The French Revolution: A Short History

by R. M. Johnston

On the 23rd, the royal session was held. A great display of troops and of ceremony was made. The deputies assembled in the hall, and {57} the King's speech was read. It was a carefully prepared document, announcing noteworthy concessions as well as noteworthy reservations, but vitiated by two things: the concessions came just too late; the reservations were not promptly and effectively enforced. The King declared that for two months past the States-General had accomplished nothing save wrangling, that the time had therefore arrived for recalling them to their duties. His royal will was that the distinction between the three orders should be maintained, and after announcing a number of financial and other reforms, he ordered the deputies to separate at once. The King then left the hall supported by his attendants, and by the greater part of the nobles and high clergy. There followed a memorable scene, to understand which it is necessary to go back a little.

On the arrival of the deputies at Versailles, they had at once tended to form themselves into groups, messes, or clubs, for eating, social and political purposes. An association of this kind, the Club Breton, so called from the province of its founders, soon assumed considerable importance. Here the forward men of the assembly met and discussed; and here, filtering through innumerable channels, came {58} the news of the palace, the tittle tattle of Trianon and the Oeuil de Boeuf, the decisions of the King's council. At every crisis during the struggle at Versailles, the leaders of the assembly knew beforehand what the King and his ministers thought, and what measures they had decided on. All that was necessary therefore was to concert secretly the step most likely to thwart the royal policy, and by eloquence, by persuasion, by entreaty, to cajole the great floating mass of members to follow the lead of the more active minds. The King's speech on the 23rd of June was no surprise to the assembly, and the leaders were prepared with an effective rejoinder.

So when Louis XVI left the hall after commanding the deputies to disperse, the greater part of them kept their seats, and when Dreux Brézé, Master of Ceremonies, noting this, called on the president to withdraw, Bailly replied that the assembly was in session and could not adjourn without a motion. The discussion between Dreux Brézé and Bailly continuing, Mirabeau turned on the King's representative and in his thundering voice declaimed the famous speech, which he had doubtless prepared the night before. "We are here," he concluded, "by the will of the people, and we {59} will only quit at the point of the bayonet." At this de Brézé withdrew and reported to the King for orders. But Louis had done enough for one day, and the only conclusion he could come to was that if the deputies refused to leave the hall, the best course would be for them to remain there. And there in fact they stayed.

Immediately after this scene Necker sent in his resignation. On the morning of the 24th, this was known in Paris, and produced consternation and a run on the banks. To reassure the public, Necker was immediately reinstated, on the basis that Louis should accept, as now seemed inevitable, the fusion of the orders. On the 25th, a large group of nobles headed by the Duc d'Orléans and the Comte de Clermont Tonnerre joined the assembly, and a week later the Assemblée Nationale was fully constituted, the three orders merged into one.

During the two months through which this great constitutional struggle had lasted, the assembly had had a great moral force behind it, a moral force that was fast tending to become something more. The winter of 1788-89 had been one of the most severe of the century. There had been not only the almost chronic shortage of bread, but weather of {60} extraordinary rigour. In the city of Paris the Seine is reported to have been frozen solid, while the suffering among its inhabitants was unparalleled. As an inevitable consequence of this riots broke out. In January there had been food riots in many parts of France that taxed severely the military resources of the Government. They continued during the electoral period, and were occasionally accompanied by great violence. And when the deputies assembled at Versailles there was behind them a great popular force, already half unloosed, that looked to the States-General for appeasement or for guidance.

The procedure which the Third Estate and National Assembly stumbled into, gave this popular force an opportunity for expressing itself. The public was admitted to the opening session, and it continued to come to those that followed. From the public galleries came the loudest sounds of applause that greeted the patriotic orator. The Parisian public quickly fell into the way of making the journey to Versailles to join in these demonstrations, and soon transferred them from the hall of the assembly to the street outside. Mirabeau, Sieyès, Mounier, and other popular members were constantly receiving ovations—and soon learnt to {61} convert them into political weapons; while members who were suspected of reactionary tendencies, especially the higher clergy, met with hostile receptions. And all this, well known both to Court and assembly, was but a faint echo of the great force rumbling steadily twelve miles away in the city of Paris.

The leaders of the assembly did not scruple to use this pressure of public opinion, of popular violence, for all it was worth. And placed as they were it was not surprising that they should have done so. The deputies were only a small group of men in the great royal city garrisoned with all the traditions of the French royalty and 5,000 sabres and bayonets besides. It was natural that they should seek support then, even if that support meant violence, lawlessness or insurrection.

Thus Paris encouraged the assembly, and the assembly Paris. The ferment in the capital was reaching fever-heat just at the moment that the assembly had won its victory over the orders. The working classes were raging for food, the bankers, capitalists and merchants saw in the States-General the only hope of avoiding bankruptcy, the intellectual and professional class was more agitated than any other. The cafés and pamphlet shops of the {62} Palais Royal were daily more crowded, more excited. And on the 30th of June the army itself began to show symptoms of following the general movement.

The regiment of French guards was a body of soldiers kept permanently quartered in the capital. The men were, therefore, in closer touch with the population than would be the case in ordinary regiments. Their commanding officer at this moment was not only an aristocrat but a martinet, and he completely failed to keep his regiment in hand. Trouble had long been brewing in the ranks and culminated in mutiny and riot at the close of June. Making the most of the state of Paris many of the mutinous guardsmen took their liberty and refused to return to barracks. Clearly what between the accomplished revolt of the Third Estate, the incipient revolt of Paris, and the open mutiny of the troops, something had to be done.

Necker's return to the Ministry had been imposed on the Court, and although his policy of accepting the fusion of the orders was followed, his influence really amounted to little. The Queen and the Comte d'Artois soon plucked up courage after their first defeat, and took up once more the policy of repression; but {63} as it was now apparently useless to attempt to stem the tide by means of speeches or decrees, they persuaded the King that force was the only means. By using the army he could get rid of Necker, get rid of the National Assembly, and reduce Paris to order.