THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
A HISTORY
by
THOMAS CARLYLE
CONTENTS.
VOLUME I.
THE BASTILLE
BOOK 1.I.
DEATH OF LOUIS XV.
Chapter 1.1.I. Louis the Well-Beloved
Chapter 1.1.II. Realised Ideals
Chapter 1.1.III. Viaticum
Chapter 1.1.IV. Louis the Unforgotten
BOOK 1.II.
THE PAPER AGE
Chapter 1.2.I. Astraea Redux
Chapter 1.2.II. Petition in Hieroglyphs
Chapter 1.2.III. Questionable
Chapter 1.2.IV. Maurepas
Chapter 1.2.V. Astraea Redux without Cash
Chapter 1.2.VI. Windbags
Chapter 1.2.VII. Contrat Social
Chapter 1.2.VIII. Printed Paper
BOOK 1.III.
THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS
Chapter 1.3.I. Dishonoured Bills
Chapter 1.3.II. Controller Calonne
Chapter 1.3.III. The Notables
Chapter 1.3.IV. Lomenie's Edicts
Chapter 1.3.V. Lomenie's Thunderbolts
Chapter 1.3.VI. Lomenie's Plots
Chapter 1.3.VII. Internecine
Chapter 1.3.VIII. Lomenie's Death-throes
Chapter 1.3.IX. Burial with Bonfire
BOOK 1.IV.
STATES-GENERAL
Chapter 1.4.I. The Notables Again
Chapter 1.4.II. The Election
Chapter 1.4.III. Grown Electric
Chapter 1.4.IV. The Procession
BOOK 1.V.
THE THIRD ESTATE
Chapter 1.5.I. Inertia
Chapter 1.5.II. Mercury de Breze
Chapter 1.5.III. Broglie the War-God
Chapter 1.5.IV. To Arms!
Chapter 1.5.V. Give us Arms
Chapter 1.5.VI. Storm and Victory
Chapter 1.5.VII. Not a Revolt
Chapter 1.5.VIII. Conquering your King
Chapter 1.5.IX. The Lanterne
Book 1.VI.
CONSOLIDATION
Chapter 1.6.I. Make the Constitution
Chapter 1.6.II. The Constituent Assembly
Chapter 1.6.III. The General Overturn
Chapter 1.6.IV. In Queue
Chapter 1.6.V. The Fourth Estate
BOOK 1.VII.
THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN
Chapter 1.7.I. Patrollotism
Chapter 1.7.II. O Richard, O my King
Chapter 1.7.III. Black Cockades
Chapter 1.7.IV. The Menads
Chapter 1.7.V. Usher Maillard
Chapter 1.7.VI. To Versailles
Chapter 1.7.VII. At Versailles
Chapter 1.7.VIII. The Equal Diet
Chapter 1.7.IX. Lafayette
Chapter 1.7.X. The Grand Entries
Chapter 1.7.XI. From Versailles
VOLUME II.
THE CONSTITUTION
BOOK 2.I.
THE FEAST OF PIKES
Chapter 2.1.I. In the Tuileries
Chapter 2.1.II. In the Salle de Manege
Chapter 2.1.III. The Muster
Chapter 2.1.IV. Journalism
Chapter 2.1.V. Clubbism
Chapter 2.1.VI. Je le jure
Chapter 2.1.VII. Prodigies
Chapter 2.1.VIII. Solemn League and Covenant
Chapter 2.1.IX. Symbolic
Chapter 2.1.X. Mankind
Chapter 2.1.XI. As in the Age of Gold
Chapter 2.1.XII. Sound and Smoke
BOOK 2.II.
NANCI
Chapter 2.2.I. Bouille
Chapter 2.2.II. Arrears and Aristocrats
Chapter 2.2.III. Bouille at Metz
Chapter 2.2.IV. Arrears at Nanci
Chapter 2.2.V. Inspector Malseigne
Chapter 2.2.VI. Bouille at Nanci
BOOK 2.III.
THE TUILERIES
Chapter 2.3.I. Epimenides
Chapter 2.3.II. The Wakeful
Chapter 2.3.III. Sword in Hand
Chapter 2.3.IV. To fly or not to fly
Chapter 2.3.V. The Day of Poniards
Chapter 2.3.VI. Mirabeau
Chapter 2.3.VII. Death of Mirabeau
BOOK 2.IV.
VARENNES
Chapter 2.4.I. Easter at Saint-Cloud
Chapter 2.4.II. Easter at Paris
Chapter 2.4.III. Count Fersen
Chapter 2.4.IV. Attitude
Chapter 2.4.V. The New Berline
Chapter 2.4.VI. Old-Dragoon Drouet
Chapter 2.4.VII. The Night of Spurs
Chapter 2.4.VIII. The Return
Chapter 2.4.IX. Sharp Shot
BOOK 2.V.
PARLIAMENT FIRST
Chapter 2.5.I. Grande Acceptation
Chapter 2.5.II. The Book of the Law
Chapter 2.5.III. Avignon
Chapter 2.5.IV. No Sugar
Chapter 2.5.V. Kings and Emigrants
Chapter 2.5.VI. Brigands and Jales
Chapter 2.5.VII. Constitution will not march
Chapter 2.5.VIII. The Jacobins
Chapter 2.5.IX. Minister Roland
Chapter 2.5.X. Petion-National-Pique
Chapter 2.5.XI. The Hereditary Representative
Chapter 2.5.XII. Procession of the Black Breeches
BOOK 2.VI.
THE MARSEILLESE
Chapter 2.6.I. Executive that does not act
Chapter 2.6.II. Let us march
Chapter 2.6.III. Some Consolation to Mankind
Chapter 2.6.IV. Subterranean
Chapter 2.6.V. At Dinner
Chapter 2.6.VI. The Steeples at Midnight
Chapter 2.6.VII. The Swiss
Chapter 2.6.VIII. Constitution burst in Pieces
VOLUME III.
THE GUILLOTINE
BOOK 3.I.
SEPTEMBER
Chapter 3.1.I. The Improvised Commune
Chapter 3.1.II. Danton
Chapter 3.1.III. Dumouriez
Chapter 3.1.IV. September in Paris
Chapter 3.1.V. A Trilogy
Chapter 3.1.VI. The Circular
Chapter 3.1.VII. September in Argonne
Chapter 3.1.VIII. Exeunt
BOOK 3.II.
REGICIDE
Chapter 3.2.I. The Deliberative
Chapter 3.2.II. The Executive
Chapter 3.2.III. Discrowned
Chapter 3.2.IV. The Loser pays
Chapter 3.2.V. Stretching of Formulas
Chapter 3.2.VI. At the Bar
Chapter 3.2.VII. The Three Votings
Chapter 3.2.VIII. Place de la Revolution
BOOK 3.III.
THE GIRONDINS
Chapter 3.3.I. Cause and Effect
Chapter 3.3.II. Culottic and Sansculottic
Chapter 3.3.III. Growing shrill
Chapter 3.3.IV. Fatherland in Danger
Chapter 3.3.V. Sansculottism Accoutred
Chapter 3.3.VI. The Traitor
Chapter 3.3.VII. In Fight
Chapter 3.3.VIII. In Death-Grips
Chapter 3.3.IX. Extinct
BOOK 3.IV.
TERROR
Chapter 3.4.I. Charlotte Corday
Chapter 3.4.II. In Civil War
Chapter 3.4.III. Retreat of the Eleven
Chapter 3.4.IV. O Nature
Chapter 3.4.V. Sword of Sharpness
Chapter 3.4.VI. Risen against Tyrants
Chapter 3.4.VII. Marie-Antoinette
Chapter 3.4.VIII. The Twenty-two
BOOK 3.V.
TERROR THE ORDER OF THE DAY
Chapter 3.5.I. Rushing down
Chapter 3.5.II. Death
Chapter 3.5.III. Destruction
Chapter 3.5.IV. Carmagnole complete
Chapter 3.5.V. Like a Thunder-Cloud
Chapter 3.5.VI. Do thy Duty
Chapter 3.5.VII. Flame-Picture
BOOK 3.VI.
THERMIDOR
Chapter 3.6.I. The Gods are athirst
Chapter 3.6.II. Danton, No weakness
Chapter 3.6.III. The Tumbrils
Chapter 3.6.IV. Mumbo-Jumbo
Chapter 3.6.V. The Prisons
Chapter 3.6.VI. To finish the Terror
Chapter 3.6.VII. Go down to
BOOK 3.VII.
VENDEMIAIRE
Chapter 3.7.I. Decadent
Chapter 3.7.II. La Cabarus
Chapter 3.7.III. Quiberon
Chapter 3.7.IV. Lion not dead
Chapter 3.7.V. Lion sprawling its last
Chapter 3.7.VI. Grilled Herrings
Chapter 3.7.VII. The Whiff of Grapeshot
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A HISTORY
By
THOMAS CARLYLE
VOLUME I.--THE BASTILLE
BOOK 1.I.
DEATH OF LOUIS XV.
Chapter 1.1.I.
Louis the Well-Beloved.
President Henault, remarking on royal Surnames of Honour how difficult it
often is to ascertain not only why, but even when, they were conferred,
takes occasion in his sleek official way, to make a philosophical
reflection. 'The Surname of Bien-aime (Well-beloved),' says he, 'which
Louis XV. bears, will not leave posterity in the same doubt. This Prince,
in the year 1744, while hastening from one end of his kingdom to the other,
and suspending his conquests in Flanders that he might fly to the
assistance of Alsace, was arrested at Metz by a malady which threatened to
cut short his days. At the news of this, Paris, all in terror, seemed a
city taken by storm: the churches resounded with supplications and groans;
the prayers of priests and people were every moment interrupted by their
sobs: and it was from an interest so dear and tender that this Surname of
Bien-aime fashioned itself, a title higher still than all the rest which
this great Prince has earned.' (Abrege Chronologique de l'Histoire de
France (Paris, 1775), p. 701.)
So stands it written; in lasting memorial of that year 1744. Thirty other
years have come and gone; and 'this great Prince' again lies sick; but in
how altered circumstances now! Churches resound not with excessive
groanings; Paris is stoically calm: sobs interrupt no prayers, for indeed
none are offered; except Priests' Litanies, read or chanted at fixed money-
rate per hour, which are not liable to interruption. The shepherd of the
people has been carried home from Little Trianon, heavy of heart, and been
put to bed in his own Chateau of Versailles: the flock knows it, and heeds
it not. At most, in the immeasurable tide of French Speech (which ceases
not day after day, and only ebbs towards the short hours of night), may
this of the royal sickness emerge from time to time as an article of news.
Bets are doubtless depending; nay, some people 'express themselves loudly
in the streets.' (Memoires de M. le Baron Besenval (Paris, 1805), ii. 59-
90.) But for the rest, on green field and steepled city, the May sun
shines out, the May evening fades; and men ply their useful or useless
business as if no Louis lay in danger.
Dame Dubarry, indeed, might pray, if she had a talent for it; Duke
d'Aiguillon too, Maupeou and the Parlement Maupeou: these, as they sit in
their high places, with France harnessed under their feet, know well on
what basis they continue there. Look to it, D'Aiguillon; sharply as thou
didst, from the Mill of St. Cast, on Quiberon and the invading English;
thou, 'covered if not with glory yet with meal!' Fortune was ever
accounted inconstant: and each dog has but his day.
Forlorn enough languished Duke d'Aiguillon, some years ago; covered, as we
said, with meal; nay with worse. For La Chalotais, the Breton
Parlementeer, accused him not only of poltroonery and tyranny, but even of
concussion (official plunder of money); which accusations it was easier to
get 'quashed' by backstairs Influences than to get answered: neither could
the thoughts, or even the tongues, of men be tied. Thus, under disastrous
eclipse, had this grand-nephew of the great Richelieu to glide about;
unworshipped by the world; resolute Choiseul, the abrupt proud man,
disdaining him, or even forgetting him. Little prospect but to glide into
Gascony, to rebuild Chateaus there, (Arthur Young, Travels during the years
1787-88-89 (Bury St. Edmunds, 1792), i. 44.) and die inglorious killing
game! However, in the year 1770, a certain young soldier, Dumouriez by
name, returning from Corsica, could see 'with sorrow, at Compiegne, the old
King of France, on foot, with doffed hat, in sight of his army, at the side
of a magnificent phaeton, doing homage the--Dubarry.' (La Vie et les
Memoires du General Dumouriez (Paris, 1822), i. 141.)
Much lay therein! Thereby, for one thing, could D'Aiguillon postpone the
rebuilding of his Chateau, and rebuild his fortunes first. For stout
Choiseul would discern in the Dubarry nothing but a wonderfully dizened
Scarlet-woman; and go on his way as if she were not. Intolerable: the
source of sighs, tears, of pettings and pouting; which would not end till
'France' (La France, as she named her royal valet) finally mustered heart
to see Choiseul; and with that 'quivering in the chin (tremblement du
menton natural in such cases) (Besenval, Memoires, ii. 21.) faltered out a
dismissal: dismissal of his last substantial man, but pacification of his
scarlet-woman. Thus D'Aiguillon rose again, and culminated. And with him
there rose Maupeou, the banisher of Parlements; who plants you a refractory
President 'at Croe in Combrailles on the top of steep rocks, inaccessible
except by litters,' there to consider himself. Likewise there rose Abbe
Terray, dissolute Financier, paying eightpence in the shilling,--so that
wits exclaim in some press at the playhouse, "Where is Abbe Terray, that he
might reduce us to two-thirds!" And so have these individuals (verily by
black-art) built them a Domdaniel, or enchanted Dubarrydom; call it an
Armida-Palace, where they dwell pleasantly; Chancellor Maupeou 'playing
blind-man's-buff' with the scarlet Enchantress; or gallantly presenting her
with dwarf Negroes;--and a Most Christian King has unspeakable peace within
doors, whatever he may have without. "My Chancellor is a scoundrel; but I
cannot do without him." (Dulaure, Histoire de Paris (Paris, 1824), vii.
328.)
Beautiful Armida-Palace, where the inmates live enchanted lives; lapped in
soft music of adulation; waited on by the splendours of the world;--which
nevertheless hangs wondrously as by a single hair. Should the Most
Christian King die; or even get seriously afraid of dying! For, alas, had
not the fair haughty Chateauroux to fly, with wet cheeks and flaming heart,
from that Fever-scene at Metz; driven forth by sour shavelings? She hardly
returned, when fever and shavelings were both swept into the background.
Pompadour too, when Damiens wounded Royalty 'slightly, under the fifth
rib,' and our drive to Trianon went off futile, in shrieks and madly shaken
torches,--had to pack, and be in readiness: yet did not go, the wound not
proving poisoned. For his Majesty has religious faith; believes, at least
in a Devil. And now a third peril; and who knows what may be in it! For
the Doctors look grave; ask privily, If his Majesty had not the small-pox
long ago?--and doubt it may have been a false kind. Yes, Maupeou, pucker
those sinister brows of thine, and peer out on it with thy malign rat-eyes:
it is a questionable case. Sure only that man is mortal; that with the
life of one mortal snaps irrevocably the wonderfulest talisman, and all
Dubarrydom rushes off, with tumult, into infinite Space; and ye, as
subterranean Apparitions are wont, vanish utterly,--leaving only a smell of
sulphur!
These, and what holds of these may pray,--to Beelzebub, or whoever will
hear them. But from the rest of France there comes, as was said, no
prayer; or one of an opposite character, 'expressed openly in the streets.'
Chateau or Hotel, were an enlightened Philosophism scrutinises many things,
is not given to prayer: neither are Rossbach victories, Terray Finances,
nor, say only 'sixty thousand Lettres de Cachet' (which is Maupeou's
share), persuasives towards that. O Henault! Prayers? From a France
smitten (by black-art) with plague after plague, and lying now in shame and
pain, with a Harlot's foot on its neck, what prayer can come? Those lank
scarecrows, that prowl hunger-stricken through all highways and byways of
French Existence, will they pray? The dull millions that, in the workshop
or furrowfield, grind fore-done at the wheel of Labour, like haltered gin-
horses, if blind so much the quieter? Or they that in the Bicetre
Hospital, 'eight to a bed,' lie waiting their manumission? Dim are those
heads of theirs, dull stagnant those hearts: to them the great Sovereign
is known mainly as the great Regrater of Bread. If they hear of his
sickness, they will answer with a dull Tant pis pour lui; or with the
question, Will he die?
Yes, will he die? that is now, for all France, the grand question, and
hope; whereby alone the King's sickness has still some interest.
Chapter 1.1.II.
Realised Ideals.
Such a changed France have we; and a changed Louis. Changed, truly; and
further than thou yet seest!--To the eye of History many things, in that
sick-room of Louis, are now visible, which to the Courtiers there present
were invisible. For indeed it is well said, 'in every object there is
inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of
seeing.' To Newton and to Newton's Dog Diamond, what a different pair of
Universes; while the painting on the optical retina of both was, most
likely, the same! Let the Reader here, in this sick-room of Louis,
endeavour to look with the mind too.
Time was when men could (so to speak) of a given man, by nourishing and
decorating him with fit appliances, to the due pitch, make themselves a
King, almost as the Bees do; and what was still more to the purpose,
loyally obey him when made. The man so nourished and decorated,
thenceforth named royal, does verily bear rule; and is said, and even
thought, to be, for example, 'prosecuting conquests in Flanders,' when he
lets himself like luggage be carried thither: and no light luggage;
covering miles of road. For he has his unblushing Chateauroux, with her
band-boxes and rouge-pots, at his side; so that, at every new station, a
wooden gallery must be run up between their lodgings. He has not only his
Maison-Bouche, and Valetaille without end, but his very Troop of Players,
with their pasteboard coulisses, thunder-barrels, their kettles, fiddles,
stage-wardrobes, portable larders (and chaffering and quarrelling enough);
all mounted in wagons, tumbrils, second-hand chaises,--sufficient not to
conquer Flanders, but the patience of the world. With such a flood of loud
jingling appurtenances does he lumber along, prosecuting his conquests in
Flanders; wonderful to behold. So nevertheless it was and had been: to
some solitary thinker it might seem strange; but even to him inevitable,
not unnatural.
For ours is a most fictile world; and man is the most fingent plastic of
creatures. A world not fixable; not fathomable! An unfathomable Somewhat,
which is Not we; which we can work with, and live amidst,--and model,
miraculously in our miraculous Being, and name World.--But if the very
Rocks and Rivers (as Metaphysic teaches) are, in strict language, made by
those outward Senses of ours, how much more, by the Inward Sense, are all
Phenomena of the spiritual kind: Dignities, Authorities, Holies, Unholies!
Which inward sense, moreover is not permanent like the outward ones, but
forever growing and changing. Does not the Black African take of Sticks
and Old Clothes (say, exported Monmouth-Street cast-clothes) what will
suffice, and of these, cunningly combining them, fabricate for himself an
Eidolon (Idol, or Thing Seen), and name it Mumbo-Jumbo; which he can
thenceforth pray to, with upturned awestruck eye, not without hope? The
white European mocks; but ought rather to consider; and see whether he, at
home, could not do the like a little more wisely.
So it was, we say, in those conquests of Flanders, thirty years ago: but
so it no longer is. Alas, much more lies sick than poor Louis: not the
French King only, but the French Kingship; this too, after long rough tear
and wear, is breaking down. The world is all so changed; so much that
seemed vigorous has sunk decrepit, so much that was not is beginning to
be!--Borne over the Atlantic, to the closing ear of Louis, King by the
Grace of God, what sounds are these; muffled ominous, new in our centuries?
Boston Harbour is black with unexpected Tea: behold a Pennsylvanian
Congress gather; and ere long, on Bunker Hill, DEMOCRACY announcing, in
rifle-volleys death-winged, under her Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-
doodle-doo, that she is born, and, whirlwind-like, will envelope the whole
world!
Sovereigns die and Sovereignties: how all dies, and is for a Time only; is
a 'Time-phantasm, yet reckons itself real!' The Merovingian Kings, slowly
wending on their bullock-carts through the streets of Paris, with their
long hair flowing, have all wended slowly on,--into Eternity. Charlemagne
sleeps at Salzburg, with truncheon grounded; only Fable expecting that he
will awaken. Charles the Hammer, Pepin Bow-legged, where now is their eye
of menace, their voice of command? Rollo and his shaggy Northmen cover not
the Seine with ships; but have sailed off on a longer voyage. The hair of
Towhead (Tete d'etoupes) now needs no combing; Iron-cutter (Taillefer)
cannot cut a cobweb; shrill Fredegonda, shrill Brunhilda have had out their
hot life-scold, and lie silent, their hot life-frenzy cooled. Neither from
that black Tower de Nesle descends now darkling the doomed gallant, in his
sack, to the Seine waters; plunging into Night: for Dame de Nesle how
cares not for this world's gallantry, heeds not this world's scandal; Dame
de Nesle is herself gone into Night. They are all gone; sunk,--down, down,
with the tumult they made; and the rolling and the trampling of ever new
generations passes over them, and they hear it not any more forever.
And yet withal has there not been realised somewhat? Consider (to go no
further) these strong Stone-edifices, and what they hold! Mud-Town of the
Borderers (Lutetia Parisiorum or Barisiorum) has paved itself, has spread
over all the Seine Islands, and far and wide on each bank, and become City
of Paris, sometimes boasting to be 'Athens of Europe,' and even 'Capital of
the Universe.' Stone towers frown aloft; long-lasting, grim with a
thousand years. Cathedrals are there, and a Creed (or memory of a Creed)
in them; Palaces, and a State and Law. Thou seest the Smoke-vapour;
unextinguished Breath as of a thing living. Labour's thousand hammers ring
on her anvils: also a more miraculous Labour works noiselessly, not with
the Hand but with the Thought. How have cunning workmen in all crafts,
with their cunning head and right-hand, tamed the Four Elements to be their
ministers; yoking the winds to their Sea-chariot, making the very Stars
their Nautical Timepiece;--and written and collected a Bibliotheque du Roi;
among whose Books is the Hebrew Book! A wondrous race of creatures: these
have been realised, and what of Skill is in these: call not the Past Time,
with all its confused wretchednesses, a lost one.
Observe, however, that of man's whole terrestrial possessions and
attainments, unspeakably the noblest are his Symbols, divine or divine-
seeming; under which he marches and fights, with victorious assurance, in
this life-battle: what we can call his Realised Ideals. Of which realised
ideals, omitting the rest, consider only these two: his Church, or
spiritual Guidance; his Kingship, or temporal one. The Church: what a
word was there; richer than Golconda and the treasures of the world! In
the heart of the remotest mountains rises the little Kirk; the Dead all
slumbering round it, under their white memorial-stones, 'in hope of a happy
resurrection:'--dull wert thou, O Reader, if never in any hour (say of
moaning midnight, when such Kirk hung spectral in the sky, and Being was as
if swallowed up of Darkness) it spoke to thee--things unspeakable, that
went into thy soul's soul. Strong was he that had a Church, what we can
call a Church: he stood thereby, though 'in the centre of Immensities, in
the conflux of Eternities,' yet manlike towards God and man; the vague
shoreless Universe had become for him a firm city, and dwelling which he
knew. Such virtue was in Belief; in these words, well spoken: I believe.
Well might men prize their Credo, and raise stateliest Temples for it, and
reverend Hierarchies, and give it the tithe of their substance; it was
worth living for and dying for.
Neither was that an inconsiderable moment when wild armed men first raised
their Strongest aloft on the buckler-throne, and with clanging armour and
hearts, said solemnly: Be thou our Acknowledged Strongest! In such
Acknowledged Strongest (well named King, Kon-ning, Can-ning, or Man that
was Able) what a Symbol shone now for them,--significant with the destinies
of the world! A Symbol of true Guidance in return for loving Obedience;
properly, if he knew it, the prime want of man. A Symbol which might be
called sacred; for is there not, in reverence for what is better than we,
an indestructible sacredness? On which ground, too, it was well said there
lay in the Acknowledged Strongest a divine right; as surely there might in
the Strongest, whether Acknowledged or not,--considering who made him
strong. And so, in the midst of confusions and unutterable incongruities
(as all growth is confused), did this of Royalty, with Loyalty environing
it, spring up; and grow mysteriously, subduing and assimilating (for a
principle of Life was in it); till it also had grown world-great, and was
among the main Facts of our modern existence. Such a Fact, that Louis
XIV., for example, could answer the expostulatory Magistrate with his
"L'Etat c'est moi (The State? I am the State);" and be replied to by
silence and abashed looks. So far had accident and forethought; had your
Louis Elevenths, with the leaden Virgin in their hatband, and torture-
wheels and conical oubliettes (man-eating!) under their feet; your Henri
Fourths, with their prophesied social millennium, 'when every peasant
should have his fowl in the pot;' and on the whole, the fertility of this
most fertile Existence (named of Good and Evil),--brought it, in the matter
of the Kingship. Wondrous! Concerning which may we not again say, that in
the huge mass of Evil, as it rolls and swells, there is ever some Good
working imprisoned; working towards deliverance and triumph?
