4.IV.
Attitude.
But in Paris, at six in the morning; when some Patriot Deputy, warned by a billet, awoke Lafayette, and they went to the Tuileries?--Imagination may paint, but words cannot, the surprise of Lafayette; or with what bewilderment helpless Gouvion rolled glassy Argus's eyes, discerning now that his false Chambermaid told true!
However, it is to be recorded that Paris, thanks to an august National Assembly, did, on this seeming doomsday, surpass itself. Never, according to Historian eye-witnesses, was there seen such an 'imposing attitude.' (Deux Amis, vi. 67-178; Toulongeon, ii. 1-38; Camille, Prudhomme and Editors (in Hist. Parl. x. 240-4.) Sections all 'in permanence;' our Townhall, too, having first, about ten o'clock, fired three solemn alarm- cannons: above all, our National Assembly! National Assembly, likewise permanent, decides what is needful; with unanimous consent, for the Cote Droit sits dumb, afraid of the Lanterne. Decides with a calm promptitude, which rises towards the sublime. One must needs vote, for the thing is self-evident, that his Majesty has been abducted, or spirited away, 'enleve,' by some person or persons unknown: in which case, what will the Constitution have us do? Let us return to first principles, as we always say; "revenons aux principes."
By first or by second principles, much is promptly decided: Ministers are sent for, instructed how to continue their functions; Lafayette is examined; and Gouvion, who gives a most helpless account, the best he can. Letters are found written: one Letter, of immense magnitude; all in his Majesty's hand, and evidently of his Majesty's own composition; addressed to the National Assembly. It details, with earnestness, with a childlike simplicity, what woes his Majesty has suffered. Woes great and small: A Necker seen applauded, a Majesty not; then insurrection; want of due cash in Civil List; general want of cash, furniture and order; anarchy everywhere; Deficit never yet, in the smallest, 'choked or comble:'-- wherefore in brief His Majesty has retired towards a Place of Liberty; and, leaving Sanctions, Federation, and what Oaths there may be, to shift for themselves, does now refer--to what, thinks an august Assembly? To that 'Declaration of the Twenty-third of June,' with its "Seul il fera, He alone will make his People happy." As if that were not buried, deep enough, under two irrevocable Twelvemonths, and the wreck and rubbish of a whole Feudal World! This strange autograph Letter the National Assembly decides on printing; on transmitting to the Eighty-three Departments, with exegetic commentary, short but pithy. Commissioners also shall go forth on all sides; the People be exhorted; the Armies be increased; care taken that the Commonweal suffer no damage.--And now, with a sublime air of calmness, nay of indifference, we 'pass to the order of the day!'
By such sublime calmness, the terror of the People is calmed. These gleaming Pike forests, which bristled fateful in the early sun, disappear again; the far-sounding Street-orators cease, or spout milder. We are to have a civil war; let us have it then. The King is gone; but National Assembly, but France and we remain. The People also takes a great attitude; the People also is calm; motionless as a couchant lion. With but a few broolings, some waggings of the tail; to shew what it will do! Cazales, for instance, was beset by street-groups, and cries of Lanterne; but National Patrols easily delivered him. Likewise all King's effigies and statues, at least stucco ones, get abolished. Even King's names; the word Roi fades suddenly out of all shop-signs; the Royal Bengal Tiger itself, on the Boulevards, becomes the National Bengal one, Tigre National. (Walpoliana.)
How great is a calm couchant People! On the morrow, men will say to one another: "We have no King, yet we slept sound enough." On the morrow, fervent Achille de Chatelet, and Thomas Paine the rebellious Needleman, shall have the walls of Paris profusely plastered with their Placard; announcing that there must be a Republic! (Dumont,c. 16.)--Need we add that Lafayette too, though at first menaced by Pikes, has taken a great attitude, or indeed the greatest of all? Scouts and Aides-de-camp fly forth, vague, in quest and pursuit; young Romoeuf towards Valenciennes, though with small hope.
Thus Paris; sublimely calmed, in its bereavement. But from the Messageries Royales, in all Mail-bags, radiates forth far-darting the electric news: Our Hereditary Representative is flown. Laugh, black Royalists: yet be it in your sleeve only; lest Patriotism notice, and waxing frantic, lower the Lanterne! In Paris alone is a sublime National Assembly with its calmness; truly, other places must take it as they can: with open mouth and eyes; with panic cackling, with wrath, with conjecture. How each one of those dull leathern Diligences, with its leathern bag and 'The King is fled,' furrows up smooth France as it goes; through town and hamlet, ruffles the smooth public mind into quivering agitation of death-terror; then lumbers on, as if nothing had happened! Along all highways; towards the utmost borders; till all France is ruffled,--roughened up (metaphorically speaking) into one enormous, desperate-minded, red-guggling Turkey Cock!
For example, it is under cloud of night that the leathern Monster reaches Nantes; deep sunk in sleep. The word spoken rouses all Patriot men: General Dumouriez, enveloped in roquelaures, has to descend from his bedroom; finds the street covered with 'four or five thousand citizens in their shirts.' (Dumouriez, Memoires, ii. 109.) Here and there a faint farthing rushlight, hastily kindled; and so many swart-featured haggard faces, with nightcaps pushed back; and the more or less flowing drapery of night-shirt: open-mouthed till the General say his word! And overhead, as always, the Great Bear is turning so quiet round Bootes; steady, indifferent as the leathern Diligence itself. Take comfort, ye men of Nantes: Bootes and the steady Bear are turning; ancient Atlantic still sends his brine, loud-billowing, up your Loire-stream; brandy shall be hot in the stomach: this is not the Last of the Days, but one before the Last.--The fools! If they knew what was doing, in these very instants, also by candle-light, in the far North-East!
Perhaps we may say the most terrified man in Paris or France is--who thinks the Reader?--seagreen Robespierre. Double paleness, with the shadow of gibbets and halters, overcasts the seagreen features: it is too clear to him that there is to be 'a Saint-Bartholomew of Patriots,' that in four- and-twenty hours he will not be in life. These horrid anticipations of the soul he is heard uttering at Petion's; by a notable witness. By Madame Roland, namely; her whom we saw, last year, radiant at the Lyons Federation! These four months, the Rolands have been in Paris; arranging with Assembly Committees the Municipal affairs of Lyons, affairs all sunk in debt;--communing, the while, as was most natural, with the best Patriots to be found here, with our Brissots, Petions, Buzots, Robespierres; who were wont to come to us, says the fair Hostess, four evenings in the week. They, running about, busier than ever this day, would fain have comforted the seagreen man: spake of Achille du Chatelet's Placard; of a Journal to be called The Republican; of preparing men's minds for a Republic. "A Republic?" said the Seagreen, with one of his dry husky unsportful laughs, "What is that?" (Madame Roland, ii. 70.) O seagreen Incorruptible, thou shalt see!
4.V.
The New Berline.
But scouts all this while and aide-de-camps, have flown forth faster than the leathern Diligences. Young Romoeuf, as we said, was off early towards Valenciennes: distracted Villagers seize him, as a traitor with a finger of his own in the plot; drag him back to the Townhall; to the National Assembly, which speedily grants a new passport. Nay now, that same scarecrow of an Herb-merchant with his ass has bethought him of the grand new Berline seen in the Wood of Bondy; and delivered evidence of it: (Moniteur, &c. (in Hist. Parl. x. 244-313.) Romoeuf, furnished with new passport, is sent forth with double speed on a hopefuller track; by Bondy, Claye, and Chalons, towards Metz, to track the new Berline; and gallops a franc etrier.
Miserable new Berline! Why could not Royalty go in some old Berline similar to that of other men? Flying for life, one does not stickle about his vehicle. Monsieur, in a commonplace travelling-carriage is off Northwards; Madame, his Princess, in another, with variation of route: they cross one another while changing horses, without look of recognition; and reach Flanders, no man questioning them. Precisely in the same manner, beautiful Princess de Lamballe set off, about the same hour; and will reach England safe:--would she had continued there! The beautiful, the good, but the unfortunate; reserved for a frightful end!
All runs along, unmolested, speedy, except only the new Berline. Huge leathern vehicle;--huge Argosy, let us say, or Acapulco-ship; with its heavy stern-boat of Chaise-and-pair; with its three yellow Pilot-boats of mounted Bodyguard Couriers, rocking aimless round it and ahead of it, to bewilder, not to guide! It lumbers along, lurchingly with stress, at a snail's pace; noted of all the world. The Bodyguard Couriers, in their yellow liveries, go prancing and clattering; loyal but stupid; unacquainted with all things. Stoppages occur; and breakages to be repaired at Etoges. King Louis too will dismount, will walk up hills, and enjoy the blessed sunshine:--with eleven horses and double drink money, and all furtherances of Nature and Art, it will be found that Royalty, flying for life, accomplishes Sixty-nine miles in Twenty-two incessant hours. Slow Royalty! And yet not a minute of these hours but is precious: on minutes hang the destinies of Royalty now.
Readers, therefore, can judge in what humour Duke de Choiseul might stand waiting, in the Village of Pont-de-Sommevelle, some leagues beyond Chalons, hour after hour, now when the day bends visibly westward. Choiseul drove out of Paris, in all privity, ten hours before their Majesties' fixed time; his Hussars, led by Engineer Goguelat, are here duly, come 'to escort a Treasure that is expected:' but, hour after hour, is no Baroness de Korff's Berline. Indeed, over all that North-east Region, on the skirts of Champagne and of Lorraine, where the Great Road runs, the agitation is considerable. For all along, from this Pont-de-Sommevelle Northeastward as far as Montmedi, at Post-villages and Towns, escorts of Hussars and Dragoons do lounge waiting: a train or chain of Military Escorts; at the Montmedi end of it our brave Bouille: an electric thunder-chain; which the invisible Bouille, like a Father Jove, holds in his hand--for wise purposes! Brave Bouille has done what man could; has spread out his electric thunder-chain of Military Escorts, onwards to the threshold of Chalons: it waits but for the new Korff Berline; to receive it, escort it, and, if need be, bear it off in whirlwind of military fire. They lie and lounge there, we say, these fierce Troopers; from Montmedi and Stenai, through Clermont, Sainte-Menehould to utmost Pont-de-Sommevelle, in all Post-villages; for the route shall avoid Verdun and great Towns: they loiter impatient 'till the Treasure arrive.'
Judge what a day this is for brave Bouille: perhaps the first day of a new glorious life; surely the last day of the old! Also, and indeed still more, what a day, beautiful and terrible, for your young full-blooded Captains: your Dandoins, Comte de Damas, Duke de Choiseul, Engineer Goguelat, and the like; entrusted with the secret!--Alas, the day bends ever more westward; and no Korff Berline comes to sight. It is four hours beyond the time, and still no Berline. In all Village-streets, Royalist Captains go lounging, looking often Paris-ward; with face of unconcern, with heart full of black care: rigorous Quartermasters can hardly keep the private dragoons from cafes and dramshops. (Declaration du Sieur La Gache du Regiment Royal-Dragoons (in Choiseul, pp. 125-39.) Dawn on our bewilderment, thou new Berline; dawn on us, thou Sun-chariot of a new Berline, with the destinies of France!
It was of His Majesty's ordering, this military array of Escorts: a thing solacing the Royal imagination with a look of security and rescue; yet, in reality, creating only alarm, and where there was otherwise no danger, danger without end. For each Patriot, in these Post-villages, asks naturally: This clatter of cavalry, and marching and lounging of troops, what means it? To escort a Treasure? Why escort, when no Patriot will steal from the Nation; or where is your Treasure?--There has been such marching and counter-marching: for it is another fatality, that certain of these Military Escorts came out so early as yesterday; the Nineteenth not the Twentieth of the month being the day first appointed, which her Majesty, for some necessity or other, saw good to alter. And now consider the suspicious nature of Patriotism; suspicious, above all, of Bouille the Aristocrat; and how the sour doubting humour has had leave to accumulate and exacerbate for four-and-twenty hours!
At Pont-de-Sommevelle, these Forty foreign Hussars of Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are becoming an unspeakable mystery to all men. They lounged long enough, already, at Sainte-Menehould; lounged and loitered till our National Volunteers there, all risen into hot wrath of doubt, 'demanded three hundred fusils of their Townhall,' and got them. At which same moment too, as it chanced, our Captain Dandoins was just coming in, from Clermont with his troop, at the other end of the Village. A fresh troop; alarming enough; though happily they are only Dragoons and French! So that Goguelat with his Hussars had to ride, and even to do it fast; till here at Pont-de-Sommevelle, where Choiseul lay waiting, he found resting-place. Resting-place, as on burning marle. For the rumour of him flies abroad; and men run to and fro in fright and anger: Chalons sends forth exploratory pickets, coming from Sainte-Menehould, on that. What is it, ye whiskered Hussars, men of foreign guttural speech; in the name of Heaven, what is it that brings you? A Treasure?--exploratory pickets shake their heads. The hungry Peasants, however, know too well what Treasure it is: Military seizure for rents, feudalities; which no Bailiff could make us pay! This they know;--and set to jingling their Parish-bell by way of tocsin; with rapid effect! Choiseul and Goguelat, if the whole country is not to take fire, must needs, be there Berline, be there no Berline, saddle and ride.
They mount; and this Parish tocsin happily ceases. They ride slowly Eastward, towards Sainte-Menehould; still hoping the Sun-Chariot of a Berline may overtake them. Ah me, no Berline! And near now is that Sainte-Menehould, which expelled us in the morning, with its 'three hundred National fusils;' which looks, belike, not too lovingly on Captain Dandoins and his fresh Dragoons, though only French;--which, in a word, one dare not enter the second time, under pain of explosion! With rather heavy heart, our Hussar Party strikes off to the left; through byways, through pathless hills and woods, they, avoiding Sainte-Menehould and all places which have seen them heretofore, will make direct for the distant Village of Varennes. It is probable they will have a rough evening-ride.
This first military post, therefore, in the long thunder-chain, has gone off with no effect; or with worse, and your chain threatens to entangle itself!--The Great Road, however, is got hushed again into a kind of quietude, though one of the wakefullest. Indolent Dragoons cannot, by any Quartermaster, be kept altogether from the dramshop; where Patriots drink, and will even treat, eager enough for news. Captains, in a state near distraction, beat the dusky highway, with a face of indifference; and no Sun-Chariot appears. Why lingers it? Incredible, that with eleven horses and such yellow Couriers and furtherances, its rate should be under the weightiest dray-rate, some three miles an hour! Alas, one knows not whether it ever even got out of Paris;--and yet also one knows not whether, this very moment, it is not at the Village-end! One's heart flutters on the verge of unutterabilities.
4.VI.
Old-Dragoon Drouet.
In this manner, however, has the Day bent downwards. Wearied mortals are creeping home from their field-labour; the village-artisan eats with relish his supper of herbs, or has strolled forth to the village-street for a sweet mouthful of air and human news. Still summer-eventide everywhere! The great Sun hangs flaming on the utmost North-West; for it is his longest day this year. The hill-tops rejoicing will ere long be at their ruddiest, and blush Good-night. The thrush, in green dells, on long-shadowed leafy spray, pours gushing his glad serenade, to the babble of brooks grown audibler; silence is stealing over the Earth. Your dusty Mill of Valmy, as all other mills and drudgeries, may furl its canvass, and cease swashing and circling. The swenkt grinders in this Treadmill of an Earth have ground out another Day; and lounge there, as we say, in village-groups; movable, or ranked on social stone-seats; (Rapport de M. Remy (in Choiseul, p. 143.) their children, mischievous imps, sporting about their feet. Unnotable hum of sweet human gossip rises from this Village of Sainte- Menehould, as from all other villages. Gossip mostly sweet, unnotable; for the very Dragoons are French and gallant; nor as yet has the Paris-and- Verdun Diligence, with its leathern bag, rumbled in, to terrify the minds of men.
One figure nevertheless we do note at the last door of the Village: that figure in loose-flowing nightgown, of Jean Baptiste Drouet, Master of the Post here. An acrid choleric man, rather dangerous-looking; still in the prime of life, though he has served, in his time as a Conde Dragoon. This day from an early hour, Drouet got his choler stirred, and has been kept fretting. Hussar Goguelat in the morning saw good, by way of thrift, to bargain with his own Innkeeper, not with Drouet regular Maitre de Poste, about some gig-horse for the sending back of his gig; which thing Drouet perceiving came over in red ire, menacing the Inn-keeper, and would not be appeased. Wholly an unsatisfactory day. For Drouet is an acrid Patriot too, was at the Paris Feast of Pikes: and what do these Bouille Soldiers mean? Hussars, with their gig, and a vengeance to it!--have hardly been thrust out, when Dandoins and his fresh Dragoons arrive from Clermont, and stroll. For what purpose? Choleric Drouet steps out and steps in, with long-flowing nightgown; looking abroad, with that sharpness of faculty which stirred choler gives to man.
On the other hand, mark Captain Dandoins on the street of that same Village; sauntering with a face of indifference, a heart eaten of black care! For no Korff Berline makes its appearance. The great Sun flames broader towards setting: one's heart flutters on the verge of dread unutterabilities.
By Heaven! Here is the yellow Bodyguard Courier; spurring fast, in the ruddy evening light! Steady, O Dandoins, stand with inscrutable indifferent face; though the yellow blockhead spurs past the Post-house; inquires to find it; and stirs the Village, all delighted with his fine livery.--Lumbering along with its mountains of bandboxes, and Chaise behind, the Korff Berline rolls in; huge Acapulco-ship with its Cockboat, having got thus far. The eyes of the Villagers look enlightened, as such eyes do when a coach-transit, which is an event, occurs for them. Strolling Dragoons respectfully, so fine are the yellow liveries, bring hand to helmet; and a lady in gipsy-hat responds with a grace peculiar to her. (Declaration de la Gache (in Choiseul ubi supra.) Dandoins stands with folded arms, and what look of indifference and disdainful garrison-air a man can, while the heart is like leaping out of him. Curled disdainful moustachio; careless glance,--which however surveys the Village-groups, and does not like them. With his eye he bespeaks the yellow Courier. Be quick, be quick! Thick-headed Yellow cannot understand the eye; comes up mumbling, to ask in words: seen of the Village!
Nor is Post-master Drouet unobservant, all this while; but steps out and steps in, with his long-flowing nightgown, in the level sunlight; prying into several things. When a man's faculties, at the right time, are sharpened by choler, it may lead to much. That Lady in slouched gypsy-hat, though sitting back in the Carriage, does she not resemble some one we have seen, some time;--at the Feast of Pikes, or elsewhere? And this Grosse- Tete in round hat and peruke, which, looking rearward, pokes itself out from time to time, methinks there are features in it--? Quick, Sieur Guillaume, Clerk of the Directoire, bring me a new Assignat! Drouet scans the new Assignat; compares the Paper-money Picture with the Gross-Head in round hat there: by Day and Night! you might say the one was an attempted Engraving of the other. And this march of Troops; this sauntering and whispering,--I see it!
Drouet Post-master of this Village, hot Patriot, Old Dragoon of Conde, consider, therefore, what thou wilt do. And fast: for behold the new Berline, expeditiously yoked, cracks whipcord, and rolls away!--Drouet dare not, on the spur of the instant, clutch the bridles in his own two hands; Dandoins, with broadsword, might hew you off. Our poor Nationals, not one of them here, have three hundred fusils but then no powder; besides one is not sure, only morally-certain. Drouet, as an adroit Old-Dragoon of Conde does what is advisablest: privily bespeaks Clerk Guillaume, Old-Dragoon of Conde he too; privily, while Clerk Guillaume is saddling two of the fleetest horses, slips over to the Townhall to whisper a word; then mounts with Clerk Guillaume; and the two bound eastward in pursuit, to see what can be done.
They bound eastward, in sharp trot; their moral-certainty permeating the Village, from the Townhall outwards, in busy whispers. Alas! Captain Dandoins orders his Dragoons to mount; but they, complaining of long fast, demand bread-and-cheese first;--before which brief repast can be eaten, the whole Village is permeated; not whispering now, but blustering and shrieking! National Volunteers, in hurried muster, shriek for gunpowder; Dragoons halt between Patriotism and Rule of the Service, between bread and cheese and fixed bayonets: Dandoins hands secretly his Pocket-book, with its secret despatches, to the rigorous Quartermaster: the very Ostlers have stable-forks and flails. The rigorous Quartermaster, half-saddled, cuts out his way with the sword's edge, amid levelled bayonets, amid Patriot vociferations, adjurations, flail-strokes; and rides frantic; (Declaration de La Gache (in Choiseul), p. 134.)--few or even none following him; the rest, so sweetly constrained consenting to stay there.
And thus the new Berline rolls; and Drouet and Guillaume gallop after it, and Dandoins's Troopers or Trooper gallops after them; and Sainte- Menehould, with some leagues of the King's Highway, is in explosion;--and your Military thunder-chain has gone off in a self-destructive manner; one may fear with the frightfullest issues!
4.VII.
The Night of Spurs.
This comes of mysterious Escorts, and a new Berline with eleven horses: 'he that has a secret should not only hide it, but hide that he has it to hide.' Your first Military Escort has exploded self-destructive; and all Military Escorts, and a suspicious Country will now be up, explosive; comparable not to victorious thunder. Comparable, say rather, to the first stirring of an Alpine Avalanche; which, once stir it, as here at Sainte- Menehould, will spread,--all round, and on and on, as far as Stenai; thundering with wild ruin, till Patriot Villagers, Peasantry, Military Escorts, new Berline and Royalty are down,--jumbling in the Abyss!
The thick shades of Night are falling. Postillions crack the whip: the Royal Berline is through Clermont, where Colonel Comte de Damas got a word whispered to it; is safe through, towards Varennes; rushing at the rate of double drink-money: an Unknown 'Inconnu on horseback' shrieks earnestly some hoarse whisper, not audible, into the rushing Carriage-window, and vanishes, left in the night. (Campan, ii. 159.) August Travellers palpitate; nevertheless overwearied Nature sinks every one of them into a kind of sleep. Alas, and Drouet and Clerk Guillaume spur; taking side- roads, for shortness, for safety; scattering abroad that moral-certainty of theirs; which flies, a bird of the air carrying it!
And your rigorous Quartermaster spurs; awakening hoarse trumpet-tone, as here at Clermont, calling out Dragoons gone to bed. Brave Colonel de Damas has them mounted, in part, these Clermont men; young Cornet Remy dashes off with a few. But the Patriot Magistracy is out here at Clermont too; National Guards shrieking for ball-cartridges; and the Village 'illuminates itself;'--deft Patriots springing out of bed; alertly, in shirt or shift, striking a light; sticking up each his farthing candle, or penurious oil- cruise, till all glitters and glimmers; so deft are they! A camisado, or shirt-tumult, every where: stormbell set a-ringing; village-drum beating furious generale, as here at Clermont, under illumination; distracted Patriots pleading and menacing! Brave young Colonel de Damas, in that uproar of distracted Patriotism, speaks some fire-sentences to what Troopers he has: "Comrades insulted at Sainte-Menehould; King and Country calling on the brave;" then gives the fire-word, Draw swords. Whereupon, alas, the Troopers only smite their sword-handles, driving them further home! "To me, whoever is for the King!" cries Damas in despair; and gallops, he with some poor loyal Two, of the subaltern sort, into the bosom of the Night. (Proces-verbal du Directoire de Clermont (in Choiseul, p. 189-95).)
Night unexampled in the Clermontais; shortest of the year; remarkablest of the century: Night deserving to be named of Spurs! Cornet Remy, and those Few he dashed off with, has missed his road; is galloping for hours towards Verdun; then, for hours, across hedged country, through roused hamlets, towards Varennes. Unlucky Cornet Remy; unluckier Colonel Damas, with whom there ride desperate only some loyal Two! More ride not of that Clermont Escort: of other Escorts, in other Villages, not even Two may ride; but only all curvet and prance,--impeded by stormbell and your Village illuminating itself.
