All this time the assembly was in the greatest alarm. The first cannonade filled them with consternation. As the firing became more frequent, the agitation increased. At one moment, the members considered themselves lost. An officer entering the hall, hastily exclaimed: "To your places, legislators; we are forced!" A few rose to go out. "No, no," cried others, "this is our post." The spectators in the gallery exclaimed instantly, "Vive l'assemblée nationale!" and the assembly replied, "Vive la nation!" Shouts of victory were then heard without, and the fate of monarchy was decided.
The assembly instantly made a proclamation to restore tranquillity, and implore the people to respect justice, their magistrates, the rights of man, liberty, and equality. But the multitude and their chiefs had all the power in their hands, and were determined to use it. The new municipality came to assert its authority. It was preceded by three banners, inscribed with the words, "Patrie, liberté, egalité." Its address was imperious, and concluded by demanding the deposition of the king, and a national convention. Deputations followed, and all expressed the same desire, or rather issued the same command.
The assembly felt itself compelled to yield; it would not, however, take upon itself the deposition of the king. Vergniaud ascended the tribune, in the name of the commission of twelve, and said: "I am about to propose to you a very rigorous measure; I appeal to the affliction of your hearts to judge how necessary it is to adopt it immediately." This measure consisted of the convocation of a national assembly, the dismissal of the ministers, and the suspension of the king. The assembly adopted it unanimously. The Girondist ministers were recalled; the celebrated decrees were carried into execution, about four thousand non-juring priests were exiled, and commissioners were despatched to the armies to make sure of them. Louis XVI., to whom the assembly had at first assigned the Luxembourg as a residence, was transferred as a prisoner to the Temple, by the all- powerful commune, under the pretext that it could not otherwise be answerable for the safety of his person. Finally, the 23rd of September was appointed for opening the extraordinary assembly, destined to decide the fate of royalty. But royalty had already fallen on the 10th of August, that day marked by the insurrection of the multitude against the middle classes and the constitutional throne, as the 14th of July had seen the insurrection of the middle class against the privileged class and the absolute power of the crown. On the 10th of August began the dictatorial and arbitrary epoch of the revolution. Circumstances becoming more and more difficult to encounter, a vast warfare arose, requiring still greater energy than ever, and that energy irregular, because popular, rendered the domination of the lower class restless, cruel, and oppressive. The nature of the question was then entirely changed; it was no longer a matter of liberty, but of public safety; and the conventional period, from the end of the constitution of 1791, to the time when the constitution of the year III. established the directory, was only a long campaign of the revolution against parties and against Europe. It was scarcely possible it should be otherwise. "The revolutionary movement once established," says M. de Maîstre, in his Considerations sur la France. [Footnote: Lausanne, 1796.] "France and the monarchy could only be saved by Jacobinism. Our grandchildren, who will care little for our sufferings, and will dance on our graves, will laugh at our present ignorance; they will easily console themselves for the excesses we have witnessed, and which will have preserved the integrity of the finest of kingdoms."
The departments adhered to the events of the 10th of August. The army, which shortly afterwards came under the influence of the revolution, was at yet of constitutional royalist principles; but as the troops were subordinate to parties, they would easily submit to the dominant opinion. The generals, second in rank, such as Dumouriez, Custines, Biron, Kellermann, and Labourdonnaie, were disposed to adopt the last changes. They had not yet declared for any particular party, looking to the revolution as a means of advancement. It was not the same with the two generals in chief. Luckner floated undecided between the insurrection of the 10th of August, which he termed, "a little accident that had happened to Paris and his friend, Lafayette." The latter, head of the constitutional party, firmly adhering to his oaths, wished still to defend the overturned throne, and a constitution which no longer existed. He commanded about thirty thousand men, who were devoted to his person and his cause. His head-quarters were near Sedan. In his project of resistance in favour of the constitution, he concerted with the municipality of that town, and the directory of the department of Ardennes, to establish a civil centre round which all the departments might rally. The three commissioners, Kersaint, Antonelle, and Péraldy, sent by the legislature to his army, were arrested and imprisoned in the tower of Sedan. The reason assigned for this measure was, that the assembly having been intimidated, the members who had accepted such a mission were necessarily but the leaders or instruments of the faction which had subjugated the national assembly and the king. The troops and the civil authorities then renewed their oath to the constitution, and Lafayette endeavoured to enlarge the circle of the insurrection of the army against the popular insurrection.
General Lafayette at that moment thought, possibly, too much on the past, on the law, and the common oath, and not enough on the really extraordinary position in which France then was. He only saw the dearest hopes of the friends of liberty destroyed, the usurpation of the state by the multitude, and the anarchical reign of the Jacobins; he did not perceive the fatality of a situation which rendered the triumph of the latest comer in the revolution indispensable. It was scarcely possible that the bourgeoisie, which had been strong enough to overthrow the old system and the privileged classes, but which had reposed after that victory, could resist the emigrants and all Europe. For this a new shock, a new faith were necessary; there was need of a numerous, ardent, inexhaustible class, as enthusiastic for the 10th of August, as the bourgeoisie had been for the 14th of July. Lafayette could not associate with this party; he had combated it, under the constituent assembly, at the Champ de Mars, before and after the 20th of June. He could not continue to play his former part, nor defend a cause just in itself, but condemned by events, without compromising his country, and the results of a revolution to which he was sincerely attached. His resistance, if continued, would have given rise to a civil war between the people and the army, at a time when it was not certain that the combination of all parties would suffice against a foreign war.