How such Ideals do realise themselves; and grow, wondrously, from amid the
incongruous ever-fluctuating chaos of the Actual: this is what World-
History, if it teach any thing, has to teach us, How they grow; and, after
long stormy growth, bloom out mature, supreme; then quickly (for the
blossom is brief) fall into decay; sorrowfully dwindle; and crumble down,
or rush down, noisily or noiselessly disappearing. The blossom is so
brief; as of some centennial Cactus-flower, which after a century of
waiting shines out for hours! Thus from the day when rough Clovis, in the
Champ de Mars, in sight of his whole army, had to cleave retributively the
head of that rough Frank, with sudden battleaxe, and the fierce words, "It
was thus thou clavest the vase" (St. Remi's and mine) "at Soissons,"
forward to Louis the Grand and his L'Etat c'est moi, we count some twelve
hundred years: and now this the very next Louis is dying, and so much
dying with him!--Nay, thus too, if Catholicism, with and against Feudalism
(but not against Nature and her bounty), gave us English a Shakspeare and
Era of Shakspeare, and so produced a blossom of Catholicism--it was not
till Catholicism itself, so far as Law could abolish it, had been abolished
here.
But of those decadent ages in which no Ideal either grows or blossoms?
When Belief and Loyalty have passed away, and only the cant and false echo
of them remains; and all Solemnity has become Pageantry; and the Creed of
persons in authority has become one of two things: an Imbecility or a
Macchiavelism? Alas, of these ages World-History can take no notice; they
have to become compressed more and more, and finally suppressed in the
Annals of Mankind; blotted out as spurious,--which indeed they are.
Hapless ages: wherein, if ever in any, it is an unhappiness to be born.
To be born, and to learn only, by every tradition and example, that God's
Universe is Belial's and a Lie; and 'the Supreme Quack' the hierarch of
men! In which mournfulest faith, nevertheless, do we not see whole
generations (two, and sometimes even three successively) live, what they
call living; and vanish,--without chance of reappearance?
In such a decadent age, or one fast verging that way, had our poor Louis
been born. Grant also that if the French Kingship had not, by course of
Nature, long to live, he of all men was the man to accelerate Nature. The
Blossom of French Royalty, cactus-like, has accordingly made an astonishing
progress. In those Metz days, it was still standing with all its petals,
though bedimmed by Orleans Regents and Roue Ministers and Cardinals; but
now, in 1774, we behold it bald, and the virtue nigh gone out of it.
Disastrous indeed does it look with those same 'realised ideals,' one and
all! The Church, which in its palmy season, seven hundred years ago, could
make an Emperor wait barefoot, in penance-shift; three days, in the snow,
has for centuries seen itself decaying; reduced even to forget old purposes
and enmities, and join interest with the Kingship: on this younger
strength it would fain stay its decrepitude; and these two will henceforth
stand and fall together. Alas, the Sorbonne still sits there, in its old
mansion; but mumbles only jargon of dotage, and no longer leads the
consciences of men: not the Sorbonne; it is Encyclopedies, Philosophie,
and who knows what nameless innumerable multitude of ready Writers, profane
Singers, Romancers, Players, Disputators, and Pamphleteers, that now form
the Spiritual Guidance of the world. The world's Practical Guidance too is
lost, or has glided into the same miscellaneous hands. Who is it that the
King (Able-man, named also Roi, Rex, or Director) now guides? His own
huntsmen and prickers: when there is to be no hunt, it is well said, 'Le
Roi ne fera rien (To-day his Majesty will do nothing). (Memoires sur la
Vie privee de Marie Antoinette, par Madame Campan (Paris, 1826), i. 12).
He lives and lingers there, because he is living there, and none has yet
laid hands on him.
The nobles, in like manner, have nearly ceased either to guide or misguide;
and are now, as their master is, little more than ornamental figures. It
is long since they have done with butchering one another or their king:
the Workers, protected, encouraged by Majesty, have ages ago built walled
towns, and there ply their crafts; will permit no Robber Baron to 'live by
the saddle,' but maintain a gallows to prevent it. Ever since that period
of the Fronde, the Noble has changed his fighting sword into a court
rapier, and now loyally attends his king as ministering satellite; divides
the spoil, not now by violence and murder, but by soliciting and finesse.
These men call themselves supports of the throne, singular gilt-pasteboard
caryatides in that singular edifice! For the rest, their privileges every
way are now much curtailed. That law authorizing a Seigneur, as he
returned from hunting, to kill not more than two Serfs, and refresh his
feet in their warm blood and bowels, has fallen into perfect desuetude,--
and even into incredibility; for if Deputy Lapoule can believe in it, and
call for the abrogation of it, so cannot we. (Histoire de la Revolution
Francaise, par Deux Amis de la Liberte (Paris, 1793), ii. 212.) No
Charolois, for these last fifty years, though never so fond of shooting,
has been in use to bring down slaters and plumbers, and see them roll from
their roofs; (Lacretelle, Histoire de France pendant le 18me Siecle (Paris,
1819) i. 271.) but contents himself with partridges and grouse. Close-
viewed, their industry and function is that of dressing gracefully and
eating sumptuously. As for their debauchery and depravity, it is perhaps
unexampled since the era of Tiberius and Commodus. Nevertheless, one has
still partly a feeling with the lady Marechale: "Depend upon it, Sir, God
thinks twice before damning a man of that quality." (Dulaure, vii. 261.)
These people, of old, surely had virtues, uses; or they could not have been
there. Nay, one virtue they are still required to have (for mortal man
cannot live without a conscience): the virtue of perfect readiness to
fight duels.
Such are the shepherds of the people: and now how fares it with the flock?
With the flock, as is inevitable, it fares ill, and ever worse. They are
not tended, they are only regularly shorn. They are sent for, to do
statute-labour, to pay statute-taxes; to fatten battle-fields (named 'Bed
of honour') with their bodies, in quarrels which are not theirs; their hand
and toil is in every possession of man; but for themselves they have little
or no possession. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed; to pine dully in thick
obscuration, in squalid destitution and obstruction: this is the lot of
the millions; peuple taillable et corveable a merci et misericorde. In
Brittany they once rose in revolt at the first introduction of Pendulum
Clocks; thinking it had something to do with the Gabelle. Paris requires
to be cleared out periodically by the Police; and the horde of hunger-
stricken vagabonds to be sent wandering again over space--for a time.
'During one such periodical clearance,' says Lacretelle, 'in May, 1750, the
Police had presumed withal to carry off some reputable people's children,
in the hope of extorting ransoms for them. The mothers fill the public
places with cries of despair; crowds gather, get excited: so many women in
destraction run about exaggerating the alarm: an absurd and horrid fable
arises among the people; it is said that the doctors have ordered a Great
Person to take baths of young human blood for the restoration of his own,
all spoiled by debaucheries. Some of the rioters,' adds Lacretelle, quite
coolly, 'were hanged on the following days:' the Police went on.
(Lacretelle, iii. 175.) O ye poor naked wretches! and this, then, is your
inarticulate cry to Heaven, as of a dumb tortured animal, crying from
uttermost depths of pain and debasement? Do these azure skies, like a dead
crystalline vault, only reverberate the echo of it on you? Respond to it
only by 'hanging on the following days?'--Not so: not forever! Ye are
heard in Heaven. And the answer too will come,--in a horror of great
darkness, and shakings of the world, and a cup of trembling which all the
nations shall drink.
Remark, meanwhile, how from amid the wrecks and dust of this universal
Decay new Powers are fashioning themselves, adapted to the new time and its
destinies. Besides the old Noblesse, originally of Fighters, there is a
new recognised Noblesse of Lawyers; whose gala-day and proud battle-day
even now is. An unrecognised Noblesse of Commerce; powerful enough, with
money in its pocket. Lastly, powerfulest of all, least recognised of all,
a Noblesse of Literature; without steel on their thigh, without gold in
their purse, but with the 'grand thaumaturgic faculty of Thought' in their
head. French Philosophism has arisen; in which little word how much do we
include! Here, indeed, lies properly the cardinal symptom of the whole
wide-spread malady. Faith is gone out; Scepticism is come in. Evil
abounds and accumulates: no man has Faith to withstand it, to amend it, to
begin by amending himself; it must even go on accumulating. While hollow
langour and vacuity is the lot of the Upper, and want and stagnation of the
Lower, and universal misery is very certain, what other thing is certain?
That a Lie cannot be believed! Philosophism knows only this: her other
belief is mainly that, in spiritual supersensual matters no Belief is
possible. Unhappy! Nay, as yet the Contradiction of a Lie is some kind of
Belief; but the Lie with its Contradiction once swept away, what will
remain? The five unsatiated Senses will remain, the sixth insatiable Sense
(of vanity); the whole daemonic nature of man will remain,--hurled forth to
rage blindly without rule or rein; savage itself, yet with all the tools
and weapons of civilisation; a spectacle new in History.
In such a France, as in a Powder-tower, where fire unquenched and now
unquenchable is smoking and smouldering all round, has Louis XV. lain down
to die. With Pompadourism and Dubarryism, his Fleur-de-lis has been
shamefully struck down in all lands and on all seas; Poverty invades even
the Royal Exchequer, and Tax-farming can squeeze out no more; there is a
quarrel of twenty-five years' standing with the Parlement; everywhere Want,
Dishonesty, Unbelief, and hotbrained Sciolists for state-physicians: it is
a portentous hour.
Such things can the eye of History see in this sick-room of King Louis,
which were invisible to the Courtiers there. It is twenty years, gone
Christmas-day, since Lord Chesterfield, summing up what he had noted of
this same France, wrote, and sent off by post, the following words, that
have become memorable: 'In short, all the symptoms which I have ever met
with in History, previous to great Changes and Revolutions in government,
now exist and daily increase in France.' (Chesterfield's Letters:
December 25th, 1753.)
Chapter 1.1.III.
Viaticum.
For the present, however, the grand question with the Governors of France
is: Shall extreme unction, or other ghostly viaticum (to Louis, not to
France), be administered?
It is a deep question. For, if administered, if so much as spoken of, must
not, on the very threshold of the business, Witch Dubarry vanish; hardly to
return should Louis even recover? With her vanishes Duke d'Aiguillon and
Company, and all their Armida-Palace, as was said; Chaos swallows the whole
again, and there is left nothing but a smell of brimstone. But then, on
the other hand, what will the Dauphinists and Choiseulists say? Nay what
may the royal martyr himself say, should he happen to get deadly worse,
without getting delirious? For the present, he still kisses the Dubarry
hand; so we, from the ante-room, can note: but afterwards? Doctors'
bulletins may run as they are ordered, but it is 'confluent small-pox,'--of
which, as is whispered too, the Gatekeepers's once so buxom Daughter lies
ill: and Louis XV. is not a man to be trifled with in his viaticum. Was
he not wont to catechise his very girls in the Parc-aux-cerfs, and pray
with and for them, that they might preserve their--orthodoxy? (Dulaure,
viii. (217), Besenval, &c.;) A strange fact, not an unexampled one; for
there is no animal so strange as man.
For the moment, indeed, it were all well, could Archbishop Beaumont but be
prevailed upon--to wink with one eye! Alas, Beaumont would himself so fain
do it: for, singular to tell, the Church too, and whole posthumous hope of
Jesuitism, now hangs by the apron of this same unmentionable woman. But
then 'the force of public opinion'? Rigorous Christophe de Beaumont, who
has spent his life in persecuting hysterical Jansenists and incredulous
Non-confessors; or even their dead bodies, if no better might be,--how
shall he now open Heaven's gate, and give Absolution with the corpus
delicti still under his nose? Our Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon, for his part,
will not higgle with a royal sinner about turning of the key: but there
are other Churchmen; there is a King's Confessor, foolish Abbe Moudon; and
Fanaticism and Decency are not yet extinct. On the whole, what is to be
done? The doors can be well watched; the Medical Bulletin adjusted; and
much, as usual, be hoped for from time and chance.
The doors are well watched, no improper figure can enter. Indeed, few wish
to enter; for the putrid infection reaches even to the Oeil-de-Boeuf; so
that 'more than fifty fall sick, and ten die.' Mesdames the Princesses
alone wait at the loathsome sick-bed; impelled by filial piety. The three
Princesses, Graille, Chiffe, Coche (Rag, Snip, Pig, as he was wont to name
them), are assiduous there; when all have fled. The fourth Princess Loque
(Dud), as we guess, is already in the Nunnery, and can only give her
orisons. Poor Graille and Sisterhood, they have never known a Father:
such is the hard bargain Grandeur must make. Scarcely at the Debotter
(when Royalty took off its boots) could they snatch up their 'enormous
hoops, gird the long train round their waists, huddle on their black cloaks
of taffeta up to the very chin;' and so, in fit appearance of full dress,
'every evening at six,' walk majestically in; receive their royal kiss on
the brow; and then walk majestically out again, to embroidery, small-
scandal, prayers, and vacancy. If Majesty came some morning, with coffee
of its own making, and swallowed it with them hastily while the dogs were
uncoupling for the hunt, it was received as a grace of Heaven. (Campan, i.
11-36.) Poor withered ancient women! in the wild tossings that yet await
your fragile existence, before it be crushed and broken; as ye fly through
hostile countries, over tempestuous seas, are almost taken by the Turks;
and wholly, in the Sansculottic Earthquake, know not your right hand from
your left, be this always an assured place in your remembrance: for the act
was good and loving! To us also it is a little sunny spot, in that dismal
howling waste, where we hardly find another.
Meanwhile, what shall an impartial prudent Courtier do? In these delicate
circumstances, while not only death or life, but even sacrament or no
sacrament, is a question, the skilfulest may falter. Few are so happy as
the Duke d'Orleans and the Prince de Conde; who can themselves, with
volatile salts, attend the King's ante-chamber; and, at the same time, send
their brave sons (Duke de Chartres, Egalite that is to be; Duke de Bourbon,
one day Conde too, and famous among Dotards) to wait upon the Dauphin.
With another few, it is a resolution taken; jacta est alea. Old
Richelieu,--when Beaumont, driven by public opinion, is at last for
entering the sick-room,--will twitch him by the rochet, into a recess; and
there, with his old dissipated mastiff-face, and the oiliest vehemence, be
seen pleading (and even, as we judge by Beaumont's change of colour,
prevailing) 'that the King be not killed by a proposition in Divinity.'
Duke de Fronsac, son of Richelieu, can follow his father: when the Cure of
Versailles whimpers something about sacraments, he will threaten to 'throw
him out of the window if he mention such a thing.'
Happy these, we may say; but to the rest that hover between two opinions,
is it not trying? He who would understand to what a pass Catholicism, and
much else, had now got; and how the symbols of the Holiest have become
gambling-dice of the Basest,--must read the narrative of those things by
Besenval, and Soulavie, and the other Court Newsmen of the time. He will
see the Versailles Galaxy all scattered asunder, grouped into new ever-
shifting Constellations. There are nods and sagacious glances; go-
betweens, silk dowagers mysteriously gliding, with smiles for this
constellation, sighs for that: there is tremor, of hope or desperation, in
several hearts. There is the pale grinning Shadow of Death, ceremoniously
ushered along by another grinning Shadow, of Etiquette: at intervals the
growl of Chapel Organs, like prayer by machinery; proclaiming, as in a kind
of horrid diabolic horse-laughter, Vanity of vanities, all is Vanity!
Chapter 1.1.IV.
Louis the Unforgotten.
Poor Louis! With these it is a hollow phantasmagory, where like mimes they
mope and mowl, and utter false sounds for hire; but with thee it is
frightful earnest.
Frightful to all men is Death; from of old named King of Terrors. Our
little compact home of an Existence, where we dwelt complaining, yet as in
a home, is passing, in dark agonies, into an Unknown of Separation,
Foreignness, unconditioned Possibility. The Heathen Emperor asks of his
soul: Into what places art thou now departing? The Catholic King must
answer: To the Judgment-bar of the Most High God! Yes, it is a summing-up
of Life; a final settling, and giving-in the 'account of the deeds done in
the body:' they are done now; and lie there unalterable, and do bear their
fruits, long as Eternity shall last.
Louis XV. had always the kingliest abhorrence of Death. Unlike that
praying Duke of Orleans, Egalite's grandfather,--for indeed several of them
had a touch of madness,--who honesty believed that there was no Death! He,
if the Court Newsmen can be believed, started up once on a time, glowing
with sulphurous contempt and indignation on his poor Secretary, who had
stumbled on the words, feu roi d'Espagne (the late King of Spain): "Feu
roi, Monsieur?"--"Monseigneur," hastily answered the trembling but adroit
man of business, "c'est une titre qu'ils prennent ('tis a title they
take)." (Besenval, i. 199.) Louis, we say, was not so happy; but he did
what he could. He would not suffer Death to be spoken of; avoided the
sight of churchyards, funereal monuments, and whatsoever could bring it to
mind. It is the resource of the Ostrich; who, hard hunted, sticks his
foolish head in the ground, and would fain forget that his foolish unseeing
body is not unseen too. Or sometimes, with a spasmodic antagonism,
significant of the same thing, and of more, he would go; or stopping his
court carriages, would send into churchyards, and ask 'how many new graves
there were today,' though it gave his poor Pompadour the disagreeablest
qualms. We can figure the thought of Louis that day, when, all royally
caparisoned for hunting, he met, at some sudden turning in the Wood of
Senart, a ragged Peasant with a coffin: "For whom?"--It was for a poor
brother slave, whom Majesty had sometimes noticed slaving in those
quarters. "What did he die of?"--"Of hunger:"--the King gave his steed the
spur. (Campan, iii. 39.)
But figure his thought, when Death is now clutching at his own heart-
strings, unlooked for, inexorable! Yes, poor Louis, Death has found thee.
No palace walls or life-guards, gorgeous tapestries or gilt buckram of
stiffest ceremonial could keep him out; but he is here, here at thy very
life-breath, and will extinguish it. Thou, whose whole existence hitherto
was a chimera and scenic show, at length becomest a reality: sumptuous
Versailles bursts asunder, like a dream, into void Immensity; Time is done,
and all the scaffolding of Time falls wrecked with hideous clangour round
thy soul: the pale Kingdoms yawn open; there must thou enter, naked, all
unking'd, and await what is appointed thee! Unhappy man, there as thou
turnest, in dull agony, on thy bed of weariness, what a thought is thine!
Purgatory and Hell-fire, now all-too possible, in the prospect; in the
retrospect,--alas, what thing didst thou do that were not better undone;
what mortal didst thou generously help; what sorrow hadst thou mercy on?
Do the 'five hundred thousand' ghosts, who sank shamefully on so many
battle-fields from Rossbach to Quebec, that thy Harlot might take revenge
for an epigram,--crowd round thee in this hour? Thy foul Harem; the curses
of mothers, the tears and infamy of daughters? Miserable man! thou 'hast
done evil as thou couldst:' thy whole existence seems one hideous abortion
and mistake of Nature; the use and meaning of thee not yet known. Wert
thou a fabulous Griffin, devouring the works of men; daily dragging virgins
to thy cave;--clad also in scales that no spear would pierce: no spear but
Death's? A Griffin not fabulous but real! Frightful, O Louis, seem these
moments for thee.--We will pry no further into the horrors of a sinner's
death-bed.
And yet let no meanest man lay flattering unction to his soul. Louis was a
Ruler; but art not thou also one? His wide France, look at it from the
Fixed Stars (themselves not yet Infinitude), is no wider than thy narrow
brickfield, where thou too didst faithfully, or didst unfaithfully. Man,
'Symbol of Eternity imprisoned into 'Time!' it is not thy works, which are
all mortal, infinitely little, and the greatest no greater than the least,
but only the Spirit thou workest in, that can have worth or continuance.
But reflect, in any case, what a life-problem this of poor Louis, when he
rose as Bien-Aime from that Metz sick-bed, really was! What son of Adam
could have swayed such incoherences into coherence? Could he? Blindest
Fortune alone has cast him on the top of it: he swims there; can as little
sway it as the drift-log sways the wind-tossed moon-stirred Atlantic.
"What have I done to be so loved?" he said then. He may say now: What
have I done to be so hated? Thou hast done nothing, poor Louis! Thy fault
is properly even this, that thou didst nothing. What could poor Louis do?
Abdicate, and wash his hands of it,--in favour of the first that would
accept! Other clear wisdom there was none for him. As it was, he stood
gazing dubiously, the absurdest mortal extant (a very Solecism Incarnate),
into the absurdest confused world;--wherein at lost nothing seemed so
certain as that he, the incarnate Solecism, had five senses; that were
Flying Tables (Tables Volantes, which vanish through the floor, to come
back reloaded). and a Parc-aux-cerfs.
Whereby at least we have again this historical curiosity: a human being in
an original position; swimming passively, as on some boundless 'Mother of
Dead Dogs,' towards issues which he partly saw. For Louis had withal a
kind of insight in him. So, when a new Minister of Marine, or what else it
might be, came announcing his new era, the Scarlet-woman would hear from
the lips of Majesty at supper: "He laid out his ware like another;
promised the beautifulest things in the world; not a thing of which will
come: he does not know this region; he will see." Or again: "'Tis the
twentieth time I hear all that; France will never get a Navy, I believe."
How touching also was this: "If I were Lieutenant of Police, I would
prohibit those Paris cabriolets." (Journal de Madame de Hausset, p. 293,
&c.;)
Doomed mortal;--for is it not a doom to be Solecism incarnate! A new Roi
Faineant, King Donothing; but with the strangest new Mayor of the Palace:
no bow-legged Pepin now, but that same cloud-capt, fire-breathing Spectre
of DEMOCRACY; incalculable, which is enveloping the world!--Was Louis no
wickeder than this or the other private Donothing and Eatall; such as we
often enough see, under the name of Man, and even Man of Pleasure,
cumbering God's diligent Creation, for a time? Say, wretcheder! His Life-
solecism was seen and felt of a whole scandalised world; him endless
Oblivion cannot engulf, and swallow to endless depths,--not yet for a
generation or two.
However, be this as it will, we remark, not without interest, that 'on the
evening of the 4th,' Dame Dubarry issues from the sick-room, with
perceptible 'trouble in her visage.' It is the fourth evening of May, year
of Grace 1774. Such a whispering in the Oeil-de-Boeuf! Is he dying then?
What can be said is, that Dubarry seems making up her packages; she sails
weeping through her gilt boudoirs, as if taking leave. D'Aiguilon and
Company are near their last card; nevertheless they will not yet throw up
the game. But as for the sacramental controversy, it is as good as settled
without being mentioned; Louis can send for his Abbe Moudon in the course
of next night, be confessed by him, some say for the space of 'seventeen
minutes,' and demand the sacraments of his own accord.
Nay, already, in the afternoon, behold is not this your Sorceress Dubarry
with the handkerchief at her eyes, mounting D'Aiguillon's chariot; rolling
off in his Duchess's consolatory arms? She is gone; and her place knows
her no more. Vanish, false Sorceress; into Space! Needless to hover at
neighbouring Ruel; for thy day is done. Shut are the royal palace-gates
for evermore; hardly in coming years shalt thou, under cloud of night,
descend once, in black domino, like a black night-bird, and disturb the
fair Antoinette's music-party in the Park: all Birds of Paradise flying
from thee, and musical windpipes growing mute. (Campan, i. 197.) Thou
unclean, yet unmalignant, not unpitiable thing! What a course was thine:
from that first trucklebed (in Joan of Arc's country) where thy mother bore
thee, with tears, to an unnamed father: forward, through lowest
subterranean depths, and over highest sunlit heights, of Harlotdom and
Rascaldom--to the guillotine-axe, which shears away thy vainly whimpering
head! Rest there uncursed; only buried and abolished: what else befitted
thee?
Louis, meanwhile, is in considerable impatience for his sacraments; sends
more than once to the window, to see whether they are not coming. Be of
comfort, Louis, what comfort thou canst: they are under way, those
sacraments. Towards six in the morning, they arrive. Cardinal Grand-
Almoner Roche-Aymon is here, in pontificals, with his pyxes and his tools;
he approaches the royal pillow; elevates his wafer; mutters or seems to
mutter somewhat;--and so (as the Abbe Georgel, in words that stick to one,
expresses it) has Louis 'made the amende honorable to God;' so does your
Jesuit construe it.--"Wa, Wa," as the wild Clotaire groaned out, when life
was departing, "what great God is this that pulls down the strength of the
strongest kings!" (Gregorius Turonensis, Histor. lib. iv. cap. 21.)
The amende honorable, what 'legal apology' you will, to God:--but not, if
D'Aiguillon can help it, to man. Dubarry still hovers in his mansion at
Ruel; and while there is life, there is hope. Grand-Almoner Roche-Aymon,
accordingly (for he seems to be in the secret), has no sooner seen his
pyxes and gear repacked, then he is stepping majestically forth again, as
if the work were done! But King's Confessor Abbe Moudon starts forward;
with anxious acidulent face, twitches him by the sleeve; whispers in his
ear. Whereupon the poor Cardinal must turn round; and declare audibly;
"That his Majesty repents of any subjects of scandal he may have given (a
pu donner); and purposes, by the strength of Heaven assisting him, to avoid
the like--for the future!" Words listened to by Richelieu with mastiff-
face, growing blacker; answered to, aloud, 'with an epithet,'--which
Besenval will not repeat. Old Richelieu, conqueror of Minorca, companion
of Flying-Table orgies, perforator of bedroom walls, (Besenval, i. 159-172.
Genlis; Duc de Levis, &c.;) is thy day also done?