And Drouet rides and Clerk Guillaume; and the Country runs.--Goguelat and Duke Choiseul are plunging through morasses, over cliffs, over stock and stone, in the shaggy woods of the Clermontais; by tracks; or trackless, with guides; Hussars tumbling into pitfalls, and lying 'swooned three quarters of an hour,' the rest refusing to march without them. What an evening-ride from Pont-de-Sommerville; what a thirty hours, since Choiseul quitted Paris, with Queen's-valet Leonard in the chaise by him! Black Care sits behind the rider. Thus go they plunging; rustle the owlet from his branchy nest; champ the sweet-scented forest-herb, queen-of-the-meadows spilling her spikenard; and frighten the ear of Night. But hark! towards twelve o'clock, as one guesses, for the very stars are gone out: sound of the tocsin from Varennes? Checking bridle, the Hussar Officer listens: "Some fire undoubtedly!"--yet rides on, with double breathlessness, to verify.
Yes, gallant friends that do your utmost, it is a certain sort of fire: difficult to quench.--The Korff Berline, fairly ahead of all this riding Avalanche, reached the little paltry Village of Varennes about eleven o'clock; hopeful, in spite of that horse-whispering Unknown. Do not all towns now lie behind us; Verdun avoided, on our right? Within wind of Bouille himself, in a manner; and the darkest of midsummer nights favouring us! And so we halt on the hill-top at the South end of the Village; expecting our relay; which young Bouille, Bouille's own son, with his Escort of Hussars, was to have ready; for in this Village is no Post. Distracting to think of: neither horse nor Hussar is here! Ah, and stout horses, a proper relay belonging to Duke Choiseul, do stand at hay, but in the Upper Village over the Bridge; and we know not of them. Hussars likewise do wait, but drinking in the taverns. For indeed it is six hours beyond the time; young Bouille, silly stripling, thinking the matter over for this night, has retired to bed. And so our yellow Couriers, inexperienced, must rove, groping, bungling, through a Village mostly asleep: Postillions will not, for any money, go on with the tired horses; not at least without refreshment; not they, let the Valet in round hat argue as he likes.
Miserable! 'For five-and-thirty minutes' by the King's watch, the Berline is at a dead stand; Round-hat arguing with Churnboots; tired horses slobbering their meal-and-water; yellow Couriers groping, bungling;--young Bouille asleep, all the while, in the Upper Village, and Choiseul's fine team standing there at hay. No help for it; not with a King's ransom: the horses deliberately slobber, Round-hat argues, Bouille sleeps. And mark now, in the thick night, do not two Horsemen, with jaded trot, come clank- clanking; and start with half-pause, if one noticed them, at sight of this dim mass of a Berline, and its dull slobbering and arguing; then prick off faster, into the Village? It is Drouet, he and Clerk Guillaume! Still ahead, they two, of the whole riding hurlyburly; unshot, though some brag of having chased them. Perilous is Drouet's errand also; but he is an Old- Dragoon, with his wits shaken thoroughly awake.
The Village of Varennes lies dark and slumberous; a most unlevel Village, of inverse saddle-shape, as men write. It sleeps; the rushing of the River Aire singing lullaby to it. Nevertheless from the Golden Arms, Bras d'Or Tavern, across that sloping marketplace, there still comes shine of social light; comes voice of rude drovers, or the like, who have not yet taken the stirrup-cup; Boniface Le Blanc, in white apron, serving them: cheerful to behold. To this Bras d'Or, Drouet enters, alacrity looking through his eyes: he nudges Boniface, in all privacy, "Camarade, es tu bon Patriote, Art thou a good Patriot?"--"Si je suis!" answers Boniface.--"In that case," eagerly whispers Drouet--what whisper is needful, heard of Boniface alone. (Deux Amis, vi. 139-78.)
And now see Boniface Le Blanc bustling, as he never did for the jolliest toper. See Drouet and Guillaume, dexterous Old-Dragoons, instantly down blocking the Bridge, with a 'furniture waggon they find there,' with whatever waggons, tumbrils, barrels, barrows their hands can lay hold of;-- till no carriage can pass. Then swiftly, the Bridge once blocked, see them take station hard by, under Varennes Archway: joined by Le Blanc, Le Blanc's Brother, and one or two alert Patriots he has roused. Some half- dozen in all, with National Muskets, they stand close, waiting under the Archway, till that same Korff Berline rumble up.
It rumbles up: Alte la! lanterns flash out from under coat-skirts, bridles chuck in strong fists, two National Muskets level themselves fore and aft through the two Coach-doors: "Mesdames, your Passports?"--Alas! Alas! Sieur Sausse, Procureur of the Township, Tallow-chandler also and Grocer is there, with official grocer-politeness; Drouet with fierce logic and ready wit:--The respected Travelling Party, be it Baroness de Korff's, or persons of still higher consequence, will perhaps please to rest itself in M. Sausse's till the dawn strike up!
O Louis; O hapless Marie-Antoinette, fated to pass thy life with such men! Phlegmatic Louis, art thou but lazy semi-animate phlegm then, to the centre of thee? King, Captain-General, Sovereign Frank! If thy heart ever formed, since it began beating under the name of heart, any resolution at all, be it now then, or never in this world: "Violent nocturnal individuals, and if it were persons of high consequence? And if it were the King himself? Has the King not the power, which all beggars have, of travelling unmolested on his own Highway? Yes: it is the King; and tremble ye to know it! The King has said, in this one small matter; and in France, or under God's Throne, is no power that shall gainsay. Not the King shall ye stop here under this your miserable Archway; but his dead body only, and answer it to Heaven and Earth. To me, Bodyguards: Postillions, en avant!"--One fancies in that case the pale paralysis of these two Le Blanc musketeers; the drooping of Drouet's under-jaw; and how Procureur Sausse had melted like tallow in furnace-heat: Louis faring on; in some few steps awakening Young Bouille, awakening relays and hussars: triumphant entry, with cavalcading high-brandishing Escort, and Escorts, into Montmedi; and the whole course of French History different!
Alas, it was not in the poor phlegmatic man. Had it been in him, French History had never come under this Varennes Archway to decide itself.--He steps out; all step out. Procureur Sausse gives his grocer-arms to the Queen and Sister Elizabeth; Majesty taking the two children by the hand. And thus they walk, coolly back, over the Marketplace, to Procureur Sausse's; mount into his small upper story; where straightway his Majesty 'demands refreshments.' Demands refreshments, as is written; gets bread- and-cheese with a bottle of Burgundy; and remarks, that it is the best Burgundy he ever drank!
Meanwhile, the Varennes Notables, and all men, official, and non-official, are hastily drawing on their breeches; getting their fighting-gear. Mortals half-dressed tumble out barrels, lay felled trees; scouts dart off to all the four winds,--the tocsin begins clanging, 'the Village illuminates itself.' Very singular: how these little Villages do manage, so adroit are they, when startled in midnight alarm of war. Like little adroit municipal rattle-snakes, suddenly awakened: for their stormbell rattles and rings; their eyes glisten luminous (with tallow-light), as in rattle-snake ire; and the Village will sting! Old-Dragoon Drouet is our engineer and generalissimo; valiant as a Ruy Diaz:--Now or never, ye Patriots, for the Soldiery is coming; massacre by Austrians, by Aristocrats, wars more than civil, it all depends on you and the hour!-- National Guards rank themselves, half-buttoned: mortals, we say, still only in breeches, in under-petticoat, tumble out barrels and lumber, lay felled trees for barricades: the Village will sting. Rabid Democracy, it would seem, is not confined to Paris, then? Ah no, whatsoever Courtiers might talk; too clearly no. This of dying for one's King is grown into a dying for one's self, against the King, if need be.
And so our riding and running Avalanche and Hurlyburly has reached the Abyss, Korff Berline foremost; and may pour itself thither, and jumble: endless! For the next six hours, need we ask if there was a clattering far and wide? Clattering and tocsining and hot tumult, over all the Clermontais, spreading through the Three Bishopricks: Dragoon and Hussar Troops galloping on roads and no-roads; National Guards arming and starting in the dead of night; tocsin after tocsin transmitting the alarm. In some forty minutes, Goguelat and Choiseul, with their wearied Hussars, reach Varennes. Ah, it is no fire then; or a fire difficult to quench! They leap the tree-barricades, in spite of National serjeant; they enter the village, Choiseul instructing his Troopers how the matter really is; who respond interjectionally, in their guttural dialect, "Der Konig; die Koniginn!" and seem stanch. These now, in their stanch humour, will, for one thing, beset Procureur Sausse's house. Most beneficial: had not Drouet stormfully ordered otherwise; and even bellowed, in his extremity, "Cannoneers to your guns!"--two old honey-combed Field-pieces, empty of all but cobwebs; the rattle whereof, as the Cannoneers with assured countenance trundled them up, did nevertheless abate the Hussar ardour, and produce a respectfuller ranking further back. Jugs of wine, handed over the ranks, for the German throat too has sensibility, will complete the business. When Engineer Goguelat, some hour or so afterwards, steps forth, the response to him is--a hiccuping Vive la Nation!
What boots it? Goguelat, Choiseul, now also Count Damas, and all the Varennes Officiality are with the King; and the King can give no order, form no opinion; but sits there, as he has ever done, like clay on potter's wheel; perhaps the absurdest of all pitiable and pardonable clay-figures that now circle under the Moon. He will go on, next morning, and take the National Guard with him; Sausse permitting! Hapless Queen: with her two children laid there on the mean bed, old Mother Sausse kneeling to Heaven, with tears and an audible prayer, to bless them; imperial Marie-Antoinette near kneeling to Son Sausse and Wife Sausse, amid candle-boxes and treacle- barrels,--in vain! There are Three-thousand National Guards got in; before long they will count Ten-thousand; tocsins spreading like fire on dry heath, or far faster.
Young Bouille, roused by this Varennes tocsin, has taken horse, and--fled towards his Father. Thitherward also rides, in an almost hysterically desperate manner, a certain Sieur Aubriot, Choiseul's Orderly; swimming dark rivers, our Bridge being blocked; spurring as if the Hell-hunt were at his heels. (Rapport de M. Aubriot (Choiseul, p. 150-7.) Through the village of Dun, he, galloping still on, scatters the alarm; at Dun, brave Captain Deslons and his Escort of a Hundred, saddle and ride. Deslons too gets into Varennes; leaving his Hundred outside, at the tree-barricade; offers to cut King Louis out, if he will order it: but unfortunately "the work will prove hot;" whereupon King Louis has "no orders to give." (Extrait d'un Rapport de M. Deslons (Choiseul, p. 164-7.)
And so the tocsin clangs, and Dragoons gallop; and can do nothing, having gallopped: National Guards stream in like the gathering of ravens: your exploding Thunder-chain, falling Avalanche, or what else we liken it to, does play, with a vengeance,--up now as far as Stenai and Bouille himself. (Bouille, ii. 74-6.) Brave Bouille, son of the whirlwind, he saddles Royal Allemand; speaks fire-words, kindling heart and eyes; distributes twenty- five gold-louis a company:--Ride, Royal-Allemand, long-famed: no Tuileries Charge and Necker-Orleans Bust-Procession; a very King made captive, and world all to win!--Such is the Night deserving to be named of Spurs.
At six o'clock two things have happened. Lafayette's Aide-de-camp, Romoeuf, riding a franc etrier, on that old Herb-merchant's route, quickened during the last stages, has got to Varennes; where the Ten thousand now furiously demand, with fury of panic terror, that Royalty shall forthwith return Paris-ward, that there be not infinite bloodshed. Also, on the other side, 'English Tom,' Choiseul's jokei, flying with that Choiseul relay, has met Bouille on the heights of Dun; the adamantine brow flushed with dark thunder; thunderous rattle of Royal Allemand at his heels. English Tom answers as he can the brief question, How it is at Varennes?--then asks in turn what he, English Tom, with M. de Choiseul's horses, is to do, and whither to ride?--To the Bottomless Pool! answers a thunder-voice; then again speaking and spurring, orders Royal Allemand to the gallop; and vanishes, swearing (en jurant). (Declaration du Sieur Thomas (in Choiseul, p. 188).) 'Tis the last of our brave Bouille. Within sight of Varennes, he having drawn bridle, calls a council of officers; finds that it is in vain. King Louis has departed, consenting: amid the clangour of universal stormbell; amid the tramp of Ten thousand armed men, already arrived; and say, of Sixty thousand flocking thither. Brave Deslons, even without 'orders,' darted at the River Aire with his Hundred! (Weber, ii. 386.) swam one branch of it, could not the other; and stood there, dripping and panting, with inflated nostril; the Ten thousand answering him with a shout of mockery, the new Berline lumbering Paris-ward its weary inevitable way. No help, then in Earth; nor in an age, not of miracles, in Heaven!
That night, 'Marquis de Bouille and twenty-one more of us rode over the Frontiers; the Bernardine monks at Orval in Luxemburg gave us supper and lodging.' (Aubriot, ut supra, p. 158.) With little of speech, Bouille rides; with thoughts that do not brook speech. Northward, towards uncertainty, and the Cimmerian Night: towards West-Indian Isles, for with thin Emigrant delirium the son of the whirlwind cannot act; towards England, towards premature Stoical death; not towards France any more. Honour to the Brave; who, be it in this quarrel or in that, is a substance and articulate-speaking piece of Human Valour, not a fanfaronading hollow Spectrum and squeaking and gibbering Shadow! One of the few Royalist Chief-actors this Bouille, of whom so much can be said.
The brave Bouille too, then, vanishes from the tissue of our Story. Story and tissue, faint ineffectual Emblem of that grand Miraculous Tissue, and Living Tapestry named French Revolution, which did weave itself then in very fact, 'on the loud-sounding 'LOOM OF TIME!' The old Brave drop out from it, with their strivings; and new acrid Drouets, of new strivings and colour, come in:--as is the manner of that weaving.
4.VIII.
The Return.
So then our grand Royalist Plot, of Flight to Metz, has executed itself. Long hovering in the background, as a dread royal ultimatum, it has rushed forward in its terrors: verily to some purpose. How many Royalist Plots and Projects, one after another, cunningly-devised, that were to explode like powder-mines and thunderclaps; not one solitary Plot of which has issued otherwise! Powder-mine of a Seance Royale on the Twenty-third of June 1789, which exploded as we then said, 'through the touchhole;' which next, your wargod Broglie having reloaded it, brought a Bastille about your ears. Then came fervent Opera-Repast, with flourishing of sabres, and O Richard, O my King; which, aided by Hunger, produces Insurrection of Women, and Pallas Athene in the shape of Demoiselle Theroigne. Valour profits not; neither has fortune smiled on Fanfaronade. The Bouille Armament ends as the Broglie one had done. Man after man spends himself in this cause, only to work it quicker ruin; it seems a cause doomed, forsaken of Earth and Heaven.
On the Sixth of October gone a year, King Louis, escorted by Demoiselle Theroigne and some two hundred thousand, made a Royal Progress and Entrance into Paris, such as man had never witnessed: we prophesied him Two more such; and accordingly another of them, after this Flight to Metz, is now coming to pass. Theroigne will not escort here, neither does Mirabeau now 'sit in one of the accompanying carriages.' Mirabeau lies dead, in the Pantheon of Great Men. Theroigne lies living, in dark Austrian Prison; having gone to Liege, professionally, and been seized there. Bemurmured now by the hoarse-flowing Danube; the light of her Patriot Supper-Parties gone quite out; so lies Theroigne: she shall speak with the Kaiser face to face, and return. And France lies how! Fleeting Time shears down the great and the little; and in two years alters many things.
But at all events, here, we say, is a second Ignominious Royal Procession, though much altered; to be witnessed also by its hundreds of thousands. Patience, ye Paris Patriots; the Royal Berline is returning. Not till Saturday: for the Royal Berline travels by slow stages; amid such loud- voiced confluent sea of National Guards, sixty thousand as they count; amid such tumult of all people. Three National-Assembly Commissioners, famed Barnave, famed Petion, generally-respectable Latour-Maubourg, have gone to meet it; of whom the two former ride in the Berline itself beside Majesty, day after day. Latour, as a mere respectability, and man of whom all men speak well, can ride in the rear, with Dame Tourzel and the Soubrettes.
So on Saturday evening, about seven o'clock, Paris by hundreds of thousands is again drawn up: not now dancing the tricolor joy-dance of hope; nor as yet dancing in fury-dance of hate and revenge; but in silence, with vague look of conjecture and curiosity mostly scientific. A Sainte-Antoine Placard has given notice this morning that 'whosoever insults Louis shall be caned, whosoever applauds him shall be hanged.' Behold then, at last, that wonderful New Berline; encircled by blue National sea with fixed bayonets, which flows slowly, floating it on, through the silent assembled hundreds of thousands. Three yellow Couriers sit atop bound with ropes; Petion, Barnave, their Majesties, with Sister Elizabeth, and the Children of France, are within.
Smile of embarrassment, or cloud of dull sourness, is on the broad phlegmatic face of his Majesty: who keeps declaring to the successive Official-persons, what is evident, "Eh bien, me voila, Well, here you have me;" and what is not evident, "I do assure you I did not mean to pass the frontiers;" and so forth: speeches natural for that poor Royal man; which Decency would veil. Silent is her Majesty, with a look of grief and scorn; natural for that Royal Woman. Thus lumbers and creeps the ignominious Royal Procession, through many streets, amid a silent-gazing people: comparable, Mercier thinks, (Nouveau Paris, iii. 22.) to some Procession de Roi de Bazoche; or say, Procession of King Crispin, with his Dukes of Sutor-mania and royal blazonry of Cordwainery. Except indeed that this is not comic; ah no, it is comico-tragic; with bound Couriers, and a Doom hanging over it; most fantastic, yet most miserably real. Miserablest flebile ludibrium of a Pickleherring Tragedy! It sweeps along there, in most ungorgeous pall, through many streets, in the dusty summer evening; gets itself at length wriggled out of sight; vanishing in the Tuileries Palace--towards its doom, of slow torture, peine forte et dure.
Populace, it is true, seizes the three rope-bound yellow Couriers; will at least massacre them. But our august Assembly, which is sitting at this great moment, sends out Deputation of rescue; and the whole is got huddled up. Barnave, 'all dusty,' is already there, in the National Hall; making brief discreet address and report. As indeed, through the whole journey, this Barnave has been most discreet, sympathetic; and has gained the Queen's trust, whose noble instinct teaches her always who is to be trusted. Very different from heavy Petion; who, if Campan speak truth, ate his luncheon, comfortably filled his wine-glass, in the Royal Berline; flung out his chicken-bones past the nose of Royalty itself; and, on the King's saying "France cannot be a Republic," answered "No, it is not ripe yet." Barnave is henceforth a Queen's adviser, if advice could profit: and her Majesty astonishes Dame Campan by signifying almost a regard for Barnave: and that, in a day of retribution and Royal triumph, Barnave shall not be executed. (Campan, ii. c. 18.)
On Monday night Royalty went; on Saturday evening it returns: so much, within one short week, has Royalty accomplished for itself. The Pickleherring Tragedy has vanished in the Tuileries Palace, towards 'pain strong and hard.' Watched, fettered, and humbled, as Royalty never was. Watched even in its sleeping-apartments and inmost recesses: for it has to sleep with door set ajar, blue National Argus watching, his eye fixed on the Queen's curtains; nay, on one occasion, as the Queen cannot sleep, he offers to sit by her pillow, and converse a little! (Ibid. ii. 149.)
4.IX.
Sharp Shot.
In regard to all which, this most pressing question arises: What is to be done with it? "Depose it!" resolutely answer Robespierre and the thoroughgoing few. For truly, with a King who runs away, and needs to be watched in his very bedroom that he may stay and govern you, what other reasonable thing can be done? Had Philippe d'Orleans not been a caput mortuum! But of him, known as one defunct, no man now dreams. "Depose it not; say that it is inviolable, that it was spirited away, was enleve; at any cost of sophistry and solecism, reestablish it!" so answer with loud vehemence all manner of Constitutional Royalists; as all your Pure Royalists do naturally likewise, with low vehemence, and rage compressed by fear, still more passionately answer. Nay Barnave and the two Lameths, and what will follow them, do likewise answer so. Answer, with their whole might: terror-struck at the unknown Abysses on the verge of which, driven thither by themselves mainly, all now reels, ready to plunge.
By mighty effort and combination this latter course, of reestablish it, is the course fixed on; and it shall by the strong arm, if not by the clearest logic, be made good. With the sacrifice of all their hard-earned popularity, this notable Triumvirate, says Toulongeon, 'set the Throne up again, which they had so toiled to overturn: as one might set up an overturned pyramid, on its vertex; to stand so long as it is held.'
Unhappy France; unhappy in King, Queen, and Constitution; one knows not in which unhappiest! Was the meaning of our so glorious French Revolution this, and no other, That when Shams and Delusions, long soul-killing, had become body-killing, and got the length of Bankruptcy and Inanition, a great People rose and, with one voice, said, in the Name of the Highest: Shams shall be no more? So many sorrows and bloody horrors, endured, and to be yet endured through dismal coming centuries, were they not the heavy price paid and payable for this same: Total Destruction of Shams from among men? And now, O Barnave Triumvirate! is it in such double-distilled Delusion, and Sham even of a Sham, that an Effort of this kind will rest acquiescent? Messieurs of the popular Triumvirate: Never! But, after all, what can poor popular Triumvirates and fallible august Senators do? They can, when the Truth is all too-horrible, stick their heads ostrich- like into what sheltering Fallacy is nearest: and wait there, a posteriori!
Readers who saw the Clermontais and Three-Bishopricks gallop, in the Night of Spurs; Diligences ruffling up all France into one terrific terrified Cock of India; and the Town of Nantes in its shirt,--may fancy what an affair to settle this was. Robespierre, on the extreme Left, with perhaps Petion and lean old Goupil, for the very Triumvirate has defalcated, are shrieking hoarse; drowned in Constitutional clamour. But the debate and arguing of a whole Nation; the bellowings through all Journals, for and against; the reverberant voice of Danton; the Hyperion-shafts of Camille; the porcupine-quills of implacable Marat:--conceive all this.
Constitutionalists in a body, as we often predicted, do now recede from the Mother Society, and become Feuillans; threatening her with inanition, the rank and respectability being mostly gone. Petition after Petition, forwarded by Post, or borne in Deputation, comes praying for Judgment and Decheance, which is our name for Deposition; praying, at lowest, for Reference to the Eighty-three Departments of France. Hot Marseillese Deputation comes declaring, among other things: "Our Phocean Ancestors flung a Bar of Iron into the Bay at their first landing; this Bar will float again on the Mediterranean brine before we consent to be slaves." All this for four weeks or more, while the matter still hangs doubtful; Emigration streaming with double violence over the frontiers; (Bouille, ii. 101.) France seething in fierce agitation of this question and prize- question: What is to be done with the fugitive Hereditary Representative?
Finally, on Friday the 15th of July 1791, the National Assembly decides; in what negatory manner we know. Whereupon the Theatres all close, the Bourne-stones and Portable-chairs begin spouting, Municipal Placards flaming on the walls, and Proclamations published by sound of trumpet, 'invite to repose;' with small effect. And so, on Sunday the 17th, there shall be a thing seen, worthy of remembering. Scroll of a Petition, drawn up by Brissots, Dantons, by Cordeliers, Jacobins; for the thing was infinitely shaken and manipulated, and many had a hand in it: such Scroll lies now visible, on the wooden framework of the Fatherland's Altar, for signature. Unworking Paris, male and female, is crowding thither, all day, to sign or to see. Our fair Roland herself the eye of History can discern there, 'in the morning;' (Madame Roland, ii. 74.) not without interest. In few weeks the fair Patriot will quit Paris; yet perhaps only to return.