It was the 19th of August, and the army of invasion having left Coblentz on the 30th of July, was ascending the Moselle, and advancing on that frontier. In consideration of the common danger, the troops were disposed to resume their obedience to the assembly; Luckner, who at first approved of Lafayette's views, retracted, weeping and swearing, before the municipality of Metz; and Lafayette himself saw the necessity of yielding to a more powerful destiny. He left his army, taking upon himself all the responsibility of the whole insurrection. He was accompanied by Bureau-de- Pusy, Latour-Maubourg, Alexander Lameth, and some officers of his staff. He proceeded through the enemy's posts towards Holland, intending to go to the United States, his adopted country. But he was discovered and arrested with his companions. In violation of the rights of nations, he was treated as a prisoner of war, and confined first in the dungeons of Magdeburg, and then by the Austrians at Olmütz. The English parliament itself took steps in his favour; but it was not until the treaty of Campo-Formio that Bonaparte released him from prison. During four years of the hardest captivity, subject to every description of privation, kept in ignorance of the state of his country and of liberty, with no prospect before him but that of perpetual and harsh imprisonment, he displayed the most heroic courage. He might have obtained his liberty by making certain retractations, but he preferred remaining buried in his dungeon to abandoning in the least degree the sacred cause he had embraced.
There have been in our day few lives more pure than Lafayette's; few characters more beautiful; few men whose popularity has been more justly won and longer maintained. After defending liberty in America at the side of Washington, he desired to establish it in the same manner in France; but this noble part was impossible in our revolution. When a people in the pursuit of liberty has no internal dissension, and no foes but foreigners, it may find a deliverer; may produce, in Switzerland a William Tell, in the Netherlands a prince of Orange, in America a Washington; but when it pursues it against its own countrymen and foreigners, at once amidst factions and battles, it can only produce a Cromwell or a Bonaparte, who become the dictators of revolutions when the struggle subsides and parties are exhausted. Lafayette, an actor in the first epoch of the crisis, enthusiastically declared for its results. He became the general of the middle class, at the head of the national guard under the constituent assembly, in the army under the legislative assembly. He had risen by it, and he would end with it. It may be said of him, that if he committed some faults of position, he had ever but one object, liberty, and that he employed but one means, the law. The manner in which, when yet quite young, he devoted himself to the deliverance of the two worlds, his glorious conduct and his invariable firmness, will transmit his name with honour to posterity, with whom a man cannot have two reputations, as in the time of party, but his own alone.
The authors of the events of the 10th of August became more and more divided, having no common views as to the results which should arise from that revolution. The more daring party, which had got hold of the commune or municipality, wished by means of that commune to rule Paris; by means of Paris, the national assembly; and by means of the assembly, France. After having effected the transference of Louis XVI. to the Temple, it threw down all the statues of the kings, and destroyed all the emblems of the monarchy. The department exercised a right of superintendence over the municipality; to be completely independent, it abrogated this right. The law required certain conditions to constitute a citizen; it decreed the cessation of these, in order that the multitude might be introduced into the government of the state. At the same time, it demanded the establishment of an extraordinary tribunal to try the conspirators of the 10th of August. As the assembly did not prove sufficiently docile, and endeavoured by proclamations to recall the people to more just and moderate sentiments, it received threatening messages from the Hôtel de Ville. "As a citizen," said a member of the commune, "as a magistrate of the people, I come to announce to you that this evening, at midnight, the tocsin will sound, the drum beat to arms. The people are weary of not being avenged; tremble lest they administer justice themselves." "If, before two or three hours pass, the foreman of the jury be not named," said another, "and if the jury be not itself in a condition to act, great calamities will befall Paris." To avert the threatened outbreaks, the assembly was obliged to appoint an extraordinary criminal tribunal. This tribunal condemned a few persons, but the commune having conceived the most terrible projects, did not consider it sufficiently expeditious.
At the head of the commune were Marat, Panis, Sergent, Duplain, Lenfent, Lefort, Jourdeuil, Collot d'Herbois, Billaud-Varennes, Tallien, etc.; but the chief leader of the party at that time was Danton. He, more than any other person, had distinguished himself on the 10th of August. During the whole of that night he had rushed about from the sections to the barracks of the Marseillais and Bretons, and from these to the Faubourgs. A member of the revolutionary commune, he had directed its operations, and had afterwards been appointed minister of justice.
Danton was a gigantic revolutionist; he deemed no means censurable so they were useful, and, according to him, men could do whatever they dared attempt. Danton, who has been termed the Mirabeau of the populace bore a physical resemblance to that tribune of the higher classes; he had irregular features, a powerful voice, impetuous gesticulation, a daring eloquence, a lordly brow. Their vices, too, were the same; only Mirabeau's were those of a patrician, Danton's those of a democrat; that which there was of daring in the conceptions of Mirabeau, was to be found in Danton, but in another way, because, in the revolution, he belonged to another class and another epoch. Ardent, overwhelmed with debts and wants, of dissolute habits, given up now to his passions, now to his party, he was formidable while in the pursuit of an object, but became indifferent as soon as he had obtained it. This powerful demagogue presented a mixture of the most opposite vices and qualities. Though he had sold himself to the court, he did not seem sordid; he was one of those who, so to speak, give an air of freedom even to baseness. He was an absolute exterminator, without being personally ferocious; inexorable towards masses, humane, generous even towards individuals. [Footnote: At the time the commune was arranging the massacre of the 2nd September, he saved all who applied to him; he, of his own accord, released from prison Duport, Barnave, and Ch. Lameth, his personal antagonists.] Revolution, in his opinion, was a game at which the conqueror, if he required it, won the life of the conquered. The welfare of his party was, in his eyes, superior to law and even to humanity; this will explain his endeavours after the 10th of August, and his return to moderation when he considered the republic established.