Alas, the Chapel organs may keep going; the Shrine of Sainte Genevieve be
let down, and pulled up again,--without effect. In the evening the whole
Court, with Dauphin and Dauphiness, assist at the Chapel: priests are
hoarse with chanting their 'Prayers of Forty Hours;' and the heaving
bellows blow. Almost frightful! For the very heaven blackens; battering
rain-torrents dash, with thunder; almost drowning the organ's voice: and
electric fire-flashes make the very flambeaux on the altar pale. So that
the most, as we are told, retired, when it was over, with hurried steps,
'in a state of meditation (recueillement),' and said little or nothing.
(Weber, Memoires concernant Marie-Antoinette (London, 1809), i. 22.)
So it has lasted for the better half of a fortnight; the Dubarry gone
almost a week. Besenval says, all the world was getting impatient que cela
finit; that poor Louis would have done with it. It is now the 10th of May
1774. He will soon have done now.
This tenth May day falls into the loathsome sick-bed; but dull, unnoticed
there: for they that look out of the windows are quite darkened; the
cistern-wheel moves discordant on its axis; Life, like a spent steed, is
panting towards the goal. In their remote apartments, Dauphin and
Dauphiness stand road-ready; all grooms and equerries booted and spurred:
waiting for some signal to escape the house of pestilence. (One grudges to
interfere with the beautiful theatrical 'candle,' which Madame Campan (i.
79) has lit on this occasion, and blown out at the moment of death. What
candles might be lit or blown out, in so large an Establishment as that of
Versailles, no man at such distance would like to affirm: at the same
time, as it was two o'clock in a May Afternoon, and these royal Stables
must have been some five or six hundred yards from the royal sick-room, the
'candle' does threaten to go out in spite of us. It remains burning
indeed--in her fantasy; throwing light on much in those Memoires of hers.)
And, hark! across the Oeil-de-Boeuf, what sound is that; sound 'terrible
and absolutely like thunder'? It is the rush of the whole Court, rushing
as in wager, to salute the new Sovereigns: Hail to your Majesties! The
Dauphin and Dauphiness are King and Queen! Over-powered with many
emotions, they two fall on their knees together, and, with streaming tears,
exclaim, "O God, guide us, protect us; we are too young to reign!"--Too
young indeed.
Thus, in any case, 'with a sound absolutely like thunder,' has the Horologe
of Time struck, and an old Era passed away. The Louis that was, lies
forsaken, a mass of abhorred clay; abandoned 'to some poor persons, and
priests of the Chapelle Ardente,'--who make haste to put him 'in two lead
coffins, pouring in abundant spirits of wine.' The new Louis with his
Court is rolling towards Choisy, through the summer afternoon: the royal
tears still flow; but a word mispronounced by Monseigneur d'Artois sets
them all laughing, and they weep no more. Light mortals, how ye walk your
light life-minuet, over bottomless abysses, divided from you by a film!
For the rest, the proper authorities felt that no Funeral could be too
unceremonious. Besenval himself thinks it was unceremonious enough. Two
carriages containing two noblemen of the usher species, and a Versailles
clerical person; some score of mounted pages, some fifty palfreniers;
these, with torches, but not so much as in black, start from Versailles on
the second evening with their leaden bier. At a high trot they start; and
keep up that pace. For the jibes (brocards) of those Parisians, who stand
planted in two rows, all the way to St. Denis, and 'give vent to their
pleasantry, the characteristic of the nation,' do not tempt one to slacken.
Towards midnight the vaults of St. Denis receive their own; unwept by any
eye of all these; if not by poor Loque his neglected Daughter's, whose
Nunnery is hard by.
Him they crush down, and huddle under-ground, in this impatient way; him
and his era of sin and tyranny and shame; for behold a New Era is come; the
future all the brighter that the past was base.
BOOK 1.II.
THE PAPER AGE
Chapter 1.2.I.
Astraea Redux.
A paradoxical philosopher, carrying to the uttermost length that aphorism
of Montesquieu's, 'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome,' has said,
'Happy the people whose annals are vacant.' In which saying, mad as it
looks, may there not still be found some grain of reason? For truly, as it
has been written, 'Silence is divine,' and of Heaven; so in all earthly
things too there is a silence which is better than any speech. Consider it
well, the Event, the thing which can be spoken of and recorded, is it not,
in all cases, some disruption, some solution of continuity? Were it even a
glad Event, it involves change, involves loss (of active Force); and so
far, either in the past or in the present, is an irregularity, a disease.
Stillest perseverance were our blessedness; not dislocation and
alteration,--could they be avoided.
The oak grows silently, in the forest, a thousand years; only in the
thousandth year, when the woodman arrives with his axe, is there heard an
echoing through the solitudes; and the oak announces itself when, with a
far-sounding crash, it falls. How silent too was the planting of the
acorn; scattered from the lap of some wandering wind! Nay, when our oak
flowered, or put on its leaves (its glad Events), what shout of
proclamation could there be? Hardly from the most observant a word of
recognition. These things befell not, they were slowly done; not in an
hour, but through the flight of days: what was to be said of it? This
hour seemed altogether as the last was, as the next would be.
It is thus everywhere that foolish Rumour babbles not of what was done, but
of what was misdone or undone; and foolish History (ever, more or less, the
written epitomised synopsis of Rumour) knows so little that were not as
well unknown. Attila Invasions, Walter-the-Penniless Crusades, Sicilian
Vespers, Thirty-Years Wars: mere sin and misery; not work, but hindrance
of work! For the Earth, all this while, was yearly green and yellow with
her kind harvests; the hand of the craftsman, the mind of the thinker
rested not: and so, after all, and in spite of all, we have this so
glorious high-domed blossoming World; concerning which, poor History may
well ask, with wonder, Whence it came? She knows so little of it, knows so
much of what obstructed it, what would have rendered it impossible. Such,
nevertheless, by necessity or foolish choice, is her rule and practice;
whereby that paradox, 'Happy the people whose annals are vacant,' is not
without its true side.
And yet, what seems more pertinent to note here, there is a stillness, not
of unobstructed growth, but of passive inertness, and symptom of imminent
downfall. As victory is silent, so is defeat. Of the opposing forces the
weaker has resigned itself; the stronger marches on, noiseless now, but
rapid, inevitable: the fall and overturn will not be noiseless. How all
grows, and has its period, even as the herbs of the fields, be it annual,
centennial, millennial! All grows and dies, each by its own wondrous laws,
in wondrous fashion of its own; spiritual things most wondrously of all.
Inscrutable, to the wisest, are these latter; not to be prophesied of, or
understood. If when the oak stands proudliest flourishing to the eye, you
know that its heart is sound, it is not so with the man; how much less with
the Society, with the Nation of men! Of such it may be affirmed even that
the superficial aspect, that the inward feeling of full health, is
generally ominous. For indeed it is of apoplexy, so to speak, and a
plethoric lazy habit of body, that Churches, Kingships, Social
Institutions, oftenest die. Sad, when such Institution plethorically says
to itself, Take thy ease, thou hast goods laid up;--like the fool of the
Gospel, to whom it was answered, Fool, this night thy life shall be
required of thee!
Is it the healthy peace, or the ominous unhealthy, that rests on France,
for these next Ten Years? Over which the Historian can pass lightly,
without call to linger: for as yet events are not, much less performances.
Time of sunniest stillness;--shall we call it, what all men thought it, the
new Age of God? Call it at least, of Paper; which in many ways is the
succedaneum of Gold. Bank-paper, wherewith you can still buy when there is
no gold left; Book-paper, splendent with Theories, Philosophies,
Sensibilities,--beautiful art, not only of revealing Thought, but also of
so beautifully hiding from us the want of Thought! Paper is made from the
rags of things that did once exist; there are endless excellences in
Paper.--What wisest Philosophe, in this halcyon uneventful period, could
prophesy that there was approaching, big with darkness and confusion, the
event of events? Hope ushers in a Revolution,--as earthquakes are preceded
by bright weather. On the Fifth of May, fifteen years hence, old Louis
will not be sending for the Sacraments; but a new Louis, his grandson, with
the whole pomp of astonished intoxicated France, will be opening the
States-General.
Dubarrydom and its D'Aiguillons are gone forever. There is a young, still
docile, well-intentioned King; a young, beautiful and bountiful, well-
intentioned Queen; and with them all France, as it were, become young.
Maupeou and his Parlement have to vanish into thick night; respectable
Magistrates, not indifferent to the Nation, were it only for having been
opponents of the Court, can descend unchained from their 'steep rocks at
Croe in Combrailles' and elsewhere, and return singing praises: the old
Parlement of Paris resumes its functions. Instead of a profligate bankrupt
Abbe Terray, we have now, for Controller-General, a virtuous philosophic
Turgot, with a whole Reformed France in his head. By whom whatsoever is
wrong, in Finance or otherwise, will be righted,--as far as possible. Is
it not as if Wisdom herself were henceforth to have seat and voice in the
Council of Kings? Turgot has taken office with the noblest plainness of
speech to that effect; been listened to with the noblest royal
trustfulness. (Turgot's Letter: Condorcet, Vie de Turgot (Oeuvres de
Condorcet, t. v.), p. 67. The date is 24th August, 1774.) It is true, as
King Louis objects, "They say he never goes to mass;" but liberal France
likes him little worse for that; liberal France answers, "The Abbe Terray
always went." Philosophism sees, for the first time, a Philosophe (or even
a Philosopher) in office: she in all things will applausively second him;
neither will light old Maurepas obstruct, if he can easily help it.
Then how 'sweet' are the manners; vice 'losing all its deformity;' becoming
decent (as established things, making regulations for themselves, do);
becoming almost a kind of 'sweet' virtue! Intelligence so abounds;
irradiated by wit and the art of conversation. Philosophism sits joyful in
her glittering saloons, the dinner-guest of Opulence grown ingenuous, the
very nobles proud to sit by her; and preaches, lifted up over all
Bastilles, a coming millennium. From far Ferney, Patriarch Voltaire gives
sign: veterans Diderot, D'Alembert have lived to see this day; these with
their younger Marmontels, Morellets, Chamforts, Raynals, make glad the
spicy board of rich ministering Dowager, of philosophic Farmer-General. O
nights and suppers of the gods! Of a truth, the long-demonstrated will now
be done: 'the Age of Revolutions approaches' (as Jean Jacques wrote), but
then of happy blessed ones. Man awakens from his long somnambulism; chases
the Phantasms that beleagured and bewitched him. Behold the new morning
glittering down the eastern steeps; fly, false Phantasms, from its shafts
of light; let the Absurd fly utterly forsaking this lower Earth for ever.
It is Truth and Astraea Redux that (in the shape of Philosophism)
henceforth reign. For what imaginable purpose was man made, if not to be
'happy'? By victorious Analysis, and Progress of the Species, happiness
enough now awaits him. Kings can become philosophers; or else philosophers
Kings. Let but Society be once rightly constituted,--by victorious
Analysis. The stomach that is empty shall be filled; the throat that is
dry shall be wetted with wine. Labour itself shall be all one as rest; not
grievous, but joyous. Wheatfields, one would think, cannot come to grow
untilled; no man made clayey, or made weary thereby;--unless indeed
machinery will do it? Gratuitous Tailors and Restaurateurs may start up,
at fit intervals, one as yet sees not how. But if each will, according to
rule of Benevolence, have a care for all, then surely--no one will be
uncared for. Nay, who knows but, by sufficiently victorious Analysis,
'human life may be indefinitely lengthened,' and men get rid of Death, as
they have already done of the Devil? We shall then be happy in spite of
Death and the Devil.--So preaches magniloquent Philosophism her Redeunt
Saturnia regna.
The prophetic song of Paris and its Philosophes is audible enough in the
Versailles Oeil-de-Boeuf; and the Oeil-de-Boeuf, intent chiefly on nearer
blessedness, can answer, at worst, with a polite "Why not?" Good old
cheery Maurepas is too joyful a Prime Minister to dash the world's joy.
Sufficient for the day be its own evil. Cheery old man, he cuts his jokes,
and hovers careless along; his cloak well adjusted to the wind, if so be he
may please all persons. The simple young King, whom a Maurepas cannot
think of troubling with business, has retired into the interior apartments;
taciturn, irresolute; though with a sharpness of temper at times: he, at
length, determines on a little smithwork; and so, in apprenticeship with a
Sieur Gamain (whom one day he shall have little cause to bless), is
learning to make locks. (Campan, i. 125.) It appears further, he
understood Geography; and could read English. Unhappy young King, his
childlike trust in that foolish old Maurepas deserved another return. But
friend and foe, destiny and himself have combined to do him hurt.
Meanwhile the fair young Queen, in her halls of state, walks like a goddess
of Beauty, the cynosure of all eyes; as yet mingles not with affairs; heeds
not the future; least of all, dreads it. Weber and Campan (Ib. i. 100-151.
Weber, i. 11-50.) have pictured her, there within the royal tapestries, in
bright boudoirs, baths, peignoirs, and the Grand and Little Toilette; with
a whole brilliant world waiting obsequious on her glance: fair young
daughter of Time, what things has Time in store for thee! Like Earth's
brightest Appearance, she moves gracefully, environed with the grandeur of
Earth: a reality, and yet a magic vision; for, behold, shall not utter
Darkness swallow it! The soft young heart adopts orphans, portions
meritorious maids, delights to succour the poor,--such poor as come
picturesquely in her way; and sets the fashion of doing it; for as was
said, Benevolence has now begun reigning. In her Duchess de Polignac, in
Princess de Lamballe, she enjoys something almost like friendship; now too,
after seven long years, she has a child, and soon even a Dauphin, of her
own; can reckon herself, as Queens go, happy in a husband.
Events? The Grand events are but charitable Feasts of Morals (Fetes des
moeurs), with their Prizes and Speeches; Poissarde Processions to the
Dauphin's cradle; above all, Flirtations, their rise, progress, decline and
fall. There are Snow-statues raised by the poor in hard winter to a Queen
who has given them fuel. There are masquerades, theatricals; beautifyings
of little Trianon, purchase and repair of St. Cloud; journeyings from the
summer Court-Elysium to the winter one. There are poutings and grudgings
from the Sardinian Sisters-in-law (for the Princes too are wedded); little
jealousies, which Court-Etiquette can moderate. Wholly the lightest-
hearted frivolous foam of Existence; yet an artfully refined foam; pleasant
were it not so costly, like that which mantles on the wine of Champagne!
Monsieur, the King's elder Brother, has set up for a kind of wit; and leans
towards the Philosophe side. Monseigneur d'Artois pulls the mask from a
fair impertinent; fights a duel in consequence,--almost drawing blood.
(Besenval, ii. 282-330.) He has breeches of a kind new in this world;--a
fabulous kind; 'four tall lackeys,' says Mercier, as if he had seen it,
'hold him up in the air, that he may fall into the garment without vestige
of wrinkle; from which rigorous encasement the same four, in the same way,
and with more effort, must deliver him at night.' (Mercier, Nouveau Paris,
iii. 147.) This last is he who now, as a gray time-worn man, sits desolate
at Gratz; (A.D. 1834.) having winded up his destiny with the Three Days.
In such sort are poor mortals swept and shovelled to and fro.
Chapter 1.2.II.
Petition in Hieroglyphs.
With the working people, again it is not so well. Unlucky! For there are
twenty to twenty-five millions of them. Whom, however, we lump together
into a kind of dim compendious unity, monstrous but dim, far off, as the
canaille; or, more humanely, as 'the masses.' Masses, indeed: and yet,
singular to say, if, with an effort of imagination, thou follow them, over
broad France, into their clay hovels, into their garrets and hutches, the
masses consist all of units. Every unit of whom has his own heart and
sorrows; stands covered there with his own skin, and if you prick him he
will bleed. O purple Sovereignty, Holiness, Reverence; thou, for example,
Cardinal Grand-Almoner, with thy plush covering of honour, who hast thy
hands strengthened with dignities and moneys, and art set on thy world
watch-tower solemnly, in sight of God, for such ends,--what a thought:
that every unit of these masses is a miraculous Man, even as thyself art;
struggling, with vision, or with blindness, for his infinite Kingdom (this
life which he has got, once only, in the middle of Eternities); with a
spark of the Divinity, what thou callest an immortal soul, in him!
Dreary, languid do these struggle in their obscure remoteness; their hearth
cheerless, their diet thin. For them, in this world, rises no Era of Hope;
hardly now in the other,--if it be not hope in the gloomy rest of Death,
for their faith too is failing. Untaught, uncomforted, unfed! A dumb
generation; their voice only an inarticulate cry: spokesman, in the King's
Council, in the world's forum, they have none that finds credence. At rare
intervals (as now, in 1775), they will fling down their hoes and hammers;
and, to the astonishment of thinking mankind, (Lacretelle, France pendant
le 18me Siecle, ii. 455. Biographie Universelle, para Turgot (by
Durozoir).) flock hither and thither, dangerous, aimless; get the length
even of Versailles. Turgot is altering the Corn-trade, abrogating the
absurdest Corn-laws; there is dearth, real, or were it even 'factitious;'
an indubitable scarcity of bread. And so, on the second day of May 1775,
these waste multitudes do here, at Versailles Chateau, in wide-spread
wretchedness, in sallow faces, squalor, winged raggedness, present, as in
legible hieroglyphic writing, their Petition of Grievances. The Chateau
gates have to be shut; but the King will appear on the balcony, and speak
to them. They have seen the King's face; their Petition of Grievances has
been, if not read, looked at. For answer, two of them are hanged, 'on a
new gallows forty feet high;' and the rest driven back to their dens,--for
a time.
Clearly a difficult 'point' for Government, that of dealing with these
masses;--if indeed it be not rather the sole point and problem of
Government, and all other points mere accidental crotchets,
superficialities, and beatings of the wind! For let Charter-Chests, Use
and Wont, Law common and special say what they will, the masses count to so
many millions of units; made, to all appearance, by God,--whose Earth this
is declared to be. Besides, the people are not without ferocity; they have
sinews and indignation. Do but look what holiday old Marquis Mirabeau, the
crabbed old friend of Men, looked on, in these same years, from his
lodging, at the Baths of Mont d'Or: 'The savages descending in torrents
from the mountains; our people ordered not to go out. The Curate in
surplice and stole; Justice in its peruke; Marechausee sabre in hand,
guarding the place, till the bagpipes can begin. The dance interrupted, in
a quarter of an hour, by battle; the cries, the squealings of children, of
infirm persons, and other assistants, tarring them on, as the rabble does
when dogs fight: frightful men, or rather frightful wild animals, clad in
jupes of coarse woollen, with large girdles of leather studded with copper
nails; of gigantic stature, heightened by high wooden-clogs (sabots);
rising on tiptoe to see the fight; tramping time to it; rubbing their sides
with their elbows: their faces haggard (figures haves), and covered with
their long greasy hair; the upper part of the visage waxing pale, the lower
distorting itself into the attempt at a cruel laugh and a sort of ferocious
impatience. And these people pay the taille! And you want further to take
their salt from them! And you know not what it is you are stripping barer,
or as you call it, governing; what by the spurt of your pen, in its cold
dastard indifference, you will fancy you can starve always with impunity;
always till the catastrophe come!--Ah Madame, such Government by
Blindman's-buff, stumbling along too far, will end in the General Overturn
(culbute generale). (Memoires de Mirabeau, ecrits par Lui-meme, par son
Pere, son Oncle et son Fils Adoptif (Paris, 34-5), ii.186.)
Undoubtedly a dark feature this in an Age of Gold,--Age, at least, of Paper
and Hope! Meanwhile, trouble us not with thy prophecies, O croaking Friend
of Men: 'tis long that we have heard such; and still the old world keeps
wagging, in its old way.
Chapter 1.2.III.
Questionable.
Or is this same Age of Hope itself but a simulacrum; as Hope too often is?
Cloud-vapour with rainbows painted on it, beautiful to see, to sail
towards,--which hovers over Niagara Falls? In that case, victorious
Analysis will have enough to do.
Alas, yes! a whole world to remake, if she could see it; work for another
than she! For all is wrong, and gone out of joint; the inward spiritual,
and the outward economical; head or heart, there is no soundness in it. As
indeed, evils of all sorts are more or less of kin, and do usually go
together: especially it is an old truth, that wherever huge physical evil
is, there, as the parent and origin of it, has moral evil to a
proportionate extent been. Before those five-and-twenty labouring
Millions, for instance, could get that haggardness of face, which old
Mirabeau now looks on, in a Nation calling itself Christian, and calling
man the brother of man,--what unspeakable, nigh infinite Dishonesty (of
seeming and not being) in all manner of Rulers, and appointed Watchers,
spiritual and temporal, must there not, through long ages, have gone on
accumulating! It will accumulate: moreover, it will reach a head; for the
first of all Gospels is this, that a Lie cannot endure for ever.
In fact, if we pierce through that rosepink vapour of Sentimentalism,
Philanthropy, and Feasts of Morals, there lies behind it one of the
sorriest spectacles. You might ask, What bonds that ever held a human
society happily together, or held it together at all, are in force here?
It is an unbelieving people; which has suppositions, hypotheses, and froth-
systems of victorious Analysis; and for belief this mainly, that Pleasure
is pleasant. Hunger they have for all sweet things; and the law of Hunger;
but what other law? Within them, or over them, properly none!
Their King has become a King Popinjay; with his Maurepas Government,
gyrating as the weather-cock does, blown about by every wind. Above them
they see no God; or they even do not look above, except with astronomical
glasses. The Church indeed still is; but in the most submissive state;
quite tamed by Philosophism; in a singularly short time; for the hour was
come. Some twenty years ago, your Archbishop Beaumont would not even let
the poor Jansenists get buried: your Lomenie Brienne (a rising man, whom
we shall meet with yet) could, in the name of the Clergy, insist on having
the Anti-protestant laws, which condemn to death for preaching, 'put in
execution.' (Boissy d'Anglas, Vie de Malesherbes, i. 15-22.) And, alas,
now not so much as Baron Holbach's Atheism can be burnt,--except as pipe-
matches by the private speculative individual. Our Church stands haltered,
dumb, like a dumb ox; lowing only for provender (of tithes); content if it
can have that; or, dumbly, dully expecting its further doom. And the
Twenty Millions of 'haggard faces;' and, as finger-post and guidance to
them in their dark struggle, 'a gallows forty feet high'! Certainly a
singular Golden Age; with its Feasts of Morals, its 'sweet manners,' its
sweet institutions (institutions douces); betokening nothing but peace
among men!--Peace? O Philosophe-Sentimentalism, what hast thou to do with
peace, when thy mother's name is Jezebel? Foul Product of still fouler
Corruption, thou with the corruption art doomed!
Meanwhile it is singular how long the rotten will hold together, provided
you do not handle it roughly. For whole generations it continues standing,
'with a ghastly affectation of life,' after all life and truth has fled out
of it; so loth are men to quit their old ways; and, conquering indolence
and inertia, venture on new. Great truly is the Actual; is the Thing that
has rescued itself from bottomless deeps of theory and possibility, and
stands there as a definite indisputable Fact, whereby men do work and live,
or once did so. Widely shall men cleave to that, while it will endure; and
quit it with regret, when it gives way under them. Rash enthusiast of
Change, beware! Hast thou well considered all that Habit does in this life
of ours; how all Knowledge and all Practice hang wondrous over infinite
abysses of the Unknown, Impracticable; and our whole being is an infinite
abyss, over-arched by Habit, as by a thin Earth-rind, laboriously built
together?
But if 'every man,' as it has been written, 'holds confined within him a
mad-man,' what must every Society do;--Society, which in its commonest
state is called 'the standing miracle of this world'! 'Without such Earth-
rind of Habit,' continues our author, 'call it System of Habits, in a word,
fixed ways of acting and of believing,--Society would not exist at all.
With such it exists, better or worse. Herein too, in this its System of
Habits, acquired, retained how you will, lies the true Law-Code and
Constitution of a Society; the only Code, though an unwritten one which it
can in nowise disobey. The thing we call written Code, Constitution, Form
of Government, and the like, what is it but some miniature image, and
solemnly expressed summary of this unwritten Code? Is,--or rather alas, is
not; but only should be, and always tends to be! In which latter
discrepancy lies struggle without end.' And now, we add in the same
dialect, let but, by ill chance, in such ever-enduring struggle,--your
'thin Earth-rind' be once broken! The fountains of the great deep boil
forth; fire-fountains, enveloping, engulfing. Your 'Earth-rind' is
shattered, swallowed up; instead of a green flowery world, there is a waste
wild-weltering chaos:--which has again, with tumult and struggle, to make
itself into a world.
On the other hand, be this conceded: Where thou findest a Lie that is
oppressing thee, extinguish it. Lies exist there only to be extinguished;
they wait and cry earnestly for extinction. Think well, meanwhile, in what
spirit thou wilt do it: not with hatred, with headlong selfish violence;
but in clearness of heart, with holy zeal, gently, almost with pity. Thou
wouldst not replace such extinct Lie by a new Lie, which a new Injustice of
thy own were; the parent of still other Lies? Whereby the latter end of
that business were worse than the beginning.
So, however, in this world of ours, which has both an indestructible hope
in the Future, and an indestructible tendency to persevere as in the Past,
must Innovation and Conservation wage their perpetual conflict, as they may
and can. Wherein the 'daemonic element,' that lurks in all human things,
may doubtless, some once in the thousand years--get vent! But indeed may
we not regret that such conflict,--which, after all, is but like that
classical one of 'hate-filled Amazons with heroic Youths,' and will end in
embraces,--should usually be so spasmodic? For Conservation, strengthened
by that mightiest quality in us, our indolence, sits for long ages, not
victorious only, which she should be; but tyrannical, incommunicative. She
holds her adversary as if annihilated; such adversary lying, all the while,
like some buried Enceladus; who, to gain the smallest freedom, must stir a
whole Trinacria with it Aetnas.