But, what with sorrow of baulked Patriotism, what with closed theatres, and Proclamations still publishing themselves by sound of trumpet, the fervour of men's minds, this day, is great. Nay, over and above, there has fallen out an incident, of the nature of Farce-Tragedy and Riddle; enough to stimulate all creatures. Early in the day, a Patriot (or some say, it was a Patriotess, and indeed Truth is undiscoverable), while standing on the firm deal-board of Fatherland's Altar, feels suddenly, with indescribable torpedo-shock of amazement, his bootsole pricked through from below; he clutches up suddenly this electrified bootsole and foot; discerns next instant--the point of a gimlet or brad-awl playing up, through the firm deal-board, and now hastily drawing itself back! Mystery, perhaps Treason? The wooden frame-work is impetuously broken up; and behold, verily a mystery; never explicable fully to the end of the world! Two human individuals, of mean aspect, one of them with a wooden leg, lie ensconced there, gimlet in hand: they must have come in overnight; they have a supply of provisions,--no 'barrel of gunpowder' that one can see; they affect to be asleep; look blank enough, and give the lamest account of themselves. "Mere curiosity; they were boring up to get an eye-hole; to see, perhaps 'with lubricity,' whatsoever, from that new point of vision, could be seen:"--little that was edifying, one would think! But indeed what stupidest thing may not human Dulness, Pruriency, Lubricity, Chance and the Devil, choosing Two out of Half-a-million idle human heads, tempt them to? (Hist. Parl. xi. 104-7.)
Sure enough, the two human individuals with their gimlet are there. Ill- starred pair of individuals! For the result of it all is that Patriotism, fretting itself, in this state of nervous excitability, with hypotheses, suspicions and reports, keeps questioning these two distracted human individuals, and again questioning them; claps them into the nearest Guardhouse, clutches them out again; one hypothetic group snatching them from another: till finally, in such extreme state of nervous excitability, Patriotism hangs them as spies of Sieur Motier; and the life and secret is choked out of them forevermore. Forevermore, alas! Or is a day to be looked for when these two evidently mean individuals, who are human nevertheless, will become Historical Riddles; and, like him of the Iron Mask (also a human individual, and evidently nothing more),--have their Dissertations? To us this only is certain, that they had a gimlet, provisions and a wooden leg; and have died there on the Lanterne, as the unluckiest fools might die.
And so the signature goes on, in a still more excited manner. And Chaumette, for Antiquarians possess the very Paper to this hour, (Ibid. xi. 113, &c.)--has signed himself 'in a flowing saucy hand slightly leaned;' and Hebert, detestable Pere Duchene, as if 'an inked spider had dropped on the paper;' Usher Maillard also has signed, and many Crosses, which cannot write. And Paris, through its thousand avenues, is welling to the Champ- de-Mars and from it, in the utmost excitability of humour; central Fatherland's Altar quite heaped with signing Patriots and Patriotesses; the Thirty-benches and whole internal Space crowded with onlookers, with comers and goers; one regurgitating whirlpool of men and women in their Sunday clothes. All which a Constitutional Sieur Motier sees; and Bailly, looking into it with his long visage made still longer. Auguring no good; perhaps Decheance and Deposition after all! Stop it, ye Constitutional Patriots; fire itself is quenchable, yet only quenchable at first!
Stop it, truly: but how stop it? Have not the first Free People of the Universe a right to petition?--Happily, if also unhappily, here is one proof of riot: these two human individuals, hanged at the Lanterne. Proof, O treacherous Sieur Motier? Were they not two human individuals sent thither by thee to be hanged; to be a pretext for thy bloody Drapeau Rouge? This question shall many a Patriot, one day, ask; and answer affirmatively, strong in Preternatural Suspicion.
Enough, towards half past seven in the evening, the mere natural eye can behold this thing: Sieur Motier, with Municipals in scarf, with blue National Patrollotism, rank after rank, to the clang of drums; wending resolutely to the Champ-de-Mars; Mayor Bailly, with elongated visage, bearing, as in sad duty bound, the Drapeau Rouge! Howl of angry derision rises in treble and bass from a hundred thousand throats, at the sight of Martial Law; which nevertheless waving its Red sanguinary Flag, advances there, from the Gros-Caillou Entrance; advances, drumming and waving, towards Altar of Fatherland. Amid still wilder howls, with objurgation, obtestation; with flights of pebbles and mud, saxa et faeces; with crackle of a pistol-shot;--finally with volley-fire of Patrollotism; levelled muskets; roll of volley on volley! Precisely after one year and three days, our sublime Federation Field is wetted, in this manner, with French blood.
Some 'Twelve unfortunately shot,' reports Bailly, counting by units; but Patriotism counts by tens and even by hundreds. Not to be forgotten, nor forgiven! Patriotism flies, shrieking, execrating. Camille ceases Journalising, this day; great Danton with Camille and Freron have taken wing, for their life; Marat burrows deep in the Earth, and is silent. Once more Patrollotism has triumphed: one other time; but it is the last.
This was the Royal Flight to Varennes. Thus was the Throne overturned thereby; but thus also was it victoriously set up again--on its vertex; and will stand while it can be held.
BOOK 2.V.
5.I.
Grande Acceptation.
In the last nights of September, when the autumnal equinox is past, and grey September fades into brown October, why are the Champs Elysees illuminated; why is Paris dancing, and flinging fire-works? They are gala- nights, these last of September; Paris may well dance, and the Universe: the Edifice of the Constitution is completed! Completed; nay revised, to see that there was nothing insufficient in it; solemnly proferred to his Majesty; solemnly accepted by him, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, on the fourteenth of the month. And now by such illumination, jubilee, dancing and fire-working, do we joyously handsel the new Social Edifice, and first raise heat and reek there, in the name of Hope.
The Revision, especially with a throne standing on its vertex, has been a work of difficulty, of delicacy. In the way of propping and buttressing, so indispensable now, something could be done; and yet, as is feared, not enough. A repentant Barnave Triumvirate, our Rabauts, Duports, Thourets, and indeed all Constitutional Deputies did strain every nerve: but the Extreme Left was so noisy; the People were so suspicious, clamorous to have the work ended: and then the loyal Right Side sat feeble petulant all the while, and as it were, pouting and petting; unable to help, had they even been willing; the two Hundred and Ninety had solemnly made scission, before that: and departed, shaking the dust off their feet. To such transcendency of fret, and desperate hope that worsening of the bad might the sooner end it and bring back the good, had our unfortunate loyal Right Side now come! (Toulongeon, ii. 56, 59.)
However, one finds that this and the other little prop has been added, where possibility allowed. Civil-list and Privy-purse were from of old well cared for. King's Constitutional Guard, Eighteen hundred loyal men from the Eighty-three Departments, under a loyal Duke de Brissac; this, with trustworthy Swiss besides, is of itself something. The old loyal Bodyguards are indeed dissolved, in name as well as in fact; and gone mostly towards Coblentz. But now also those Sansculottic violent Gardes Francaises, or Centre Grenadiers, shall have their mittimus: they do ere long, in the Journals, not without a hoarse pathos, publish their Farewell; 'wishing all Aristocrats the graves in Paris which to us are denied.' (Hist. Parl. xiii. 73.) They depart, these first Soldiers of the Revolution; they hover very dimly in the distance for about another year; till they can be remodelled, new-named, and sent to fight the Austrians; and then History beholds them no more. A most notable Corps of men; which has its place in World-History;--though to us, so is History written, they remain mere rubrics of men; nameless; a shaggy Grenadier Mass, crossed with buff-belts. And yet might we not ask: What Argonauts, what Leonidas' Spartans had done such a work? Think of their destiny: since that May morning, some three years ago, when they, unparticipating, trundled off d'Espremenil to the Calypso Isles; since that July evening, some two years ago, when they, participating and sacreing with knit brows, poured a volley into Besenval's Prince de Lambesc! History waves them her mute adieu.
So that the Sovereign Power, these Sansculottic Watchdogs, more like wolves, being leashed and led away from his Tuileries, breathes freer. The Sovereign Power is guarded henceforth by a loyal Eighteen hundred,--whom Contrivance, under various pretexts, may gradually swell to Six thousand; who will hinder no Journey to Saint-Cloud. The sad Varennes business has been soldered up; cemented, even in the blood of the Champ-de-Mars, these two months and more; and indeed ever since, as formerly, Majesty has had its privileges, its 'choice of residence,' though, for good reasons, the royal mind 'prefers continuing in Paris.' Poor royal mind, poor Paris; that have to go mumming; enveloped in speciosities, in falsehood which knows itself false; and to enact mutually your sorrowful farce-tragedy, being bound to it; and on the whole, to hope always, in spite of hope!
Nay, now that his Majesty has accepted the Constitution, to the sound of cannon-salvoes, who would not hope? Our good King was misguided but he meant well. Lafayette has moved for an Amnesty, for universal forgiving and forgetting of Revolutionary faults; and now surely the glorious Revolution cleared of its rubbish, is complete! Strange enough, and touching in several ways, the old cry of Vive le Roi once more rises round King Louis the Hereditary Representative. Their Majesties went to the Opera; gave money to the Poor: the Queen herself, now when the Constitution is accepted, hears voice of cheering. Bygone shall be bygone; the New Era shall begin! To and fro, amid those lamp-galaxies of the Elysian Fields, the Royal Carriage slowly wends and rolls; every where with vivats, from a multitude striving to be glad. Louis looks out, mainly on the variegated lamps and gay human groups, with satisfaction enough for the hour. In her Majesty's face, 'under that kind graceful smile a deep sadness is legible.' (De Stael, Considerations, i. c. 23.) Brilliancies, of valour and of wit, stroll here observant: a Dame de Stael, leaning most probably on the arm of her Narbonne. She meets Deputies; who have built this Constitution; who saunter here with vague communings,--not without thoughts whether it will stand. But as yet melodious fiddlestrings twang and warble every where, with the rhythm of light fantastic feet; long lamp- galaxies fling their coloured radiance; and brass-lunged Hawkers elbow and bawl, "Grande Acceptation, Constitution Monarchique:" it behoves the Son of Adam to hope. Have not Lafayette, Barnave, and all Constitutionalists set their shoulders handsomely to the inverted pyramid of a throne? Feuillans, including almost the whole Constitutional Respectability of France, perorate nightly from their tribune; correspond through all Post- offices; denouncing unquiet Jacobinism; trusting well that its time is nigh done. Much is uncertain, questionable: but if the Hereditary Representative be wise and lucky, may one not, with a sanguine Gaelic temper, hope that he will get in motion better or worse; that what is wanting to him will gradually be gained and added?
For the rest, as we must repeat, in this building of the Constitutional Fabric, especially in this Revision of it, nothing that one could think of to give it new strength, especially to steady it, to give it permanence, and even eternity, has been forgotten. Biennial Parliament, to be called Legislative, Assemblee Legislative; with Seven Hundred and Forty-five Members, chosen in a judicious manner by the 'active citizens' alone, and even by electing of electors still more active: this, with privileges of Parliament shall meet, self-authorized if need be, and self-dissolved; shall grant money-supplies and talk; watch over the administration and authorities; discharge for ever the functions of a Constitutional Great Council, Collective Wisdom, and National Palaver,--as the Heavens will enable. Our First biennial Parliament, which indeed has been a-choosing since early in August, is now as good as chosen. Nay it has mostly got to Paris: it arrived gradually;--not without pathetic greeting to its venerable Parent, the now moribund Constituent; and sat there in the Galleries, reverently listening; ready to begin, the instant the ground were clear.
Then as to changes in the Constitution itself? This, impossible for any Legislative, or common biennial Parliament, and possible solely for some resuscitated Constituent or National Convention,--is evidently one of the most ticklish points. The august moribund Assembly debated it for four entire days. Some thought a change, or at least reviewal and new approval, might be admissible in thirty years; some even went lower, down to twenty, nay to fifteen. The august Assembly had once decided for thirty years; but it revoked that, on better thoughts; and did not fix any date of time, but merely some vague outline of a posture of circumstances, and on the whole left the matter hanging. (Choix de Rapports, &c. (Paris, 1825), vi. 239- 317.) Doubtless a National Convention can be assembled even within the thirty years: yet one may hope, not; but that Legislatives, biennial Parliaments of the common kind, with their limited faculty, and perhaps quiet successive additions thereto, may suffice, for generations, or indeed while computed Time runs.
Furthermore, be it noted that no member of this Constituent has been, or could be, elected to the new Legislative. So noble-minded were these Law- makers! cry some: and Solon-like would banish themselves. So splenetic! cry more: each grudging the other, none daring to be outdone in self- denial by the other. So unwise in either case! answer all practical men. But consider this other self-denying ordinance, That none of us can be King's Minister, or accept the smallest Court Appointment, for the space of four, or at lowest (and on long debate and Revision), for the space of two years! So moves the incorruptible seagreen Robespierre; with cheap magnanimity he; and none dare be outdone by him. It was such a law, not so superfluous then, that sent Mirabeau to the Gardens of Saint-Cloud, under cloak of darkness, to that colloquy of the gods; and thwarted many things. Happily and unhappily there is no Mirabeau now to thwart.
Welcomer meanwhile, welcome surely to all right hearts, is Lafayette's chivalrous Amnesty. Welcome too is that hard-wrung Union of Avignon; which has cost us, first and last, 'thirty sessions of debate,' and so much else: may it at length prove lucky! Rousseau's statue is decreed: virtuous Jean-Jacques, Evangelist of the Contrat Social. Not Drouet of Varennes; nor worthy Lataille, master of the old world-famous Tennis Court in Versailles, is forgotten; but each has his honourable mention, and due reward in money. (Moniteur (in Hist. Parl. xi. 473.) Whereupon, things being all so neatly winded up, and the Deputations, and Messages, and royal and other Ceremonials having rustled by; and the King having now affectionately perorated about peace and tranquilisation, and members having answered "Oui! oui!" with effusion, even with tears,--President Thouret, he of the Law Reforms, rises, and, with a strong voice, utters these memorable last-words: "The National Constituent Assembly declares that it has finished its mission; and that its sittings are all ended." Incorruptible Robespierre, virtuous Petion are borne home on the shoulders of the people; with vivats heaven-high. The rest glide quietly to their respective places of abode. It is the last afternoon of September, 1791; on the morrow morning the new Legislative will begin.
So, amid glitter of illuminated streets and Champs Elysees, and crackle of fireworks and glad deray, has the first National Assembly vanished; dissolving, as they well say, into blank Time; and is no more. National Assembly is gone, its work remaining; as all Bodies of men go, and as man himself goes: it had its beginning, and must likewise have its end. A Phantasm-Reality born of Time, as the rest of us are; flitting ever backwards now on the tide of Time: to be long remembered of men. Very strange Assemblages, Sanhedrims, Amphictyonics, Trades Unions, Ecumenic Councils, Parliaments and Congresses, have met together on this Planet, and dispersed again; but a stranger Assemblage than this august Constituent, or with a stranger mission, perhaps never met there. Seen from the distance, this also will be a miracle. Twelve Hundred human individuals, with the Gospel of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in their pocket, congregating in the name of Twenty-five Millions, with full assurance of faith, to 'make the Constitution:' such sight, the acme and main product of the Eighteenth Century, our World can witness once only. For Time is rich in wonders, in monstrosities most rich; and is observed never to repeat himself, or any of his Gospels:--surely least of all, this Gospel according to Jean-Jacques. Once it was right and indispensable, since such had become the Belief of men; but once also is enough.
They have made the Constitution, these Twelve Hundred Jean-Jacques Evangelists; not without result. Near twenty-nine months they sat, with various fortune; in various capacity;--always, we may say, in that capacity of carborne Caroccio, and miraculous Standard of the Revolt of Men, as a Thing high and lifted up; whereon whosoever looked might hope healing. They have seen much: cannons levelled on them; then suddenly, by interposition of the Powers, the cannons drawn back; and a war-god Broglie vanishing, in thunder not his own, amid the dust and downrushing of a Bastille and Old Feudal France. They have suffered somewhat: Royal Session, with rain and Oath of the Tennis-Court; Nights of Pentecost; Insurrections of Women. Also have they not done somewhat? Made the Constitution, and managed all things the while; passed, in these twenty- nine months, 'twenty-five hundred Decrees,' which on the average is some three for each day, including Sundays! Brevity, one finds, is possible, at times: had not Moreau de St. Mery to give three thousand orders before rising from his seat?--There was valour (or value) in these men; and a kind of faith,--were it only faith in this, That cobwebs are not cloth; that a Constitution could be made. Cobwebs and chimeras ought verily to disappear; for a Reality there is. Let formulas, soul-killing, and now grown body-killing, insupportable, begone, in the name of Heaven and Earth!--Time, as we say, brought forth these Twelve Hundred; Eternity was before them, Eternity behind: they worked, as we all do, in the confluence of Two Eternities; what work was given them. Say not that it was nothing they did. Consciously they did somewhat; unconsciously how much! They had their giants and their dwarfs, they accomplished their good and their evil; they are gone, and return no more. Shall they not go with our blessing, in these circumstances; with our mild farewell?
By post, by diligence, on saddle or sole; they are gone: towards the four winds! Not a few over the marches, to rank at Coblentz. Thither wended Maury, among others; but in the end towards Rome,--to be clothed there in red Cardinal plush; in falsehood as in a garment; pet son (her last-born?) of the Scarlet Woman. Talleyrand-Perigord, excommunicated Constitutional Bishop, will make his way to London; to be Ambassador, spite of the Self- denying Law; brisk young Marquis Chauvelin acting as Ambassador's-Cloak. In London too, one finds Petion the virtuous; harangued and haranguing, pledging the wine-cup with Constitutional Reform Clubs, in solemn tavern- dinner. Incorruptible Robespierre retires for a little to native Arras: seven short weeks of quiet; the last appointed him in this world. Public Accuser in the Paris Department, acknowledged highpriest of the Jacobins; the glass of incorruptible thin Patriotism, for his narrow emphasis is loved of all the narrow,--this man seems to be rising, somewhither? He sells his small heritage at Arras; accompanied by a Brother and a Sister, he returns, scheming out with resolute timidity a small sure destiny for himself and them, to his old lodging, at the Cabinet-maker's, in the Rue St. Honore:--O resolute-tremulous incorruptible seagreen man, towards what a destiny!
Lafayette, for his part, will lay down the command. He retires Cincinnatus-like to his hearth and farm; but soon leaves them again. Our National Guard, however, shall henceforth have no one Commandant; but all Colonels shall command in succession, month about. Other Deputies we have met, or Dame de Stael has met, 'sauntering in a thoughtful manner;' perhaps uncertain what to do. Some, as Barnave, the Lameths, and their Duport, will continue here in Paris: watching the new biennial Legislative, Parliament the First; teaching it to walk, if so might be; and the Court to lead it.
Thus these: sauntering in a thoughtful manner; travelling by post or diligence,--whither Fate beckons. Giant Mirabeau slumbers in the Pantheon of Great Men: and France? and Europe?--The brass-lunged Hawkers sing "Grand Acceptation, Monarchic Constitution" through these gay crowds: the Morrow, grandson of Yesterday, must be what it can, as To-day its father is. Our new biennial Legislative begins to constitute itself on the first of October, 1791.
5.II.
The Book of the Law.
If the august Constituent Assembly itself, fixing the regards of the Universe, could, at the present distance of time and place, gain comparatively small attention from us, how much less can this poor Legislative! It has its Right Side and its Left; the less Patriotic and the more, for Aristocrats exist not here or now: it spouts and speaks: listens to Reports, reads Bills and Laws; works in its vocation, for a season: but the history of France, one finds, is seldom or never there. Unhappy Legislative, what can History do with it; if not drop a tear over it, almost in silence? First of the two-year Parliaments of France, which, if Paper Constitution and oft-repeated National Oath could avail aught, were to follow in softly-strong indissoluble sequence while Time ran,--it had to vanish dolefully within one year; and there came no second like it. Alas! your biennial Parliaments in endless indissoluble sequence; they, and all that Constitutional Fabric, built with such explosive Federation Oaths, and its top-stone brought out with dancing and variegated radiance, went to pieces, like frail crockery, in the crash of things; and already, in eleven short months, were in that Limbo near the Moon, with the ghosts of other Chimeras. There, except for rare specific purposes, let them rest, in melancholy peace.
On the whole, how unknown is a man to himself; or a public Body of men to itself! Aesop's fly sat on the chariot-wheel, exclaiming, What a dust I do raise! Great Governors, clad in purple with fasces and insignia, are governed by their valets, by the pouting of their women and children; or, in Constitutional countries, by the paragraphs of their Able Editors. Say not, I am this or that; I am doing this or that! For thou knowest it not, thou knowest only the name it as yet goes by. A purple Nebuchadnezzar rejoices to feel himself now verily Emperor of this great Babylon which he has builded; and is a nondescript biped-quadruped, on the eve of a seven- years course of grazing! These Seven Hundred and Forty-five elected individuals doubt not but they are the First biennial Parliament, come to govern France by parliamentary eloquence: and they are what? And they have come to do what? Things foolish and not wise!
It is much lamented by many that this First Biennial had no members of the old Constituent in it, with their experience of parties and parliamentary tactics; that such was their foolish Self-denying Law. Most surely, old members of the Constituent had been welcome to us here. But, on the other hand, what old or what new members of any Constituent under the Sun could have effectually profited? There are First biennial Parliaments so postured as to be, in a sense, beyond wisdom; where wisdom and folly differ only in degree, and wreckage and dissolution are the appointed issue for both.
Old-Constituents, your Barnaves, Lameths and the like, for whom a special Gallery has been set apart, where they may sit in honour and listen, are in the habit of sneering at these new Legislators; (Dumouriez, ii. 150, &c.) but let not us! The poor Seven Hundred and Forty-five, sent together by the active citizens of France, are what they could be; do what is fated them. That they are of Patriot temper we can well understand. Aristocrat Noblesse had fled over the marches, or sat brooding silent in their unburnt Chateaus; small prospect had they in Primary Electoral Assemblies. What with Flights to Varennes, what with Days of Poniards, with plot after plot, the People are left to themselves; the People must needs choose Defenders of the People, such as can be had. Choosing, as they also will ever do, 'if not the ablest man, yet the man ablest to be chosen!' Fervour of character, decided Patriot-Constitutional feeling; these are qualities: but free utterance, mastership in tongue-fence; this is the quality of qualities. Accordingly one finds, with little astonishment, in this First Biennial, that as many as Four hundred Members are of the Advocate or Attorney species. Men who can speak, if there be aught to speak: nay here are men also who can think, and even act. Candour will say of this ill- fated First French Parliament that it wanted not its modicum of talent, its modicum of honesty; that it, neither in the one respect nor in the other, sank below the average of Parliaments, but rose above the average. Let average Parliaments, whom the world does not guillotine, and cast forth to long infamy, be thankful not to themselves but to their stars!
France, as we say, has once more done what it could: fervid men have come together from wide separation; for strange issues. Fiery Max Isnard is come, from the utmost South-East; fiery Claude Fauchet, Te-Deum Fauchet Bishop of Calvados, from the utmost North-West. No Mirabeau now sits here, who had swallowed formulas: our only Mirabeau now is Danton, working as yet out of doors; whom some call 'Mirabeau of the Sansculottes.'
