The English embassador, Dorset, who was residing at Versailles, revealed the plot to the ministers of the king. They, however, kept the secret until it was disclosed by an intercepted letter from Dorset to the Count d'Artois (subsequently Charles X). This discovery vastly increased the alarm of the nation. Perils were now multiplying on every side. The most appalling rumors of invasion filled the air. Bands of marauders, haggard, starving, brutal, swept over the country, burning, devouring, and destroying. It was supposed at first that they were the advance battalions of the invaders, sent by the emigrants to chastise France into subjection. Alarm increased to terror. Mothers in almost a delirium of fear sought places of concealment for their children. The peasant in the morning ran to his field to see if it had been laid waste. At night he trembled lest he should awake to behold conflagration and ruin. There was no law. The king's troops were objects of especial dread. The most insolent of the nobles were in command, and with money and wine they sought to bribe especially the Germans and the Swiss to be obedient to their wishes.
It was this peril which armed France. Villages, peasants, all were united to defend themselves against these terrible brigands. The arsenals of the old castles contained arms. Nerved by despair, the roused multitudes simultaneously besieged all these castles, and demanded and seized the weapons necessary for their defense. It was as a movement of magic. A sudden danger, every where menacing, every where worked the same result. In one short week France sprung up armed and ready for war. Three millions of men had come from the furrow and the shop, and fiercely demanded "Where are the brigands? Lead us to meet our foes, whoever and wherever they may be."[201]
The lords in an hour found themselves helpless. The peasants, hitherto so tame and servile, were now soldiers, roused to determination and proud of their newly discovered power. Awful was the retribution. The chateaux blazed—funeral fires of feudality—on every hill and in every valley. One can only be surprised that the hour of retribution should have been delayed for so many ages, and that when it came the infuriated, degraded, brutalized masses did not proceed to even greater atrocities. Though deeds of cruelty were perpetrated which cause the ear that hears to tingle, still, on the whole, mercy predominated.
In many cases lords who had treated their serfs kindly were protected by their vassals, as children would protect a father. The Marquis of Montfermail was thus shielded from harm. In Dauphiné a castle was assailed during the absence of the lord. His lady was at home alone with the children. The peasants left the castle and its inmates unharmed, destroying only those feudal charters which were the title-deeds of despotism.
These titles, engrossed on fine parchment and embellished with gorgeous seals, were the pride of the noble family—the evidence of their antiquity. They were preserved with great reverence, deposited in costly caskets, which caskets, enveloped in velvet, were safely placed in oaken chests, and those chests, iron-ribbed and with ponderous locks, were guarded in a strong part of the feudal tower. The peasants ever gazed with awe upon the tower of the archives. They understood the significancy of those title-deeds—the badges of their degradation, the authority to which the lords appealed in support of their tyranny, insolence, and nameless outrages.
"Our country-people," writes Michelet, "went straight to the tower. For many centuries that tower had seemed to sneer at the valley, sterilizing, blighting, oppressing it with its deadly shadow. A guardian of the country in barbarous times, standing there as a sentinel, it became later an object of horror. In 1789 what was it but the odious witness of bondage, a perpetual outrage to repeat every morning to the man trudging to his labor the everlasting humiliation of his race? 'Work, work on, son of serfs! Earn for another's profit. Work, and without hope.' Every morning and every evening, for a thousand years, perhaps more, that tower had been cursed. A day came when it was to fall.
"O glorious day, how long have you been in coming! How long our fathers expected and dreamed of you in vain! The hope that their sons would at length behold you was alone able to support them, otherwise they would have no longer consented to live. They would have died in their agony. And what has enabled me, their companion, laboring beside them in the furrow of history and drinking their bitter cup, to revive the suffering Middle Ages, and yet not die of grief? Was it not you, O glorious day, first day of liberty? I have lived in order to relate your history!"
Thus far the religious sentiment of France, as expressed by nearly all the pastors and the great proportion of their Christian flocks, was warmly in favor of the Revolution. The higher clergy alone, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, who were usually the younger sons of the nobles, and were thus interested in the perpetuation of abuses, united with the lords. As in the National Assembly so it was in the nation itself, that the working clergy were among the most conspicuous of the sons of freedom. Religious services were held in the churches in grateful commemoration of the fall of the Bastille.[202] The vast cathedral of Nôtre Dame was thronged to listen to a sermon from the Abbé Fauchet, who consecrated to the memory of those who fell on that occasion the homage of his extraordinary eloquence. He selected for his text the words of St. Paul, "For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty."—Gal. v. 13.
"The false interpreters of the divine oracle," said the abbé, "have wished, in the name of heaven, to keep the people in subjection to the will of their masters. They have consecrated despotism. They have rendered God an accomplice with tyrants. These false teachers exult because it is written, 'Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's.' But that which is not Cæsar's, is it necessary to render to him that? And liberty does not belong to Cæsar. It belongs to human nature."[203]