Wherefore, on the whole, we will honour a Paper Age too; an Era of hope!
For in this same frightful process of Enceladus Revolt; when the task, on
which no mortal would willingly enter, has become imperative, inevitable,--
is it not even a kindness of Nature that she lures us forward by cheerful
promises, fallacious or not; and a whole generation plunges into the Erebus
Blackness, lighted on by an Era of Hope? It has been well said: 'Man is
based on Hope; he has properly no other possession but Hope; this
habitation of his is named the Place of Hope.'
Chapter 1.2.IV.
Maurepas.
But now, among French hopes, is not that of old M. de Maurepas one of the
best-grounded; who hopes that he, by dexterity, shall contrive to continue
Minister? Nimble old man, who for all emergencies has his light jest; and
ever in the worst confusion will emerge, cork-like, unsunk! Small care to
him is Perfectibility, Progress of the Species, and Astraea Redux: good
only, that a man of light wit, verging towards fourscore, can in the seat
of authority feel himself important among men. Shall we call him, as
haughty Chateauroux was wont of old, 'M. Faquinet (Diminutive of
Scoundrel)'? In courtier dialect, he is now named 'the Nestor of France;'
such governing Nestor as France has.
At bottom, nevertheless, it might puzzle one to say where the Government of
France, in these days, specially is. In that Chateau of Versailles, we
have Nestor, King, Queen, ministers and clerks, with paper-bundles tied in
tape: but the Government? For Government is a thing that governs, that
guides; and if need be, compels. Visible in France there is not such a
thing. Invisible, inorganic, on the other hand, there is: in Philosophe
saloons, in Oeil-de-Boeuf galleries; in the tongue of the babbler, in the
pen of the pamphleteer. Her Majesty appearing at the Opera is applauded;
she returns all radiant with joy. Anon the applauses wax fainter, or
threaten to cease; she is heavy of heart, the light of her face has fled.
Is Sovereignty some poor Montgolfier; which, blown into by the popular
wind, grows great and mounts; or sinks flaccid, if the wind be withdrawn?
France was long a 'Despotism tempered by Epigrams;' and now, it would seem,
the Epigrams have get the upper hand.
Happy were a young 'Louis the Desired' to make France happy; if it did not
prove too troublesome, and he only knew the way. But there is endless
discrepancy round him; so many claims and clamours; a mere confusion of
tongues. Not reconcilable by man; not manageable, suppressible, save by
some strongest and wisest men;--which only a lightly-jesting lightly-
gyrating M. de Maurepas can so much as subsist amidst. Philosophism claims
her new Era, meaning thereby innumerable things. And claims it in no faint
voice; for France at large, hitherto mute, is now beginning to speak also;
and speaks in that same sense. A huge, many-toned sound; distant, yet not
unimpressive. On the other hand, the Oeil-de-Boeuf, which, as nearest, one
can hear best, claims with shrill vehemence that the Monarchy be as
heretofore a Horn of Plenty; wherefrom loyal courtiers may draw,--to the
just support of the throne. Let Liberalism and a New Era, if such is the
wish, be introduced; only no curtailment of the royal moneys? Which latter
condition, alas, is precisely the impossible one.
Philosophism, as we saw, has got her Turgot made Controller-General; and
there shall be endless reformation. Unhappily this Turgot could continue
only twenty months. With a miraculous Fortunatus' Purse in his Treasury,
it might have lasted longer; with such Purse indeed, every French
Controller-General, that would prosper in these days, ought first to
provide himself. But here again may we not remark the bounty of Nature in
regard to Hope? Man after man advances confident to the Augean Stable, as
if he could clean it; expends his little fraction of an ability on it, with
such cheerfulness; does, in so far as he was honest, accomplish something.
Turgot has faculties; honesty, insight, heroic volition; but the
Fortunatus' Purse he has not. Sanguine Controller-General! a whole pacific
French Revolution may stand schemed in the head of the thinker; but who
shall pay the unspeakable 'indemnities' that will be needed? Alas, far
from that: on the very threshold of the business, he proposes that the
Clergy, the Noblesse, the very Parlements be subjected to taxes! One
shriek of indignation and astonishment reverberates through all the Chateau
galleries; M. de Maurepas has to gyrate: the poor King, who had written
few weeks ago, 'Il n'y a que vous et moi qui aimions le peuple (There is
none but you and I that has the people's interest at heart),' must write
now a dismissal; (In May, 1776.) and let the French Revolution accomplish
itself, pacifically or not, as it can.
Hope, then, is deferred? Deferred; not destroyed, or abated. Is not this,
for example, our Patriarch Voltaire, after long years of absence,
revisiting Paris? With face shrivelled to nothing; with 'huge peruke a la
Louis Quatorze, which leaves only two eyes "visible" glittering like
carbuncles,' the old man is here. (February, 1778.) What an outburst!
Sneering Paris has suddenly grown reverent; devotional with Hero-worship.
Nobles have disguised themselves as tavern-waiters to obtain sight of him:
the loveliest of France would lay their hair beneath his feet. 'His
chariot is the nucleus of a comet; whose train fills whole streets:' they
crown him in the theatre, with immortal vivats; 'finally stifle him under
roses,'--for old Richelieu recommended opium in such state of the nerves,
and the excessive Patriarch took too much. Her Majesty herself had some
thought of sending for him; but was dissuaded. Let Majesty consider it,
nevertheless. The purport of this man's existence has been to wither up
and annihilate all whereon Majesty and Worship for the present rests: and
is it so that the world recognises him? With Apotheosis; as its Prophet
and Speaker, who has spoken wisely the thing it longed to say? Add only,
that the body of this same rose-stifled, beatified-Patriarch cannot get
buried except by stealth. It is wholly a notable business; and France,
without doubt, is big (what the Germans call 'Of good Hope'): we shall
wish her a happy birth-hour, and blessed fruit.
Beaumarchais too has now winded-up his Law-Pleadings (Memoires); (1773-6.
See Oeuvres de Beaumarchais; where they, and the history of them, are
given.) not without result, to himself and to the world. Caron
Beaumarchais (or de Beaumarchais, for he got ennobled) had been born poor,
but aspiring, esurient; with talents, audacity, adroitness; above all, with
the talent for intrigue: a lean, but also a tough, indomitable man.
Fortune and dexterity brought him to the harpsichord of Mesdames, our good
Princesses Loque, Graille and Sisterhood. Still better, Paris Duvernier,
the Court-Banker, honoured him with some confidence; to the length even of
transactions in cash. Which confidence, however, Duvernier's Heir, a
person of quality, would not continue. Quite otherwise; there springs a
Lawsuit from it: wherein tough Beaumarchais, losing both money and repute,
is, in the opinion of Judge-Reporter Goezman, of the Parlement Maupeou, of
a whole indifferent acquiescing world, miserably beaten. In all men's
opinions, only not in his own! Inspired by the indignation, which makes,
if not verses, satirical law-papers, the withered Music-master, with a
desperate heroism, takes up his lost cause in spite of the world; fights
for it, against Reporters, Parlements and Principalities, with light
banter, with clear logic; adroitly, with an inexhaustible toughness and
resource, like the skilfullest fencer; on whom, so skilful is he, the whole
world now looks. Three long years it lasts; with wavering fortune. In
fine, after labours comparable to the Twelve of Hercules, our unconquerable
Caron triumphs; regains his Lawsuit and Lawsuits; strips Reporter Goezman
of the judicial ermine; covering him with a perpetual garment of obloquy
instead:--and in regard to the Parlement Maupeou (which he has helped to
extinguish), to Parlements of all kinds, and to French Justice generally,
gives rise to endless reflections in the minds of men. Thus has
Beaumarchais, like a lean French Hercules, ventured down, driven by
destiny, into the Nether Kingdoms; and victoriously tamed hell-dogs there.
He also is henceforth among the notabilities of his generation.
Chapter 1.2.V.
Astraea Redux without Cash.
Observe, however, beyond the Atlantic, has not the new day verily dawned!
Democracy, as we said, is born; storm-girt, is struggling for life and
victory. A sympathetic France rejoices over the Rights of Man; in all
saloons, it is said, What a spectacle! Now too behold our Deane, our
Franklin, American Plenipotentiaries, here in position soliciting; (1777;
Deane somewhat earlier: Franklin remained till 1785.) the sons of the
Saxon Puritans, with their Old-Saxon temper, Old-Hebrew culture, sleek
Silas, sleek Benjamin, here on such errand, among the light children of
Heathenism, Monarchy, Sentimentalism, and the Scarlet-woman. A spectacle
indeed; over which saloons may cackle joyous; though Kaiser Joseph,
questioned on it, gave this answer, most unexpected from a Philosophe:
"Madame, the trade I live by is that of royalist (Mon metier a moi c'est
d'etre royaliste)."
So thinks light Maurepas too; but the wind of Philosophism and force of
public opinion will blow him round. Best wishes, meanwhile, are sent;
clandestine privateers armed. Paul Jones shall equip his Bon Homme
Richard: weapons, military stores can be smuggled over (if the English do
not seize them); wherein, once more Beaumarchais, dimly as the Giant
Smuggler becomes visible,--filling his own lank pocket withal. But surely,
in any case, France should have a Navy. For which great object were not
now the time: now when that proud Termagant of the Seas has her hands
full? It is true, an impoverished Treasury cannot build ships; but the
hint once given (which Beaumarchais says he gave), this and the other loyal
Seaport, Chamber of Commerce, will build and offer them. Goodly vessels
bound into the waters; a Ville de Paris, Leviathan of ships.
And now when gratuitous three-deckers dance there at anchor, with streamers
flying; and eleutheromaniac Philosophedom grows ever more clamorous, what
can a Maurepas do--but gyrate? Squadrons cross the ocean: Gages, Lees,
rough Yankee Generals, 'with woollen night-caps under their hats,' present
arms to the far-glancing Chivalry of France; and new-born Democracy sees,
not without amazement, 'Despotism tempered by Epigrams fight at her side.
So, however, it is. King's forces and heroic volunteers; Rochambeaus,
Bouilles, Lameths, Lafayettes, have drawn their swords in this sacred
quarrel of mankind;--shall draw them again elsewhere, in the strangest way.
Off Ushant some naval thunder is heard. In the course of which did our
young Prince, Duke de Chartres, 'hide in the hold;' or did he materially,
by active heroism, contribute to the victory? Alas, by a second edition,
we learn that there was no victory; or that English Keppel had it. (27th
July, 1778.) Our poor young Prince gets his Opera plaudits changed into
mocking tehees; and cannot become Grand-Admiral,--the source to him of woes
which one may call endless.
Woe also for Ville de Paris, the Leviathan of ships! English Rodney has
clutched it, and led it home, with the rest; so successful was his new
'manoeuvre of breaking the enemy's line.' (9th and 12th April, 1782.) It
seems as if, according to Louis XV., 'France were never to have a Navy.'
Brave Suffren must return from Hyder Ally and the Indian Waters; with small
result; yet with great glory for 'six non-defeats;--which indeed, with such
seconding as he had, one may reckon heroic. Let the old sea-hero rest now,
honoured of France, in his native Cevennes mountains; send smoke, not of
gunpowder, but mere culinary smoke, through the old chimneys of the Castle
of Jales,--which one day, in other hands, shall have other fame. Brave
Laperouse shall by and by lift anchor, on philanthropic Voyage of
Discovery; for the King knows Geography. (August 1st, 1785.) But, alas,
this also will not prosper: the brave Navigator goes, and returns not; the
Seekers search far seas for him in vain. He has vanished trackless into
blue Immensity; and only some mournful mysterious shadow of him hovers long
in all heads and hearts.
Neither, while the War yet lasts, will Gibraltar surrender. Not though
Crillon, Nassau-Siegen, with the ablest projectors extant, are there; and
Prince Conde and Prince d'Artois have hastened to help. Wondrous leather-
roofed Floating-batteries, set afloat by French-Spanish Pacte de Famille,
give gallant summons: to which, nevertheless, Gibraltar answers
Plutonically, with mere torrents of redhot iron,--as if stone Calpe had
become a throat of the Pit; and utters such a Doom's-blast of a No, as all
men must credit. (Annual Register (Dodsley's), xxv. 258-267. September,
October, 1782.)
And so, with this loud explosion, the noise of War has ceased; an Age of
Benevolence may hope, for ever. Our noble volunteers of Freedom have
returned, to be her missionaries. Lafayette, as the matchless of his time,
glitters in the Versailles Oeil-de-Beouf; has his Bust set up in the Paris
Hotel-de-Ville. Democracy stands inexpugnable, immeasurable, in her New
World; has even a foot lifted towards the Old;--and our French Finances,
little strengthened by such work, are in no healthy way.
What to do with the Finance? This indeed is the great question: a small
but most black weather-symptom, which no radiance of universal hope can
cover. We saw Turgot cast forth from the Controllership, with shrieks,--
for want of a Fortunatus' Purse. As little could M. de Clugny manage the
duty; or indeed do anything, but consume his wages; attain 'a place in
History,' where as an ineffectual shadow thou beholdest him still
lingering;--and let the duty manage itself. Did Genevese Necker possess
such a Purse, then? He possessed banker's skill, banker's honesty; credit
of all kinds, for he had written Academic Prize Essays, struggled for India
Companies, given dinners to Philosophes, and 'realised a fortune in twenty
years.' He possessed, further, a taciturnity and solemnity; of depth, or
else of dulness. How singular for Celadon Gibbon, false swain as he had
proved; whose father, keeping most probably his own gig, 'would not hear of
such a union,'--to find now his forsaken Demoiselle Curchod sitting in the
high places of the world, as Minister's Madame, and 'Necker not jealous!'
(Gibbon's Letters: date, 16th June, 1777, &c.;)
A new young Demoiselle, one day to be famed as a Madame and De Stael, was
romping about the knees of the Decline and Fall: the lady Necker founds
Hospitals; gives solemn Philosophe dinner-parties, to cheer her exhausted
Controller-General. Strange things have happened: by clamour of
Philosophism, management of Marquis de Pezay, and Poverty constraining even
Kings. And so Necker, Atlas-like, sustains the burden of the Finances, for
five years long? (Till May, 1781.) Without wages, for he refused such;
cheered only by Public Opinion, and the ministering of his noble Wife.
With many thoughts in him, it is hoped;--which, however, he is shy of
uttering. His Compte Rendu, published by the royal permission, fresh sign
of a New Era, shows wonders;--which what but the genius of some Atlas-
Necker can prevent from becoming portents? In Necker's head too there is a
whole pacific French Revolution, of its kind; and in that taciturn dull
depth, or deep dulness, ambition enough.
Meanwhile, alas, his Fotunatus' Purse turns out to be little other than the
old 'vectigal of Parsimony.' Nay, he too has to produce his scheme of
taxing: Clergy, Noblesse to be taxed; Provincial Assemblies, and the
rest,--like a mere Turgot! The expiring M. de Maurepas must gyrate one
other time. Let Necker also depart; not unlamented.
Great in a private station, Necker looks on from the distance; abiding his
time. 'Eighty thousand copies' of his new Book, which he calls
Administration des Finances, will be sold in few days. He is gone; but
shall return, and that more than once, borne by a whole shouting Nation.
Singular Controller-General of the Finances; once Clerk in Thelusson's
Bank!
Chapter 1.2.VI.
Windbags.
So marches the world, in this its Paper Age, or Era of Hope. Not without
obstructions, war-explosions; which, however, heard from such distance, are
little other than a cheerful marching-music. If indeed that dark living
chaos of Ignorance and Hunger, five-and-twenty million strong, under your
feet,--were to begin playing!
For the present, however, consider Longchamp; now when Lent is ending, and
the glory of Paris and France has gone forth, as in annual wont. Not to
assist at Tenebris Masses, but to sun itself and show itself, and salute
the Young Spring. (Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ii. 51. Louvet, Roman de
Faublas, &c.;) Manifold, bright-tinted, glittering with gold; all through
the Bois de Boulogne, in longdrawn variegated rows;--like longdrawn living
flower-borders, tulips, dahlias, lilies of the valley; all in their moving
flower-pots (of new-gilt carriages): pleasure of the eye, and pride of
life! So rolls and dances the Procession: steady, of firm assurance, as
if it rolled on adamant and the foundations of the world; not on mere
heraldic parchment,--under which smoulders a lake of fire. Dance on, ye
foolish ones; ye sought not wisdom, neither have ye found it. Ye and your
fathers have sown the wind, ye shall reap the whirlwind. Was it not, from
of old, written: The wages of sin is death?
But at Longchamp, as elsewhere, we remark for one thing, that dame and
cavalier are waited on each by a kind of human familiar, named jokei.
Little elf, or imp; though young, already withered; with its withered air
of premature vice, of knowingness, of completed elf-hood: useful in
various emergencies. The name jokei (jockey) comes from the English; as
the thing also fancies that it does. Our Anglomania, in fact , is grown
considerable; prophetic of much. If France is to be free, why shall she
not, now when mad war is hushed, love neighbouring Freedom? Cultivated
men, your Dukes de Liancourt, de la Rochefoucault admire the English
Constitution, the English National Character; would import what of it they
can.
Of what is lighter, especially if it be light as wind, how much easier the
freightage! Non-Admiral Duke de Chartres (not yet d'Orleans or Egalite)
flies to and fro across the Strait; importing English Fashions; this he, as
hand-and-glove with an English Prince of Wales, is surely qualified to do.
Carriages and saddles; top-boots and redingotes, as we call riding-coats.
Nay the very mode of riding: for now no man on a level with his age but
will trot a l'Anglaise, rising in the stirrups; scornful of the old sitfast
method, in which, according to Shakspeare, 'butter and eggs' go to market.
Also, he can urge the fervid wheels, this brave Chartres of ours; no whip
in Paris is rasher and surer than the unprofessional one of Monseigneur.
Elf jokeis, we have seen; but see now real Yorkshire jockeys, and what they
ride on, and train: English racers for French Races. These likewise we
owe first (under the Providence of the Devil) to Monseigneur. Prince
d'Artois also has his stud of racers. Prince d'Artois has withal the
strangest horseleech: a moonstruck, much-enduring individual, of Neuchatel
in Switzerland,--named Jean Paul Marat. A problematic Chevalier d'Eon, now
in petticoats, now in breeches, is no less problematic in London than in
Paris; and causes bets and lawsuits. Beautiful days of international
communion! Swindlery and Blackguardism have stretched hands across the
Channel, and saluted mutually: on the racecourse of Vincennes or Sablons,
behold in English curricle-and-four, wafted glorious among the
principalities and rascalities, an English Dr. Dodd, (Adelung, Geschichte
der Menschlichen Narrheit, para Dodd.)--for whom also the too early gallows
gapes.
Duke de Chartres was a young Prince of great promise, as young Princes
often are; which promise unfortunately has belied itself. With the huge
Orleans Property, with Duke de Penthievre for Father-in-law (and now the
young Brother-in-law Lamballe killed by excesses),--he will one day be the
richest man in France. Meanwhile, 'his hair is all falling out, his blood
is quite spoiled,'--by early transcendentalism of debauchery. Carbuncles
stud his face; dark studs on a ground of burnished copper. A most signal
failure, this young Prince! The stuff prematurely burnt out of him:
little left but foul smoke and ashes of expiring sensualities: what might
have been Thought, Insight, and even Conduct, gone now, or fast going,--to
confused darkness, broken by bewildering dazzlements; to obstreperous
crotchets; to activities which you may call semi-delirious, or even semi-
galvanic! Paris affects to laugh at his charioteering; but he heeds not
such laughter.
On the other hand, what a day, not of laughter, was that, when he
threatened, for lucre's sake, to lay sacrilegious hand on the Palais-Royal
Garden! (1781-82. (Dulaure, viii. 423.)) The flower-parterres shall be
riven up; the Chestnut Avenues shall fall: time-honoured boscages, under
which the Opera Hamadryads were wont to wander, not inexorable to men.
Paris moans aloud. Philidor, from his Cafe de la Regence, shall no longer
look on greenness; the loungers and losels of the world, where now shall
they haunt? In vain is moaning. The axe glitters; the sacred groves fall
crashing,--for indeed Monseigneur was short of money: the Opera Hamadryads
fly with shrieks. Shriek not, ye Opera Hamadryads; or not as those that
have no comfort. He will surround your Garden with new edifices and
piazzas: though narrowed, it shall be replanted; dizened with hydraulic
jets, cannon which the sun fires at noon; things bodily, things spiritual,
such as man has not imagined;--and in the Palais-Royal shall again, and
more than ever, be the Sorcerer's Sabbath and Satan-at-Home of our Planet.
What will not mortals attempt? From remote Annonay in the Vivarais, the
Brothers Montgolfier send up their paper-dome, filled with the smoke of
burnt wool. (5th June, 1783.) The Vivarais provincial assembly is to be
prorogued this same day: Vivarais Assembly-members applaud, and the shouts
of congregated men. Will victorious Analysis scale the very Heavens, then?
Paris hears with eager wonder; Paris shall ere long see. From Reveilion's
Paper-warehouse there, in the Rue St. Antoine (a noted Warehouse),--the new
Montgolfier air-ship launches itself. Ducks and poultry are borne skyward:
but now shall men be borne. (October and November, 1783.) Nay, Chemist
Charles thinks of hydrogen and glazed silk. Chemist Charles will himself
ascend, from the Tuileries Garden; Montgolfier solemnly cutting the cord.
By Heaven, he also mounts, he and another? Ten times ten thousand hearts
go palpitating; all tongues are mute with wonder and fear; till a shout,
like the voice of seas, rolls after him, on his wild way. He soars, he
dwindles upwards; has become a mere gleaming circlet,--like some Turgotine
snuff-box, what we call 'Turgotine Platitude;' like some new daylight Moon!
Finally he descends; welcomed by the universe. Duchess Polignac, with a
party, is in the Bois de Boulogne, waiting; though it is drizzly winter;
the 1st of December 1783. The whole chivalry of France, Duke de Chartres
foremost, gallops to receive him. (Lacretelle, 18me Siecle, iii. 258.)
Beautiful invention; mounting heavenward, so beautifully,--so unguidably!
Emblem of much, and of our Age of Hope itself; which shall mount,
specifically-light, majestically in this same manner; and hover,--tumbling
whither Fate will. Well if it do not, Pilatre-like, explode; and demount
all the more tragically!--So, riding on windbags, will men scale the
Empyrean.
Or observe Herr Doctor Mesmer, in his spacious Magnetic Halls. Long-stoled
he walks; reverend, glancing upwards, as in rapt commerce; an Antique
Egyptian Hierophant in this new age. Soft music flits; breaking fitfully
the sacred stillness. Round their Magnetic Mystery, which to the eye is
mere tubs with water,--sit breathless, rod in hand, the circles of Beauty
and Fashion, each circle a living circular Passion-Flower: expecting the
magnetic afflatus, and new-manufactured Heaven-on-Earth. O women, O men,
great is your infidel-faith! A Parlementary Duport, a Bergasse,
D'Espremenil we notice there; Chemist Berthollet too,--on the part of
Monseigneur de Chartres.
Had not the Academy of Sciences, with its Baillys, Franklins, Lavoisiers,
interfered! But it did interfere. (Lacretelle, 18me Siecle, iii.258.)
Mesmer may pocket his hard money, and withdraw. Let him walk silent by the
shore of the Bodensee, by the ancient town of Constance; meditating on
much. For so, under the strangest new vesture, the old great truth (since
no vesture can hide it) begins again to be revealed: That man is what we
call a miraculous creature, with miraculous power over men; and, on the
whole, with such a Life in him, and such a World round him, as victorious
Analysis, with her Physiologies, Nervous-systems, Physic and Metaphysic,
will never completely name, to say nothing of explaining. Wherein also the
Quack shall, in all ages, come in for his share. (August, 1784.)
Chapter 1.2.VII.
Contrat Social.
In such succession of singular prismatic tints, flush after flush suffusing
our horizon, does the Era of Hope dawn on towards fulfilment.
Questionable! As indeed, with an Era of Hope that rests on mere universal
Benevolence, victorious Analysis, Vice cured of its deformity; and, in the
long run, on Twenty-five dark savage Millions, looking up, in hunger and
weariness, to that Ecce-signum of theirs 'forty feet high,'--how could it
but be questionable?
Through all time, if we read aright, sin was, is, will be, the parent of
misery. This land calls itself most Christian, and has crosses and
cathedrals; but its High-priest is some Roche-Aymon, some Necklace-Cardinal
Louis de Rohan. The voice of the poor, through long years, ascends
inarticulate, in Jacqueries, meal-mobs; low-whimpering of infinite moan:
unheeded of the Earth; not unheeded of Heaven. Always moreover where the
Millions are wretched, there are the Thousands straitened, unhappy; only
the Units can flourish; or say rather, be ruined the last. Industry, all
noosed and haltered, as if it too were some beast of chase for the mighty
hunters of this world to bait, and cut slices from,--cries passionately to
these its well-paid guides and watchers, not, Guide me; but, Laissez faire,
Leave me alone of your guidance! What market has Industry in this France?