Nevertheless we have our gifts,--especially of speech and logic. An eloquent Vergniaud we have; most mellifluous yet most impetuous of public speakers; from the region named Gironde, of the Garonne: a man unfortunately of indolent habits; who will sit playing with your children, when he ought to be scheming and perorating. Sharp bustling Guadet; considerate grave Censonne; kind-sparkling mirthful young Ducos; Valaze doomed to a sad end: all these likewise are of that Gironde, or Bourdeaux region: men of fervid Constitutional principles; of quick talent, irrefragable logic, clear respectability; who will have the Reign of Liberty establish itself, but only by respectable methods. Round whom others of like temper will gather; known by and by as Girondins, to the sorrowing wonder of the world. Of which sort note Condorcet, Marquis and Philosopher; who has worked at much, at Paris Municipal Constitution, Differential Calculus, Newspaper Chronique de Paris, Biography, Philosophy; and now sits here as two-years Senator: a notable Condorcet, with stoical Roman face, and fiery heart; 'volcano hid under snow;' styled likewise, in irreverent language, 'mouton enrage,' peaceablest of creatures bitten rabid! Or note, lastly, Jean-Pierre Brissot; whom Destiny, long working noisily with him, has hurled hither, say, to have done with him. A biennial Senator he too; nay, for the present, the king of such. Restless, scheming, scribbling Brissot; who took to himself the style de Warville, heralds know not in the least why;--unless it were that the father of him did, in an unexceptionable manner, perform Cookery and Vintnery in the Village of Ouarville? A man of the windmill species, that grinds always, turning towards all winds; not in the steadiest manner.
In all these men there is talent, faculty to work; and they will do it: working and shaping, not without effect, though alas not in marble, only in quicksand!--But the highest faculty of them all remains yet to be mentioned; or indeed has yet to unfold itself for mention: Captain Hippolyte Carnot, sent hither from the Pas de Calais; with his cold mathematical head, and silent stubbornness of will: iron Carnot, far- planning, imperturbable, unconquerable; who, in the hour of need, shall not be found wanting. His hair is yet black; and it shall grow grey, under many kinds of fortune, bright and troublous; and with iron aspect this man shall face them all.
Nor is Cote Droit, and band of King's friends, wanting: Vaublanc, Dumas, Jaucourt the honoured Chevalier; who love Liberty, yet with Monarchy over it; and speak fearlessly according to that faith;--whom the thick-coming hurricanes will sweep away. With them, let a new military Theodore Lameth be named;--were it only for his two Brothers' sake, who look down on him, approvingly there, from the Old-Constituents' Gallery. Frothy professing Pastorets, honey-mouthed conciliatory Lamourettes, and speechless nameless individuals sit plentiful, as Moderates, in the middle. Still less is a Cote Gauche wanting: extreme Left; sitting on the topmost benches, as if aloft on its speculatory Height or Mountain, which will become a practical fulminatory Height, and make the name of Mountain famous-infamous to all times and lands.
Honour waits not on this Mountain; nor as yet even loud dishonour. Gifts it boasts not, nor graces, of speaking or of thinking; solely this one gift of assured faith, of audacity that will defy the Earth and the Heavens. Foremost here are the Cordelier Trio: hot Merlin from Thionville, hot Bazire, Attorneys both; Chabot, disfrocked Capuchin, skilful in agio. Lawyer Lacroix, who wore once as subaltern the single epaulette, has loud lungs and a hungry heart. There too is Couthon, little dreaming what he is;--whom a sad chance has paralysed in the lower extremities. For, it seems, he sat once a whole night, not warm in his true love's bower (who indeed was by law another's), but sunken to the middle in a cold peat-bog, being hunted out; quaking for his life, in the cold quaking morass; (Dumouriez, ii. 370.) and goes now on crutches to the end. Cambon likewise, in whom slumbers undeveloped such a finance-talent for printing of Assignats; Father of Paper-money; who, in the hour of menace, shall utter this stern sentence, 'War to the Manorhouse, peace to the Hut, Guerre aux Chateaux, paix aux Chaumieres!' (Choix de Rapports, xi. 25.) Lecointre, the intrepid Draper of Versailles, is welcome here; known since the Opera-Repast and Insurrection of Women. Thuriot too; Elector Thuriot, who stood in the embrasures of the Bastille, and saw Saint-Antoine rising in mass; who has many other things to see. Last and grimmest of all note old Ruhl, with his brown dusky face and long white hair; of Alsatian Lutheran breed; a man whom age and book-learning have not taught; who, haranguing the old men of Rheims, shall hold up the Sacred Ampulla (Heaven- sent, wherefrom Clovis and all Kings have been anointed) as a mere worthless oil-bottle, and dash it to sherds on the pavement there; who, alas, shall dash much to sherds, and finally his own wild head, by pistol- shot, and so end it.
Such lava welters redhot in the bowels of this Mountain; unknown to the world and to itself! A mere commonplace Mountain hitherto; distinguished from the Plain chiefly by its superior barrenness, its baldness of look: at the utmost it may, to the most observant, perceptibly smoke. For as yet all lies so solid, peaceable; and doubts not, as was said, that it will endure while Time runs. Do not all love Liberty and the Constitution? All heartily;--and yet with degrees. Some, as Chevalier Jaucourt and his Right Side, may love Liberty less than Royalty, were the trial made; others, as Brissot and his Left Side, may love it more than Royalty. Nay again of these latter some may love Liberty more than Law itself; others not more. Parties will unfold themselves; no mortal as yet knows how. Forces work within these men and without: dissidence grows opposition; ever widening; waxing into incompatibility and internecine feud: till the strong is abolished by a stronger; himself in his turn by a strongest! Who can help it? Jaucourt and his Monarchists, Feuillans, or Moderates; Brissot and his Brissotins, Jacobins, or Girondins; these, with the Cordelier Trio, and all men, must work what is appointed them, and in the way appointed them.
And to think what fate these poor Seven Hundred and Forty-five are assembled, most unwittingly, to meet! Let no heart be so hard as not to pity them. Their soul's wish was to live and work as the First of the French Parliaments: and make the Constitution march. Did they not, at their very instalment, go through the most affecting Constitutional ceremony, almost with tears? The Twelve Eldest are sent solemnly to fetch the Constitution itself, the printed book of the Law. Archivist Camus, an Old-Constituent appointed Archivist, he and the Ancient Twelve, amid blare of military pomp and clangour, enter, bearing the divine Book: and President and all Legislative Senators, laying their hand on the same, successively take the Oath, with cheers and heart-effusion, universal three-times-three. (Moniteur, Seance du 4 Octobre 1791.) In this manner they begin their Session. Unhappy mortals! For, that same day, his Majesty having received their Deputation of welcome, as seemed, rather drily, the Deputation cannot but feel slighted, cannot but lament such slight: and thereupon our cheering swearing First Parliament sees itself, on the morrow, obliged to explode into fierce retaliatory sputter, of anti- royal Enactment as to how they, for their part, will receive Majesty; and how Majesty shall not be called Sire any more, except they please: and then, on the following day, to recal this Enactment of theirs, as too hasty, and a mere sputter though not unprovoked.
An effervescent well-intentioned set of Senators; too combustible, where continual sparks are flying! Their History is a series of sputters and quarrels; true desire to do their function, fatal impossibility to do it. Denunciations, reprimandings of King's Ministers, of traitors supposed and real; hot rage and fulmination against fulminating Emigrants; terror of Austrian Kaiser, of 'Austrian Committee' in the Tuileries itself: rage and haunting terror, haste and dim desperate bewilderment!--Haste, we say; and yet the Constitution had provided against haste. No Bill can be passed till it have been printed, till it have been thrice read, with intervals of eight days;--'unless the Assembly shall beforehand decree that there is urgency.' Which, accordingly, the Assembly, scrupulous of the Constitution, never omits to do: Considering this, and also considering that, and then that other, the Assembly decrees always 'qu'il y a urgence;' and thereupon 'the Assembly, having decreed that there is urgence,' is free to decree--what indispensable distracted thing seems best to it. Two thousand and odd decrees, as men reckon, within Eleven months! (Montgaillard, iii. 1. 237.) The haste of the Constituent seemed great; but this is treble-quick. For the time itself is rushing treble-quick; and they have to keep pace with that. Unhappy Seven Hundred and Forty-five: true-patriotic, but so combustible; being fired, they must needs fling fire: Senate of touchwood and rockets, in a world of smoke-storm, with sparks wind-driven continually flying!
Or think, on the other hand, looking forward some months, of that scene they call Baiser de Lamourette! The dangers of the country are now grown imminent, immeasurable; National Assembly, hope of France, is divided against itself. In such extreme circumstances, honey-mouthed Abbe Lamourette, new Bishop of Lyons, rises, whose name, l'amourette, signifies the sweetheart, or Delilah doxy,--he rises, and, with pathetic honied eloquence, calls on all august Senators to forget mutual griefs and grudges, to swear a new oath, and unite as brothers. Whereupon they all, with vivats, embrace and swear; Left Side confounding itself with Right; barren Mountain rushing down to fruitful Plain, Pastoret into the arms of Condorcet, injured to the breast of injurer, with tears; and all swearing that whosoever wishes either Feuillant Two-Chamber Monarchy or Extreme- Jacobin Republic, or any thing but the Constitution and that only, shall be anathema marantha. (Moniteur, Seance du 6 Juillet 1792.) Touching to behold! For, literally on the morrow morning, they must again quarrel, driven by Fate; and their sublime reconcilement is called derisively Baiser de L'amourette, or Delilah Kiss.
Like fated Eteocles-Polynices Brothers, embracing, though in vain; weeping that they must not love, that they must hate only, and die by each other's hands! Or say, like doomed Familiar Spirits; ordered, by Art Magic under penalties, to do a harder than twist ropes of sand: 'to make the Constitution march.' If the Constitution would but march! Alas, the Constitution will not stir. It falls on its face; they tremblingly lift it on end again: march, thou gold Constitution! The Constitution will not march.--"He shall march, by--!" said kind Uncle Toby, and even swore. The Corporal answered mournfully: "He will never march in this world."
A constitution, as we often say, will march when it images, if not the old Habits and Beliefs of the Constituted; then accurately their Rights, or better indeed, their Mights;--for these two, well-understood, are they not one and the same? The old Habits of France are gone: her new Rights and Mights are not yet ascertained, except in Paper-theorem; nor can be, in any sort, till she have tried. Till she have measured herself, in fell death- grip, and were it in utmost preternatural spasm of madness, with Principalities and Powers, with the upper and the under, internal and external; with the Earth and Tophet and the very Heaven! Then will she know.--Three things bode ill for the marching of this French Constitution: the French People; the French King; thirdly the French Noblesse and an assembled European World.
5.III.
Avignon.
But quitting generalities, what strange Fact is this, in the far South- West, towards which the eyes of all men do now, in the end of October, bend themselves? A tragical combustion, long smoking and smouldering unluminous, has now burst into flame there.
Hot is that Southern Provencal blood: alas, collisions, as was once said, must occur in a career of Freedom; different directions will produce such; nay different velocities in the same direction will! To much that went on there History, busied elsewhere, would not specially give heed: to troubles of Uzez, troubles of Nismes, Protestant and Catholic, Patriot and Aristocrat; to troubles of Marseilles, Montpelier, Arles; to Aristocrat Camp of Jales, that wondrous real-imaginary Entity, now fading pale-dim, then always again glowing forth deep-hued (in the Imagination mainly);-- ominous magical, 'an Aristocrat picture of war done naturally!' All this was a tragical deadly combustion, with plot and riot, tumult by night and by day; but a dark combustion, not luminous, not noticed; which now, however, one cannot help noticing.
Above all places, the unluminous combustion in Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin was fierce. Papal Avignon, with its Castle rising sheer over the Rhone-stream; beautifullest Town, with its purple vines and gold-orange groves: why must foolish old rhyming Rene, the last Sovereign of Provence, bequeath it to the Pope and Gold Tiara, not rather to Louis Eleventh with the Leaden Virgin in his hatband? For good and for evil! Popes, Anti- popes, with their pomp, have dwelt in that Castle of Avignon rising sheer over the Rhone-stream: there Laura de Sade went to hear mass; her Petrarch twanging and singing by the Fountain of Vaucluse hard by, surely in a most melancholy manner. This was in the old days.
And now in these new days, such issues do come from a squirt of the pen by some foolish rhyming Rene, after centuries, this is what we have: Jourdan Coupe-tete, leading to siege and warfare an Army, from three to fifteen thousand strong, called the Brigands of Avignon; which title they themselves accept, with the addition of an epithet, 'The brave Brigands of Avignon!' It is even so. Jourdan the Headsman fled hither from that Chatelet Inquest, from that Insurrection of Women; and began dealing in madder; but the scene was rife in other than dye-stuffs; so Jourdan shut his madder shop, and has risen, for he was the man to do it. The tile- beard of Jourdan is shaven off; his fat visage has got coppered and studded with black carbuncles; the Silenus trunk is swollen with drink and high living: he wears blue National uniform with epaulettes, 'an enormous sabre, two horse-pistols crossed in his belt, and other two smaller, sticking from his pockets;' styles himself General, and is the tyrant of men. (Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 267.) Consider this one fact, O Reader; and what sort of facts must have preceded it, must accompany it! Such things come of old Rene; and of the question which has risen, Whether Avignon cannot now cease wholly to be Papal and become French and free?
For some twenty-five months the confusion has lasted. Say three months of arguing; then seven of raging; then finally some fifteen months now of fighting, and even of hanging. For already in February 1790, the Papal Aristocrats had set up four gibbets, for a sign; but the People rose in June, in retributive frenzy; and, forcing the public Hangman to act, hanged four Aristocrats, on each Papal gibbet a Papal Haman. Then were Avignon Emigrations, Papal Aristocrats emigrating over the Rhone River; demission of Papal Consul, flight, victory: re-entrance of Papal Legate, truce, and new onslaught; and the various turns of war. Petitions there were to National Assembly; Congresses of Townships; three-score and odd Townships voting for French Reunion, and the blessings of Liberty; while some twelve of the smaller, manipulated by Aristocrats, gave vote the other way: with shrieks and discord! Township against Township, Town against Town: Carpentras, long jealous of Avignon, is now turned out in open war with it;--and Jourdan Coupe-tete, your first General being killed in mutiny, closes his dye-shop; and does there visibly, with siege-artillery, above all with bluster and tumult, with the 'brave Brigands of Avignon,' beleaguer the rival Town, for two months, in the face of the world!
Feats were done, doubt it not, far-famed in Parish History; but to Universal History unknown. Gibbets we see rise, on the one side and on the other; and wretched carcasses swinging there, a dozen in the row; wretched Mayor of Vaison buried before dead. (Barbaroux, Memoires, p. 26.) The fruitful seedfield, lie unreaped, the vineyards trampled down; there is red cruelty, madness of universal choler and gall. Havoc and anarchy everywhere; a combustion most fierce, but unlucent, not to be noticed here!--Finally, as we saw, on the 14th of September last, the National Constituent Assembly, having sent Commissioners and heard them; (Lescene Desmaisons: Compte rendu a l'Assemblee Nationale, 10 Septembre 1791 (Choix des Rapports, vii. 273-93).) having heard Petitions, held Debates, month after month ever since August 1789; and on the whole 'spent thirty sittings' on this matter, did solemnly decree that Avignon and the Comtat were incorporated with France, and His Holiness the Pope should have what indemnity was reasonable.
And so hereby all is amnestied and finished? Alas, when madness of choler has gone through the blood of men, and gibbets have swung on this side and on that, what will a parchment Decree and Lafayette Amnesty do? Oblivious Lethe flows not above ground! Papal Aristocrats and Patriot Brigands are still an eye-sorrow to each other; suspected, suspicious, in what they do and forbear. The august Constituent Assembly is gone but a fortnight, when, on Sunday the Sixteenth morning of October 1791, the unquenched combustion suddenly becomes luminous! For Anti-constitutional Placards are up, and the Statue of the Virgin is said to have shed tears, and grown red. (Proces-verbal de la Commune d'Avignon, &c. (in Hist. Parl. xii. 419-23.) Wherefore, on that morning, Patriot l'Escuyer, one of our 'six leading Patriots,' having taken counsel with his brethren and General Jourdan, determines on going to Church, in company with a friend or two: not to hear mass, which he values little; but to meet all the Papalists there in a body, nay to meet that same weeping Virgin, for it is the Cordeliers Church; and give them a word of admonition. Adventurous errand; which has the fatallest issue! What L'Escuyer's word of admonition might be no History records; but the answer to it was a shrieking howl from the Aristocrat Papal worshippers, many of them women. A thousand-voiced shriek and menace; which as L'Escuyer did not fly, became a thousand-handed hustle and jostle; a thousand-footed kick, with tumblings and tramplings, with the pricking of semstresses stilettos, scissors, and female pointed instruments. Horrible to behold; the ancient Dead, and Petrarchan Laura, sleeping round it there; (Ugo Foscolo, Essay on Petrarch, p. 35.) high Altar and burning tapers looking down on it; the Virgin quite tearless, and of the natural stone-colour!--L'Escuyer's friend or two rush off, like Job's Messengers, for Jourdan and the National Force. But heavy Jourdan will seize the Town-Gates first; does not run treble-fast, as he might: on arriving at the Cordeliers Church, the Church is silent, vacant; L'Escuyer, all alone, lies there, swimming in his blood, at the foot of the high Altar; pricked with scissors; trodden, massacred;--gives one dumb sob, and gasps out his miserable life for evermore.
Sight to stir the heart of any man; much more of many men, self-styled Brigands of Avignon! The corpse of L'Escuyer, stretched on a bier, the ghastly head girt with laurel, is borne through the streets; with many- voiced unmelodious Nenia; funeral-wail still deeper than it is loud! The copper-face of Jourdan, of bereft Patriotism, has grown black. Patriot Municipality despatches official Narrative and tidings to Paris; orders numerous or innumerable arrestments for inquest and perquisition. Aristocrats male and female are haled to the Castle; lie crowded in subterranean dungeons there, bemoaned by the hoarse rushing of the Rhone; cut out from help.
So lie they; waiting inquest and perquisition. Alas! with a Jourdan Headsman for Generalissimo, with his copper-face grown black, and armed Brigand Patriots chanting their Nenia, the inquest is likely to be brief. On the next day and the next, let Municipality consent or not, a Brigand Court-Martial establishes itself in the subterranean stories of the Castle of Avignon; Brigand Executioners, with naked sabre, waiting at the door, for a Brigand verdict. Short judgment, no appeal! There is Brigand wrath and vengeance; not unrefreshed by brandy. Close by is the Dungeon of the Glaciere, or Ice-Tower: there may be deeds done--? For which language has no name!--Darkness and the shadow of horrid cruelty envelopes these Castle Dungeons, that Glaciere Tower: clear only that many have entered, that few have returned. Jourdan and the Brigands, supreme now over Municipals, over all Authorities Patriot or Papal, reign in Avignon, waited on by Terror and Silence.
The result of all which is that, on the 15th of November 1791, we behold Friend Dampmartin, and subalterns beneath him, and General Choisi above him, with Infantry and Cavalry, and proper cannon-carriages rattling in front, with spread banners, to the sound of fife and drum, wend, in a deliberate formidable manner, towards that sheer Castle Rock, towards those broad Gates of Avignon; three new National-Assembly Commissioners following at safe distance in the rear. (Dampmartin, i. 251-94.) Avignon, summoned in the name of Assembly and Law, flings its Gates wide open; Choisi with the rest, Dampmartin and the Bons Enfans, 'Good Boys of Baufremont,' so they name these brave Constitutional Dragoons, known to them of old,--do enter, amid shouts and scattered flowers. To the joy of all honest persons; to the terror only of Jourdan Headsman and the Brigands. Nay next we behold carbuncled swollen Jourdan himself shew copper-face, with sabre and four pistols; affecting to talk high: engaging, meanwhile, to surrender the Castle that instant. So the Choisi Grenadiers enter with him there. They start and stop, passing that Glaciere, snuffing its horrible breath; with wild yell, with cries of "Cut the Butcher down!"--and Jourdan has to whisk himself through secret passages, and instantaneously vanish.
Be the mystery of iniquity laid bare then! A Hundred and Thirty Corpses, of men, nay of women and even children (for the trembling mother, hastily seized, could not leave her infant), lie heaped in that Glaciere; putrid, under putridities: the horror of the world. For three days there is mournful lifting out, and recognition; amid the cries and movements of a passionate Southern people, now kneeling in prayer, now storming in wild pity and rage: lastly there is solemn sepulture, with muffled drums, religious requiem, and all the people's wail and tears. Their Massacred rest now in holy ground; buried in one grave.
And Jourdan Coupe-tete? Him also we behold again, after a day or two: in flight, through the most romantic Petrarchan hill-country; vehemently spurring his nag; young Ligonnet, a brisk youth of Avignon, with Choisi Dragoons, close in his rear! With such swollen mass of a rider no nag can run to advantage. The tired nag, spur-driven, does take the River Sorgue; but sticks in the middle of it; firm on that chiaro fondo di Sorga; and will proceed no further for spurring! Young Ligonnet dashes up; the Copper-face menaces and bellows, draws pistol, perhaps even snaps it; is nevertheless seized by the collar; is tied firm, ancles under horse's belly, and ridden back to Avignon, hardly to be saved from massacre on the streets there. (Dampmartin, ubi supra.)
Such is the combustion of Avignon and the South-West, when it becomes luminous! Long loud debate is in the august Legislative, in the Mother- Society as to what now shall be done with it. Amnesty, cry eloquent Vergniaud and all Patriots: let there be mutual pardon and repentance, restoration, pacification, and if so might any how be, an end! Which vote ultimately prevails. So the South-West smoulders and welters again in an 'Amnesty,' or Non-remembrance, which alas cannot but remember, no Lethe flowing above ground! Jourdan himself remains unchanged; gets loose again as one not yet gallows-ripe; nay, as we transciently discern from the distance, is 'carried in triumph through the cities of the South.' (Deux Amis vii. (Paris, 1797), pp. 59-71.) What things men carry!
With which transient glimpse, of a Copper-faced Portent faring in this manner through the cities of the South, we must quit these regions;--and let them smoulder. They want not their Aristocrats; proud old Nobles, not yet emigrated. Arles has its 'Chiffonne,' so, in symbolical cant, they name that Aristocrat Secret-Association; Arles has its pavements piled up, by and by, into Aristocrat barricades. Against which Rebecqui, the hot- clear Patriot, must lead Marseilles with cannon. The Bar of Iron has not yet risen to the top in the Bay of Marseilles; neither have these hot Sons of the Phoceans submitted to be slaves. By clear management and hot instance, Rebecqui dissipates that Chiffonne, without bloodshed; restores the pavement of Arles. He sails in Coast-barks, this Rebecqui, scrutinising suspicious Martello-towers, with the keen eye of Patriotism; marches overland with despatch, singly, or in force; to City after City; dim scouring far and wide; (Barbaroux, p. 21; Hist. Parl. xiii. 421-4.)-- argues, and if it must be, fights. For there is much to do; Jales itself is looking suspicious. So that Legislator Fauchet, after debate on it, has to propose Commissioners and a Camp on the Plain of Beaucaire: with or without result.
Of all which, and much else, let us note only this small consequence, that young Barbaroux, Advocate, Town-Clerk of Marseilles, being charged to have these things remedied, arrived at Paris in the month of February 1792. The beautiful and brave: young Spartan, ripe in energy, not ripe in wisdom; over whose black doom there shall flit nevertheless a certain ruddy fervour, streaks of bright Southern tint, not wholly swallowed of Death! Note also that the Rolands of Lyons are again in Paris; for the second and final time. King's Inspectorship is abrogated at Lyons, as elsewhere: Roland has his retiring-pension to claim, if attainable; has Patriot friends to commune with; at lowest, has a book to publish. That young Barbaroux and the Rolands came together; that elderly Spartan Roland liked, or even loved the young Spartan, and was loved by him, one can fancy: and Madame--? Breathe not, thou poison-breath, Evil-speech! That soul is taintless, clear, as the mirror-sea. And yet if they too did look into each other's eyes, and each, in silence, in tragical renunciance, did find that the other was all too lovely? Honi soit! She calls him 'beautiful as Antinous:' he 'will speak elsewhere of that astonishing woman.'--A Madame d'Udon (or some such name, for Dumont does not recollect quite clearly) gives copious Breakfast to the Brissotin Deputies and us Friends of Freedom, at her house in the Place Vendome; with temporary celebrity, with graces and wreathed smiles; not without cost. There, amid wide babble and jingle, our plan of Legislative Debate is settled for the day, and much counselling held. Strict Roland is seen there, but does not go often. (Dumont, Souvenirs, p. 374.)
