrants and the Hessian troops. His route led him through Thionville and Metz. The Count de Clairfayt, an Austrian field-marshal, who has been esteemed the ablest general opposed to the French during the Revolutionary war, conducted the Austrian troops and another division of the emigrants along other parallel roads upon the right, to fall upon La Fayette, who was stationed before Sedan and Mézieres. It was supposed that he would easily scatter the feeble forces which Louis XVI. had permitted to be stationed there; and then he was to press rapidly upon Paris by Rheims and Soissons.[343]
The friends of liberty now saw no possible way of rescuing France from its peril and of saving themselves from the scaffold, but by wresting the executive power from the king and the court, who were in co-operation with the foe. This could only be done by a revolution, for the Constitution conferred no right upon the Assembly to dethrone the king. The Girondists or moderate Republicans, detesting the Jacobins and appalled in view of the anarchy which would ensue from arming the mob of Paris, wished to have the Assembly usurp the power and dethrone the king. The Jacobins, who hoped to ride into authority upon the waves of popular tumult, deliberately resolved to demolish the throne by hurling against it the infuriate masses of the people. It was calling into action the terrible energies of the earthquake and the tornado, knowing that their ravages, once commenced, could be arrested by no earthly power.
The plan first formed was to rouse the people in resistless numbers, march upon the Tuileries, take the king a prisoner, and hold him in the Castle of Vincennes as a hostage for the good conduct of the emigrants and the allies. The appointed day came, and Paris was thrown into a state of terrible confusion. But the court had been admonished of the movement. The palace was strongly defended, and in consequence of some misunderstanding it was found that there was not sufficient concert of action to attempt the enterprise.
A new scheme was now formed, energetic and well-adapted to the effectual accomplishment of its purpose. At the ringing of the tocsin forty thousand men were to be marshaled in the faubourg St. Antoine. Another immense gathering of the populace was to rally in the faubourg St. Marceau. All the troops in the metropolis from the provinces were to be arrayed at the encampment of the Marseilles battalion. They were then to march simultaneously to the palace, fill the garden and the court of the Carrousel, and invest the Tuileries on all sides. Here they were to encamp with all the enginery of war, and fortify their position by ditches, barricades, and redoubts. No blood was to be shed. There was to be no assault upon the palace, and no forcible entry. The king was to be blockaded, and the Assembly was to be informed that the populace would not lay down their arms until the king was dethroned, and the Legislature had adopted measures to secure the safety of the country.[344] In this plan there was something generous and sublime. It endeavored to guard carefully against disorder, pillage, and blood. It was the majestic movement of the people rising in self defense against its own executive in combination with foreign foes. Barbaroux, the leader of the Marseillese, sketches this plan in pencil. It was copied by Fournier, and adopted by Danton and Santerre.[345]
Several of the leaders of the Girondists, anxious to avert the fearful crisis now impending, wrote a noble letter to the king containing considerations just and weighty, which ought to have influenced him to corresponding action. The letter was written by Vergniaud, Gaudet, and Gensonné, three of the brightest ornaments of the Legislative Assembly.
"It ought not to be dissembled," said these men to the king, "that it is the conduct of the executive power that is the immediate cause of all the evils with which France is afflicted, and of the dangers with which the throne is surrounded. They deceive the king who would lead him to suppose that it is the effervesence of the clubs, the manœuvres of particular agitators and powerful factions that have occasioned and continued those disorderly movements, of which every day increases the violence, and of which no one can calculate the consequences. Thus to suppose is to find the cause of the evil in what are only the symptoms. The only way to establish the public tranquillity is for the king to surround himself with the confidence of his people. This can only be done by declaring, in the most solemn manner, that he will receive no augmentation of his power that shall not be freely and regularly offered him by the French nation without the assistance or interference of any foreign powers.
"What would be, perhaps, sufficient at once to re-establish confidence would be for the king to make the coalesced powers acknowledge the independence of the French nation, cease from all farther hostilities, and withdraw the troops that menace our frontiers. It is impossible that a very great part of the nation should not be persuaded that the king has it in his power to put an end to the coalition; and while that coalition continues and places the public liberty in a state of peril, it is in vain to flatter the king that confidence can revive."