For two things there may be market and demand: for the coarser kind of
field-fruits, since the Millions will live: for the fine kinds of luxury
and spicery,--of multiform taste, from opera-melodies down to racers and
courtesans; since the Units will be amused. It is at bottom but a mad
state of things.
To mend and remake all which we have, indeed, victorious Analysis. Honour
to victorious Analysis; nevertheless, out of the Workshop and Laboratory,
what thing was victorious Analysis yet known to make? Detection of
incoherences, mainly; destruction of the incoherent. From of old, Doubt
was but half a magician; she evokes the spectres which she cannot quell.
We shall have 'endless vortices of froth-logic;' whereon first words, and
then things, are whirled and swallowed. Remark, accordingly, as
acknowledged grounds of Hope, at bottom mere precursors of Despair, this
perpetual theorising about Man, the Mind of Man, Philosophy of Government,
Progress of the Species and such-like; the main thinking furniture of every
head. Time, and so many Montesquieus, Mablys, spokesmen of Time, have
discovered innumerable things: and now has not Jean Jacques promulgated
his new Evangel of a Contrat Social; explaining the whole mystery of
Government, and how it is contracted and bargained for,--to universal
satisfaction? Theories of Government! Such have been, and will be; in
ages of decadence. Acknowledge them in their degree; as processes of
Nature, who does nothing in vain; as steps in her great process.
Meanwhile, what theory is so certain as this, That all theories, were they
never so earnest, painfully elaborated, are, and, by the very conditions of
them, must be incomplete, questionable, and even false? Thou shalt know
that this Universe is, what it professes to be, an infinite one. Attempt
not to swallow it, for thy logical digestion; be thankful, if skilfully
planting down this and the other fixed pillar in the chaos, thou prevent
its swallowing thee. That a new young generation has exchanged the Sceptic
Creed, What shall I believe? for passionate Faith in this Gospel according
to Jean Jacques is a further step in the business; and betokens much.
Blessed also is Hope; and always from the beginning there was some
Millennium prophesied; Millennium of Holiness; but (what is notable) never
till this new Era, any Millennium of mere Ease and plentiful Supply. In
such prophesied Lubberland, of Happiness, Benevolence, and Vice cured of
its deformity, trust not, my friends! Man is not what one calls a happy
animal; his appetite for sweet victual is so enormous. How, in this wild
Universe, which storms in on him, infinite, vague-menacing, shall poor man
find, say not happiness, but existence, and footing to stand on, if it be
not by girding himself together for continual endeavour and endurance?
Woe, if in his heart there dwelt no devout Faith; if the word Duty had lost
its meaning for him! For as to this of Sentimentalism, so useful for
weeping with over romances and on pathetic occasions, it otherwise verily
will avail nothing; nay less. The healthy heart that said to itself, 'How
healthy am I!' was already fallen into the fatalest sort of disease. Is
not Sentimentalism twin-sister to Cant, if not one and the same with it?
Is not Cant the materia prima of the Devil; from which all falsehoods,
imbecilities, abominations body themselves; from which no true thing can
come? For Cant is itself properly a double-distilled Lie; the second-power
of a Lie.
And now if a whole Nation fall into that? In such case, I answer,
infallibly they will return out of it! For life is no cunningly-devised
deception or self-deception: it is a great truth that thou art alive, that
thou hast desires, necessities; neither can these subsist and satisfy
themselves on delusions, but on fact. To fact, depend on it, we shall come
back: to such fact, blessed or cursed, as we have wisdom for. The lowest,
least blessed fact one knows of, on which necessitous mortals have ever
based themselves, seems to be the primitive one of Cannibalism: That I can
devour Thee. What if such Primitive Fact were precisely the one we had
(with our improved methods) to revert to, and begin anew from!
Chapter 1.2.VIII.
Printed Paper.
In such a practical France, let the theory of Perfectibility say what it
will, discontents cannot be wanting: your promised Reformation is so
indispensable; yet it comes not; who will begin it--with himself?
Discontent with what is around us, still more with what is above us, goes
on increasing; seeking ever new vents.
Of Street Ballads, of Epigrams that from of old tempered Despotism, we need
not speak. Nor of Manuscript Newspapers (Nouvelles a la main) do we speak.
Bachaumont and his journeymen and followers may close those 'thirty volumes
of scurrilous eaves-dropping,' and quit that trade; for at length if not
liberty of the Press, there is license. Pamphlets can be surreptititiously
vended and read in Paris, did they even bear to be 'Printed at Pekin.' We
have a Courrier de l'Europe in those years, regularly published at London;
by a De Morande, whom the guillotine has not yet devoured. There too an
unruly Linguet, still unguillotined, when his own country has become too
hot for him, and his brother Advocates have cast him out, can emit his
hoarse wailings, and Bastille Devoilee (Bastille unveiled). Loquacious
Abbe Raynal, at length, has his wish; sees the Histoire Philosophique, with
its 'lubricity,' unveracity, loose loud eleutheromaniac rant (contributed,
they say, by Philosophedom at large, though in the Abbe's name, and to his
glory), burnt by the common hangman;--and sets out on his travels as a
martyr. It was the edition of 1781; perhaps the last notable book that had
such fire-beatitude,--the hangman discovering now that it did not serve.
Again, in Courts of Law, with their money-quarrels, divorce-cases,
wheresoever a glimpse into the household existence can be had, what
indications! The Parlements of Besancon and Aix ring, audible to all
France, with the amours and destinies of a young Mirabeau. He, under the
nurture of a 'Friend of Men,' has, in State Prisons, in marching Regiments,
Dutch Authors' garrets, and quite other scenes, 'been for twenty years
learning to resist 'despotism:' despotism of men, and alas also of gods.
How, beneath this rose-coloured veil of Universal Benevolence and Astraea
Redux, is the sanctuary of Home so often a dreary void, or a dark
contentious Hell-on-Earth! The old Friend of Men has his own divorce case
too; and at times, 'his whole family but one' under lock and key: he
writes much about reforming and enfranchising the world; and for his own
private behoof he has needed sixty Lettres-de-Cachet. A man of insight
too, with resolution, even with manful principle: but in such an element,
inward and outward; which he could not rule, but only madden. Edacity,
rapacity;--quite contrary to the finer sensibilities of the heart! Fools,
that expect your verdant Millennium, and nothing but Love and Abundance,
brooks running wine, winds whispering music,--with the whole ground and
basis of your existence champed into a mud of Sensuality; which, daily
growing deeper, will soon have no bottom but the Abyss!
Or consider that unutterable business of the Diamond Necklace. Red-hatted
Cardinal Louis de Rohan; Sicilian jail-bird Balsamo Cagliostro; milliner
Dame de Lamotte, 'with a face of some piquancy:' the highest Church
Dignitaries waltzing, in Walpurgis Dance, with quack-prophets, pickpurses
and public women;--a whole Satan's Invisible World displayed; working there
continually under the daylight visible one; the smoke of its torment going
up for ever! The Throne has been brought into scandalous collision with
the Treadmill. Astonished Europe rings with the mystery for ten months;
sees only lie unfold itself from lie; corruption among the lofty and the
low, gulosity, credulity, imbecility, strength nowhere but in the hunger.
Weep, fair Queen, thy first tears of unmixed wretchedness! Thy fair name
has been tarnished by foul breath; irremediably while life lasts. No more
shalt thou be loved and pitied by living hearts, till a new generation has
been born, and thy own heart lies cold, cured of all its sorrows.--The
Epigrams henceforth become, not sharp and bitter; but cruel, atrocious,
unmentionable. On that 31st of May, 1786, a miserable Cardinal Grand-
Almoner Rohan, on issuing from his Bastille, is escorted by hurrahing
crowds: unloved he, and worthy of no love; but important since the Court
and Queen are his enemies. (Fils Adoptif, Memoires de Mirabeau, iv. 325.)
How is our bright Era of Hope dimmed: and the whole sky growing bleak with
signs of hurricane and earthquake! It is a doomed world: gone all
'obedience that made men free;' fast going the obedience that made men
slaves,--at least to one another. Slaves only of their own lusts they now
are, and will be. Slaves of sin; inevitably also of sorrow. Behold the
mouldering mass of Sensuality and Falsehood; round which plays foolishly,
itself a corrupt phosphorescence, some glimmer of Sentimentalism;--and over
all, rising, as Ark of their Covenant, the grim Patibulary Fork 'forty feet
high;' which also is now nigh rotted. Add only that the French Nation
distinguishes itself among Nations by the characteristic of Excitability;
with the good, but also with the perilous evil, which belongs to that.
Rebellion, explosion, of unknown extent is to be calculated on. There are,
as Chesterfield wrote, 'all the symptoms I have ever met with in History!'
Shall we say, then: Wo to Philosophism, that it destroyed Religion, what it
called 'extinguishing the abomination (ecraser 'l'infame)'? Wo rather to
those that made the Holy an abomination, and extinguishable; wo at all men
that live in such a time of world-abomination and world-destruction! Nay,
answer the Courtiers, it was Turgot, it was Necker, with their mad
innovating; it was the Queen's want of etiquette; it was he, it was she, it
was that. Friends! it was every scoundrel that had lived, and quack-like
pretended to be doing, and been only eating and misdoing, in all provinces
of life, as Shoeblack or as Sovereign Lord, each in his degree, from the
time of Charlemagne and earlier. All this (for be sure no falsehood
perishes, but is as seed sown out to grow) has been storing itself for
thousands of years; and now the account-day has come. And rude will the
settlement be: of wrath laid up against the day of wrath. O my Brother,
be not thou a Quack! Die rather, if thou wilt take counsel; 'tis but dying
once, and thou art quit of it for ever. Cursed is that trade; and bears
curses, thou knowest not how, long ages after thou art departed, and the
wages thou hadst are all consumed; nay, as the ancient wise have written,--
through Eternity itself, and is verily marked in the Doom-Book of a God!
Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. And yet, as we said, Hope is but
deferred; not abolished, not abolishable. It is very notable, and
touching, how this same Hope does still light onwards the French Nation
through all its wild destinies. For we shall still find Hope shining, be
it for fond invitation, be it for anger and menace; as a mild heavenly
light it shone; as a red conflagration it shines: burning sulphurous blue,
through darkest regions of Terror, it still shines; and goes sent out at
all, since Desperation itself is a kind of Hope. Thus is our Era still to
be named of Hope, though in the saddest sense,--when there is nothing left
but Hope.
But if any one would know summarily what a Pandora's Box lies there for the
opening, he may see it in what by its nature is the symptom of all
symptoms, the surviving Literature of the Period. Abbe Raynal, with his
lubricity and loud loose rant, has spoken his word; and already the fast-
hastening generation responds to another. Glance at Beaumarchais' Mariage
de Figaro; which now (in 1784), after difficulty enough, has issued on the
stage; and 'runs its hundred nights,' to the admiration of all men. By
what virtue or internal vigour it so ran, the reader of our day will rather
wonder:--and indeed will know so much the better that it flattered some
pruriency of the time; that it spoke what all were feeling, and longing to
speak. Small substance in that Figaro: thin wiredrawn intrigues, thin
wiredrawn sentiments and sarcasms; a thing lean, barren; yet which winds
and whisks itself, as through a wholly mad universe, adroitly, with a high-
sniffing air: wherein each, as was hinted, which is the grand secret, may
see some image of himself, and of his own state and ways. So it runs its
hundred nights, and all France runs with it; laughing applause. If the
soliloquising Barber ask: "What has your Lordship done to earn all this?"
and can only answer: "You took the trouble to be born (Vous vous etes
donne la peine de naitre)," all men must laugh: and a gay horse-racing
Anglomaniac Noblesse loudest of all. For how can small books have a great
danger in them? asks the Sieur Caron; and fancies his thin epigram may be a
kind of reason. Conqueror of a golden fleece, by giant smuggling; tamer of
hell-dogs, in the Parlement Maupeou; and finally crowned Orpheus in the
Theatre Francais, Beaumarchais has now culminated, and unites the
attributes of several demigods. We shall meet him once again, in the
course of his decline.
Still more significant are two Books produced on the eve of the ever-
memorable Explosion itself, and read eagerly by all the world: Saint-
Pierre's Paul et Virginie, and Louvet's Chevalier de Faublas. Noteworthy
Books; which may be considered as the last speech of old Feudal France. In
the first there rises melodiously, as it were, the wail of a moribund
world: everywhere wholesome Nature in unequal conflict with diseased
perfidious Art; cannot escape from it in the lowest hut, in the remotest
island of the sea. Ruin and death must strike down the loved one; and,
what is most significant of all, death even here not by necessity, but by
etiquette. What a world of prurient corruption lies visible in that super-
sublime of modesty! Yet, on the whole, our good Saint-Pierre is musical,
poetical though most morbid: we will call his Book the swan-song of old
dying France.
Louvet's again, let no man account musical. Truly, if this wretched
Faublas is a death-speech, it is one under the gallows, and by a felon that
does not repent. Wretched cloaca of a Book; without depth even as a
cloaca! What 'picture of French society' is here? Picture properly of
nothing, if not of the mind that gave it out as some sort of picture. Yet
symptom of much; above all, of the world that could nourish itself thereon.
BOOK 1.III.
THE PARLEMENT OF PARIS
Chapter 1.3.I.
Dishonoured Bills.
While the unspeakable confusion is everywhere weltering within, and through
so many cracks in the surface sulphur-smoke is issuing, the question
arises: Through what crevice will the main Explosion carry itself?
Through which of the old craters or chimneys; or must it, at once, form a
new crater for itself? In every Society are such chimneys, are
Institutions serving as such: even Constantinople is not without its
safety-valves; there too Discontent can vent itself,--in material fire; by
the number of nocturnal conflagrations, or of hanged bakers, the Reigning
Power can read the signs of the times, and change course according to
these.
We may say that this French Explosion will doubtless first try all the old
Institutions of escape; for by each of these there is, or at least there
used to be, some communication with the interior deep; they are national
Institutions in virtue of that. Had they even become personal
Institutions, and what we can call choked up from their original uses,
there nevertheless must the impediment be weaker than elsewhere. Through
which of them then? An observer might have guessed: Through the Law
Parlements; above all, through the Parlement of Paris.
Men, though never so thickly clad in dignities, sit not inaccessible to the
influences of their time; especially men whose life is business; who at all
turns, were it even from behind judgment-seats, have come in contact with
the actual workings of the world. The Counsellor of Parlement, the
President himself, who has bought his place with hard money that he might
be looked up to by his fellow-creatures, how shall he, in all Philosophe-
soirees, and saloons of elegant culture, become notable as a Friend of
Darkness? Among the Paris Long-robes there may be more than one patriotic
Malesherbes, whose rule is conscience and the public good; there are
clearly more than one hotheaded D'Espremenil, to whose confused thought any
loud reputation of the Brutus sort may seem glorious. The Lepelletiers,
Lamoignons have titles and wealth; yet, at Court, are only styled 'Noblesse
of the Robe.' There are Duports of deep scheme; Freteaus, Sabatiers, of
incontinent tongue: all nursed more or less on the milk of the Contrat
Social. Nay, for the whole Body, is not this patriotic opposition also a
fighting for oneself? Awake, Parlement of Paris, renew thy long warfare!
Was not the Parlement Maupeou abolished with ignominy? Not now hast thou
to dread a Louis XIV., with the crack of his whip, and his Olympian looks;
not now a Richelieu and Bastilles: no, the whole Nation is behind thee.
Thou too (O heavens!) mayest become a Political Power; and with the
shakings of thy horse-hair wig shake principalities and dynasties, like a
very Jove with his ambrosial curls!
Light old M. de Maurepas, since the end of 1781, has been fixed in the
frost of death: "Never more," said the good Louis, "shall I hear his step
overhead;" his light jestings and gyratings are at an end. No more can the
importunate reality be hidden by pleasant wit, and today's evil be deftly
rolled over upon tomorrow. The morrow itself has arrived; and now nothing
but a solid phlegmatic M. de Vergennes sits there, in dull matter of fact,
like some dull punctual Clerk (which he originally was); admits what cannot
be denied, let the remedy come whence it will. In him is no remedy; only
clerklike 'despatch of business' according to routine. The poor King,
grown older yet hardly more experienced, must himself, with such no-faculty
as he has, begin governing; wherein also his Queen will give help. Bright
Queen, with her quick clear glances and impulses; clear, and even noble;
but all too superficial, vehement-shallow, for that work! To govern France
were such a problem; and now it has grown well-nigh too hard to govern even
the Oeil-de-Boeuf. For if a distressed People has its cry, so likewise,
and more audibly, has a bereaved Court. To the Oeil-de-Boeuf it remains
inconceivable how, in a France of such resources, the Horn of Plenty should
run dry: did it not use to flow? Nevertheless Necker, with his revenue of
parsimony, has 'suppressed above six hundred places,' before the Courtiers
could oust him; parsimonious finance-pedant as he was. Again, a military
pedant, Saint-Germain, with his Prussian manoeuvres; with his Prussian
notions, as if merit and not coat-of-arms should be the rule of promotion,
has disaffected military men; the Mousquetaires, with much else are
suppressed: for he too was one of your suppressors; and unsettling and
oversetting, did mere mischief--to the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Complaints abound;
scarcity, anxiety: it is a changed Oeil-de-Boeuf. Besenval says, already
in these years (1781) there was such a melancholy (such a tristesse) about
Court, compared with former days, as made it quite dispiriting to look
upon.
No wonder that the Oeil-de-Boeuf feels melancholy, when you are suppressing
its places! Not a place can be suppressed, but some purse is the lighter
for it; and more than one heart the heavier; for did it not employ the
working-classes too,--manufacturers, male and female, of laces, essences;
of Pleasure generally, whosoever could manufacture Pleasure? Miserable
economies; never felt over Twenty-five Millions! So, however, it goes on:
and is not yet ended. Few years more and the Wolf-hounds shall fall
suppressed, the Bear-hounds, the Falconry; places shall fall, thick as
autumnal leaves. Duke de Polignac demonstrates, to the complete silencing
of ministerial logic, that his place cannot be abolished; then gallantly,
turning to the Queen, surrenders it, since her Majesty so wishes. Less
chivalrous was Duke de Coigny, and yet not luckier: "We got into a real
quarrel, Coigny and I," said King Louis; "but if he had even struck me, I
could not have blamed him." (Besenval, iii. 255-58.) In regard to such
matters there can be but one opinion. Baron Besenval, with that frankness
of speech which stamps the independent man, plainly assures her Majesty
that it is frightful (affreux); "you go to bed, and are not sure but you
shall rise impoverished on the morrow: one might as well be in Turkey."
It is indeed a dog's life.
How singular this perpetual distress of the royal treasury! And yet it is
a thing not more incredible than undeniable. A thing mournfully true: the
stumbling-block on which all Ministers successively stumble, and fall. Be
it 'want of fiscal genius,' or some far other want, there is the palpablest
discrepancy between Revenue and Expenditure; a Deficit of the Revenue: you
must 'choke (combler) the Deficit,' or else it will swallow you! This is
the stern problem; hopeless seemingly as squaring of the circle.
Controller Joly de Fleury, who succeeded Necker, could do nothing with it;
nothing but propose loans, which were tardily filled up; impose new taxes,
unproductive of money, productive of clamour and discontent. As little
could Controller d'Ormesson do, or even less; for if Joly maintained
himself beyond year and day, d'Ormesson reckons only by months: till 'the
King purchased Rambouillet without consulting him,' which he took as a hint
to withdraw. And so, towards the end of 1783, matters threaten to come to
still-stand. Vain seems human ingenuity. In vain has our newly-devised
'Council of Finances' struggled, our Intendants of Finance, Controller-
General of Finances: there are unhappily no Finances to control. Fatal
paralysis invades the social movement; clouds, of blindness or of
blackness, envelop us: are we breaking down, then, into the black horrors
of NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY?
Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all Falsehoods,
public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither, from the first origin
of them, they were all doomed. For Nature is true and not a lie. No lie
you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation,
like a Bill drawn on Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment,-
-with the answer, No effects. Pity only that it often had so long a
circulation: that the original forger were so seldom he who bore the final
smart of it! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring, are passed on;
shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank; and so land ultimately on
the dumb lowest rank, who with spade and mattock, with sore heart and empty
wallet, daily come in contact with reality, and can pass the cheat no
further.
Observe nevertheless how, by a just compensating law, if the lie with its
burden (in this confused whirlpool of Society) sinks and is shifted ever
downwards, then in return the distress of it rises ever upwards and
upwards. Whereby, after the long pining and demi-starvation of those
Twenty Millions, a Duke de Coigny and his Majesty come also to have their
'real quarrel.' Such is the law of just Nature; bringing, though at long
intervals, and were it only by Bankruptcy, matters round again to the mark.
But with a Fortunatus' Purse in his pocket, through what length of time
might not almost any Falsehood last! Your Society, your Household,
practical or spiritual Arrangement, is untrue, unjust, offensive to the eye
of God and man. Nevertheless its hearth is warm, its larder well
replenished: the innumerable Swiss of Heaven, with a kind of Natural
loyalty, gather round it; will prove, by pamphleteering, musketeering, that
it is a truth; or if not an unmixed (unearthly, impossible) Truth, then
better, a wholesomely attempered one, (as wind is to the shorn lamb), and
works well. Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder grow empty!
Was your Arrangement so true, so accordant to Nature's ways, then how, in
the name of wonder, has Nature, with her infinite bounty, come to leave it
famishing there? To all men, to all women and all children, it is now
indutiable that your Arrangement was false. Honour to Bankruptcy; ever
righteous on the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all
Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it rise heaven-
high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and
make us free of it.
Chapter 1.3.II.
Controller Calonne.
Under such circumstances of tristesse, obstruction and sick langour, when
to an exasperated Court it seems as if fiscal genius had departed from
among men, what apparition could be welcomer than that of M. de Calonne?
Calonne, a man of indisputable genius; even fiscal genius, more or less; of
experience both in managing Finance and Parlements, for he has been
Intendant at Metz, at Lille; King's Procureur at Douai. A man of weight,
connected with the moneyed classes; of unstained name,--if it were not some
peccadillo (of showing a Client's Letter) in that old D'Aiguillon-
Lachalotais business, as good as forgotten now. He has kinsmen of heavy
purse, felt on the Stock Exchange. Our Foulons, Berthiers intrigue for
him:--old Foulon, who has now nothing to do but intrigue; who is known and
even seen to be what they call a scoundrel; but of unmeasured wealth; who,
from Commissariat-clerk which he once was, may hope, some think, if the
game go right, to be Minister himself one day.
Such propping and backing has M. de Calonne; and then intrinsically such
qualities! Hope radiates from his face; persuasion hangs on his tongue.
For all straits he has present remedy, and will make the world roll on
wheels before him. On the 3d of November 1783, the Oeil-de-Boeuf rejoices
in its new Controller-General. Calonne also shall have trial; Calonne
also, in his way, as Turgot and Necker had done in theirs, shall forward
the consummation; suffuse, with one other flush of brilliancy, our now too
leaden-coloured Era of Hope, and wind it up--into fulfilment.
Great, in any case, is the felicity of the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Stinginess has
fled from these royal abodes: suppression ceases; your Besenval may go
peaceably to sleep, sure that he shall awake unplundered. Smiling Plenty,
as if conjured by some enchanter, has returned; scatters contentment from
her new-flowing horn. And mark what suavity of manners! A bland smile
distinguishes our Controller: to all men he listens with an air of
interest, nay of anticipation; makes their own wish clear to themselves,
and grants it; or at least, grants conditional promise of it. "I fear this
is a matter of difficulty," said her Majesty.--"Madame," answered the
Controller, "if it is but difficult, it is done, if it is impossible, it
shall be done (se fera)." A man of such 'facility' withal. To observe him
in the pleasure-vortex of society, which none partakes of with more gusto,
you might ask, When does he work? And yet his work, as we see, is never
behindhand; above all, the fruit of his work: ready-money. Truly a man of
incredible facility; facile action, facile elocution, facile thought: how,
in mild suasion, philosophic depth sparkles up from him, as mere wit and
lambent sprightliness; and in her Majesty's Soirees, with the weight of a
world lying on him, he is the delight of men and women! By what magic does
he accomplish miracles? By the only true magic, that of genius. Men name
him 'the Minister;' as indeed, when was there another such? Crooked things
are become straight by him, rough places plain; and over the Oeil-de-Boeuf
there rests an unspeakable sunshine.
Nay, in seriousness, let no man say that Calonne had not genius: genius
for Persuading; before all things, for Borrowing. With the skilfulest
judicious appliances of underhand money, he keeps the Stock-Exchanges
flourishing; so that Loan after Loan is filled up as soon as opened.
'Calculators likely to know' (Besenval, iii. 216.) have calculated that he
spent, in extraordinaries, 'at the rate of one million daily;' which indeed
is some fifty thousand pounds sterling: but did he not procure something
with it; namely peace and prosperity, for the time being? Philosophedom
grumbles and croaks; buys, as we said, 80,000 copies of Necker's new Book:
but Nonpareil Calonne, in her Majesty's Apartment, with the glittering
retinue of Dukes, Duchesses, and mere happy admiring faces, can let Necker
and Philosophedom croak.
The misery is, such a time cannot last! Squandering, and Payment by Loan
is no way to choke a Deficit. Neither is oil the substance for quenching
conflagrations;--but, only for assuaging them, not permanently! To the
Nonpareil himself, who wanted not insight, it is clear at intervals, and
dimly certain at all times, that his trade is by nature temporary, growing
daily more difficult; that changes incalculable lie at no great distance.
