The court regarded this letter as insolent, and the king returned an answer which declared that he should pay no attention whatever to its suggestions.
On the 30th of July the troops from Marseilles had arrived, five hundred in number, composed of the most fiery and turbulent spirits of the South. The clubs and journals and shouts of the people had for some time been demanding of the Assembly the suspension of the king. But the Assembly, restrained by respect for the Constitution, hesitated in the adoption of a measure so revolutionary and yet apparently so necessary. The insurrection now planned, unless it could be quelled by the king's forces, was sure to accomplish its end. If the Assembly did not in its consternation pronounce the throne vacant, or if the king did not in his terror abdicate, the whole royal family was to be held in a state of blockade, and it could not be disguised that they were in danger of falling victims to the rage of the ungovernable mob. This was the plan deliberately formed and energetically executed. It was patriotism's last and most terrible resort. Humanity is shocked by the measure. Yet we must not forget that foreign armies were approaching, and the king was in complicity with them, and thwarting all measures for effectual resistance. The court was organizing the partisans of the king to unite with the foreigners in all the horrors of civil war. A nation of twenty-five millions of freemen were again to be enslaved. All the patriots who had been instrumental in securing liberty for France were to be consigned to exile, the dungeon, and the scaffold. If ever a people were excusable in being thrown into a state of blind ungovernable fury, it was the people of France in view of such threats.
Paris was in this state of panic when the atrocious proclamation of the Duke of Brunswick reached the city. The king had sent a secret embassador, Mallet du Pan, to the allies, suggesting the tone of the manifesto he wished them to issue. Some of his suggestions they adopted, and added to them menaces as cruel and bloody as any deeds ever perpetrated by a mob.
"Their majesties," said the duke in this manifesto, "the emperor, and the king of Prussia, having intrusted me with the command of the combined armies, assembled by their orders on the frontiers of France, I am desirous to acquaint the inhabitants of that kingdom with the motives which have determined the measures of the two sovereigns, and the intentions by which they are guided."
He then stated that one object which the sovereigns had deeply at heart was "to put an end to the anarchy in the interior of France; to stop the attacks directed against the throne and the altar, to re-establish the regal power, to restore to the king the security and liberty of which he is deprived, and to place him in a condition to exercise the legitimate authority which is his due."
He then declared, in violation of all the rules of civilized warfare, that "such of the national guards as shall have fought against the troops of the two allied courts, and who shall be taken in arms, shall be punished as rebels against their king." This doomed every French patriot who should resist the invaders to be shot or hanged.
"The inhabitants of cities, towns, and villages," continued this savage declaration, "who shall dare to defend themselves against the troops of their imperial and royal majesties, and to fire upon them either in the open field or from their houses, shall be instantly punished with all the rigor of the laws of war, and their houses demolished or burned.
"The city of Paris and all its inhabitants without distinction, are required to submit immediately to the king, to set him at entire liberty, to insure to him, as well as to all the royal personages, the inviolability and respect which subjects owe their sovereigns. Their imperial and royal majesties hold the members of the National Assembly, of the department, of the district, of the municipality, and of the National Guard of Paris, the justices of the peace, and all others whom it may concern, personally responsible with their lives for all that may happen; their said majesties declaring, moreover, on their faith and word as emperor and king, that if the palace of the Tuileries is forced or insulted, that if the least violence, the least outrage is offered to their majesties the king and queen and to the royal family, if immediate provision is not made for their safety, their preservation, and their liberty, they will take an exemplary and ever-memorable vengeance, by giving up the city of Paris to military execution and total destruction, and the rebels guilty of outrages to the punishments they shall have deserved."[346]
This ferocious document was printed in all the Royalist papers in Paris on the 28th of July. The king immediately issued a message disavowing any agency in the manifesto. But the people no longer had any confidence in the word of the king. Paris was thrown into a state of terrible agitation. The forty-eight sections of Paris met, and commissioned the mayor, Pétion, to appear before the General Assembly, and petition, in their name, the dethronement of the king. On the 3d of August, Pétion, at the head of a numerous deputation, presented himself before the Assembly. In an address, calm, unimpassioned, but terrible in its severity, he retraced the whole course of the king from the commencement of the Revolution, and closed with the solemn demand for the dethronement of Louis XVI., as the most dangerous enemy of the nation. The Assembly was embarrassed by its desire to adhere to the Constitution which it had sworn to obey. The dethronement of the king was not a constitutional but a revolutionary act. A long and stormy debate ensued, during which the hall was flooded with petitions against the king. The king's friends were again intensely anxious to secure his escape. But the king would not listen to their plans, for he was so infatuated as to believe that the Duke of Brunswick would soon, by an unimpeded march, be in Paris for his rescue.
The sympathy which La Fayette had manifested for the royal family had now ruined him in the esteem of the populace. He was every where denounced as a traitor, and a strong effort was made to compel the Assembly to indite a bill of accusation against him. But La Fayette's friends in the chamber rallied, and he was absolved from the charge of treason by a vote of four hundred and forty-six against two hundred and eighty. The populace was so exasperated by this result that they heaped abuse upon all who voted in his favor, and several of them were severely maltreated by the mob. The National Assembly had now become unpopular. It was ferociously denounced in the club of the Jacobins and in all the corners of the streets. In the mean time the insurrectionary committee, formed from the Jacobin club, were busy in preparation for the great insurrection. All hearts were appalled, for all could see that a cloud of terrific blackness was gathering, and no one could tell what limit there would be to the ravages of the storm.