5.IV.
No Sugar.
Such are our inward troubles; seen in the Cities of the South; extant, seen or unseen, in all cities and districts, North as well as South. For in all are Aristocrats, more or less malignant; watched by Patriotism; which again, being of various shades, from light Fayettist-Feuillant down to deep-sombre Jacobin, has to watch itself!
Directories of Departments, what we call County Magistracies, being chosen by Citizens of a too 'active' class, are found to pull one way; Municipalities, Town Magistracies, to pull the other way. In all places too are Dissident Priests; whom the Legislative will have to deal with: contumacious individuals, working on that angriest of passions; plotting, enlisting for Coblentz; or suspected of plotting: fuel of a universal unconstitutional heat. What to do with them? They may be conscientious as well as contumacious: gently they should be dealt with, and yet it must be speedily. In unilluminated La Vendee the simple are like to be seduced by them; many a simple peasant, a Cathelineau the wool-dealer wayfaring meditative with his wool-packs, in these hamlets, dubiously shakes his head! Two Assembly Commissioners went thither last Autumn; considerate Gensonne, not yet called to be a Senator; Gallois, an editorial man. These Two, consulting with General Dumouriez, spake and worked, softly, with judgment; they have hushed down the irritation, and produced a soft Report,--for the time.
The General himself doubts not in the least but he can keep peace there; being an able man. He passes these frosty months among the pleasant people of Niort, occupies 'tolerably handsome apartments in the Castle of Niort,' and tempers the minds of men. (Dumouriez, ii. 129.) Why is there but one Dumouriez? Elsewhere you find South or North, nothing but untempered obscure jarring; which breaks forth ever and anon into open clangour of riot. Southern Perpignan has its tocsin, by torch light; with rushing and onslaught: Northern Caen not less, by daylight; with Aristocrats ranged in arms at Places of Worship; Departmental compromise proving impossible; breaking into musketry and a Plot discovered! (Hist. Parl. xii. 131, 141; xiii. 114, 417.) Add Hunger too: for Bread, always dear, is getting dearer: not so much as Sugar can be had; for good reasons. Poor Simoneau, Mayor of Etampes, in this Northern region, hanging out his Red Flag in some riot of grains, is trampled to death by a hungry exasperated People. What a trade this of Mayor, in these times! Mayor of Saint-Denis hung at the Lanterne, by Suspicion and Dyspepsia, as we saw long since; Mayor of Vaison, as we saw lately, buried before dead; and now this poor Simoneau, the Tanner, of Etampes,--whom legal Constitutionalism will not forget.
With factions, suspicions, want of bread and sugar, it is verily what they call dechire, torn asunder this poor country: France and all that is French. For, over seas too come bad news. In black Saint-Domingo, before that variegated Glitter in the Champs Elysees was lit for an Accepted Constitution, there had risen, and was burning contemporary with it, quite another variegated Glitter and nocturnal Fulgor, had we known it: of molasses and ardent-spirits; of sugar-boileries, plantations, furniture, cattle and men: skyhigh; the Plain of Cap Francais one huge whirl of smoke and flame!
What a change here, in these two years; since that first 'Box of Tricolor Cockades' got through the Custom-house, and atrabiliar Creoles too rejoiced that there was a levelling of Bastilles! Levelling is comfortable, as we often say: levelling, yet only down to oneself. Your pale-white Creoles, have their grievances:--and your yellow Quarteroons? And your dark-yellow Mulattoes? And your Slaves soot-black? Quarteroon Oge, Friend of our Parisian Brissotin Friends of the Blacks, felt, for his share too, that Insurrection was the most sacred of duties. So the tricolor Cockades had fluttered and swashed only some three months on the Creole hat, when Oge's signal-conflagrations went aloft; with the voice of rage and terror. Repressed, doomed to die, he took black powder or seedgrains in the hollow of his hand, this Oge; sprinkled a film of white ones on the top, and said to his Judges, "Behold they are white;"--then shook his hand, and said "Where are the Whites, Ou sont les Blancs?"
So now, in the Autumn of 1791, looking from the sky-windows of Cap Francais, thick clouds of smoke girdle our horizon, smoke in the day, in the night fire; preceded by fugitive shrieking white women, by Terror and Rumour. Black demonised squadrons are massacring and harrying, with nameless cruelty. They fight and fire 'from behind thickets and coverts,' for the Black man loves the Bush; they rush to the attack, thousands strong, with brandished cutlasses and fusils, with caperings, shoutings and vociferation,--which, if the White Volunteer Company stands firm, dwindle into staggerings, into quick gabblement, into panic flight at the first volley, perhaps before it. (Deux Amis, x. 157.) Poor Oge could be broken on the wheel; this fire-whirlwind too can be abated, driven up into the Mountains: but Saint-Domingo is shaken, as Oge's seedgrains were; shaking, writhing in long horrid death-throes, it is Black without remedy; and remains, as African Haiti, a monition to the world.
O my Parisian Friends, is not this, as well as Regraters and Feuillant Plotters, one cause of the astonishing dearth of Sugar! The Grocer, palpitant, with drooping lip, sees his Sugar taxe; weighed out by Female Patriotism, in instant retail, at the inadequate rate of twenty-five sous, or thirteen pence a pound. "Abstain from it?" yes, ye Patriot Sections, all ye Jacobins, abstain! Louvet and Collot-d'Herbois so advise; resolute to make the sacrifice: though "how shall literary men do without coffee?" Abstain, with an oath; that is the surest! (Debats des Jacobins, &c. (Hist. Parl. xiii. 171, 92-98.)
Also, for like reason, must not Brest and the Shipping Interest languish? Poor Brest languishes, sorrowing, not without spleen; denounces an Aristocrat Bertrand-Moleville traitorous Aristocrat Marine-Minister. Do not her Ships and King's Ships lie rotting piecemeal in harbour; Naval Officers mostly fled, and on furlough too, with pay? Little stirring there; if it be not the Brest Gallies, whip-driven, with their Galley- Slaves,--alas, with some Forty of our hapless Swiss Soldiers of Chateau- Vieux, among others! These Forty Swiss, too mindful of Nanci, do now, in their red wool caps, tug sorrowfully at the oar; looking into the Atlantic brine, which reflects only their own sorrowful shaggy faces; and seem forgotten of Hope.
But, on the whole, may we not say, in fugitive language, that the French Constitution which shall march is very rheumatic, full of shooting internal pains, in joint and muscle; and will not march without difficulty?
5.V.
Kings and Emigrants.
Extremely rheumatic Constitutions have been known to march, and keep on their feet, though in a staggering sprawling manner, for long periods, in virtue of one thing only: that the Head were healthy. But this Head of the French Constitution! What King Louis is and cannot help being, Readers already know. A King who cannot take the Constitution, nor reject the Constitution: nor do anything at all, but miserably ask, What shall I do? A King environed with endless confusions; in whose own mind is no germ of order. Haughty implacable remnants of Noblesse struggling with humiliated repentant Barnave-Lameths: struggling in that obscure element of fetchers and carriers, of Half-pay braggarts from the Cafe Valois, of Chambermaids, whisperers, and subaltern officious persons; fierce Patriotism looking on all the while, more and more suspicious, from without: what, in such struggle, can they do? At best, cancel one another, and produce zero. Poor King! Barnave and your Senatorial Jaucourts speak earnestly into this ear; Bertrand-Moleville, and Messengers from Coblentz, speak earnestly into that: the poor Royal head turns to the one side and to the other side; can turn itself fixedly to no side. Let Decency drop a veil over it: sorrier misery was seldom enacted in the world. This one small fact, does it not throw the saddest light on much? The Queen is lamenting to Madam Campan: "What am I to do? When they, these Barnaves, get us advised to any step which the Noblesse do not like, then I am pouted at; nobody comes to my card table; the King's Couchee is solitary." (Campan, ii. 177-202.) In such a case of dubiety, what is one to do? Go inevitably to the ground!
The King has accepted this Constitution, knowing beforehand that it will not serve: he studies it, and executes it in the hope mainly that it will be found inexecutable. King's Ships lie rotting in harbour, their officers gone; the Armies disorganised; robbers scour the highways, which wear down unrepaired; all Public Service lies slack and waste: the Executive makes no effort, or an effort only to throw the blame on the Constitution. Shamming death, 'faisant le mort!' What Constitution, use it in this manner, can march? 'Grow to disgust the Nation' it will truly, (Bertrand- Moleville, i. c. 4.)--unless you first grow to disgust the Nation! It is Bertrand de Moleville's plan, and his Majesty's; the best they can form.
Or if, after all, this best-plan proved too slow; proved a failure? Provident of that too, the Queen, shrouded in deepest mystery, 'writes all day, in cipher, day after day, to Coblentz;' Engineer Goguelat, he of the Night of Spurs, whom the Lafayette Amnesty has delivered from Prison, rides and runs. Now and then, on fit occasion, a Royal familiar visit can be paid to that Salle de Manege, an affecting encouraging Royal Speech (sincere, doubt it not, for the moment) can be delivered there, and the Senators all cheer and almost weep;--at the same time Mallet du Pan has visibly ceased editing, and invisibly bears abroad a King's Autograph, soliciting help from the Foreign Potentates. (Moleville, i. 370.) Unhappy Louis, do this thing or else that other,--if thou couldst!
The thing which the King's Government did do was to stagger distractedly from contradiction to contradiction; and wedding Fire to Water, envelope itself in hissing, and ashy steam! Danton and needy corruptible Patriots are sopped with presents of cash: they accept the sop: they rise refreshed by it, and travel their own way. (Ibid. i. c. 17.) Nay, the King's Government did likewise hire Hand-clappers, or claqueurs, persons to applaud. Subterranean Rivarol has Fifteen Hundred men in King's pay, at the rate of some ten thousand pounds sterling, per month; what he calls 'a staff of genius:' Paragraph-writers, Placard-Journalists; 'two hundred and eighty Applauders, at three shillings a day:' one of the strangest Staffs ever commanded by man. The muster-rolls and account-books of which still exist. (Montgaillard, iii. 41.) Bertrand-Moleville himself, in a way he thinks very dexterous, contrives to pack the Galleries of the Legislative; gets Sansculottes hired to go thither, and applaud at a signal given, they fancying it was Petion that bid them: a device which was not detected for almost a week. Dexterous enough; as if a man finding the Day fast decline should determine on altering the Clockhands: that is a thing possible for him.
Here too let us note an unexpected apparition of Philippe d'Orleans at Court: his last at the Levee of any King. D'Orleans, sometime in the winter months seemingly, has been appointed to that old first-coveted rank of Admiral,--though only over ships rotting in port. The wished-for comes too late! However, he waits on Bertrand-Moleville to give thanks: nay to state that he would willingly thank his Majesty in person; that, in spite of all the horrible things men have said and sung, he is far from being his Majesty's enemy; at bottom, how far! Bertrand delivers the message, brings about the royal Interview, which does pass to the satisfaction of his Majesty; d'Orleans seeming clearly repentant, determined to turn over a new leaf. And yet, next Sunday, what do we see? 'Next Sunday,' says Bertrand, 'he came to the King's Levee; but the Courtiers ignorant of what had passed, the crowd of Royalists who were accustomed to resort thither on that day specially to pay their court, gave him the most humiliating reception. They came pressing round him; managing, as if by mistake, to tread on his toes, to elbow him towards the door, and not let him enter again. He went downstairs to her Majesty's Apartments, where cover was laid; so soon as he shewed face, sounds rose on all sides, "Messieurs, take care of the dishes," as if he had carried poison in his pockets. The insults which his presence every where excited forced him to retire without having seen the Royal Family: the crowd followed him to the Queen's Staircase; in descending, he received a spitting (crachat) on the head, and some others, on his clothes. Rage and spite were seen visibly painted on his face:' (Bertrand-Moleville, i. 177.) as indeed how could they miss to be? He imputes it all to the King and Queen, who know nothing of it, who are even much grieved at it; and so descends, to his Chaos again. Bertrand was there at the Chateau that day himself, and an eye-witness to these things.
For the rest, Non-jurant Priests, and the repression of them, will distract the King's conscience; Emigrant Princes and Noblesse will force him to double-dealing: there must be veto on veto; amid the ever-waxing indignation of men. For Patriotism, as we said, looks on from without, more and more suspicious. Waxing tempest, blast after blast, of Patriot indignation, from without; dim inorganic whirl of Intrigues, Fatuities, within! Inorganic, fatuous; from which the eye turns away. De Stael intrigues for her so gallant Narbonne, to get him made War-Minister; and ceases not, having got him made. The King shall fly to Rouen; shall there, with the gallant Narbonne, properly 'modify the Constitution.' This is the same brisk Narbonne, who, last year, cut out from their entanglement, by force of dragoons, those poor fugitive Royal Aunts: men say he is at bottom their Brother, or even more, so scandalous is scandal. He drives now, with his de Stael, rapidly to the Armies, to the Frontier Towns; produces rose-coloured Reports, not too credible; perorates, gesticulates; wavers poising himself on the top, for a moment, seen of men; then tumbles, dismissed, washed away by the Time-flood.
Also the fair Princess de Lamballe intrigues, bosom friend of her Majesty: to the angering of Patriotism. Beautiful Unfortunate, why did she ever return from England? Her small silver-voice, what can it profit in that piping of the black World-tornado? Which will whirl her, poor fragile Bird of Paradise, against grim rocks. Lamballe and de Stael intrigue visibly, apart or together: but who shall reckon how many others, and in what infinite ways, invisibly! Is there not what one may call an 'Austrian Committee,' sitting invisible in the Tuileries; centre of an invisible Anti-National Spiderweb, which, for we sleep among mysteries, stretches its threads to the ends of the Earth? Journalist Carra has now the clearest certainty of it: to Brissotin Patriotism, and France generally, it is growing more and more probable.
O Reader, hast thou no pity for this Constitution? Rheumatic shooting pains in its members; pressure of hydrocephale and hysteric vapours on its Brain: a Constitution divided against itself; which will never march, hardly even stagger? Why were not Drouet and Procureur Sausse in their beds, that unblessed Varennes Night! Why did they not, in the name of Heaven, let the Korff Berline go whither it listed! Nameless incoherency, incompatibility, perhaps prodigies at which the world still shudders, had been spared.
But now comes the third thing that bodes ill for the marching of this French Constitution: besides the French People, and the French King, there is thirdly--the assembled European world? it has become necessary now to look at that also. Fair France is so luminous: and round and round it, is troublous Cimmerian Night. Calonnes, Breteuils hover dim, far-flown; overnetting Europe with intrigues. From Turin to Vienna; to Berlin, and utmost Petersburg in the frozen North! Great Burke has raised his great voice long ago; eloquently demonstrating that the end of an Epoch is come, to all appearance the end of Civilised Time. Him many answer: Camille Desmoulins, Clootz Speaker of Mankind, Paine the rebellious Needleman, and honourable Gallic Vindicators in that country and in this: but the great Burke remains unanswerable; 'The Age of Chivalry is gone,' and could not but go, having now produced the still more indomitable Age of Hunger. Altars enough, of the Dubois-Rohan sort, changing to the Gobel-and- Talleyrand sort, are faring by rapid transmutation to, shall we say, the right Proprietor of them? French Game and French Game-Preservers did alight on the Cliffs of Dover, with cries of distress. Who will say that the end of much is not come? A set of mortals has risen, who believe that Truth is not a printed Speculation, but a practical Fact; that Freedom and Brotherhood are possible in this Earth, supposed always to be Belial's, which 'the Supreme Quack' was to inherit! Who will say that Church, State, Throne, Altar are not in danger; that the sacred Strong-box itself, last Palladium of effete Humanity, may not be blasphemously blown upon, and its padlocks undone?
The poor Constituent Assembly might act with what delicacy and diplomacy it would; declare that it abjured meddling with its neighbours, foreign conquest, and so forth; but from the first this thing was to be predicted: that old Europe and new France could not subsist together. A Glorious Revolution, oversetting State-Prisons and Feudalism; publishing, with outburst of Federative Cannon, in face of all the Earth, that Appearance is not Reality, how shall it subsist amid Governments which, if Appearance is not Reality, are--one knows not what? In death feud, and internecine wrestle and battle, it shall subsist with them; not otherwise.
Rights of Man, printed on Cotton Handkerchiefs, in various dialects of human speech, pass over to the Frankfort Fair. (Toulongeon, i. 256.) What say we, Frankfort Fair? They have crossed Euphrates and the fabulous Hydaspes; wafted themselves beyond the Ural, Altai, Himmalayah: struck off from wood stereotypes, in angular Picture-writing, they are jabbered and jingled of in China and Japan. Where will it stop? Kien-Lung smells mischief; not the remotest Dalai-Lama shall now knead his dough-pills in peace.--Hateful to us; as is the Night! Bestir yourselves, ye Defenders of Order! They do bestir themselves: all Kings and Kinglets, with their spiritual temporal array, are astir; their brows clouded with menace. Diplomatic emissaries fly swift; Conventions, privy Conclaves assemble; and wise wigs wag, taking what counsel they can.
Also, as we said, the Pamphleteer draws pen, on this side and that: zealous fists beat the Pulpit-drum. Not without issue! Did not iron Birmingham, shouting 'Church and King,' itself knew not why, burst out, last July, into rage, drunkenness, and fire; and your Priestleys, and the like, dining there on that Bastille day, get the maddest singeing: scandalous to consider! In which same days, as we can remark, high Potentates, Austrian and Prussian, with Emigrants, were faring towards Pilnitz in Saxony; there, on the 27th of August, they, keeping to themselves what further 'secret Treaty' there might or might not be, did publish their hopes and their threatenings, their Declaration that it was 'the common cause of Kings.'
Where a will to quarrel is, there is a way. Our readers remember that Pentecost-Night, Fourth of August 1789, when Feudalism fell in a few hours? The National Assembly, in abolishing Feudalism, promised that 'compensation' should be given; and did endeavour to give it. Nevertheless the Austrian Kaiser answers that his German Princes, for their part, cannot be unfeudalised; that they have Possessions in French Alsace, and Feudal Rights secured to them, for which no conceivable compensation will suffice. So this of the Possessioned Princes, 'Princes Possessiones' is bandied from Court to Court; covers acres of diplomatic paper at this day: a weariness to the world. Kaunitz argues from Vienna; Delessart responds from Paris, though perhaps not sharply enough. The Kaiser and his Possessioned Princes will too evidently come and take compensation--so much as they can get. Nay might one not partition France, as we have done Poland, and are doing; and so pacify it with a vengeance?
From South to North! For actually it is 'the common cause of Kings.' Swedish Gustav, sworn Knight of the Queen of France, will lead Coalised Armies;--had not Ankarstrom treasonously shot him; for, indeed, there were griefs nearer home. (30th March 1792 (Annual Register, p. 11). Austria and Prussia speak at Pilnitz; all men intensely listening: Imperial Rescripts have gone out from Turin; there will be secret Convention at Vienna. Catherine of Russia beckons approvingly; will help, were she ready. Spanish Bourbon stirs amid his pillows; from him too, even from him, shall there come help. Lean Pitt, 'the Minister of Preparatives,' looks out from his watch-tower in Saint-James's, in a suspicious manner. Councillors plotting, Calonnes dim-hovering;--alas, Serjeants rub-a-dubbing openly through all manner of German market-towns, collecting ragged valour! (Toulongeon, ii. 100-117.) Look where you will, immeasurable Obscurantism is girdling this fair France; which, again, will not be girdled by it. Europe is in travail; pang after pang; what a shriek was that of Pilnitz! The birth will be: WAR.
Nay the worst feature of the business is this last, still to be named; the Emigrants at Coblentz, so many thousands ranking there, in bitter hate and menace: King's Brothers, all Princes of the Blood except wicked d'Orleans; your duelling de Castries, your eloquent Cazales; bull-headed Malseignes, a wargod Broglie; Distaff Seigneurs, insulted Officers, all that have ridden across the Rhine-stream;--d'Artois welcoming Abbe Maury with a kiss, and clasping him publicly to his own royal heart! Emigration, flowing over the Frontiers, now in drops, now in streams, in various humours of fear, of petulance, rage and hope, ever since those first Bastille days when d'Artois went, 'to shame the citizens of Paris,'--has swollen to the size of a Phenomenon of the world. Coblentz is become a small extra-national Versailles; a Versailles in partibus: briguing, intriguing, favouritism, strumpetocracy itself, they say, goes on there; all the old activities, on a small scale, quickened by hungry Revenge.
Enthusiasm, of loyalty, of hatred and hope, has risen to a high pitch; as, in any Coblentz tavern, you may hear, in speech, and in singing. Maury assists in the interior Council; much is decided on; for one thing, they keep lists of the dates of your emigrating; a month sooner, or a month later determines your greater or your less right to the coming Division of the Spoil. Cazales himself, because he had occasionally spoken with a Constitutional tone, was looked on coldly at first: so pure are our principles. (Montgaillard, iii. 517; Toulongeon, (ubi supra).) And arms are a-hammering at Liege; 'three thousand horses' ambling hitherward from the Fairs of Germany: Cavalry enrolling; likewise Foot-soldiers, 'in blue coat, red waistcoat, and nankeen trousers!' (See Hist. Parl. xiii. 11-38, 41-61, 358, &c.) They have their secret domestic correspondences, as their open foreign: with disaffected Crypto-Aristocrats, with contumacious Priests, with Austrian Committee in the Tuileries. Deserters are spirited over by assiduous crimps; Royal-Allemand is gone almost wholly. Their route of march, towards France and the Division of the Spoil, is marked out, were the Kaiser once ready. "It is said, they mean to poison the sources; but," adds Patriotism making Report of it, "they will not poison the source of Liberty," whereat 'on applaudit,' we cannot but applaud. Also they have manufactories of False Assignats; and men that circulate in the interior distributing and disbursing the same; one of these we denounce now to Legislative Patriotism: 'A man Lebrun by name; about thirty years of age, with blonde hair and in quantity; has,' only for the time being surely, 'a black-eye, oeil poche; goes in a wiski with a black horse,' (Moniteur, Seance du 2 Novembre 1791 (Hist. Parl. xii. 212).)--always keeping his Gig!
Unhappy Emigrants, it was their lot, and the lot of France! They are ignorant of much that they should know: of themselves, of what is around them. A Political Party that knows not when it is beaten, may become one of the fatallist of things, to itself, and to all. Nothing will convince these men that they cannot scatter the French Revolution at the first blast of their war-trumpet; that the French Revolution is other than a blustering Effervescence, of brawlers and spouters, which, at the flash of chivalrous broadswords, at the rustle of gallows-ropes, will burrow itself, in dens the deeper the welcomer. But, alas, what man does know and measure himself, and the things that are round him;--else where were the need of physical fighting at all? Never, till they are cleft asunder, can these heads believe that a Sansculottic arm has any vigour in it: cleft asunder, it will be too late to believe.
One may say, without spleen against his poor erring brothers of any side, that above all other mischiefs, this of the Emigrant Nobles acted fatally on France. Could they have known, could they have understood! In the beginning of 1789, a splendour and a terror still surrounded them: the Conflagration of their Chateaus, kindled by months of obstinacy, went out after the Fourth of August; and might have continued out, had they at all known what to defend, what to relinquish as indefensible. They were still a graduated Hierarchy of Authorities, or the accredited Similitude of such: they sat there, uniting King with Commonalty; transmitting and translating gradually, from degree to degree, the command of the one into the obedience of the other; rendering command and obedience still possible. Had they understood their place, and what to do in it, this French Revolution, which went forth explosively in years and in months, might have spread itself over generations; and not a torture-death but a quiet euthanasia have been provided for many things.