Apart from financial Deficit, the world is wholly in such a new-fangled
humour; all things working loose from their old fastenings, towards new
issues and combinations. There is not a dwarf jokei, a cropt Brutus'-head,
or Anglomaniac horseman rising on his stirrups, that does not betoken
change. But what then? The day, in any case, passes pleasantly; for the
morrow, if the morrow come, there shall be counsel too. Once mounted (by
munificence, suasion, magic of genius) high enough in favour with the Oeil-
de-Boeuf, with the King, Queen, Stock-Exchange, and so far as possible with
all men, a Nonpareil Controller may hope to go careering through the
Inevitable, in some unimagined way, as handsomely as another.
At all events, for these three miraculous years, it has been expedient
heaped on expedient; till now, with such cumulation and height, the pile
topples perilous. And here has this world's-wonder of a Diamond Necklace
brought it at last to the clear verge of tumbling. Genius in that
direction can no more: mounted high enough, or not mounted, we must fare
forth. Hardly is poor Rohan, the Necklace-Cardinal, safely bestowed in the
Auvergne Mountains, Dame de Lamotte (unsafely) in the Salpetriere, and that
mournful business hushed up, when our sanguine Controller once more
astonishes the world. An expedient, unheard of for these hundred and sixty
years, has been propounded; and, by dint of suasion (for his light
audacity, his hope and eloquence are matchless) has been got adopted,--
Convocation of the Notables.
Let notable persons, the actual or virtual rulers of their districts, be
summoned from all sides of France: let a true tale, of his Majesty's
patriotic purposes and wretched pecuniary impossibilities, be suasively
told them; and then the question put: What are we to do? Surely to adopt
healing measures; such as the magic of genius will unfold; such as, once
sanctioned by Notables, all Parlements and all men must, with more or less
reluctance, submit to.
Chapter 1.3.III.
The Notables.
Here, then is verily a sign and wonder; visible to the whole world; bodeful
of much. The Oeil-de-Boeuf dolorously grumbles; were we not well as we
stood,--quenching conflagrations by oil? Constitutional Philosophedom
starts with joyful surprise; stares eagerly what the result will be. The
public creditor, the public debtor, the whole thinking and thoughtless
public have their several surprises, joyful and sorrowful. Count Mirabeau,
who has got his matrimonial and other Lawsuits huddled up, better or worse;
and works now in the dimmest element at Berlin; compiling Prussian
Monarchies, Pamphlets On Cagliostro; writing, with pay, but not with
honourable recognition, innumerable Despatches for his Government,--scents
or descries richer quarry from afar. He, like an eagle or vulture, or
mixture of both, preens his wings for flight homewards. (Fils Adoptif,
Memoires de Mirabeau, t. iv. livv. 4 et 5.)
M. de Calonne has stretched out an Aaron's Rod over France; miraculous; and
is summoning quite unexpected things. Audacity and hope alternate in him
with misgivings; though the sanguine-valiant side carries it. Anon he
writes to an intimate friend, "Here me fais pitie a moi-meme (I am an
object of pity to myself);" anon, invites some dedicating Poet or Poetaster
to sing 'this Assembly of the Notables and the Revolution that is
preparing.' (Biographie Universelle, para Calonne (by Guizot).) Preparing
indeed; and a matter to be sung,--only not till we have seen it, and what
the issue of it is. In deep obscure unrest, all things have so long gone
rocking and swaying: will M. de Calonne, with this his alchemy of the
Notables, fasten all together again, and get new revenues? Or wrench all
asunder; so that it go no longer rocking and swaying, but clashing and
colliding?
Be this as it may, in the bleak short days, we behold men of weight and
influence threading the great vortex of French Locomotion, each on his
several line, from all sides of France towards the Chateau of Versailles:
summoned thither de par le roi. There, on the 22d day of February 1787,
they have met, and got installed: Notables to the number of a Hundred and
Thirty-seven, as we count them name by name: (Lacretelle, iii. 286.
Montgaillard, i. 347.) add Seven Princes of the Blood, it makes the round
Gross of Notables. Men of the sword, men of the robe; Peers, dignified
Clergy, Parlementary Presidents: divided into Seven Boards (Bureaux);
under our Seven Princes of the Blood, Monsieur, D'Artois, Penthievre, and
the rest; among whom let not our new Duke d'Orleans (for, since 1785, he is
Chartres no longer) be forgotten. Never yet made Admiral, and now turning
the corner of his fortieth year, with spoiled blood and prospects; half-
weary of a world which is more than half-weary of him, Monseigneur's future
is most questionable. Not in illumination and insight, not even in
conflagration; but, as was said, 'in dull smoke and ashes of outburnt
sensualities,' does he live and digest. Sumptuosity and sordidness;
revenge, life-weariness, ambition, darkness, putrescence; and, say, in
sterling money, three hundred thousand a year,--were this poor Prince once
to burst loose from his Court-moorings, to what regions, with what
phenomena, might he not sail and drift! Happily as yet he 'affects to hunt
daily;' sits there, since he must sit, presiding that Bureau of his, with
dull moon-visage, dull glassy eyes, as if it were a mere tedium to him.
We observe finally, that Count Mirabeau has actually arrived. He descends
from Berlin, on the scene of action; glares into it with flashing sun-
glance; discerns that it will do nothing for him. He had hoped these
Notables might need a Secretary. They do need one; but have fixed on
Dupont de Nemours; a man of smaller fame, but then of better;--who indeed,
as his friends often hear, labours under this complaint, surely not a
universal one, of having 'five kings to correspond with.' (Dumont,
Souvenirs sur Mirabeau (Paris, 1832), p. 20.) The pen of a Mirabeau cannot
become an official one; nevertheless it remains a pen. In defect of
Secretaryship, he sets to denouncing Stock-brokerage (Denonciation de
l'Agiotage); testifying, as his wont is, by loud bruit, that he is present
and busy;--till, warned by friend Talleyrand, and even by Calonne himself
underhand, that 'a seventeenth Lettre-de-Cachet may be launched against
him,' he timefully flits over the marches.
And now, in stately royal apartments, as Pictures of that time still
represent them, our hundred and forty-four Notables sit organised; ready to
hear and consider. Controller Calonne is dreadfully behindhand with his
speeches, his preparatives; however, the man's 'facility of work' is known
to us. For freshness of style, lucidity, ingenuity, largeness of view,
that opening Harangue of his was unsurpassable:--had not the subject-matter
been so appalling. A Deficit, concerning which accounts vary, and the
Controller's own account is not unquestioned; but which all accounts agree
in representing as 'enormous.' This is the epitome of our Controller's
difficulties: and then his means? Mere Turgotism; for thither, it seems,
we must come at last: Provincial Assemblies; new Taxation; nay, strangest
of all, new Land-tax, what he calls Subvention Territoriale, from which
neither Privileged nor Unprivileged, Noblemen, Clergy, nor Parlementeers,
shall be exempt!
Foolish enough! These Privileged Classes have been used to tax; levying
toll, tribute and custom, at all hands, while a penny was left: but to be
themselves taxed? Of such Privileged persons, meanwhile, do these
Notables, all but the merest fraction, consist. Headlong Calonne had given
no heed to the 'composition,' or judicious packing of them; but chosen such
Notables as were really notable; trusting for the issue to off-hand
ingenuity, good fortune, and eloquence that never yet failed. Headlong
Controller-General! Eloquence can do much, but not all. Orpheus, with
eloquence grown rhythmic, musical (what we call Poetry), drew iron tears
from the cheek of Pluto: but by what witchery of rhyme or prose wilt thou
from the pocket of Plutus draw gold?
Accordingly, the storm that now rose and began to whistle round Calonne,
first in these Seven Bureaus, and then on the outside of them, awakened by
them, spreading wider and wider over all France, threatens to become
unappeasable. A Deficit so enormous! Mismanagement, profusion is too
clear. Peculation itself is hinted at; nay, Lafayette and others go so far
as to speak it out, with attempts at proof. The blame of his Deficit our
brave Calonne, as was natural, had endeavoured to shift from himself on his
predecessors; not excepting even Necker. But now Necker vehemently denies;
whereupon an 'angry Correspondence,' which also finds its way into print.
In the Oeil-de-Boeuf, and her Majesty's private Apartments, an eloquent
Controller, with his "Madame, if it is but difficult," had been persuasive:
but, alas, the cause is now carried elsewhither. Behold him, one of these
sad days, in Monsieur's Bureau; to which all the other Bureaus have sent
deputies. He is standing at bay: alone; exposed to an incessant fire of
questions, interpellations, objurgations, from those 'hundred and thirty-
seven' pieces of logic-ordnance,--what we may well call bouches a feu,
fire-mouths literally! Never, according to Besenval, or hardly ever, had
such display of intellect, dexterity, coolness, suasive eloquence, been
made by man. To the raging play of so many fire-mouths he opposes nothing
angrier than light-beams, self-possession and fatherly smiles. With the
imperturbablest bland clearness, he, for five hours long, keeps answering
the incessant volley of fiery captious questions, reproachful
interpellations; in words prompt as lightning, quiet as light. Nay, the
cross-fire too: such side questions and incidental interpellations as, in
the heat of the main-battle, he (having only one tongue) could not get
answered; these also he takes up at the first slake; answers even these.
(Besenval, iii. 196.) Could blandest suasive eloquence have saved France,
she were saved.
Heavy-laden Controller! In the Seven Bureaus seems nothing but hindrance:
in Monsieur's Bureau, a Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, with an
eye himself to the Controllership, stirs up the Clergy; there are meetings,
underground intrigues. Neither from without anywhere comes sign of help or
hope. For the Nation (where Mirabeau is now, with stentor-lungs,
'denouncing Agio') the Controller has hitherto done nothing, or less. For
Philosophedom he has done as good as nothing,--sent out some scientific
Laperouse, or the like: and is he not in 'angry correspondence' with its
Necker? The very Oeil-de-Boeuf looks questionable; a falling Controller
has no friends. Solid M. de Vergennes, who with his phlegmatic judicious
punctuality might have kept down many things, died the very week before
these sorrowful Notables met. And now a Seal-keeper, Garde-des-Sceaux
Miromenil is thought to be playing the traitor: spinning plots for
Lomenie-Brienne! Queen's-Reader Abbe de Vermond, unloved individual, was
Brienne's creature, the work of his hands from the first: it may be feared
the backstairs passage is open, ground getting mined under our feet.
Treacherous Garde-des-Sceaux Miromenil, at least, should be dismissed;
Lamoignon, the eloquent Notable, a stanch man, with connections, and even
ideas, Parlement-President yet intent on reforming Parlements, were not he
the right Keeper? So, for one, thinks busy Besenval; and, at dinner-table,
rounds the same into the Controller's ear,--who always, in the intervals of
landlord-duties, listens to him as with charmed look, but answers nothing
positive. (Besenval, iii. 203.)
Alas, what to answer? The force of private intrigue, and then also the
force of public opinion, grows so dangerous, confused! Philosophedom
sneers aloud, as if its Necker already triumphed. The gaping populace
gapes over Wood-cuts or Copper-cuts; where, for example, a Rustic is
represented convoking the poultry of his barnyard, with this opening
address: "Dear animals, I have assembled you to advise me what sauce I
shall dress you with;" to which a Cock responding, "We don't want to be
eaten," is checked by "You wander from the point (Vous vous ecartez de la
question)." (Republished in the Musee de la Caricature (Paris, 1834).)
Laughter and logic; ballad-singer, pamphleteer; epigram and caricature:
what wind of public opinion is this,--as if the Cave of the Winds were
bursting loose! At nightfall, President Lamoignon steals over to the
Controller's; finds him 'walking with large strides in his chamber, like
one out of himself.' (Besenval, iii. 209.) With rapid confused speech the
Controller begs M. de Lamoignon to give him 'an advice.' Lamoignon
candidly answers that, except in regard to his own anticipated Keepership,
unless that would prove remedial, he really cannot take upon him to advise.
'On the Monday after Easter,' the 9th of April 1787, a date one rejoices to
verify, for nothing can excel the indolent falsehood of these Histoires and
Memoires,--'On the Monday after Easter, as I, Besenval, was riding towards
Romainville to the Marechal de Segur's, I met a friend on the Boulevards,
who told me that M. de Calonne was out. A little further on came M. the
Duke d'Orleans, dashing towards me, head to the wind' (trotting a
l'Anglaise), 'and confirmed the news.' (Ib. iii. 211.) It is true news.
Treacherous Garde-des-Sceaux Miromenil is gone, and Lamoignon is appointed
in his room: but appointed for his own profit only, not for the
Controller's: 'next day' the Controller also has had to move. A little
longer he may linger near; be seen among the money changers, and even
'working in the Controller's office,' where much lies unfinished: but
neither will that hold. Too strong blows and beats this tempest of public
opinion, of private intrigue, as from the Cave of all the Winds; and blows
him (higher Authority giving sign) out of Paris and France,--over the
horizon, into Invisibility, or uuter (utter, outer?) Darkness.
Such destiny the magic of genius could not forever avert. Ungrateful Oeil-
de-Boeuf! did he not miraculously rain gold manna on you; so that, as a
Courtier said, "All the world held out its hand, and I held out my hat,"--
for a time? Himself is poor; penniless, had not a 'Financier's widow in
Lorraine' offered him, though he was turned of fifty, her hand and the rich
purse it held. Dim henceforth shall be his activity, though unwearied:
Letters to the King, Appeals, Prognostications; Pamphlets (from London),
written with the old suasive facility; which however do not persuade.
Luckily his widow's purse fails not. Once, in a year or two, some shadow
of him shall be seen hovering on the Northern Border, seeking election as
National Deputy; but be sternly beckoned away. Dimmer then, far-borne over
utmost European lands, in uncertain twilight of diplomacy, he shall hover,
intriguing for 'Exiled Princes,' and have adventures; be overset into the
Rhine stream and half-drowned, nevertheless save his papers dry.
Unwearied, but in vain! In France he works miracles no more; shall hardly
return thither to find a grave. Farewell, thou facile sanguine Controller-
General, with thy light rash hand, thy suasive mouth of gold: worse men
there have been, and better; but to thee also was allotted a task,--of
raising the wind, and the winds; and thou hast done it.
But now, while Ex-Controller Calonne flies storm-driven over the horizon,
in this singular way, what has become of the Controllership? It hangs
vacant, one may say; extinct, like the Moon in her vacant interlunar cave.
Two preliminary shadows, poor M. Fourqueux, poor M. Villedeuil, do hold in
quick succession some simulacrum of it, (Besenval, iii. 225.)--as the new
Moon will sometimes shine out with a dim preliminary old one in her arms.
Be patient, ye Notables! An actual new Controller is certain, and even
ready; were the indispensable manoeuvres but gone through. Long-headed
Lamoignon, with Home Secretary Breteuil, and Foreign Secretary Montmorin
have exchanged looks; let these three once meet and speak. Who is it that
is strong in the Queen's favour, and the Abbe de Vermond's? That is a man
of great capacity? Or at least that has struggled, these fifty years, to
have it thought great; now, in the Clergy's name, demanding to have
Protestant death-penalties 'put in execution;' no flaunting it in the Oeil-
de-Boeuf, as the gayest man-pleaser and woman-pleaser; gleaning even a good
word from Philosophedom and your Voltaires and D'Alemberts? With a party
ready-made for him in the Notables?--Lomenie de Brienne, Archbishop of
Toulouse! answer all the three, with the clearest instantaneous concord;
and rush off to propose him to the King; 'in such haste,' says Besenval,
'that M. de Lamoignon had to borrow a simarre,' seemingly some kind of
cloth apparatus necessary for that. (Ib. iii. 224.)
Lomenie-Brienne, who had all his life 'felt a kind of predestination for
the highest offices,' has now therefore obtained them. He presides over
the Finances; he shall have the title of Prime Minister itself, and the
effort of his long life be realised. Unhappy only that it took such talent
and industry to gain the place; that to qualify for it hardly any talent or
industry was left disposable! Looking now into his inner man, what
qualification he may have, Lomenie beholds, not without astonishment, next
to nothing but vacuity and possibility. Principles or methods, acquirement
outward or inward (for his very body is wasted, by hard tear and wear) he
finds none; not so much as a plan, even an unwise one. Lucky, in these
circumstances, that Calonne has had a plan! Calonne's plan was gathered
from Turgot's and Necker's by compilation; shall become Lomenie's by
adoption. Not in vain has Lomenie studied the working of the British
Constitution; for he professes to have some Anglomania, of a sort. Why, in
that free country, does one Minister, driven out by Parliament, vanish from
his King's presence, and another enter, borne in by Parliament?
(Montgaillard, Histoire de France, i. 410-17.) Surely not for mere change
(which is ever wasteful); but that all men may have share of what is going;
and so the strife of Freedom indefinitely prolong itself, and no harm be
done.
The Notables, mollified by Easter festivities, by the sacrifice of Calonne,
are not in the worst humour. Already his Majesty, while the 'interlunar
shadows' were in office, had held session of Notables; and from his throne
delivered promissory conciliatory eloquence: 'The Queen stood waiting at a
window, till his carriage came back; and Monsieur from afar clapped hands
to her,' in sign that all was well. (Besenval, iii. 220.) It has had the
best effect; if such do but last. Leading Notables meanwhile can be
'caressed;' Brienne's new gloss, Lamoignon's long head will profit
somewhat; conciliatory eloquence shall not be wanting. On the whole,
however, is it not undeniable that this of ousting Calonne and adopting the
plans of Calonne, is a measure which, to produce its best effect, should be
looked at from a certain distance, cursorily; not dwelt on with minute near
scrutiny. In a word, that no service the Notables could now do were so
obliging as, in some handsome manner, to--take themselves away! Their 'Six
Propositions' about Provisional Assemblies, suppression of Corvees and
suchlike, can be accepted without criticism. The Subvention on Land-tax,
and much else, one must glide hastily over; safe nowhere but in flourishes
of conciliatory eloquence. Till at length, on this 25th of May, year 1787,
in solemn final session, there bursts forth what we can call an explosion
of eloquence; King, Lomenie, Lamoignon and retinue taking up the successive
strain; in harrangues to the number of ten, besides his Majesty's, which
last the livelong day;--whereby, as in a kind of choral anthem, or bravura
peal, of thanks, praises, promises, the Notables are, so to speak, organed
out, and dismissed to their respective places of abode. They had sat, and
talked, some nine weeks: they were the first Notables since Richelieu's,
in the year 1626.
By some Historians, sitting much at their ease, in the safe distance,
Lomenie has been blamed for this dismissal of his Notables: nevertheless
it was clearly time. There are things, as we said, which should not be
dwelt on with minute close scrutiny: over hot coals you cannot glide too
fast. In these Seven Bureaus, where no work could be done, unless talk
were work, the questionablest matters were coming up. Lafayette, for
example, in Monseigneur d'Artois' Bureau, took upon him to set forth more
than one deprecatory oration about Lettres-de-Cachet, Liberty of the
Subject, Agio, and suchlike; which Monseigneur endeavouring to repress, was
answered that a Notable being summoned to speak his opinion must speak it.
(Montgaillard, i. 360.)
Thus too his Grace the Archbishop of Aix perorating once, with a plaintive
pulpit tone, in these words? "Tithe, that free-will offering of the piety
of Christians"--"Tithe," interrupted Duke la Rochefoucault, with the cold
business-manner he has learned from the English, "that free-will offering
of the piety of Christians; on which there are now forty-thousand lawsuits
in this realm." (Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 21.) Nay, Lafayette,
bound to speak his opinion, went the length, one day, of proposing to
convoke a 'National Assembly.' "You demand States-General?" asked
Monseigneur with an air of minatory surprise.--"Yes, Monseigneur; and even
better than that."--Write it," said Monseigneur to the Clerks.
(Toulongeon, Histoire de France depuis la Revolution de 1789 (Paris, 1803),
i. app. 4.)--Written accordingly it is; and what is more, will be acted by
and by.
Chapter 1.3.IV.
Lomenie's Edicts.
Thus, then, have the Notables returned home; carrying to all quarters of
France, such notions of deficit, decrepitude, distraction; and that States-
General will cure it, or will not cure it but kill it. Each Notable, we
may fancy, is as a funeral torch; disclosing hideous abysses, better left
hid! The unquietest humour possesses all men; ferments, seeks issue, in
pamphleteering, caricaturing, projecting, declaiming; vain jangling of
thought, word and deed.
It is Spiritual Bankruptcy, long tolerated; verging now towards Economical
Bankruptcy, and become intolerable. For from the lowest dumb rank, the
inevitable misery, as was predicted, has spread upwards. In every man is
some obscure feeling that his position, oppressive or else oppressed, is a
false one: all men, in one or the other acrid dialect, as assaulters or as
defenders, must give vent to the unrest that is in them. Of such stuff
national well-being, and the glory of rulers, is not made. O Lomenie, what
a wild-heaving, waste-looking, hungry and angry world hast thou, after
lifelong effort, got promoted to take charge of!
Lomenie's first Edicts are mere soothing ones: creation of Provincial
Assemblies, 'for apportioning the imposts,' when we get any; suppression of
Corvees or statute-labour; alleviation of Gabelle. Soothing measures,
recommended by the Notables; long clamoured for by all liberal men. Oil
cast on the waters has been known to produce a good effect. Before
venturing with great essential measures, Lomenie will see this singular
'swell of the public mind' abate somewhat.
Most proper, surely. But what if it were not a swell of the abating kind?
There are swells that come of upper tempest and wind-gust. But again there
are swells that come of subterranean pent wind, some say; and even of
inward decomposion, of decay that has become self-combustion:--as when,
according to Neptuno-Plutonic Geology, the World is all decayed down into
due attritus of this sort; and shall now be exploded, and new-made! These
latter abate not by oil.--The fool says in his heart, How shall not
tomorrow be as yesterday; as all days,--which were once tomorrows? The
wise man, looking on this France, moral, intellectual, economical, sees,
'in short, all the symptoms he has ever met with in history,'--unabatable
by soothing Edicts.
Meanwhile, abate or not, cash must be had; and for that quite another sort
of Edicts, namely 'bursal' or fiscal ones. How easy were fiscal Edicts,
did you know for certain that the Parlement of Paris would what they call
'register' them! Such right of registering, properly of mere writing down,
the Parlement has got by old wont; and, though but a Law-Court, can
remonstrate, and higgle considerably about the same. Hence many quarrels;
desperate Maupeou devices, and victory and defeat;--a quarrel now near
forty years long. Hence fiscal Edicts, which otherwise were easy enough,
become such problems. For example, is there not Calonne's Subvention
Territoriale, universal, unexempting Land-tax; the sheet-anchor of Finance?
Or, to show, so far as possible, that one is not without original finance
talent, Lomenie himself can devise an Edit du Timbre or Stamp-tax,--
borrowed also, it is true; but then from America: may it prove luckier in
France than there!
France has her resources: nevertheless, it cannot be denied, the aspect of
that Parlement is questionable. Already among the Notables, in that final
symphony of dismissal, the Paris President had an ominous tone. Adrien
Duport, quitting magnetic sleep, in this agitation of the world, threatens
to rouse himself into preternatural wakefulness. Shallower but also
louder, there is magnetic D'Espremenil, with his tropical heat (he was born
at Madras); with his dusky confused violence; holding of Illumination,
Animal Magnetism, Public Opinion, Adam Weisshaupt, Harmodius and
Aristogiton, and all manner of confused violent things: of whom can come
no good. The very Peerage is infected with the leaven. Our Peers have, in
too many cases, laid aside their frogs, laces, bagwigs; and go about in
English costume, or ride rising in their stirrups,--in the most headlong
manner; nothing but insubordination, eleutheromania, confused unlimited
opposition in their heads. Questionable: not to be ventured upon, if we
had a Fortunatus' Purse! But Lomenie has waited all June, casting on the
waters what oil he had; and now, betide as it may, the two Finance Edicts
must out. On the 6th of July, he forwards his proposed Stamp-tax and Land-
tax to the Parlement of Paris; and, as if putting his own leg foremost, not
his borrowed Calonne's-leg, places the Stamp-tax first in order.
Alas, the Parlement will not register: the Parlement demands instead a
'state of the expenditure,' a 'state of the contemplated reductions;'
'states' enough; which his Majesty must decline to furnish! Discussions
arise; patriotic eloquence: the Peers are summoned. Does the Nemean Lion
begin to bristle? Here surely is a duel, which France and the Universe may
look upon: with prayers; at lowest, with curiosity and bets. Paris stirs
with new animation. The outer courts of the Palais de Justice roll with
unusual crowds, coming and going; their huge outer hum mingles with the
clang of patriotic eloquence within, and gives vigour to it. Poor Lomenie
gazes from the distance, little comforted; has his invisible emissaries
flying to and fro, assiduous, without result.
So pass the sultry dog-days, in the most electric manner; and the whole
month of July. And still, in the Sanctuary of Justice, sounds nothing but
Harmodius-Aristogiton eloquence, environed with the hum of crowding Paris;
and no registering accomplished, and no 'states' furnished. "States?" said
a lively Parlementeer: "Messieurs, the states that should be furnished us,
in my opinion are the STATES-GENERAL." On which timely joke there follow
cachinnatory buzzes of approval. What a word to be spoken in the Palais de
Justice! Old D'Ormesson (the Ex-Controller's uncle) shakes his judicious
head; far enough from laughing. But the outer courts, and Paris and
France, catch the glad sound, and repeat it; shall repeat it, and re-echo
and reverberate it, till it grow a deafening peal. Clearly enough here is
no registering to be thought of.
