The French Revolution of 1789, as Viewed in the Light of Republican Institutions

by John S. C. Abbott

These deeds of violence excited the disgust of Bailly, the mayor, and La Fayette. Having such evidence that both the municipality and the National Guard were impotent, both La Fayette and Bailly tendered their resignations.

They were, however, prevailed upon to continue in office by the most earnest solicitations of the friends of France.[198]

A report was spread throughout the kingdom that the fugitive princes and nobles were organizing a force on the frontiers for the invasion of France, that the armies of foreign despots were at their command, and that all the Royalists in France were conspiring to welcome them. The panic which pervaded the kingdom was fearful. France, just beginning to breathe the atmosphere of liberty, was threatened with chains of slavery more heavy than had ever been worn before. The energies of a semi-enfranchised people were roused to the utmost vigor. Every city, and every village of any importance, organized a municipal government in sympathy with the municipality in Paris. The peasantry in the rural districts, hating the nobles who had long oppressed them, attacked and burned their castles. There was a universal rising of the Third Estate against the tyranny of the privileged classes, assailing that tyranny with the only instrument at its command—blind brutal force. In one week three millions of men assumed the military character, and organized themselves for the defense of the kingdom. The tricolored cockade became the national uniform.

The National Assembly, intently occupied in framing a constitution, was greatly disturbed by reports of these wide-spread acts of violence; yet daily delegations arrived with vows of homage from the different provinces, and with their recognition of the authority of the national representatives.

Necker was in exile at Basle. He had left the Polignacs in pride and power at Versailles; they now were fugitives. One morning one of the Polignacs hastened to Necker's apartment and informed him of the overthrow of the court and the triumph of the people. Necker had just received these tidings when a courier placed in his hand the letter of the king recalling him to the ministry. The grandest of triumphs greeted him from the moment his carriage entered France until he was received with a delirium of joy in the streets of Paris. The people, who had with lawless violence punished Foulon and Berthier, who had conspired so inhumanly for the overthrow of their liberties, were determined that others, who with equal malignity had conspired against them, should also be condemned. Necker humanely resolved that an act of general amnesty should be passed. Many of his friends assured him that it was not safe to attempt to secure the passage of such a measure; that the crimes of the leaders of the court were too great to be thus easily forgotten; that the indignant nation, finding Necker pleading the cause of the court, would think that he had been bought over; and that thus he would only secure his own ruin. But Necker, relying upon his popularity, resolved to make the trial. On the 29th of July he repaired to the Hôtel de Ville. As he passed through the streets and entered the spacious hall, he was received with rapturous applause. Deeming his popularity equal to the emergence, he demanded a general amnesty. In the enthusiasm of the moment it was granted by acclamation. Necker retired to his apartments delighted with his success; but before the sun had set he found himself cruelly deceived. The Assembly, led by Mirabeau, remonstrated peremptorily against this usurpation of power by the Municipality of Paris, asserting that that body had no authority either to condemn or to pardon. The measure of amnesty was annulled by the Assembly, and the detention of the prisoners confirmed.

The great question which now agitated the Assembly was, what measures were to be adopted to bring order out of the chaos into which France was plunged. All the old courts were virtually annihilated. No new courts had been organized with the sanction of national authority. The nobles and all their friends, in conference with the emigrants and foreign despots, were conspiring to reinstate the reign of despotic power. The people were in a state of terror. The degraded, the desperate, the vicious, in banditti hordes, were sweeping the country, burning and pillaging indiscriminately. It was proposed to publish a decree enjoining upon the people to demean themselves peaceably, to pay such taxes and duties as were not yet suppressed, and to yield obedience for the present to the old laws of the realm, obnoxious and unjust as they undeniably were.

While this question was under discussion, the Viscount de Noailles and the Duke d'Aguillon, both distinguished members of the nobility, ascended the tribune and declared that it was vain to attempt to quiet the people by force, that the only way of appeasing them was by removing the cause of their sufferings. They then, though both of them members of the privileged class, nobly avowed the enormity of the aggressions under which, by the name of feudal rights, the people were oppressed, and voted for the repeal of those atrocities.

It is a remarkable fact that in this great revolution the boldest and ablest friends of popular rights came out from the body of the nobles themselves. Some were influenced by as pure motives as can move the human heart. With others, perhaps, selfish and ambitious motives predominated. Among the most active in all these movements, we see La Fayette, Talleyrand, Sièyes, Mirabeau, and the Duke of Orleans. But for the aid of these men, whatever may have been the motives which influenced the one or the other, the popular cause could not have triumphed. And now we find, in the National Assembly, two of the most distinguished of the nobles rising and themselves proposing the utter abolition of all feudal rights.

It was the 4th of August, 1789, when this memorable scene was enacted in the National Assembly, one of the most remarkable which ever transpired on earth. The whole body of the nobles seems to have been seized with a paroxysm of magnanimity and disinterestedness. One of the deputies of the Tiers Etat, M. Kerengal, in the dress of a farmer, gave a frightful picture of the sufferings of the people under feudal oppression.[199] There was no more discussion. No voice defended feudality. The nobles, one after another, renounced all their prerogatives. The clergy surrendered their tithes. The deputies of the towns and of the provinces gave up their special privileges, and, in one short night, all those customs and laws by which, for ages, one man had been robbed to enrich another were scattered to the winds. Equality of rights was established between all individuals and all parts of the French territory. Louis XVI. was then proclaimed the restorer of French liberty. It was decreed that a medal should be struck off in his honor, in memory of that glorious night. And when the Archbishop of Paris proposed that God's goodness should be acknowledged in a solemn Te Deum, to be celebrated in the king's chapel, in the presence of the king and of all the members of the National Assembly, it was carried by acclamation. During the whole of this exciting scene, when sacrifices were made such as earth never witnessed before; when nobles surrendered their titles, their pensions, and their incomes; when towns and corporations surrendered their privileges and pecuniary immunities; when prelates relinquished their tithes and their benefices; not a solitary voice of opposition or remonstrance was heard. The whole Assembly—clergy, nobles, and Tiers Etat—moved as one man. "It seemed," says M. Rabaud, "as if France was near being regenerated in the course of a single night. So true it is that the happiness of a people is easily to be accomplished, when those who govern are less occupied with themselves than with the people."[200]