But they were proud and high, these men; they were not wise to consider. They spurned all from them; in disdainful hate, they drew the sword and flung away the scabbard. France has not only no Hierarchy of Authorities, to translate command into obedience; its Hierarchy of Authorities has fled to the enemies of France; calls loudly on the enemies of France to interfere armed, who want but a pretext to do that. Jealous Kings and Kaisers might have looked on long, meditating interference, yet afraid and ashamed to interfere: but now do not the King's Brothers, and all French Nobles, Dignitaries and Authorities that are free to speak, which the King himself is not,--passionately invite us, in the name of Right and of Might? Ranked at Coblentz, from Fifteen to Twenty thousand stand now brandishing their weapons, with the cry: On, on! Yes, Messieurs, you shall on;--and divide the spoil according to your dates of emigrating.
Of all which things a poor Legislative Assembly, and Patriot France, is informed: by denunciant friend, by triumphant foe. Sulleau's Pamphlets, of the Rivarol Staff of Genius, circulate; heralding supreme hope. Durosoy's Placards tapestry the walls; Chant du Coq crows day, pecked at by Tallien's Ami des Citoyens. King's-Friend, Royou, Ami du Roi, can name, in exact arithmetical ciphers, the contingents of the various Invading Potentates; in all, Four hundred and nineteen thousand Foreign fighting men, with Fifteen thousand Emigrants. Not to reckon these your daily and hourly desertions, which an Editor must daily record, of whole Companies, and even Regiments, crying Vive le Roi, vive la Reine, and marching over with banners spread: (Ami du Roi Newspaper (in Hist. Parl. xiii. 175).)-- lies all, and wind; yet to Patriotism not wind; nor, alas, one day, to Royou! Patriotism, therefore, may brawl and babble yet a little while: but its hours are numbered: Europe is coming with Four hundred and nineteen thousand and the Chivalry of France; the gallows, one may hope, will get its own.
5.VI.
Brigands and Jales.
We shall have War, then; and on what terms! With an Executive 'pretending,' really with less and less deceptiveness now, 'to be dead;' casting even a wishful eye towards the enemy: on such terms we shall have War.
Public Functionary in vigorous action there is none; if it be not Rivarol with his Staff of Genius and Two hundred and eighty Applauders. The Public Service lies waste: the very tax-gatherer has forgotten his cunning: in this and the other Provincial Board of Management (Directoire de Departmente) it is found advisable to retain what Taxes you can gather, to pay your own inevitable expenditures. Our Revenue is Assignats; emission on emission of Paper-money. And the Army; our Three grand Armies, of Rochambeau, of Luckner, of Lafayette? Lean, disconsolate hover these Three grand Armies, watching the Frontiers there; three Flights of long-necked Cranes in moulting time;--wretched, disobedient, disorganised; who never saw fire; the old Generals and Officers gone across the Rhine. War- minister Narbonne, he of the rose-coloured Reports, solicits recruitments, equipments, money, always money; threatens, since he can get none,- to 'take his sword,' which belongs to himself, and go serve his country with that. (Moniteur, Seance du 23 Janvier, 1792; Biographie des Ministres para Narbonne.)
The question of questions is: What shall be done? Shall we, with a desperate defiance which Fortune sometimes favours, draw the sword at once, in the face of this in-rushing world of Emigration and Obscurantism; or wait, and temporise and diplomatise, till, if possible, our resources mature themselves a little? And yet again are our resources growing towards maturity; or growing the other way? Dubious: the ablest Patriots are divided; Brissot and his Brissotins, or Girondins, in the Legislative, cry aloud for the former defiant plan; Robespierre, in the Jacobins, pleads as loud for the latter dilatory one: with responses, even with mutual reprimands; distracting the Mother of Patriotism. Consider also what agitated Breakfasts there may be at Madame d'Udon's in the Place Vendome! The alarm of all men is great. Help, ye Patriots; and O at least agree; for the hour presses. Frost was not yet gone, when in that 'tolerably handsome apartment of the Castle of Niort,' there arrived a Letter: General Dumouriez must to Paris. It is War-minister Narbonne that writes; the General shall give counsel about many things. (Dumouriez, ii. c. 6.) In the month of February 1792, Brissotin friends welcome their Dumouriez Polymetis,--comparable really to an antique Ulysses in modern costume; quick, elastic, shifty, insuppressible, a 'many-counselled man.'
Let the Reader fancy this fair France with a whole Cimmerian Europe girdling her, rolling in on her; black, to burst in red thunder of War; fair France herself hand-shackled and foot-shackled in the weltering complexities of this Social Clothing, or Constitution, which they have made for her; a France that, in such Constitution, cannot march! And Hunger too; and plotting Aristocrats, and excommunicating Dissident Priests: 'The man Lebrun by name' urging his black wiski, visible to the eye: and, still more terrible in his invisibility, Engineer Goguelat, with Queen's cipher, riding and running!
The excommunicatory Priests give new trouble in the Maine and Loire; La Vendee, nor Cathelineau the wool-dealer, has not ceased grumbling and rumbling. Nay behold Jales itself once more: how often does that real- imaginary Camp of the Fiend require to be extinguished! For near two years now, it has waned faint and again waxed bright, in the bewildered soul of Patriotism: actually, if Patriotism knew it, one of the most surprising products of Nature working with Art. Royalist Seigneurs, under this or the other pretext, assemble the simple people of these Cevennes Mountains; men not unused to revolt, and with heart for fighting, could their poor heads be got persuaded. The Royalist Seigneur harangues; harping mainly on the religious string: "True Priests maltreated, false Priests intruded, Protestants (once dragooned) now triumphing, things sacred given to the dogs;" and so produces, from the pious Mountaineer throat, rough growlings. "Shall we not testify, then, ye brave hearts of the Cevennes; march to the rescue? Holy Religion; duty to God and King?" "Si fait, si fait, Just so, just so," answer the brave hearts always: "Mais il y a de bien bonnes choses dans la Revolution, But there are many good things in the Revolution too!"--And so the matter, cajole as we may, will only turn on its axis, not stir from the spot, and remains theatrical merely. (Dampmartin, i. 201.)
Nevertheless deepen your cajolery, harp quick and quicker, ye Royalist Seigneurs; with a dead-lift effort you may bring it to that. In the month of June next, this Camp of Jales will step forth as a theatricality suddenly become real; Two thousand strong, and with the boast that it is Seventy thousand: most strange to see; with flags flying, bayonets fixed; with Proclamation, and d'Artois Commission of civil war! Let some Rebecqui, or other the like hot-clear Patriot; let some 'Lieutenant-Colonel Aubry,' if Rebecqui is busy elsewhere, raise instantaneous National Guards, and disperse and dissolve it; and blow the Old Castle asunder, (Moniteur, Seance du 15 Juillet 1792.) that so, if possible, we hear of it no more!
In the Months of February and March, it is recorded, the terror, especially of rural France, had risen even to the transcendental pitch: not far from madness. In Town and Hamlet is rumour; of war, massacre: that Austrians, Aristocrats, above all, that The Brigands are close by. Men quit their houses and huts; rush fugitive, shrieking, with wife and child, they know not whither. Such a terror, the eye-witnesses say, never fell on a Nation; nor shall again fall, even in Reigns of Terror expressly so-called. The Countries of the Loire, all the Central and South-East regions, start up distracted, 'simultaneously as by an electric shock;'--for indeed grain too gets scarcer and scarcer. 'The people barricade the entrances of Towns, pile stones in the upper stories, the women prepare boiling water; from moment to moment, expecting the attack. In the Country, the alarm-bell rings incessant: troops of peasants, gathered by it, scour the highways, seeking an imaginary enemy. They are armed mostly with scythes stuck in wood; and, arriving in wild troops at the barricaded Towns, are themselves sometimes taken for Brigands.' (Newspapers, &c. (in Hist. Parl. xiii. 325).)
So rushes old France: old France is rushing down. What the end will be is known to no mortal; that the end is near all mortals may know.
5.VII.
Constitution will not march.
To all which our poor Legislative, tied up by an unmarching Constitution, can oppose nothing, by way of remedy, but mere bursts of parliamentary eloquence! They go on, debating, denouncing, objurgating: loud weltering Chaos, which devours itself.
But their two thousand and odd Decrees? Reader, these happily concern not thee, nor me. Mere Occasional Decrees, foolish and not foolish; sufficient for that day was its own evil! Of the whole two thousand there are not, now half a score, and these mostly blighted in the bud by royal Veto, that will profit or disprofit us. On the 17th of January, the Legislative, for one thing, got its High Court, its Haute Cour, set up at Orleans. The theory had been given by the Constituent, in May last, but this is the reality: a Court for the trial of Political Offences; a Court which cannot want work. To this it was decreed that there needed no royal Acceptance, therefore that there could be no Veto. Also Priests can now be married; ever since last October. A patriotic adventurous Priest had made bold to marry himself then; and not thinking this enough, came to the bar with his new spouse; that the whole world might hold honey-moon with him, and a Law be obtained.
Less joyful are the Laws against Refractory Priests; and yet no less needful! Decrees on Priests and Decrees on Emigrants: these are the two brief Series of Decrees, worked out with endless debate, and then cancelled by Veto, which mainly concern us here. For an august National Assembly must needs conquer these Refractories, Clerical or Laic, and thumbscrew them into obedience; yet, behold, always as you turn your legislative thumbscrew, and will press and even crush till Refractories give way,-- King's Veto steps in, with magical paralysis; and your thumbscrew, hardly squeezing, much less crushing, does not act!
Truly a melancholy Set of Decrees, a pair of Sets; paralysed by Veto! First, under date the 28th of October 1791, we have Legislative Proclamation, issued by herald and bill-sticker; inviting Monsieur, the King's Brother to return within two months, under penalties. To which invitation Monsieur replies nothing; or indeed replies by Newspaper Parody, inviting the august Legislative 'to return to common sense within two months,' under penalties. Whereupon the Legislative must take stronger measures. So, on the 9th of November, we declare all Emigrants to be 'suspect of conspiracy;' and, in brief, to be 'outlawed,' if they have not returned at Newyear's-day:--Will the King say Veto? That 'triple impost' shall be levied on these men's Properties, or even their Properties be 'put in sequestration,' one can understand. But further, on Newyear's-day itself, not an individual having 'returned,' we declare, and with fresh emphasis some fortnight later again declare, That Monsieur is dechu, forfeited of his eventual Heirship to the Crown; nay more that Conde, Calonne, and a considerable List of others are accused of high treason; and shall be judged by our High Court of Orleans: Veto!--Then again as to Nonjurant Priests: it was decreed, in November last, that they should forfeit what Pensions they had; be 'put under inspection, under surveillance,' and, if need were, be banished: Veto! A still sharper turn is coming; but to this also the answer will be, Veto.
Veto after Veto; your thumbscrew paralysed! Gods and men may see that the Legislative is in a false position. As, alas, who is in a true one? Voices already murmur for a 'National Convention.' (December 1791 (Hist. Parl. xii. 257).) This poor Legislative, spurred and stung into action by a whole France and a whole Europe, cannot act; can only objurgate and perorate; with stormy 'motions,' and motion in which is no way: with effervescence, with noise and fuliginous fury!
What scenes in that National Hall! President jingling his inaudible bell; or, as utmost signal of distress, clapping on his hat; 'the tumult subsiding in twenty minutes,' and this or the other indiscreet Member sent to the Abbaye Prison for three days! Suspected Persons must be summoned and questioned; old M. de Sombreuil of the Invalides has to give account of himself, and why he leaves his Gates open. Unusual smoke rose from the Sevres Pottery, indicating conspiracy; the Potters explained that it was Necklace-Lamotte's Memoirs, bought up by her Majesty, which they were endeavouring to suppress by fire, (Moniteur, Seance du 28 Mai 1792; Campan, ii. 196.)--which nevertheless he that runs may still read.
Again, it would seem, Duke de Brissac and the King's Constitutional-Guard are 'making cartridges secretly in the cellars;' a set of Royalists, pure and impure; black cut-throats many of them, picked out of gaming houses and sinks; in all Six thousand instead of Eighteen hundred; who evidently gloom on us every time we enter the Chateau. (Dumouriez, ii. 168.) Wherefore, with infinite debate, let Brissac and King's Guard be disbanded. Disbanded accordingly they are; after only two months of existence, for they did not get on foot till March of this same year. So ends briefly the King's new Constitutional Maison Militaire; he must now be guarded by mere Swiss and blue Nationals again. It seems the lot of Constitutional things. New Constitutional Maison Civile he would never even establish, much as Barnave urged it; old resident Duchesses sniffed at it, and held aloof; on the whole her Majesty thought it not worth while, the Noblesse would so soon be back triumphant. (Campan, ii. c. 19.)
Or, looking still into this National Hall and its scenes, behold Bishop Torne, a Constitutional Prelate, not of severe morals, demanding that 'religious costumes and such caricatures' be abolished. Bishop Torne warms, catches fire; finishes by untying, and indignantly flinging on the table, as if for gage or bet, his own pontifical cross. Which cross, at any rate, is instantly covered by the cross of Te-Deum Fauchet, then by other crosses, and insignia, till all are stripped; this clerical Senator clutching off his skull-cap, that other his frill-collar,--lest Fanaticism return on us. (Moniteur, du 7 Avril 1792; Deux Amis, vii. 111.)
Quick is the movement here! And then so confused, unsubstantial, you might call it almost spectral; pallid, dim, inane, like the Kingdoms of Dis! Unruly Liguet, shrunk to a kind of spectre for us, pleads here, some cause that he has: amid rumour and interruption, which excel human patience; he 'tears his papers, and withdraws,' the irascible adust little man. Nay honourable members will tear their papers, being effervescent: Merlin of Thionville tears his papers, crying: "So, the People cannot be saved by you!" Nor are Deputations wanting: Deputations of Sections; generally with complaint and denouncement, always with Patriot fervour of sentiment: Deputation of Women, pleading that they also may be allowed to take Pikes, and exercise in the Champ-de-Mars. Why not, ye Amazons, if it be in you? Then occasionally, having done our message and got answer, we 'defile through the Hall, singing ca-ira;' or rather roll and whirl through it, 'dancing our ronde patriotique the while,'--our new Carmagnole, or Pyrrhic war-dance and liberty-dance. Patriot Huguenin, Ex-Advocate, Ex-Carabineer, Ex-Clerk of the Barriers, comes deputed, with Saint-Antoine at his heels; denouncing Anti-patriotism, Famine, Forstalment and Man-eaters; asks an august Legislative: "Is there not a tocsin in your hearts against these mangeurs d'hommes!" (See Moniteur, Seances (in Hist. Parl. xiii. xiv.).)
But above all things, for this is a continual business, the Legislative has to reprimand the King's Ministers. Of His Majesty's Ministers we have said hitherto, and say, next to nothing. Still more spectral these! Sorrowful; of no permanency any of them, none at least since Montmorin vanished: the 'eldest of the King's Council' is occasionally not ten days old! (Dumouriez, ii. 137.) Feuillant-Constitutional, as your respectable Cahier de Gerville, as your respectable unfortunate Delessarts; or Royalist- Constitutional, as Montmorin last Friend of Necker; or Aristocrat as Bertrand-Moleville: they flit there phantom-like, in the huge simmering confusion; poor shadows, dashed in the racking winds; powerless, without meaning;--whom the human memory need not charge itself with.
But how often, we say, are these poor Majesty's Ministers summoned over; to be questioned, tutored; nay, threatened, almost bullied! They answer what, with adroitest simulation and casuistry, they can: of which a poor Legislative knows not what to make. One thing only is clear, That Cimmerian Europe is girdling us in; that France (not actually dead, surely?) cannot march. Have a care, ye Ministers! Sharp Guadet transfixes you with cross-questions, with sudden Advocate-conclusions; the sleeping tempest that is in Vergniaud can be awakened. Restless Brissot brings up Reports, Accusations, endless thin Logic; it is the man's highday even now. Condorcet redacts, with his firm pen, our 'Address of the Legislative Assembly to the French Nation.' (16th February 1792 (Choix des Rapports, viii. 375-92).) Fiery Max Isnard, who, for the rest, will "carry not Fire and Sword" on those Cimmerian Enemies "but Liberty,"--is for declaring "that we hold Ministers responsible; and that by responsibility we mean death, nous entendons la mort."
For verily it grows serious: the time presses, and traitors there are. Bertrand-Moleville has a smooth tongue, the known Aristocrat; gall in his heart. How his answers and explanations flow ready; jesuitic, plausible to the ear! But perhaps the notablest is this, which befel once when Bertrand had done answering and was withdrawn. Scarcely had the august Assembly begun considering what was to be done with him, when the Hall fills with smoke. Thick sour smoke: no oratory, only wheezing and barking;-- irremediable; so that the august Assembly has to adjourn! (Courrier de Paris, 14 Janvier, 1792 (Gorsas's Newspaper), in Hist. Parl. xiii. 83.) A miracle? Typical miracle? One knows not: only this one seems to know, that 'the Keeper of the Stoves was appointed by Bertrand' or by some underling of his!--O fuliginous confused Kingdom of Dis, with thy Tantalus- Ixion toils, with thy angry Fire-floods, and Streams named of Lamentation, why hast thou not thy Lethe too, that so one might finish?
5.VIII.
The Jacobins.
Nevertheless let not Patriotism despair. Have we not, in Paris at least, a virtuous Petion, a wholly Patriotic Municipality? Virtuous Petion, ever since November, is Mayor of Paris: in our Municipality, the Public, for the Public is now admitted too, may behold an energetic Danton; further, an epigrammatic slow-sure Manuel; a resolute unrepentant Billaud-Varennes, of Jesuit breeding; Tallien able-editor; and nothing but Patriots, better or worse. So ran the November Elections: to the joy of most citizens; nay the very Court supported Petion rather than Lafayette. And so Bailly and his Feuillants, long waning like the Moon, had to withdraw then, making some sorrowful obeisance, into extinction;--or indeed into worse, into lurid half-light, grimmed by the shadow of that Red Flag of theirs, and bitter memory of the Champ-de-Mars. How swift is the progress of things and men! Not now does Lafayette, as on that Federation-day, when his noon was, 'press his sword firmly on the Fatherland's Altar,' and swear in sight of France: ah no; he, waning and setting ever since that hour, hangs now, disastrous, on the edge of the horizon; commanding one of those Three moulting Crane-flights of Armies, in a most suspected, unfruitful, uncomfortable manner!
But, at most, cannot Patriotism, so many thousands strong in this Metropolis of the Universe, help itself? Has it not right-hands, pikes? Hammering of pikes, which was not to be prohibited by Mayor Bailly, has been sanctioned by Mayor Petion; sanctioned by Legislative Assembly. How not, when the King's so-called Constitutional Guard 'was making cartridges in secret?' Changes are necessary for the National Guard itself; this whole Feuillant-Aristocrat Staff of the Guard must be disbanded. Likewise, citizens without uniform may surely rank in the Guard, the pike beside the musket, in such a time: the 'active' citizen and the passive who can fight for us, are they not both welcome?--O my Patriot friends, indubitably Yes! Nay the truth is, Patriotism throughout, were it never so white-frilled, logical, respectable, must either lean itself heartily on Sansculottism, the black, bottomless; or else vanish, in the frightfullest way, to Limbo! Thus some, with upturned nose, will altogether sniff and disdain Sansculottism; others will lean heartily on it; nay others again will lean what we call heartlessly on it: three sorts; each sort with a destiny corresponding. (Discours de Bailly, Reponse de Petion (Moniteur du 20 Novembre 1791).)
In such point of view, however, have we not for the present a Volunteer Ally, stronger than all the rest: namely, Hunger? Hunger; and what rushing of Panic Terror this and the sum-total of our other miseries may bring! For Sansculottism grows by what all other things die of. Stupid Peter Baille almost made an epigram, though unconsciously, and with the Patriot world laughing not at it but at him, when he wrote 'Tout va bien ici, le pain manque, All goes well here, victuals not to be had.' (Barbaroux, p. 94.)
Neither, if you knew it, is Patriotism without her Constitution that can march; her not impotent Parliament; or call it, Ecumenic Council, and General-Assembly of the Jean-Jacques Churches: the MOTHER-SOCIETY, namely! Mother-Society with her three hundred full-grown Daughters; with what we can call little Granddaughters trying to walk, in every village of France, numerable, as Burke thinks, by the hundred thousand. This is the true Constitution; made not by Twelve-Hundred august Senators, but by Nature herself; and has grown, unconsciously, out of the wants and the efforts of these Twenty-five Millions of men. They are 'Lords of the Articles,' our Jacobins; they originate debates for the Legislative; discuss Peace and War; settle beforehand what the Legislative is to do. Greatly to the scandal of philosophical men, and of most Historians;--who do in that judge naturally, and yet not wisely. A Governing power must exist: your other powers here are simulacra; this power is it.
Great is the Mother-Society: She has had the honour to be denounced by Austrian Kaunitz; (Moniteur, Seance du 29 Mars, 1792.) and is all the dearer to Patriotism. By fortune and valour, she has extinguished Feuillantism itself, at least the Feuillant Club. This latter, high as it once carried its head, she, on the 18th of February, has the satisfaction to see shut, extinct; Patriots having gone thither, with tumult, to hiss it out of pain. The Mother Society has enlarged her locality, stretches now over the whole nave of the Church. Let us glance in, with the worthy Toulongeon, our old Ex-Constituent Friend, who happily has eyes to see: 'The nave of the Jacobins Church,' says he, 'is changed into a vast Circus, the seats of which mount up circularly like an amphitheatre to the very groin of the domed roof. A high Pyramid of black marble, built against one of the walls, which was formerly a funeral monument, has alone been left standing: it serves now as back to the Office-bearers' Bureau. Here on an elevated Platform sit President and Secretaries, behind and above them the white Busts of Mirabeau, of Franklin, and various others, nay finally of Marat. Facing this is the Tribune, raised till it is midway between floor and groin of the dome, so that the speaker's voice may be in the centre. From that point, thunder the voices which shake all Europe: down below, in silence, are forging the thunderbolts and the firebrands. Penetrating into this huge circuit, where all is out of measure, gigantic, the mind cannot repress some movement of terror and wonder; the imagination recals those dread temples which Poetry, of old, had consecrated to the Avenging Deities.' (Toulongeon, ii. 124.)
Scenes too are in this Jacobin Amphitheatre,--had History time for them. Flags of the 'Three free Peoples of the Universe,' trinal brotherly flags of England, America, France, have been waved here in concert; by London Deputation, of Whigs or Wighs and their Club, on this hand, and by young French Citizenesses on that; beautiful sweet-tongued Female Citizens, who solemnly send over salutation and brotherhood, also Tricolor stitched by their own needle, and finally Ears of Wheat; while the dome rebellows with Vivent les trois peuples libres! from all throats:--a most dramatic scene. Demoiselle Theroigne recites, from that Tribune in mid air, her persecutions in Austria; comes leaning on the arm of Joseph Chenier, Poet Chenier, to demand Liberty for the hapless Swiss of Chateau-Vieux. (Debats des Jacobins (Hist. Parl. xiii. 259, &c.).) Be of hope, ye Forty Swiss; tugging there, in the Brest waters; not forgotten!