The pious Proverb says, 'There are remedies for all things but death.'
When a Parlement refuses registering, the remedy, by long practice, has
become familiar to the simplest: a Bed of Justice. One complete month
this Parlement has spent in mere idle jargoning, and sound and fury; the
Timbre Edict not registered, or like to be; the Subvention not yet so much
as spoken of. On the 6th of August let the whole refractory Body roll out,
in wheeled vehicles, as far as the King's Chateau of Versailles; there
shall the King, holding his Bed of Justice, order them, by his own royal
lips, to register. They may remonstrate, in an under tone; but they must
obey, lest a worse unknown thing befall them.
It is done: the Parlement has rolled out, on royal summons; has heard the
express royal order to register. Whereupon it has rolled back again, amid
the hushed expectancy of men. And now, behold, on the morrow, this
Parlement, seated once more in its own Palais, with 'crowds inundating the
outer courts,' not only does not register, but (O portent!) declares all
that was done on the prior day to be null, and the Bed of Justice as good
as a futility! In the history of France here verily is a new feature. Nay
better still, our heroic Parlement, getting suddenly enlightened on several
things, declares that, for its part, it is incompetent to register Tax-
edicts at all,--having done it by mistake, during these late centuries;
that for such act one authority only is competent: the assembled Three
Estates of the Realm!
To such length can the universal spirit of a Nation penetrate the most
isolated Body-corporate: say rather, with such weapons, homicidal and
suicidal, in exasperated political duel, will Bodies-corporate fight! But,
in any case, is not this the real death-grapple of war and internecine
duel, Greek meeting Greek; whereon men, had they even no interest in it,
might look with interest unspeakable? Crowds, as was said, inundate the
outer courts: inundation of young eleutheromaniac Noblemen in English
costume, uttering audacious speeches; of Procureurs, Basoche-Clerks, who
are idle in these days: of Loungers, Newsmongers and other nondescript
classes,--rolls tumultuous there. 'From three to four thousand persons,'
waiting eagerly to hear the Arretes (Resolutions) you arrive at within;
applauding with bravos, with the clapping of from six to eight thousand
hands! Sweet also is the meed of patriotic eloquence, when your
D'Espremenil, your Freteau, or Sabatier, issuing from his Demosthenic
Olympus, the thunder being hushed for the day, is welcomed, in the outer
courts, with a shout from four thousand throats; is borne home shoulder-
high 'with benedictions,' and strikes the stars with his sublime head.
Chapter 1.3.V.
Lomenie's Thunderbolts.
Arise, Lomenie-Brienne: here is no case for 'Letters of Jussion;' for
faltering or compromise. Thou seest the whole loose fluent population of
Paris (whatsoever is not solid, and fixed to work) inundating these outer
courts, like a loud destructive deluge; the very Basoche of Lawyers' Clerks
talks sedition. The lower classes, in this duel of Authority with
Authority, Greek throttling Greek, have ceased to respect the City-Watch:
Police-satellites are marked on the back with chalk (the M signifies
mouchard, spy); they are hustled, hunted like ferae naturae. Subordinate
rural Tribunals send messengers of congratulation, of adherence. Their
Fountain of Justice is becoming a Fountain of Revolt. The Provincial
Parlements look on, with intent eye, with breathless wishes, while their
elder sister of Paris does battle: the whole Twelve are of one blood and
temper; the victory of one is that of all.
Ever worse it grows: on the 10th of August, there is 'Plainte' emitted
touching the 'prodigalities of Calonne,' and permission to 'proceed'
against him. No registering, but instead of it, denouncing: of
dilapidation, peculation; and ever the burden of the song, States-General!
Have the royal armories no thunderbolt, that thou couldst, O Lomenie, with
red right-hand, launch it among these Demosthenic theatrical thunder-
barrels, mere resin and noise for most part;--and shatter, and smite them
silent? On the night of the 14th of August, Lomenie launches his
thunderbolt, or handful of them. Letters named of the Seal (de Cachet), as
many as needful, some sixscore and odd, are delivered overnight. And so,
next day betimes, the whole Parlement, once more set on wheels, is rolling
incessantly towards Troyes in Champagne; 'escorted,' says History, 'with
the blessings of all people;' the very innkeepers and postillions looking
gratuitously reverent. (A. Lameth, Histoire de l'Assemblee Constituante
(Int. 73).) This is the 15th of August 1787.
What will not people bless; in their extreme need? Seldom had the
Parlement of Paris deserved much blessing, or received much. An isolated
Body-corporate, which, out of old confusions (while the Sceptre of the
Sword was confusedly struggling to become a Sceptre of the Pen), had got
itself together, better and worse, as Bodies-corporate do, to satisfy some
dim desire of the world, and many clear desires of individuals; and so had
grown, in the course of centuries, on concession, on acquirement and
usurpation, to be what we see it: a prosperous social Anomaly, deciding
Lawsuits, sanctioning or rejecting Laws; and withal disposing of its places
and offices by sale for ready money,--which method sleek President Henault,
after meditation, will demonstrate to be the indifferent-best. (Abrege
Chronologique, p. 975.)
In such a Body, existing by purchase for ready-money, there could not be
excess of public spirit; there might well be excess of eagerness to divide
the public spoil. Men in helmets have divided that, with swords; men in
wigs, with quill and inkhorn, do divide it: and even more hatefully these
latter, if more peaceably; for the wig-method is at once irresistibler and
baser. By long experience, says Besenval, it has been found useless to sue
a Parlementeer at law; no Officer of Justice will serve a writ on one; his
wig and gown are his Vulcan's-panoply, his enchanted cloak-of-darkness.
The Parlement of Paris may count itself an unloved body; mean, not
magnanimous, on the political side. Were the King weak, always (as now)
has his Parlement barked, cur-like at his heels; with what popular cry
there might be. Were he strong, it barked before his face; hunting for him
as his alert beagle. An unjust Body; where foul influences have more than
once worked shameful perversion of judgment. Does not, in these very days,
the blood of murdered Lally cry aloud for vengeance? Baited, circumvented,
driven mad like the snared lion, Valour had to sink extinguished under
vindictive Chicane. Behold him, that hapless Lally, his wild dark soul
looking through his wild dark face; trailed on the ignominious death-
hurdle; the voice of his despair choked by a wooden gag! The wild fire-
soul that has known only peril and toil; and, for threescore years, has
buffeted against Fate's obstruction and men's perfidy, like genius and
courage amid poltroonery, dishonesty and commonplace; faithfully enduring
and endeavouring,--O Parlement of Paris, dost thou reward it with a gibbet
and a gag? (9th May, 1766: Biographie Universelle, para Lally.) The
dying Lally bequeathed his memory to his boy; a young Lally has arisen,
demanding redress in the name of God and man. The Parlement of Paris does
its utmost to defend the indefensible, abominable; nay, what is singular,
dusky-glowing Aristogiton d'Espremenil is the man chosen to be its
spokesman in that.
Such Social Anomaly is it that France now blesses. An unclean Social
Anomaly; but in duel against another worse! The exiled Parlement is felt
to have 'covered itself with glory.' There are quarrels in which even
Satan, bringing help, were not unwelcome; even Satan, fighting stiffly,
might cover himself with glory,--of a temporary sort.
But what a stir in the outer courts of the Palais, when Paris finds its
Parlement trundled off to Troyes in Champagne; and nothing left but a few
mute Keepers of records; the Demosthenic thunder become extinct, the
martyrs of liberty clean gone! Confused wail and menace rises from the
four thousand throats of Procureurs, Basoche-Clerks, Nondescripts, and
Anglomaniac Noblesse; ever new idlers crowd to see and hear; Rascality,
with increasing numbers and vigour, hunts mouchards. Loud whirlpool rolls
through these spaces; the rest of the City, fixed to its work, cannot yet
go rolling. Audacious placards are legible, in and about the Palais, the
speeches are as good as seditious. Surely the temper of Paris is much
changed. On the third day of this business (18th of August), Monsieur and
Monseigneur d'Artois, coming in state-carriages, according to use and wont,
to have these late obnoxious Arretes and protests 'expunged' from the
Records, are received in the most marked manner. Monsieur, who is thought
to be in opposition, is met with vivats and strewed flowers; Monseigneur,
on the other hand, with silence; with murmurs, which rise to hisses and
groans; nay, an irreverent Rascality presses towards him in floods, with
such hissing vehemence, that the Captain of the Guards has to give order,
"Haut les armes (Handle arms)!"--at which thunder-word, indeed, and the
flash of the clear iron, the Rascal-flood recoils, through all avenues,
fast enough. (Montgaillard, i. 369. Besenval, &c.;) New features these.
Indeed, as good M. de Malesherbes pertinently remarks, "it is a quite new
kind of contest this with the Parlement:" no transitory sputter, as from
collision of hard bodies; but more like "the first sparks of what, if not
quenched, may become a great conflagration." (Montgaillard, i. 373.)
This good Malesherbes sees himself now again in the King's Council, after
an absence of ten years: Lomenie would profit if not by the faculties of
the man, yet by the name he has. As for the man's opinion, it is not
listened to;--wherefore he will soon withdraw, a second time; back to his
books and his trees. In such King's Council what can a good man profit?
Turgot tries it not a second time: Turgot has quitted France and this
Earth, some years ago; and now cares for none of these things. Singular
enough: Turgot, this same Lomenie, and the Abbe Morellet were once a trio
of young friends; fellow-scholars in the Sorbonne. Forty new years have
carried them severally thus far.
Meanwhile the Parlement sits daily at Troyes, calling cases; and daily
adjourns, no Procureur making his appearance to plead. Troyes is as
hospitable as could be looked for: nevertheless one has comparatively a
dull life. No crowds now to carry you, shoulder-high, to the immortal
gods; scarcely a Patriot or two will drive out so far, and bid you be of
firm courage. You are in furnished lodgings, far from home and domestic
comfort: little to do, but wander over the unlovely Champagne fields;
seeing the grapes ripen; taking counsel about the thousand-times consulted:
a prey to tedium; in danger even that Paris may forget you. Messengers
come and go: pacific Lomenie is not slack in negotiating, promising;
D'Ormesson and the prudent elder Members see no good in strife.
After a dull month, the Parlement, yielding and retaining, makes truce, as
all Parlements must. The Stamp-tax is withdrawn: the Subvention Land-tax
is also withdrawn; but, in its stead, there is granted, what they call a
'Prorogation of the Second Twentieth,'--itself a kind of Land-tax, but not
so oppressive to the Influential classes; which lies mainly on the Dumb
class. Moreover, secret promises exist (on the part of the Elders), that
finances may be raised by Loan. Of the ugly word States-General there
shall be no mention.
And so, on the 20th of September, our exiled Parlement returns:
D'Espremenil said, 'it went out covered with glory, but had come back
covered with mud (de boue).' Not so, Aristogiton; or if so, thou surely
art the man to clean it.
Chapter 1.3.VI.
Lomenie's Plots.
Was ever unfortunate Chief Minister so bested as Lomenie-Brienne? The
reins of the State fairly in his hand these six months; and not the
smallest motive-power (of Finance) to stir from the spot with, this way or
that! He flourishes his whip, but advances not. Instead of ready-money,
there is nothing but rebellious debating and recalcitrating.
Far is the public mind from having calmed; it goes chafing and fuming ever
worse: and in the royal coffers, with such yearly Deficit running on,
there is hardly the colour of coin. Ominous prognostics! Malesherbes,
seeing an exhausted, exasperated France grow hotter and hotter, talks of
'conflagration:' Mirabeau, without talk, has, as we perceive, descended on
Paris again, close on the rear of the Parlement, (Fils Adoptif, Mirabeau,
iv. l. 5.)--not to quit his native soil any more.
Over the Frontiers, behold Holland invaded by Prussia; (October, 1787.
Montgaillard, i. 374. Besenval, iii. 283.) the French party oppressed,
England and the Stadtholder triumphing: to the sorrow of War-Secretary
Montmorin and all men. But without money, sinews of war, as of work, and
of existence itself, what can a Chief Minister do? Taxes profit little:
this of the Second Twentieth falls not due till next year; and will then,
with its 'strict valuation,' produce more controversy than cash. Taxes on
the Privileged Classes cannot be got registered; are intolerable to our
supporters themselves: taxes on the Unprivileged yield nothing,--as from a
thing drained dry more cannot be drawn. Hope is nowhere, if not in the old
refuge of Loans.
To Lomenie, aided by the long head of Lamoignon, deeply pondering this sea
of troubles, the thought suggested itself: Why not have a Successive Loan
(Emprunt Successif), or Loan that went on lending, year after year, as much
as needful; say, till 1792? The trouble of registering such Loan were the
same: we had then breathing time; money to work with, at least to subsist
on. Edict of a Successive Loan must be proposed. To conciliate the
Philosophes, let a liberal Edict walk in front of it, for emancipation of
Protestants; let a liberal Promise guard the rear of it, that when our Loan
ends, in that final 1792, the States-General shall be convoked.
Such liberal Edict of Protestant Emancipation, the time having come for it,
shall cost a Lomenie as little as the 'Death-penalties to be put in
execution' did. As for the liberal Promise, of States-General, it can be
fulfilled or not: the fulfilment is five good years off; in five years
much intervenes. But the registering? Ah, truly, there is the
difficulty!--However, we have that promise of the Elders, given secretly at
Troyes. Judicious gratuities, cajoleries, underground intrigues, with old
Foulon, named 'Ame damnee, Familiar-demon, of the Parlement,' may perhaps
do the rest. At worst and lowest, the Royal Authority has resources,--
which ought it not to put forth? If it cannot realise money, the Royal
Authority is as good as dead; dead of that surest and miserablest death,
inanition. Risk and win; without risk all is already lost! For the rest,
as in enterprises of pith, a touch of stratagem often proves furthersome,
his Majesty announces a Royal Hunt, for the 19th of November next; and all
whom it concerns are joyfully getting their gear ready.
Royal Hunt indeed; but of two-legged unfeathered game! At eleven in the
morning of that Royal-Hunt day, 19th of November 1787, unexpected blare of
trumpetting, tumult of charioteering and cavalcading disturbs the Seat of
Justice: his Majesty is come, with Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon, and Peers
and retinue, to hold Royal Session and have Edicts registered. What a
change, since Louis XIV. entered here, in boots; and, whip in hand, ordered
his registering to be done,--with an Olympian look which none durst
gainsay; and did, without stratagem, in such unceremonious fashion, hunt as
well as register! (Dulaure, vi. 306.) For Louis XVI., on this day, the
Registering will be enough; if indeed he and the day suffice for it.
Meanwhile, with fit ceremonial words, the purpose of the royal breast is
signified:--Two Edicts, for Protestant Emancipation, for Successive Loan:
of both which Edicts our trusty Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon will explain the
purport; on both which a trusty Parlement is requested to deliver its
opinion, each member having free privilege of speech. And so, Lamoignon
too having perorated not amiss, and wound up with that Promise of States-
General,--the Sphere-music of Parlementary eloquence begins. Explosive,
responsive, sphere answering sphere, it waxes louder and louder. The Peers
sit attentive; of diverse sentiment: unfriendly to States-General;
unfriendly to Despotism, which cannot reward merit, and is suppressing
places. But what agitates his Highness d'Orleans? The rubicund moon-head
goes wagging; darker beams the copper visage, like unscoured copper; in the
glazed eye is disquietude; he rolls uneasy in his seat, as if he meant
something. Amid unutterable satiety, has sudden new appetite, for new
forbidden fruit, been vouchsafed him? Disgust and edacity; laziness that
cannot rest; futile ambition, revenge, non-admiralship:--O, within that
carbuncled skin what a confusion of confusions sits bottled!
'Eight Couriers,' in course of the day, gallop from Versailles, where
Lomenie waits palpitating; and gallop back again, not with the best news.
In the outer Courts of the Palais, huge buzz of expectation reigns; it is
whispered the Chief Minister has lost six votes overnight. And from
within, resounds nothing but forensic eloquence, pathetic and even
indignant; heartrending appeals to the royal clemency, that his Majesty
would please to summon States-General forthwith, and be the Saviour of
France:--wherein dusky-glowing D'Espremenil, but still more Sabatier de
Cabre, and Freteau, since named Commere Freteau (Goody Freteau), are among
the loudest. For six mortal hours it lasts, in this manner; the infinite
hubbub unslackened.
And so now, when brown dusk is falling through the windows, and no end
visible, his Majesty, on hint of Garde-des-Sceaux, Lamoignon, opens his
royal lips once more to say, in brief That he must have his Loan-Edict
registered.--Momentary deep pause!--See! Monseigneur d'Orleans rises; with
moon-visage turned towards the royal platform, he asks, with a delicate
graciosity of manner covering unutterable things: "Whether it is a Bed of
Justice, then; or a Royal Session?" Fire flashes on him from the throne
and neighbourhood: surly answer that "it is a Session." In that case,
Monseigneur will crave leave to remark that Edicts cannot be registered by
order in a Session; and indeed to enter, against such registry, his
individual humble Protest. "Vous etes bien le maitre (You will do your
pleasure)", answers the King; and thereupon, in high state, marches out,
escorted by his Court-retinue; D'Orleans himself, as in duty bound,
escorting him, but only to the gate. Which duty done, D'Orleans returns in
from the gate; redacts his Protest, in the face of an applauding Parlement,
an applauding France; and so--has cut his Court-moorings, shall we say?
And will now sail and drift, fast enough, towards Chaos?
Thou foolish D'Orleans; Equality that art to be! Is Royalty grown a mere
wooden Scarecrow; whereon thou, pert scald-headed crow, mayest alight at
pleasure, and peck? Not yet wholly.
Next day, a Lettre-de-Cachet sends D'Orleans to bethink himself in his
Chateau of Villers-Cotterets, where, alas, is no Paris with its joyous
necessaries of life; no fascinating indispensable Madame de Buffon,--light
wife of a great Naturalist much too old for her. Monseigneur, it is said,
does nothing but walk distractedly, at Villers-Cotterets; cursing his
stars. Versailles itself shall hear penitent wail from him, so hard is his
doom. By a second, simultaneous Lettre-de-Cachet, Goody Freteau is hurled
into the Stronghold of Ham, amid the Norman marshes; by a third, Sabatier
de Cabre into Mont St. Michel, amid the Norman quicksands. As for the
Parlement, it must, on summons, travel out to Versailles, with its
Register-Book under its arm, to have the Protest biffe (expunged); not
without admonition, and even rebuke. A stroke of authority which, one
might have hoped, would quiet matters.
Unhappily, no; it is a mere taste of the whip to rearing coursers, which
makes them rear worse! When a team of Twenty-five Millions begins rearing,
what is Lomenie's whip? The Parlement will nowise acquiesce meekly; and
set to register the Protestant Edict, and do its other work, in salutary
fear of these three Lettres-de-Cachet. Far from that, it begins
questioning Lettres-de-Cachet generally, their legality, endurability;
emits dolorous objurgation, petition on petition to have its three Martyrs
delivered; cannot, till that be complied with, so much as think of
examining the Protestant Edict, but puts it off always 'till this day
week.' (Besenval, iii. 309.)
In which objurgatory strain Paris and France joins it, or rather has
preceded it; making fearful chorus. And now also the other Parlements, at
length opening their mouths, begin to join; some of them, as at Grenoble
and at Rennes, with portentous emphasis,--threatening, by way of reprisal,
to interdict the very Tax-gatherer. (Weber, i. 266.) "In all former
contests," as Malesherbes remarks, "it was the Parlement that excited the
Public; but here it is the Public that excites the Parlement."
Chapter 1.3.VII.
Internecine.
What a France, through these winter months of the year 1787! The very
Oeil-de-Boeuf is doleful, uncertain; with a general feeling among the
Suppressed, that it were better to be in Turkey. The Wolf-hounds are
suppressed, the Bear-hounds, Duke de Coigny, Duke de Polignac: in the
Trianon little-heaven, her Majesty, one evening, takes Besenval's arm; asks
his candid opinion. The intrepid Besenval,--having, as he hopes, nothing
of the sycophant in him,--plainly signifies that, with a Parlement in
rebellion, and an Oeil-de-Boeuf in suppression, the King's Crown is in
danger;--whereupon, singular to say, her Majesty, as if hurt, changed the
subject, et ne me parla plus de rien! (Besenval, iii. 264.)
To whom, indeed, can this poor Queen speak? In need of wise counsel, if
ever mortal was; yet beset here only by the hubbub of chaos! Her dwelling-
place is so bright to the eye, and confusion and black care darkens it all.
Sorrows of the Sovereign, sorrows of the woman, think-coming sorrows
environ her more and more. Lamotte, the Necklace-Countess, has in these
late months escaped, perhaps been suffered to escape, from the Salpetriere.
Vain was the hope that Paris might thereby forget her; and this ever-
widening-lie, and heap of lies, subside. The Lamotte, with a V (for
Voleuse, Thief) branded on both shoulders, has got to England; and will
therefrom emit lie on lie; defiling the highest queenly name: mere
distracted lies; (Memoires justificatifs de la Comtesse de Lamotte (London,
1788). Vie de Jeanne de St. Remi, Comtesse de Lamotte, &c.; &c.; See
Diamond Necklace (ut supra).) which, in its present humour, France will
greedily believe.
For the rest, it is too clear our Successive Loan is not filling. As
indeed, in such circumstances, a Loan registered by expunging of Protests
was not the likeliest to fill. Denunciation of Lettres-de-Cachet, of
Despotism generally, abates not: the Twelve Parlements are busy; the
Twelve hundred Placarders, Balladsingers, Pamphleteers. Paris is what, in
figurative speech, they call 'flooded with pamphlets (regorge de
brochures);' flooded and eddying again. Hot deluge,--from so many Patriot
ready-writers, all at the fervid or boiling point; each ready-writer, now
in the hour of eruption, going like an Iceland Geyser! Against which what
can a judicious friend Morellet do; a Rivarol, an unruly Linguet (well paid
for it),--spouting cold!
Now also, at length, does come discussion of the Protestant Edict: but
only for new embroilment; in pamphlet and counter-pamphlet, increasing the
madness of men. Not even Orthodoxy, bedrid as she seemed, but will have a
hand in this confusion. She, once again in the shape of Abbe Lenfant,
'whom Prelates drive to visit and congratulate,'--raises audible sound from
her pulpit-drum. (Lacretelle, iii. 343. Montgaillard, &c.;) Or mark how
D'Espremenil, who has his own confused way in all things, produces at the
right moment in Parlementary harangue, a pocket Crucifix, with the
apostrophe: "Will ye crucify him afresh?" Him, O D'Espremenil, without
scruple;--considering what poor stuff, of ivory and filigree, he is made
of!
To all which add only that poor Brienne has fallen sick; so hard was the
tear and wear of his sinful youth, so violent, incessant is this agitation
of his foolish old age. Baited, bayed at through so many throats, his
Grace, growing consumptive, inflammatory (with humeur de dartre), lies
reduced to milk diet; in exasperation, almost in desperation; with
'repose,' precisely the impossible recipe, prescribed as the indispensable.
(Besenval, iii. 317.)
On the whole, what can a poor Government do, but once more recoil
ineffectual? The King's Treasury is running towards the lees; and Paris
'eddies with a flood of pamphlets.' At all rates, let the latter subside a
little! "D'Orleans gets back to Raincy, which is nearer Paris and the fair
frail Buffon; finally to Paris itself: neither are Freteau and Sabatier
banished forever. The Protestant Edict is registered; to the joy of Boissy
d'Anglas and good Malesherbes: Successive Loan, all protests expunged or
else withdrawn, remains open,--the rather as few or none come to fill it.
States-General, for which the Parlement has clamoured, and now the whole
Nation clamours, will follow 'in five years,'--if indeed not sooner. O
Parlement of Paris, what a clamour was that! "Messieurs," said old
d'Ormesson, "you will get States-General, and you will repent it." Like
the Horse in the Fable, who, to be avenged of his enemy, applied to the
Man. The Man mounted; did swift execution on the enemy; but, unhappily,
would not dismount! Instead of five years, let three years pass, and this
clamorous Parlement shall have both seen its enemy hurled prostrate, and
been itself ridden to foundering (say rather, jugulated for hide and
shoes), and lie dead in the ditch.
Under such omens, however, we have reached the spring of 1788. By no path
can the King's Government find passage for itself, but is everywhere
shamefully flung back. Beleaguered by Twelve rebellious Parlements, which
are grown to be the organs of an angry Nation, it can advance nowhither;
can accomplish nothing, obtain nothing, not so much as money to subsist on;
but must sit there, seemingly, to be eaten up of Deficit.