Deputy Brissot perorates from that Tribune; Desmoulins, our wicked Camille, interjecting audibly from below, "Coquin!" Here, though oftener in the Cordeliers, reverberates the lion-voice of Danton; grim Billaud-Varennes is here; Collot d'Herbois, pleading for the Forty Swiss; tearing a passion to rags. Apophthegmatic Manuel winds up in this pithy way: "A Minister must perish!"--to which the Amphitheatre responds: "Tous, Tous, All, All!" But the Chief Priest and Speaker of this place, as we said, is Robespierre, the long-winded incorruptible man. What spirit of Patriotism dwelt in men in those times, this one fact, it seems to us, will evince: that fifteen hundred human creatures, not bound to it, sat quiet under the oratory of Robespierre; nay, listened nightly, hour after hour, applausive; and gaped as for the word of life. More insupportable individual, one would say, seldom opened his mouth in any Tribune. Acrid, implacable-impotent; dull- drawling, barren as the Harmattan-wind! He pleads, in endless earnest- shallow speech, against immediate War, against Woollen Caps or Bonnets Rouges, against many things; and is the Trismegistus and Dalai-Lama of Patriot men. Whom nevertheless a shrill-voiced little man, yet with fine eyes, and a broad beautifully sloping brow, rises respectfully to controvert: he is, say the Newspaper Reporters, 'M. Louvet, Author of the charming Romance of Faublas.' Steady, ye Patriots! Pull not yet two ways; with a France rushing panic-stricken in the rural districts, and a Cimmerian Europe storming in on you!
5.IX.
Minister Roland.
About the vernal equinox, however, one unexpected gleam of hope does burst forth on Patriotism: the appointment of a thoroughly Patriot Ministry. This also his Majesty, among his innumerable experiments of wedding fire to water, will try. Quod bonum sit. Madame d'Udon's Breakfasts have jingled with a new significance; not even Genevese Dumont but had a word in it. Finally, on the 15th and onwards to the 23d day of March, 1792, when all is negociated,--this is the blessed issue; this Patriot Ministry that we see.
General Dumouriez, with the Foreign Portfolio shall ply Kaunitz and the Kaiser, in another style than did poor Delessarts; whom indeed we have sent to our High Court of Orleans for his sluggishness. War-minister Narbonne is washed away by the Time-flood; poor Chevalier de Grave, chosen by the Court, is fast washing away: then shall austere Servan, able Engineer- Officer, mount suddenly to the War Department. Genevese Claviere sees an old omen realized: passing the Finance Hotel, long years ago, as a poor Genevese Exile, it was borne wondrously on his mind that he was to be Finance Minister; and now he is it;--and his poor Wife, given up by the Doctors, rises and walks, not the victim of nerves but their vanquisher. (Dumont, c. 20, 21.) And above all, our Minister of the Interior? Roland de la Platriere, he of Lyons! So have the Brissotins, public or private Opinion, and Breakfasts in the Place Vendome decided it. Strict Roland, compared to a Quaker endimanche, or Sunday Quaker, goes to kiss hands at the Tuileries, in round hat and sleek hair, his shoes tied with mere riband or ferrat! The Supreme Usher twitches Dumouriez aside: "Quoi, Monsieur! No buckles to his shoes?"--"Ah, Monsieur," answers Dumouriez, glancing towards the ferrat: "All is lost, Tout est perdu." (Madame Roland, ii. 80-115.)
And so our fair Roland removes from her upper floor in the Rue Saint- Jacques, to the sumptuous saloons once occupied by Madame Necker. Nay still earlier, it was Calonne that did all this gilding; it was he who ground these lustres, Venetian mirrors; who polished this inlaying, this veneering and or-moulu; and made it, by rubbing of the proper lamp, an Aladdin's Palace:--and now behold, he wanders dim-flitting over Europe, half-drowned in the Rhine-stream, scarcely saving his Papers! Vos non vobis.--The fair Roland, equal to either fortune, has her public Dinner on Fridays, the Ministers all there in a body: she withdraws to her desk (the cloth once removed), and seems busy writing; nevertheless loses no word: if for example Deputy Brissot and Minister Claviere get too hot in argument, she, not without timidity, yet with a cunning gracefulness, will interpose. Deputy Brissot's head, they say, is getting giddy, in this sudden height: as feeble heads do.
Envious men insinuate that the Wife Roland is Minister, and not the Husband: it is happily the worst they have to charge her with. For the rest, let whose head soever be getting giddy, it is not this brave woman's. Serene and queenly here, as she was of old in her own hired garret of the Ursulines Convent! She who has quietly shelled French-beans for her dinner; being led to that, as a young maiden, by quiet insight and computation; and knowing what that was, and what she was: such a one will also look quietly on or-moulu and veneering, not ignorant of these either. Calonne did the veneering: he gave dinners here, old Besenval diplomatically whispering to him; and was great: yet Calonne we saw at last 'walk with long strides.' Necker next: and where now is Necker? Us also a swift change has brought hither; a swift change will send us hence. Not a Palace but a Caravansera!
So wags and wavers this unrestful World, day after day, month after month. The Streets of Paris, and all Cities, roll daily their oscillatory flood of men; which flood does, nightly, disappear, and lie hidden horizontal in beds and trucklebeds; and awakes on the morrow to new perpendicularity and movement. Men go their roads, foolish or wise;--Engineer Goguelat to and fro, bearing Queen's cipher. A Madame de Stael is busy; cannot clutch her Narbonne from the Time-flood: a Princess de Lamballe is busy; cannot help her Queen. Barnave, seeing the Feuillants dispersed, and Coblentz so brisk, begs by way of final recompence to kiss her Majesty's hand; augurs not well of her new course; and retires home to Grenoble, to wed an heiress there. The Cafe Valois and Meot the Restaurateur's hear daily gasconade; loud babble of Half-pay Royalists, with or without Poniards; remnants of Aristocrat saloons call the new Ministry Ministere-Sansculotte. A Louvet, of the Romance Faublas, is busy in the Jacobins. A Cazotte, of the Romance Diable Amoureux, is busy elsewhere: better wert thou quiet, old Cazotte; it is a world, this, of magic become real! All men are busy; doing they only half guess what:--flinging seeds, of tares mostly, into the Seed-field of TIME"' this, by and by, will declare wholly what.
But Social Explosions have in them something dread, and as it were mad and magical: which indeed Life always secretly has; thus the dumb Earth (says Fable), if you pull her mandrake-roots, will give a daemonic mad-making moan. These Explosions and Revolts ripen, break forth like dumb dread Forces of Nature; and yet they are Men's forces; and yet we are part of them: the Daemonic that is in man's life has burst out on us, will sweep us too away!--One day here is like another, and yet it is not like but different. How much is growing, silently resistless, at all moments! Thoughts are growing; forms of Speech are growing, and Customs and even Costumes; still more visibly are actions and transactions growing, and that doomed Strife, of France with herself and with the whole world.
The word Liberty is never named now except in conjunction with another; Liberty and Equality. In like manner, what, in a reign of Liberty and Equality, can these words, 'Sir,' 'obedient Servant,' 'Honour to be,' and such like, signify? Tatters and fibres of old Feudality; which, were it only in the Grammatical province, ought to be rooted out! The Mother Society has long since had proposals to that effect: these she could not entertain, not at the moment. Note too how the Jacobin Brethren are mounting new symbolical headgear: the Woollen Cap or Nightcap, bonnet de laine, better known as bonnet rouge, the colour being red. A thing one wears not only by way of Phrygian Cap-of-Liberty, but also for convenience' sake, and then also in compliment to the Lower-class Patriots and Bastille- Heroes; for the Red Nightcap combines all the three properties. Nay cockades themselves begin to be made of wool, of tricolor yarn: the riband-cockade, as a symptom of Feuillant Upper-class temper, is becoming suspicious. Signs of the times.
Still more, note the travail-throes of Europe: or, rather, note the birth she brings; for the successive throes and shrieks, of Austrian and Prussian Alliance, of Kaunitz Anti-jacobin Despatch, of French Ambassadors cast out, and so forth, were long to note. Dumouriez corresponds with Kaunitz, Metternich, or Cobentzel, in another style that Delessarts did. Strict becomes stricter; categorical answer, as to this Coblentz work and much else, shall be given. Failing which? Failing which, on the 20th day of April 1792, King and Ministers step over to the Salle de Manege; promulgate how the matter stands; and poor Louis, 'with tears in his eyes,' proposes that the Assembly do now decree War. After due eloquence, War is decreed that night.
War, indeed! Paris came all crowding, full of expectancy, to the morning, and still more to the evening session. D'Orleans with his two sons, is there; looks on, wide-eyed, from the opposite Gallery. (Deux Amis, vii. 146-66.) Thou canst look, O Philippe: it is a War big with issues, for thee and for all men. Cimmerian Obscurantism and this thrice glorious Revolution shall wrestle for it, then: some Four-and-twenty years; in immeasurable Briareus' wrestle; trampling and tearing; before they can come to any, not agreement, but compromise, and approximate ascertainment each of what is in the other.
Let our Three Generals on the Frontiers look to it, therefore; and poor Chevalier de Grave, the Warminister, consider what he will do. What is in the three Generals and Armies we may guess. As for poor Chevalier de Grave, he, in this whirl of things all coming to a press and pinch upon him, loses head, and merely whirls with them, in a totally distracted manner; signing himself at last, 'De Grave, Mayor of Paris:' whereupon he demits, returns over the Channel, to walk in Kensington Gardens; (Dumont, c. 19, 21.) and austere Servan, the able Engineer-Officer, is elevated in his stead. To the post of Honour? To that of Difficulty, at least.
5.X.
Petion-National-Pique.
And yet, how, on dark bottomless Cataracts there plays the foolishest fantastic-coloured spray and shadow; hiding the Abyss under vapoury rainbows! Alongside of this discussion as to Austrian-Prussian War, there goes on no less but more vehemently a discussion, Whether the Forty or Two- and-forty Swiss of Chateau-Vieux shall be liberated from the Brest Gallies? And then, Whether, being liberated, they shall have a public Festival, or only private ones?
Theroigne, as we saw, spoke; and Collot took up the tale. Has not Bouille's final display of himself, in that final Night of Spurs, stamped your so-called 'Revolt of Nanci' into a 'Massacre of Nanci,' for all Patriot judgments? Hateful is that massacre; hateful the Lafayette- Feuillant 'public thanks' given for it! For indeed, Jacobin Patriotism and dispersed Feuillantism are now at death-grips; and do fight with all weapons, even with scenic shows. The walls of Paris, accordingly, are covered with Placard and Counter-Placard, on the subject of Forty Swiss blockheads. Journal responds to Journal; Player Collot to Poetaster Roucher; Joseph Chenier the Jacobin, squire of Theroigne, to his Brother Andre the Feuillant; Mayor Petion to Dupont de Nemours: and for the space of two months, there is nowhere peace for the thought of man,--till this thing be settled.
Gloria in excelsis! The Forty Swiss are at last got 'amnestied.' Rejoice ye Forty: doff your greasy wool Bonnets, which shall become Caps of Liberty. The Brest Daughter-Society welcomes you from on board, with kisses on each cheek: your iron Handcuffs are disputed as Relics of Saints; the Brest Society indeed can have one portion, which it will beat into Pikes, a sort of Sacred Pikes; but the other portion must belong to Paris, and be suspended from the dome there, along with the Flags of the Three Free Peoples! Such a goose is man; and cackles over plush-velvet Grand Monarques and woollen Galley-slaves; over everything and over nothing,--and will cackle with his whole soul merely if others cackle!
On the ninth morning of April, these Forty Swiss blockheads arrive. From Versailles; with vivats heaven-high; with the affluence of men and women. To the Townhall we conduct them; nay to the Legislative itself, though not without difficulty. They are harangued, bedinnered, begifted,--the very Court, not for conscience' sake, contributing something; and their Public Festival shall be next Sunday. Next Sunday accordingly it is. (Newspapers of February, March, April, 1792; Iambe d'Andre Chenier sur la Fete des Suisses; &c., &c. (in Hist. Parl. xiii, xiv.).) They are mounted into a 'triumphal Car resembling a ship;' are carted over Paris, with the clang of cymbals and drums, all mortals assisting applausive; carted to the Champ- de-Mars and Fatherland's Altar; and finally carted, for Time always brings deliverance,--into invisibility for evermore.
Whereupon dispersed Feuillantism, or that Party which loves Liberty yet not more than Monarchy, will likewise have its Festival: Festival of Simonneau, unfortunate Mayor of Etampes, who died for the Law; most surely for the Law, though Jacobinism disputes; being trampled down with his Red Flag in the riot about grains. At which Festival the Public again assists, unapplausive: not we.
On the whole, Festivals are not wanting; beautiful rainbow-spray when all is now rushing treble-quick towards its Niagara Fall. National repasts there are; countenanced by Mayor Petion; Saint-Antoine, and the Strong Ones of the Halles defiling through Jacobin Club, "their felicity," according to Santerre, "not perfect otherwise;" singing many-voiced their ca-ira, dancing their ronde patriotique. Among whom one is glad to discern Saint- Huruge, expressly 'in white hat,' the Saint-Christopher of the Carmagnole. Nay a certain, Tambour or National Drummer, having just been presented with a little daughter, determines to have the new Frenchwoman christened on Fatherland's Altar then and there. Repast once over, he accordingly has her christened; Fauchet the Te-Deum Bishop acting in chief, Thuriot and honourable persons standing gossips: by the name, Petion-National-Pique! (Patriote-Francais (Brissot's Newspaper), in Hist. Parl. xiii. 451.) Does this remarkable Citizeness, now past the meridian of life, still walk the Earth? Or did she die perhaps of teething? Universal History is not indifferent.
5.XI.
The Hereditary Representative.
And yet it is not by carmagnole-dances and singing of ca-ira, that the work can be done. Duke Brunswick is not dancing carmagnoles, but has his drill serjeants busy.
On the Frontiers, our Armies, be it treason or not, behave in the worst way. Troops badly commanded, shall we say? Or troops intrinsically bad? Unappointed, undisciplined, mutinous; that, in a thirty-years peace, have never seen fire? In any case, Lafayette's and Rochambeau's little clutch, which they made at Austrian Flanders, has prospered as badly as clutch need do: soldiers starting at their own shadow; suddenly shrieking, "On nous trahit," and flying off in wild panic, at or before the first shot;-- managing only to hang some two or three Prisoners they had picked up, and massacre their own Commander, poor Theobald Dillon, driven into a granary by them in the Town of Lille.
And poor Gouvion: he who sat shiftless in that Insurrection of Women! Gouvion quitted the Legislative Hall and Parliamentary duties, in disgust and despair, when those Galley-slaves of Chateau-Vieux were admitted there. He said, "Between the Austrians and the Jacobins there is nothing but a soldier's death for it;" (Toulongeon, ii. 149.) and so, 'in the dark stormy night,' he has flung himself into the throat of the Austrian cannon, and perished in the skirmish at Maubeuge on the ninth of June. Whom Legislative Patriotism shall mourn, with black mortcloths and melody in the Champ-de-Mars: many a Patriot shiftier, truer none. Lafayette himself is looking altogether dubious; in place of beating the Austrians, is about writing to denounce the Jacobins. Rochambeau, all disconsolate, quits the service: there remains only Luckner, the babbling old Prussian Grenadier.
Without Armies, without Generals! And the Cimmerian Night, has gathered itself; Brunswick preparing his Proclamation; just about to march! Let a Patriot Ministry and Legislative say, what in these circumstances it will do? Suppress Internal Enemies, for one thing, answers the Patriot Legislative; and proposes, on the 24th of May, its Decree for the Banishment of Priests. Collect also some nucleus of determined internal friends, adds War-minister Servan; and proposes, on the 7th of June, his Camp of Twenty-thousand. Twenty-thousand National Volunteers; Five out of each Canton; picked Patriots, for Roland has charge of the Interior: they shall assemble here in Paris; and be for a defence, cunningly devised, against foreign Austrians and domestic Austrian Committee alike. So much can a Patriot Ministry and Legislative do.
Reasonable and cunningly devised as such Camp may, to Servan and Patriotism, appear, it appears not so to Feuillantism; to that Feuillant- Aristocrat Staff of the Paris Guard; a Staff, one would say again, which will need to be dissolved. These men see, in this proposed Camp of Servan's, an offence; and even, as they pretend to say, an insult. Petitions there come, in consequence, from blue Feuillants in epaulettes; ill received. Nay, in the end, there comes one Petition, called 'of the Eight Thousand National Guards:' so many names are on it; including women and children. Which famed Petition of the Eight Thousand is indeed received: and the Petitioners, all under arms, are admitted to the honours of the sitting,--if honours or even if sitting there be; for the instant their bayonets appear at the one door, the Assembly 'adjourns,' and begins to flow out at the other. (Moniteur, Seance du 10 Juin 1792.)
Also, in these same days, it is lamentable to see how National Guards, escorting Fete Dieu or Corpus-Christi ceremonial, do collar and smite down any Patriot that does not uncover as the Hostie passes. They clap their bayonets to the breast of Cattle-butcher Legendre, a known Patriot ever since the Bastille days; and threaten to butcher him; though he sat quite respectfully, he says, in his Gig, at a distance of fifty paces, waiting till the thing were by. Nay, orthodox females were shrieking to have down the Lanterne on him. (Debats des Jacobins (in Hist. Parl. xiv. 429).)
To such height has Feuillantism gone in this Corps. For indeed, are not their Officers creatures of the chief Feuillant, Lafayette? The Court too has, very naturally, been tampering with them; caressing them, ever since that dissolution of the so-called Constitutional Guard. Some Battalions are altogether 'petris, kneaded full' of Feuillantism, mere Aristocrats at bottom: for instance, the Battalion of the Filles-Saint-Thomas, made up of your Bankers, Stockbrokers, and other Full-purses of the Rue Vivienne. Our worthy old Friend Weber, Queen's Foster-brother Weber, carries a musket in that Battalion,--one may judge with what degree of Patriotic intention.
Heedless of all which, or rather heedful of all which, the Legislative, backed by Patriot France and the feeling of Necessity, decrees this Camp of Twenty thousand. Decisive though conditional Banishment of malign Priests, it has already decreed.
It will now be seen, therefore, Whether the Hereditary Representative is for us or against us? Whether or not, to all our other woes, this intolerablest one is to be added; which renders us not a menaced Nation in extreme jeopardy and need, but a paralytic Solecism of a Nation; sitting wrapped as in dead cerements, of a Constitutional-Vesture that were no other than a winding-sheet; our right hand glued to our left: to wait there, writhing and wriggling, unable to stir from the spot, till in Prussian rope we mount to the gallows? Let the Hereditary Representative consider it well: The Decree of Priests? The Camp of Twenty Thousand?--By Heaven, he answers, Veto! Veto!--Strict Roland hands in his Letter to the King; or rather it was Madame's Letter, who wrote it all at a sitting; one of the plainest-spoken Letters ever handed in to any King. This plain- spoken Letter King Louis has the benefit of reading overnight. He reads, inwardly digests; and next morning, the whole Patriot Ministry finds itself turned out. It is the 13th of June 1792. (Madame Roland, ii. 115.)
Dumouriez the many-counselled, he, with one Duranthon, called Minister of Justice, does indeed linger for a day or two; in rather suspicious circumstances; speaks with the Queen, almost weeps with her: but in the end, he too sets off for the Army; leaving what Un-Patriot or Semi-Patriot Ministry and Ministries can now accept the helm, to accept it. Name them not: new quick-changing Phantasms, which shift like magic-lantern figures; more spectral than ever!
Unhappy Queen, unhappy Louis! The two Vetos were so natural: are not the Priests martyrs; also friends? This Camp of Twenty Thousand, could it be other than of stormfullest Sansculottes? Natural; and yet, to France, unendurable. Priests that co-operate with Coblentz must go elsewhither with their martyrdom: stormful Sansculottes, these and no other kind of creatures, will drive back the Austrians. If thou prefer the Austrians, then for the love of Heaven go join them. If not, join frankly with what will oppose them to the death. Middle course is none.
Or alas, what extreme course was there left now, for a man like Louis? Underhand Royalists, Ex-Minister Bertrand-Moleville, Ex-Constituent Malouet, and all manner of unhelpful individuals, advise and advise. With face of hope turned now on the Legislative Assembly, and now on Austria and Coblentz, and round generally on the Chapter of Chances, an ancient Kingship is reeling and spinning, one knows not whitherward, on the flood of things.
5.XII.
Procession of the Black Breeches.
But is there a thinking man in France who, in these circumstances, can persuade himself that the Constitution will march? Brunswick is stirring; he, in few days now, will march. Shall France sit still, wrapped in dead cerements and grave-clothes, its right hand glued to its left, till the Brunswick Saint-Bartholomew arrive; till France be as Poland, and its Rights of Man become a Prussian Gibbet?
Verily, it is a moment frightful for all men. National Death; or else some preternatural convulsive outburst of National Life;--that same, daemonic outburst! Patriots whose audacity has limits had, in truth, better retire like Barnave; court private felicity at Grenoble. Patriots, whose audacity has no limits must sink down into the obscure; and, daring and defying all things, seek salvation in stratagem, in Plot of Insurrection. Roland and young Barbaroux have spread out the Map of France before them, Barbaroux says 'with tears:' they consider what Rivers, what Mountain ranges are in it: they will retire behind this Loire-stream, defend these Auvergne stone-labyrinths; save some little sacred Territory of the Free; die at least in their last ditch. Lafayette indites his emphatic Letter to the Legislative against Jacobinism; (Moniteur, Seance du 18 Juin 1792.) which emphatic Letter will not heal the unhealable.
Forward, ye Patriots whose audacity has no limits; it is you now that must either do or die! The sections of Paris sit in deep counsel; send out Deputation after Deputation to the Salle de Manege, to petition and denounce. Great is their ire against tyrannous Veto, Austrian Committee, and the combined Cimmerian Kings. What boots it? Legislative listens to the 'tocsin in our hearts;' grants us honours of the sitting, sees us defile with jingle and fanfaronade; but the Camp of Twenty Thousand, the Priest-Decree, be-vetoed by Majesty, are become impossible for Legislative. Fiery Isnard says, "We will have Equality, should we descend for it to the tomb." Vergniaud utters, hypothetically, his stern Ezekiel-visions of the fate of Anti-national Kings. But the question is: Will hypothetic prophecies, will jingle and fanfaronade demolish the Veto; or will the Veto, secure in its Tuileries Chateau, remain undemolishable by these? Barbaroux, dashing away his tears, writes to the Marseilles Municipality, that they must send him 'Six hundred men who know how to die, qui savent mourir.' (Barbaroux, p. 40.) No wet-eyed message this, but a fire-eyed one;--which will be obeyed!
Meanwhile the Twentieth of June is nigh, anniversary of that world-famous Oath of the Tennis-Court: on which day, it is said, certain citizens have in view to plant a Mai or Tree of Liberty, in the Tuileries Terrace of the Feuillants; perhaps also to petition the Legislative and Hereditary Representative about these Vetos;--with such demonstration, jingle and evolution, as may seem profitable and practicable. Sections have gone singly, and jingled and evolved: but if they all went, or great part of them, and there, planting their Mai in these alarming circumstances, sounded the tocsin in their hearts?
Among King's Friends there can be but one opinion as to such a step: among Nation's Friends there may be two. On the one hand, might it not by possibility scare away these unblessed Vetos? Private Patriots and even Legislative Deputies may have each his own opinion, or own no-opinion: but the hardest task falls evidently on Mayor Petion and the Municipals, at once Patriots and Guardians of the public Tranquillity. Hushing the matter down with the one hand; tickling it up with the other! Mayor Petion and Municipality may lean this way; Department-Directory with Procureur-Syndic Roederer having a Feuillant tendency, may lean that. On the whole, each man must act according to his one opinion or to his two opinions; and all manner of influences, official representations cross one another in the foolishest way. Perhaps after all, the Project, desirable and yet not desirable, will dissipate itself, being run athwart by so many complexities; and coming to nothing?
Not so: on the Twentieth morning of June, a large Tree of Liberty, Lombardy Poplar by kind, lies visibly tied on its car, in the Suburb- Antoine. Suburb Saint-Marceau too, in the uttermost South-East, and all that remote Oriental region, Pikemen and Pikewomen, National Guards, and the unarmed curious are gathering,--with the peaceablest intentions in the world. A tricolor Municipal arrives; speaks. Tush, it is all peaceable, we tell thee, in the way of Law: are not Petitions allowable, and the Patriotism of Mais? The tricolor Municipal returns without effect: your Sansculottic rills continue flowing, combining into brooks: towards noontide, led by tall Santerre in blue uniform, by tall Saint-Huruge in white hat, it moves Westward, a respectable river, or complication of still-swelling rivers.
What Processions have we not seen: Corpus-Christi and Legendre waiting in Gig; Bones of Voltaire with bullock-chariots, and goadsmen in Roman Costume; Feasts of Chateau-Vieux and Simonneau; Gouvion Funerals, Rousseau Sham-Funerals, and the Baptism of Petion-National-Pike! Nevertheless this Procession has a character of its own. Tricolor ribands streaming aloft from pike-heads; ironshod batons; and emblems not a few; among which, see specially these two, of the tragic and the untragic sort: a Bull's Heart transfixed with iron, bearing this epigraph, 'Coeur d'Aristocrate, Aristocrat's Heart;' and, more striking still, properly the standard of the host, a pair of old Black Breeches (silk, they say), extended on cross- staff high overhead, with these memorable words: 'Tremblez tyrans, voila les Sansculottes, Tremble tyrants, here are the Sans-indispensables!' Also, the Procession trails two cannons.
Scarfed tricolor Municipals do now again meet it, in the Quai Saint- Bernard; and plead earnestly, having called halt. Peaceable, ye virtuous tricolor Municipals, peaceable are we as the sucking dove. Behold our Tennis-Court Mai. Petition is legal; and as for arms, did not an august Legislative receive the so-called Eight Thousand in arms, Feuillants though they were? Our Pikes, are they not of National iron? Law is our father and mother, whom we will not dishonour; but Patriotism is our own soul. Peaceable, ye virtuous Municipals;--and on the whole, limited as to time! Stop we cannot; march ye with us.--The Black Breeches agitate themselves, impatient; the cannon-wheels grumble: the many-footed Host tramps on.
How it reached the Salle de Manege, like an ever-waxing river; got admittance, after debate; read its Address; and defiled, dancing and ca- ira-ing, led by tall sonorous Santerre and tall sonorous Saint-Huruge: how it flowed, not now a waxing river but a shut Caspian lake, round all Precincts of the Tuileries; the front Patriot squeezed by the rearward, against barred iron Grates, like to have the life squeezed out of him, and looking too into the dread throat of cannon, for National Battalions stand ranked within: how tricolor Municipals ran assiduous, and Royalists with Tickets of Entry; and both Majesties sat in the interior surrounded by men in black: all this the human mind shall fancy for itself, or read in old Newspapers, and Syndic Roederer's Chronicle of Fifty Days. (Roederer, &c. &c. (in Hist. Parl. xv. 98-194).)
Our Mai is planted; if not in the Feuillants Terrace, whither is no ingate, then in the Garden of the Capuchins, as near as we could get. National Assembly has adjourned till the Evening Session: perhaps this shut lake, finding no ingate, will retire to its sources again; and disappear in peace? Alas, not yet: rearward still presses on; rearward knows little what pressure is in the front. One would wish at all events, were it possible, to have a word with his Majesty first!
The shadows fall longer, eastward; it is four o'clock: will his Majesty not come out? Hardly he! In that case, Commandant Santerre, Cattle- butcher Legendre, Patriot Huguenin with the tocsin in his heart; they, and others of authority, will enter in. Petition and request to wearied uncertain National Guard; louder and louder petition; backed by the rattle of our two cannons! The reluctant Grate opens: endless Sansculottic multitudes flood the stairs; knock at the wooden guardian of your privacy. Knocks, in such case, grow strokes, grow smashings: the wooden guardian flies in shivers. And now ensues a Scene over which the world has long wailed; and not unjustly; for a sorrier spectacle, of Incongruity fronting Incongruity, and as it were recognising themselves incongruous, and staring stupidly in each other's face, the world seldom saw.
King Louis, his door being beaten on, opens it; stands with free bosom; asking, "What do you want?" The Sansculottic flood recoils awestruck; returns however, the rear pressing on the front, with cries of "Veto! Patriot Ministers! Remove Veto!"--which things, Louis valiantly answers, this is not the time to do, nor this the way to ask him to do. Honour what virtue is in a man. Louis does not want courage; he has even the higher kind called moral-courage, though only the passive half of that. His few National Grenadiers shuffle back with him, into the embrasure of a window: there he stands, with unimpeachable passivity, amid the shouldering and the braying; a spectacle to men. They hand him a Red Cap of Liberty; he sets it quietly on his head, forgets it there. He complains of thirst; half- drunk Rascality offers him a bottle, he drinks of it. "Sire, do not fear," says one of his Grenadiers. "Fear?" answers Louis: "feel then," putting the man's hand on his heart. So stands Majesty in Red woollen Cap; black Sansculottism weltering round him, far and wide, aimless, with in- articulate dissonance, with cries of "Veto! Patriot Ministers!"
For the space of three hours or more! The National Assembly is adjourned; tricolor Municipals avail almost nothing: Mayor Petion tarries absent; Authority is none. The Queen with her Children and Sister Elizabeth, in tears and terror not for themselves only, are sitting behind barricaded tables and Grenadiers in an inner room. The Men in Black have all wisely disappeared. Blind lake of Sansculottism welters stagnant through the King's Chateau, for the space of three hours.
Nevertheless all things do end. Vergniaud arrives with Legislative Deputation, the Evening Session having now opened. Mayor Petion has arrived; is haranguing, 'lifted on the shoulders of two Grenadiers.' In this uneasy attitude and in others, at various places without and within, Mayor Petion harangues; many men harangue: finally Commandant Santerre defiles; passes out, with his Sansculottism, by the opposite side of the Chateau. Passing through the room where the Queen, with an air of dignity and sorrowful resignation, sat among the tables and Grenadiers, a woman offers her too a Red Cap; she holds it in her hand, even puts it on the little Prince Royal. "Madame," said Santerre, "this People loves you more than you think." (Toulongeon, ii. 173; Campan, ii. c. 20.)--About eight o'clock the Royal Family fall into each other's arms amid 'torrents of tears.' Unhappy Family! Who would not weep for it, were there not a whole world to be wept for?
Thus has the Age of Chivalry gone, and that of Hunger come. Thus does all- needing Sansculottism look in the face of its Roi, Regulator, King or Ableman; and find that he has nothing to give it. Thus do the two Parties, brought face to face after long centuries, stare stupidly at one another, This am I; but, Good Heaven, is that thou?--and depart, not knowing what to make of it. And yet, Incongruities having recognised themselves to be incongruous, something must be made of it. The Fates know what.
This is the world-famous Twentieth of June, more worthy to be called the Procession of the Black Breeches. With which, what we had to say of this First French biennial Parliament, and its products and activities, may perhaps fitly enough terminate.
BOOK 2.VI.
6.I.
Executive that does not act.
How could your paralytic National Executive be put 'in action,' in any measure, by such a Twentieth of June as this? Quite contrariwise: a large sympathy for Majesty so insulted arises every where; expresses itself in Addresses, Petitions 'Petition of the Twenty Thousand inhabitants of Paris,' and such like, among all Constitutional persons; a decided rallying round the Throne.
Of which rallying it was thought King Louis might have made something. However, he does make nothing of it, or attempt to make; for indeed his views are lifted beyond domestic sympathy and rallying, over to Coblentz mainly: neither in itself is the same sympathy worth much. It is sympathy of men who believe still that the Constitution can march. Wherefore the old discord and ferment, of Feuillant sympathy for Royalty, and Jacobin sympathy for Fatherland, acting against each other from within; with terror of Coblentz and Brunswick acting from without:--this discord and ferment must hold on its course, till a catastrophe do ripen and come. One would think, especially as Brunswick is near marching, such catastrophe cannot now be distant. Busy, ye Twenty-five French Millions; ye foreign Potentates, minatory Emigrants, German drill-serjeants; each do what his hand findeth! Thou, O Reader, at such safe distance, wilt see what they make of it among them.
Consider therefore this pitiable Twentieth of June as a futility; no catastrophe, rather a catastasis, or heightening. Do not its Black Breeches wave there, in the Historical Imagination, like a melancholy flag of distress; soliciting help, which no mortal can give? Soliciting pity, which thou wert hard-hearted not to give freely, to one and all! Other such flags, or what are called Occurrences, and black or bright symbolic Phenomena; will flit through the Historical Imagination: these, one after one, let us note, with extreme brevity.
The first phenomenon is that of Lafayette at the Bar of the Assembly; after a week and day. Promptly, on hearing of this scandalous Twentieth of June, Lafayette has quitted his Command on the North Frontier, in better or worse order; and got hither, on the 28th, to repress the Jacobins: not by Letter now; but by oral Petition, and weight of character, face to face. The august Assembly finds the step questionable; invites him meanwhile to the honours of the sitting. (Moniteur, Seance du 28 Juin 1792.) Other honour, or advantage, there unhappily came almost none; the Galleries all growling; fiery Isnard glooming; sharp Guadet not wanting in sarcasms.
And out of doors, when the sitting is over, Sieur Resson, keeper of the Patriot Cafe in these regions, hears in the street a hurly-burly; steps forth to look, he and his Patriot customers: it is Lafayette's carriage, with a tumultuous escort of blue Grenadiers, Cannoneers, even Officers of the Line, hurrahing and capering round it. They make a pause opposite Sieur Resson's door; wag their plumes at him; nay shake their fists, bellowing A bas les Jacobins; but happily pass on without onslaught. They pass on, to plant a Mai before the General's door, and bully considerably. All which the Sieur Resson cannot but report with sorrow, that night, in the Mother Society. (Debats des Jacobins (Hist. Parl. xv. 235).) But what no Sieur Resson nor Mother Society can do more than guess is this, That a council of rank Feuillants, your unabolished Staff of the Guard and who else has status and weight, is in these very moments privily deliberating at the General's: Can we not put down the Jacobins by force? Next day, a Review shall be held, in the Tuileries Garden, of such as will turn out, and try. Alas, says Toulongeon, hardly a hundred turned out. Put it off till tomorrow, then, to give better warning. On the morrow, which is Saturday, there turn out 'some thirty;' and depart shrugging their shoulders! (Toulongeon, ii. 180. See also Dampmartin, ii. 161.) Lafayette promptly takes carriage again; returns musing on my things.
The dust of Paris is hardly off his wheels, the summer Sunday is still young, when Cordeliers in deputation pluck up that Mai of his: before sunset, Patriots have burnt him in effigy. Louder doubt and louder rises, in Section, in National Assembly, as to the legality of such unbidden Anti- jacobin visit on the part of a General: doubt swelling and spreading all over France, for six weeks or so: with endless talk about usurping soldiers, about English Monk, nay about Cromwell: O thou Paris Grandison- Cromwell!--What boots it? King Louis himself looked coldly on the enterprize: colossal Hero of two Worlds, having weighed himself in the balance, finds that he is become a gossamer Colossus, only some thirty turning out.
In a like sense, and with a like issue, works our Department-Directory here at Paris; who, on the 6th of July, take upon them to suspend Mayor Petion and Procureur Manuel from all civic functions, for their conduct, replete, as is alleged, with omissions and commissions, on that delicate Twentieth of June. Virtuous Petion sees himself a kind of martyr, or pseudo-martyr, threatened with several things; drawls out due heroical lamentation; to which Patriot Paris and Patriot Legislative duly respond. King Louis and Mayor Petion have already had an interview on that business of the Twentieth; an interview and dialogue, distinguished by frankness on both sides; ending on King Louis's side with the words, "Taisez-vous, Hold your peace."
For the rest, this of suspending our Mayor does seem a mistimed measure. By ill chance, it came out precisely on the day of that famous Baiser de l'amourette, or miraculous reconciliatory Delilah-Kiss, which we spoke of long ago. Which Delilah-Kiss was thereby quite hindered of effect. For now his Majesty has to write, almost that same night, asking a reconciled Assembly for advice! The reconciled Assembly will not advise; will not interfere. The King confirms the suspension; then perhaps, but not till then will the Assembly interfere, the noise of Patriot Paris getting loud. Whereby your Delilah-Kiss, such was the destiny of Parliament First, becomes a Philistine Battle!
Nay there goes a word that as many as Thirty of our chief Patriot Senators are to be clapped in prison, by mittimus and indictment of Feuillant Justices, Juges de Paix; who here in Paris were well capable of such a thing. It was but in May last that Juge de Paix Lariviere, on complaint of Bertrand-Moleville touching that Austrian Committee, made bold to launch his mittimus against three heads of the Mountain, Deputies Bazire, Chabot, Merlin, the Cordelier Trio; summoning them to appear before him, and shew where that Austrian Committee was, or else suffer the consequences. Which mittimus the Trio, on their side, made bold to fling in the fire: and valiantly pleaded privilege of Parliament. So that, for his zeal without knowledge, poor Justice Lariviere now sits in the prison of Orleans, waiting trial from the Haute Cour there. Whose example, may it not deter other rash Justices; and so this word of the Thirty arrestments continue a word merely?
But on the whole, though Lafayette weighed so light, and has had his Mai plucked up, Official Feuillantism falters not a whit; but carries its head high, strong in the letter of the Law. Feuillants all of these men: a Feuillant Directory; founding on high character, and such like; with Duke de la Rochefoucault for President,--a thing which may prove dangerous for him! Dim now is the once bright Anglomania of these admired Noblemen. Duke de Liancourt offers, out of Normandy where he is Lord-Lieutenant, not only to receive his Majesty, thinking of flight thither, but to lend him money to enormous amounts. Sire, it is not a Revolt, it is a Revolution; and truly no rose-water one! Worthier Noblemen were not in France nor in Europe than those two: but the Time is crooked, quick-shifting, perverse; what straightest course will lead to any goal, in it?
Another phasis which we note, in these early July days, is that of certain thin streaks of Federate National Volunteers wending from various points towards Paris, to hold a new Federation-Festival, or Feast of Pikes, on the Fourteenth there. So has the National Assembly wished it, so has the Nation willed it. In this way, perhaps, may we still have our Patriot Camp in spite of Veto. For cannot these Federes, having celebrated their Feast of Pikes, march on to Soissons; and, there being drilled and regimented, rush to the Frontiers, or whither we like? Thus were the one Veto cunningly eluded!
As indeed the other Veto, about Priests, is also like to be eluded; and without much cunning. For Provincial Assemblies, in Calvados as one instance, are proceeding on their own strength to judge and banish Antinational Priests. Or still worse without Provincial Assembly, a desperate People, as at Bourdeaux, can 'hang two of them on the Lanterne,' on the way towards judgment. (Hist. Parl. xvi. 259.) Pity for the spoken Veto, when it cannot become an acted one!
It is true, some ghost of a War-minister, or Home-minister, for the time being, ghost whom we do not name, does write to Municipalities and King's Commanders, that they shall, by all conceivable methods, obstruct this Federation, and even turn back the Federes by force of arms: a message which scatters mere doubt, paralysis and confusion; irritates the poor Legislature; reduces the Federes as we see, to thin streaks. But being questioned, this ghost and the other ghosts, What it is then that they propose to do for saving the country?--they answer, That they cannot tell; that indeed they for their part have, this morning, resigned in a body; and do now merely respectfully take leave of the helm altogether. With which words they rapidly walk out of the Hall, sortent brusquement de la salle, the 'Galleries cheering loudly,' the poor Legislature sitting 'for a good while in silence!' (Moniteur, Seance du Juillet 1792.) Thus do Cabinet- ministers themselves, in extreme cases, strike work; one of the strangest omens. Other complete Cabinet-ministry there will not be; only fragments, and these changeful, which never get completed; spectral Apparitions that cannot so much as appear! King Louis writes that he now views this Federation Feast with approval; and will himself have the pleasure to take part in the same.
And so these thin streaks of Federes wend Parisward through a paralytic France. Thin grim streaks; not thick joyful ranks, as of old to the first Feast of Pikes! No: these poor Federates march now towards Austria and Austrian Committee, towards jeopardy and forlorn hope; men of hard fortune and temper, not rich in the world's goods. Municipalities, paralyzed by War-ministers are shy of affording cash: it may be, your poor Federates cannot arm themselves, cannot march, till the Daughter-Society of the place open her pocket, and subscribe. There will not have arrived, at the set day, Three thousand of them in all. And yet, thin and feeble as these streaks of Federates seem, they are the only thing one discerns moving with any clearness of aim, in this strange scene. Angry buz and simmer; uneasy tossing and moaning of a huge France, all enchanted, spell-bound by unmarching Constitution, into frightful conscious and unconscious Magnetic- sleep; which frightful Magnetic-sleep must now issue soon in one of two things: Death or Madness! The Federes carry mostly in their pocket some earnest cry and Petition, to have the 'National Executive put in action;' or as a step towards that, to have the King's Decheance, King's Forfeiture, or at least his Suspension, pronounced. They shall be welcome to the Legislative, to the Mother of Patriotism; and Paris will provide for their lodging.
Decheance, indeed: and, what next? A France spell-free, a Revolution saved; and any thing, and all things next! so answer grimly Danton and the unlimited Patriots, down deep in their subterranean region of Plot, whither they have now dived. Decheance, answers Brissot with the limited: And if next the little Prince Royal were crowned, and some Regency of Girondins and recalled Patriot Ministry set over him? Alas, poor Brissot; looking, as indeed poor man does always, on the nearest morrow as his peaceable promised land; deciding what must reach to the world's end, yet with an insight that reaches not beyond his own nose! Wiser are the unlimited subterranean Patriots, who with light for the hour itself, leave the rest to the gods.
Or were it not, as we now stand, the probablest issue of all, that Brunswick, in Coblentz, just gathering his huge limbs towards him to rise, might arrive first; and stop both Decheance, and theorizing on it? Brunswick is on the eve of marching; with Eighty Thousand, they say; fell Prussians, Hessians, feller Emigrants: a General of the Great Frederick, with such an Army. And our Armies? And our Generals? As for Lafayette, on whose late visit a Committee is sitting and all France is jarring and censuring, he seems readier to fight us than fight Brunswick. Luckner and Lafayette pretend to be interchanging corps, and are making movements; which Patriotism cannot understand. This only is very clear, that their corps go marching and shuttling, in the interior of the country; much nearer Paris than formerly! Luckner has ordered Dumouriez down to him, down from Maulde, and the Fortified Camp there. Which order the many- counselled Dumouriez, with the Austrians hanging close on him, he busy meanwhile training a few thousands to stand fire and be soldiers, declares that, come of it what will, he cannot obey. (Dumouriez, ii. 1, 5.) Will a poor Legislative, therefore, sanction Dumouriez; who applies to it, 'not knowing whether there is any War-ministry?' Or sanction Luckner and these Lafayette movements?
The poor Legislative knows not what to do. It decrees, however, that the Staff of the Paris Guard, and indeed all such Staffs, for they are Feuillants mostly, shall be broken and replaced. It decrees earnestly in what manner one can declare that the Country is in Danger. And finally, on the 11th of July, the morrow of that day when the Ministry struck work, it decrees that the Country be, with all despatch, declared in Danger. Whereupon let the King sanction; let the Municipality take measures: if such Declaration will do service, it need not fail.
In Danger, truly, if ever Country was! Arise, O Country; or be trodden down to ignominious ruin! Nay, are not the chances a hundred to one that no rising of the Country will save it; Brunswick, the Emigrants, and Feudal Europe drawing nigh?
6.II.
Let us march.
But to our minds the notablest of all these moving phenomena, is that of Barbaroux's 'Six Hundred Marseillese who know how to die.'
Prompt to the request of Barbaroux, the Marseilles Municipality has got these men together: on the fifth morning of July, the Townhall says, "Marchez, abatez le Tyran, March, strike down the Tyrant;" (Dampmartin, ii. 183.) and they, with grim appropriate "Marchons," are marching. Long journey, doubtful errand; Enfans de la Patrie, may a good genius guide you! Their own wild heart and what faith it has will guide them: and is not that the monition of some genius, better or worse? Five Hundred and Seventeen able men, with Captains of fifties and tens; well armed all, musket on shoulder, sabre on thigh: nay they drive three pieces of cannon; for who knows what obstacles may occur? Municipalities there are, paralyzed by War-minister; Commandants with orders to stop even Federation Volunteers; good, when sound arguments will not open a Town-gate, if you have a petard to shiver it! They have left their sunny Phocean City and Sea-haven, with its bustle and its bloom: the thronging Course, with high- frondent Avenues, pitchy dockyards, almond and olive groves, orange trees on house-tops, and white glittering bastides that crown the hills, are all behind them. They wend on their wild way, from the extremity of French land, through unknown cities, toward an unknown destiny; with a purpose that they know.
Much wondering at this phenomenon, and how, in a peaceable trading City, so many householders or hearth-holders do severally fling down their crafts and industrial tools; gird themselves with weapons of war, and set out on a journey of six hundred miles to 'strike down the tyrant,'--you search in all Historical Books, Pamphlets, and Newspapers, for some light on it: unhappily without effect. Rumour and Terror precede this march; which still echo on you; the march itself an unknown thing. Weber, in the back- stairs of the Tuileries, has understood that they were Forcats, Galley- slaves and mere scoundrels, these Marseillese; that, as they marched through Lyons, the people shut their shops;--also that the number of them was some Four Thousand. Equally vague is Blanc Gilli, who likewise murmurs about Forcats and danger of plunder. (See Barbaroux, Memoires (Note in p. 40, 41.).) Forcats they were not; neither was there plunder, or danger of it. Men of regular life, or of the best-filled purse, they could hardly be; the one thing needful in them was that they 'knew how to die.' Friend Dampmartin saw them, with his own eyes, march 'gradually' through his quarters at Villefranche in the Beaujolais: but saw in the vaguest manner; being indeed preoccupied, and himself minded for matching just then--across the Rhine. Deep was his astonishment to think of such a march, without appointment or arrangement, station or ration: for the rest it was 'the same men he had seen formerly' in the troubles of the South; 'perfectly civil;' though his soldiers could not be kept from talking a little with them. (Dampmartin, ubi supra.)
So vague are all these; Moniteur, Histoire Parlementaire are as good as silent: garrulous History, as is too usual, will say nothing where you most wish her to speak! If enlightened Curiosity ever get sight of the Marseilles Council-Books, will it not perhaps explore this strangest of Municipal procedures; and feel called to fish up what of the Biographies, creditable or discreditable, of these Five Hundred and Seventeen, the stream of Time has not yet irrevocably swallowed?
As it is, these Marseillese remain inarticulate, undistinguishable in feature; a blackbrowed Mass, full of grim fire, who wend there, in the hot sultry weather: very singular to contemplate. They wend; amid the infinitude of doubt and dim peril; they not doubtful: Fate and Feudal Europe, having decided, come girdling in from without: they, having also decided, do march within. Dusty of face, with frugal refreshment, they plod onwards; unweariable, not to be turned aside. Such march will become famous. The Thought, which works voiceless in this blackbrowed mass, an inspired Tyrtaean Colonel, Rouget de Lille whom the Earth still holds, (A.D. 1836.) has translated into grim melody and rhythm; into his Hymn or March of the Marseillese: luckiest musical-composition ever promulgated. The sound of which will make the blood tingle in men's veins; and whole Armies and Assemblages will sing it, with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of Death, Despot and Devil.
One sees well, these Marseillese will be too late for the Federation Feast. In fact, it is not Champ-de-Mars Oaths that they have in view. They have quite another feat to do: a paralytic National Executive to set in action. They must 'strike down' whatsoever 'Tyrant,' or Martyr-Faineant, there may be who paralyzes it; strike and be struck; and on the whole prosper and know how to die.