The measure of the Iniquity, then, of the Falsehood which has been
gathering through long centuries, is nearly full? At least, that of the
misery is! For the hovels of the Twenty-five Millions, the misery,
permeating upwards and forwards, as its law is, has got so far,--to the
very Oeil-de-Boeuf of Versailles. Man's hand, in this blind pain, is set
against man: not only the low against the higher, but the higher against
each other; Provincial Noblesse is bitter against Court Noblesse; Robe
against Sword; Rochet against Pen. But against the King's Government who
is not bitter? Not even Besenval, in these days. To it all men and bodies
of men are become as enemies; it is the centre whereon infinite contentions
unite and clash. What new universal vertiginous movement is this; of
Institution, social Arrangements, individual Minds, which once worked
cooperative; now rolling and grinding in distracted collision? Inevitable:
it is the breaking-up of a World-Solecism, worn out at last, down even to
bankruptcy of money! And so this poor Versailles Court, as the chief or
central Solecism, finds all the other Solecisms arrayed against it. Most
natural! For your human Solecism, be it Person or Combination of Persons,
is ever, by law of Nature, uneasy; if verging towards bankruptcy, it is
even miserable:--and when would the meanest Solecism consent to blame or
amend itself, while there remained another to amend?
These threatening signs do not terrify Lomenie, much less teach him.
Lomenie, though of light nature, is not without courage, of a sort. Nay,
have we not read of lightest creatures, trained Canary-birds, that could
fly cheerfully with lighted matches, and fire cannon; fire whole powder-
magazines? To sit and die of deficit is no part of Lomenie's plan. The
evil is considerable; but can he not remove it, can he not attack it? At
lowest, he can attack the symptom of it: these rebellious Parlements he
can attack, and perhaps remove. Much is dim to Lomenie, but two things are
clear: that such Parlementary duel with Royalty is growing perilous, nay
internecine; above all, that money must be had. Take thought, brave
Lomenie; thou Garde-des-Sceaux Lamoignon, who hast ideas! So often
defeated, balked cruelly when the golden fruit seemed within clutch, rally
for one other struggle. To tame the Parlement, to fill the King's coffers:
these are now life-and-death questions.
Parlements have been tamed, more than once. Set to perch 'on the peaks of
rocks in accessible except by litters,' a Parlement grows reasonable. O
Maupeou, thou bold man, had we left thy work where it was!--But apart from
exile, or other violent methods, is there not one method, whereby all
things are tamed, even lions? The method of hunger! What if the
Parlement's supplies were cut off; namely its Lawsuits!
Minor Courts, for the trying of innumerable minor causes, might be
instituted: these we could call Grand Bailliages. Whereon the Parlement,
shortened of its prey, would look with yellow despair; but the Public, fond
of cheap justice, with favour and hope. Then for Finance, for registering
of Edicts, why not, from our own Oeil-de-Boeuf Dignitaries, our Princes,
Dukes, Marshals, make a thing we could call Plenary Court; and there, so to
speak, do our registering ourselves? St. Louis had his Plenary Court, of
Great Barons; (Montgaillard, i. 405.) most useful to him: our Great Barons
are still here (at least the Name of them is still here); our necessity is
greater than his.
Such is the Lomenie-Lamoignon device; welcome to the King's Council, as a
light-beam in great darkness. The device seems feasible, it is eminently
needful: be it once well executed, great deliverance is wrought. Silent,
then, and steady; now or never!--the World shall see one other Historical
Scene; and so singular a man as Lomenie de Brienne still the Stage-manager
there.
Behold, accordingly, a Home-Secretary Breteuil 'beautifying Paris,' in the
peaceablest manner, in this hopeful spring weather of 1788; the old hovels
and hutches disappearing from our Bridges: as if for the State too there
were halcyon weather, and nothing to do but beautify. Parlement seems to
sit acknowledged victor. Brienne says nothing of Finance; or even says,
and prints, that it is all well. How is this; such halcyon quiet; though
the Successive Loan did not fill? In a victorious Parlement, Counsellor
Goeslard de Monsabert even denounces that 'levying of the Second Twentieth
on strict valuation;' and gets decree that the valuation shall not be
strict,--not on the privileged classes. Nevertheless Brienne endures it,
launches no Lettre-de-Cachet against it. How is this?
Smiling is such vernal weather; but treacherous, sudden! For one thing, we
hear it whispered, 'the Intendants of Provinces 'have all got order to be
at their posts on a certain day.' Still more singular, what incessant
Printing is this that goes on at the King's Chateau, under lock and key?
Sentries occupy all gates and windows; the Printers come not out; they
sleep in their workrooms; their very food is handed in to them! (Weber, i.
276.) A victorious Parlement smells new danger. D'Espremenil has ordered
horses to Versailles; prowls round that guarded Printing-Office; prying,
snuffing, if so be the sagacity and ingenuity of man may penetrate it.
To a shower of gold most things are penetrable. D'Espremenil descends on
the lap of a Printer's Danae, in the shape of 'five hundred louis d'or:'
the Danae's Husband smuggles a ball of clay to her; which she delivers to
the golden Counsellor of Parlement. Kneaded within it, their stick printed
proof-sheets;--by Heaven! the royal Edict of that same self-registering
Plenary Court; of those Grand Bailliages that shall cut short our Lawsuits!
It is to be promulgated over all France on one and the same day.
This, then, is what the Intendants were bid wait for at their posts: this
is what the Court sat hatching, as its accursed cockatrice-egg; and would
not stir, though provoked, till the brood were out! Hie with it,
D'Espremenil, home to Paris; convoke instantaneous Sessions; let the
Parlement, and the Earth, and the Heavens know it.
Chapter 1.3.VIII.
Lomenie's Death-throes.
On the morrow, which is the 3rd of May, 1788, an astonished Parlement sits
convoked; listens speechless to the speech of D'Espremenil, unfolding the
infinite misdeed. Deed of treachery; of unhallowed darkness, such as
Despotism loves! Denounce it, O Parlement of Paris; awaken France and the
Universe; roll what thunder-barrels of forensic eloquence thou hast: with
thee too it is verily Now or never!
The Parlement is not wanting, at such juncture. In the hour of his extreme
jeopardy, the lion first incites himself by roaring, by lashing his sides.
So here the Parlement of Paris. On the motion of D'Espremenil, a most
patriotic Oath, of the One-and-all sort, is sworn, with united throat;--an
excellent new-idea, which, in these coming years, shall not remain
unimitated. Next comes indomitable Declaration, almost of the rights of
man, at least of the rights of Parlement; Invocation to the friends of
French Freedom, in this and in subsequent time. All which, or the essence
of all which, is brought to paper; in a tone wherein something of
plaintiveness blends with, and tempers, heroic valour. And thus, having
sounded the storm-bell,--which Paris hears, which all France will hear; and
hurled such defiance in the teeth of Lomenie and Despotism, the Parlement
retires as from a tolerable first day's work.
But how Lomenie felt to see his cockatrice-egg (so essential to the
salvation of France) broken in this premature manner, let readers fancy!
Indignant he clutches at his thunderbolts (de Cachet, of the Seal); and
launches two of them: a bolt for D'Espremenil; a bolt for that busy
Goeslard, whose service in the Second Twentieth and 'strict valuation' is
not forgotten. Such bolts clutched promptly overnight, and launched with
the early new morning, shall strike agitated Paris if not into
requiescence, yet into wholesome astonishment.
Ministerial thunderbolts may be launched; but if they do not hit?
D'Espremenil and Goeslard, warned, both of them, as is thought, by the
singing of some friendly bird, elude the Lomenie Tipstaves; escape
disguised through skywindows, over roofs, to their own Palais de Justice:
the thunderbolts have missed. Paris (for the buzz flies abroad) is struck
into astonishment not wholesome. The two martyrs of Liberty doff their
disguises; don their long gowns; behold, in the space of an hour, by aid of
ushers and swift runners, the Parlement, with its Counsellors, Presidents,
even Peers, sits anew assembled. The assembled Parlement declares that
these its two martyrs cannot be given up, to any sublunary authority;
moreover that the 'session is permanent,' admitting of no adjournment, till
pursuit of them has been relinquished.
And so, with forensic eloquence, denunciation and protest, with couriers
going and returning, the Parlement, in this state of continual explosion
that shall cease neither night nor day, waits the issue. Awakened Paris
once more inundates those outer courts; boils, in floods wilder than ever,
through all avenues. Dissonant hubbub there is; jargon as of Babel, in the
hour when they were first smitten (as here) with mutual unintelligibilty,
and the people had not yet dispersed!
Paris City goes through its diurnal epochs, of working and slumbering; and
now, for the second time, most European and African mortals are asleep.
But here, in this Whirlpool of Words, sleep falls not; the Night spreads
her coverlid of Darkness over it in vain. Within is the sound of mere
martyr invincibility; tempered with the due tone of plaintiveness. Without
is the infinite expectant hum,--growing drowsier a little. So has it
lasted for six-and-thirty hours.
But hark, through the dead of midnight, what tramp is this? Tramp as of
armed men, foot and horse; Gardes Francaises, Gardes Suisses: marching
hither; in silent regularity; in the flare of torchlight! There are
Sappers, too, with axes and crowbars: apparently, if the doors open not,
they will be forced!--It is Captain D'Agoust, missioned from Versailles.
D'Agoust, a man of known firmness;--who once forced Prince Conde himself,
by mere incessant looking at him, to give satisfaction and fight; (Weber,
i. 283.) he now, with axes and torches is advancing on the very sanctuary
of Justice. Sacrilegious; yet what help? The man is a soldier; looks
merely at his orders; impassive, moves forward like an inanimate engine.
The doors open on summons, there need no axes; door after door. And now
the innermost door opens; discloses the long-gowned Senators of France: a
hundred and sixty-seven by tale, seventeen of them Peers; sitting there,
majestic, 'in permanent session.' Were not the men military, and of cast-
iron, this sight, this silence reechoing the clank of his own boots, might
stagger him! For the hundred and sixty-seven receive him in perfect
silence; which some liken to that of the Roman Senate overfallen by
Brennus; some to that of a nest of coiners surprised by officers of the
Police. (Besenval, iii. 355.) Messieurs, said D'Agoust, De par le Roi!
Express order has charged D'Agoust with the sad duty of arresting two
individuals: M. Duval d'Espremenil and M. Goeslard de Monsabert. Which
respectable individuals, as he has not the honour of knowing them, are
hereby invited, in the King's name, to surrender themselves.--Profound
silence! Buzz, which grows a murmur: "We are all D'Espremenils!" ventures
a voice; which other voices repeat. The President inquires, Whether he
will employ violence? Captain D'Agoust, honoured with his Majesty's
commission, has to execute his Majesty's order; would so gladly do it
without violence, will in any case do it; grants an august Senate space to
deliberate which method they prefer. And thereupon D'Agoust, with grave
military courtesy, has withdrawn for the moment.
What boots it, august Senators? All avenues are closed with fixed
bayonets. Your Courier gallops to Versailles, through the dewy Night; but
also gallops back again, with tidings that the order is authentic, that it
is irrevocable. The outer courts simmer with idle population; but
D'Agoust's grenadier-ranks stand there as immovable floodgates: there will
be no revolting to deliver you. "Messieurs!" thus spoke D'Espremenil,
"when the victorious Gauls entered Rome, which they had carried by assault,
the Roman Senators, clothed in their purple, sat there, in their curule
chairs, with a proud and tranquil countenance, awaiting slavery or death.
Such too is the lofty spectacle, which you, in this hour, offer to the
universe (a l'univers), after having generously"--with much more of the
like, as can still be read. (Toulongeon, i. App. 20.)
In vain, O D'Espremenil! Here is this cast-iron Captain D'Agoust, with his
cast-iron military air, come back. Despotism, constraint, destruction sit
waving in his plumes. D'Espremenil must fall silent; heroically give
himself up, lest worst befall. Him Goeslard heroically imitates. With
spoken and speechless emotion, they fling themselves into the arms of their
Parlementary brethren, for a last embrace: and so amid plaudits and
plaints, from a hundred and sixty-five throats; amid wavings, sobbings, a
whole forest-sigh of Parlementary pathos,--they are led through winding
passages, to the rear-gate; where, in the gray of the morning, two Coaches
with Exempts stand waiting. There must the victims mount; bayonets
menacing behind. D'Espremenil's stern question to the populace, 'Whether
they have courage?' is answered by silence. They mount, and roll; and
neither the rising of the May sun (it is the 6th morning), nor its setting
shall lighten their heart: but they fare forward continually; D'Espremenil
towards the utmost Isles of Sainte Marguerite, or Hieres (supposed by some,
if that is any comfort, to be Calypso's Island); Goeslard towards the land-
fortress of Pierre-en-Cize, extant then, near the City of Lyons.
Captain D'Agoust may now therefore look forward to Majorship, to
Commandantship of the Tuilleries; (Montgaillard, i. 404.)--and withal
vanish from History; where nevertheless he has been fated to do a notable
thing. For not only are D'Espremenil and Goeslard safe whirling southward,
but the Parlement itself has straightway to march out: to that also his
inexorable order reaches. Gathering up their long skirts, they file out,
the whole Hundred and Sixty-five of them, through two rows of unsympathetic
grenadiers: a spectacle to gods and men. The people revolt not; they only
wonder and grumble: also, we remark, these unsympathetic grenadiers are
Gardes Francaises,--who, one day, will sympathise! In a word, the Palais
de Justice is swept clear, the doors of it are locked; and D'Agoust returns
to Versailles with the key in his pocket,--having, as was said, merited
preferment.
As for this Parlement of Paris, now turned out to the street, we will
without reluctance leave it there. The Beds of Justice it had to undergo,
in the coming fortnight, at Versailles, in registering, or rather refusing
to register, those new-hatched Edicts; and how it assembled in taverns and
tap-rooms there, for the purpose of Protesting, (Weber, i. 299-303.) or
hovered disconsolate, with outspread skirts, not knowing where to assemble;
and was reduced to lodge Protest 'with a Notary;' and in the end, to sit
still (in a state of forced 'vacation'), and do nothing; all this, natural
now, as the burying of the dead after battle, shall not concern us. The
Parlement of Paris has as good as performed its part; doing and misdoing,
so far, but hardly further, could it stir the world.
Lomenie has removed the evil then? Not at all: not so much as the symptom
of the evil; scarcely the twelfth part of the symptom, and exasperated the
other eleven! The Intendants of Provinces, the Military Commandants are at
their posts, on the appointed 8th of May: but in no Parlement, if not in
the single one of Douai, can these new Edicts get registered. Not
peaceable signing with ink; but browbeating, bloodshedding, appeal to
primary club-law! Against these Bailliages, against this Plenary Court,
exasperated Themis everywhere shows face of battle; the Provincial Noblesse
are of her party, and whoever hates Lomenie and the evil time; with her
attorneys and Tipstaves, she enlists and operates down even to the
populace. At Rennes in Brittany, where the historical Bertrand de
Moleville is Intendant, it has passed from fatal continual duelling,
between the military and gentry, to street-fighting; to stone-volleys and
musket-shot: and still the Edicts remained unregistered. The afflicted
Bretons send remonstrance to Lomenie, by a Deputation of Twelve; whom,
however, Lomenie, having heard them, shuts up in the Bastille. A second
larger deputation he meets, by his scouts, on the road, and persuades or
frightens back. But now a third largest Deputation is indignantly sent by
many roads: refused audience on arriving, it meets to take council;
invites Lafayette and all Patriot Bretons in Paris to assist; agitates
itself; becomes the Breton Club, first germ of--the Jacobins' Society. (A.
F. de Bertrand-Moleville, Memoires Particuliers (Paris, 1816), I. ch. i.
Marmontel, Memoires, iv. 27.)
So many as eight Parlements get exiled: (Montgaillard, i. 308.) others
might need that remedy, but it is one not always easy of appliance. At
Grenoble, for instance, where a Mounier, a Barnave have not been idle, the
Parlement had due order (by Lettres-de-Cachet) to depart, and exile itself:
but on the morrow, instead of coaches getting yoked, the alarm-bell bursts
forth, ominous; and peals and booms all day: crowds of mountaineers rush
down, with axes, even with firelocks,--whom (most ominous of all!) the
soldiery shows no eagerness to deal with. 'Axe over head,' the poor
General has to sign capitulation; to engage that the Lettres-de-Cachet
shall remain unexecuted, and a beloved Parlement stay where it is.
Besancon, Dijon, Rouen, Bourdeaux, are not what they should be! At Pau in
Bearn, where the old Commandant had failed, the new one (a Grammont, native
to them) is met by a Procession of townsmen with the Cradle of Henri
Quatre, the Palladium of their Town; is conjured as he venerates this old
Tortoise-shell, in which the great Henri was rocked, not to trample on
Bearnese liberty; is informed, withal, that his Majesty's cannon are all
safe--in the keeping of his Majesty's faithful Burghers of Pau, and do now
lie pointed on the walls there; ready for action! (Besenval, iii. 348.)
At this rate, your Grand Bailliages are like to have a stormy infancy. As
for the Plenary Court, it has literally expired in the birth. The very
Courtiers looked shy at it; old Marshal Broglie declined the honour of
sitting therein. Assaulted by a universal storm of mingled ridicule and
execration, (La Cour Pleniere, heroi-tragi-comedie en trois actes et en
prose; jouee le 14 Juillet 1788, par une societe d'amateurs dans un Chateau
aux environs de Versailles; par M. l'Abbe de Vermond, Lecteur de la Reine:
A Baville (Lamoignon's Country-house), et se trouve a Paris, chez la Veuve
Liberte, a l'enseigne de la Revolution, 1788.--La Passion, la Mort et la
Resurrection du Peuple: Imprime a Jerusalem, &c.; &c.--See; Montgaillard, i.
407.) this poor Plenary Court met once, and never any second time.
Distracted country! Contention hisses up, with forked hydra-tongues,
wheresoever poor Lomenie sets his foot. 'Let a Commandant, a Commissioner
of the King,' says Weber, 'enter one of these Parlements to have an Edict
registered, the whole Tribunal will disappear, and leave the Commandant
alone with the Clerk and First President. The Edict registered and the
Commandant gone, the whole Tribunal hastens back, to declare such
registration null. The highways are covered with Grand Deputations of
Parlements, proceeding to Versailles, to have their registers expunged by
the King's hand; or returning home, to cover a new page with a new
resolution still more audacious.' (Weber, i. 275.)
Such is the France of this year 1788. Not now a Golden or Paper Age of
Hope; with its horse-racings, balloon-flyings, and finer sensibilities of
the heart: ah, gone is that; its golden effulgence paled, bedarkened in
this singular manner,--brewing towards preternatural weather! For, as in
that wreck-storm of Paul et Virginie and Saint-Pierre,--'One huge
motionless cloud' (say, of Sorrow and Indignation) 'girdles our whole
horizon; streams up, hairy, copper-edged, over a sky of the colour of
lead.' Motionless itself; but 'small clouds' (as exiled Parlements and
suchlike), 'parting from it, fly over the zenith, with the velocity of
birds:'--till at last, with one loud howl, the whole Four Winds be dashed
together, and all the world exclaim, There is the tornado! Tout le monde
s'ecria, Voila l'ouragan!
For the rest, in such circumstances, the Successive Loan, very naturally,
remains unfilled; neither, indeed, can that impost of the Second Twentieth,
at least not on 'strict valuation,' be levied to good purpose: 'Lenders,'
says Weber, in his hysterical vehement manner, 'are afraid of ruin; tax-
gatherers of hanging.' The very Clergy turn away their face: convoked in
Extraordinary Assembly, they afford no gratuitous gift (don gratuit),--if
it be not that of advice; here too instead of cash is clamour for States-
General. (Lameth, Assemb. Const. (Introd.) p. 87.)
O Lomenie-Brienne, with thy poor flimsy mind all bewildered, and now 'three
actual cauteries' on thy worn-out body; who art like to die of inflamation,
provocation, milk-diet, dartres vives and maladie--(best untranslated);
(Montgaillard, i. 424.) and presidest over a France with innumerable actual
cauteries, which also is dying of inflammation and the rest! Was it wise
to quit the bosky verdures of Brienne, and thy new ashlar Chateau there,
and what it held, for this? Soft were those shades and lawns; sweet the
hymns of Poetasters, the blandishments of high-rouged Graces: (See Memoires
de Morellet.) and always this and the other Philosophe Morellet (nothing
deeming himself or thee a questionable Sham-Priest) could be so happy in
making happy:--and also (hadst thou known it), in the Military School hard
by there sat, studying mathematics, a dusky-complexioned taciturn Boy,
under the name of: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE!--With fifty years of effort, and
one final dead-lift struggle, thou hast made an exchange! Thou hast got
thy robe of office,--as Hercules had his Nessus'-shirt.
On the 13th of July of this 1788, there fell, on the very edge of harvest,
the most frightful hailstorm; scattering into wild waste the Fruits of the
Year; which had otherwise suffered grievously by drought. For sixty
leagues round Paris especially, the ruin was almost total. (Marmontel, iv.
30.) To so many other evils, then, there is to be added, that of dearth,
perhaps of famine.
Some days before this hailstorm, on the 5th of July; and still more
decisively some days after it, on the 8th of August,--Lomenie announces
that the States-General are actually to meet in the following month of May.
Till after which period, this of the Plenary Court, and the rest, shall
remain postponed. Further, as in Lomenie there is no plan of forming or
holding these most desirable States-General, 'thinkers are invited' to
furnish him with one,--through the medium of discussion by the public
press!
What could a poor Minister do? There are still ten months of respite
reserved: a sinking pilot will fling out all things, his very biscuit-
bags, lead, log, compass and quadrant, before flinging out himself. It is
on this principle, of sinking, and the incipient delirium of despair, that
we explain likewise the almost miraculous 'invitation to thinkers.'
Invitation to Chaos to be so kind as build, out of its tumultuous drift-
wood, an Ark of Escape for him! In these cases, not invitation but command
has usually proved serviceable.--The Queen stood, that evening, pensive, in
a window, with her face turned towards the Garden. The Chef de Gobelet had
followed her with an obsequious cup of coffee; and then retired till it
were sipped. Her Majesty beckoned Dame Campan to approach: "Grand Dieu!"
murmured she, with the cup in her hand, "what a piece of news will be made
public to-day! The King grants States-General." Then raising her eyes to
Heaven (if Campan were not mistaken), she added: "'Tis a first beat of the
drum, of ill-omen for France. This Noblesse will ruin us." (Campan, iii.
104, 111.)
During all that hatching of the Plenary Court, while Lamoignon looked so
mysterious, Besenval had kept asking him one question: Whether they had
cash? To which as Lamoignon always answered (on the faith of Lomenie) that
the cash was safe, judicious Besenval rejoined that then all was safe.
Nevertheless, the melancholy fact is, that the royal coffers are almost
getting literally void of coin. Indeed, apart from all other things this
'invitation to thinkers,' and the great change now at hand are enough to
'arrest the circulation of capital,' and forward only that of pamphlets. A
few thousand gold louis are now all of money or money's worth that remains
in the King's Treasury. With another movement as of desperation, Lomenie
invites Necker to come and be Controller of Finances! Necker has other
work in view than controlling Finances for Lomenie: with a dry refusal he
stands taciturn; awaiting his time.
What shall a desperate Prime Minister do? He has grasped at the strongbox
of the King's Theatre: some Lottery had been set on foot for those
sufferers by the hailstorm; in his extreme necessity, Lomenie lays hands
even on this. (Besenval, iii. 360.) To make provision for the passing
day, on any terms, will soon be impossible.--On the 16th of August, poor
Weber heard, at Paris and Versailles, hawkers, 'with a hoarse stifled tone
of voice (voix etouffee, sourde)' drawling and snuffling, through the
streets, an Edict concerning Payments (such was the soft title Rivarol had
contrived for it): all payments at the Royal Treasury shall be made
henceforth, three-fifths in Cash, and the remaining two-fifths--in Paper
bearing interest! Poor Weber almost swooned at the sound of these cracked
voices, with their bodeful raven-note; and will never forget the effect it
had on him. (Weber, i. 339.)
But the effect on Paris, on the world generally? From the dens of Stock-
brokerage, from the heights of Political Economy, of Neckerism and
Philosophism; from all articulate and inarticulate throats, rise hootings
and howlings, such as ear had not yet heard. Sedition itself may be
imminent! Monseigneur d'Artois, moved by Duchess Polignac, feels called to
wait upon her Majesty; and explain frankly what crisis matters stand in.
'The Queen wept;' Brienne himself wept;--for it is now visible and palpable
that he must go.
Remains only that the Court, to whom his manners and garrulities were
always agreeable, shall make his fall soft. The grasping old man has
already got his Archbishopship of Toulouse exchanged for the richer one of
Sens: and now, in this hour of pity, he shall have the Coadjutorship for
his nephew (hardly yet of due age); a Dameship of the Palace for his niece;
a Regiment for her husband; for himself a red Cardinal's-hat, a Coupe de
Bois (cutting from the royal forests), and on the whole 'from five to six
hundred thousand livres of revenue:' (Weber, i. 341.) finally, his
Brother, the Comte de Brienne, shall still continue War-minister. Buckled-
round with such bolsters and huge featherbeds of Promotion, let him now
fall as soft as he can!
And so Lomenie departs: rich if Court-titles and Money-bonds can enrich
him; but if these cannot, perhaps the poorest of all extant men. 'Hissed
at by the people of Versailles,' he drives forth to Jardi; southward to
Brienne,--for recovery of health. Then to Nice, to Italy; but shall
return; shall glide to and fro, tremulous, faint-twinkling, fallen on awful
times: till the Guillotine--snuff out his weak existence? Alas, worse:
for it is blown out, or choked out, foully, pitiably, on the way to the
Guillotine! In his Palace of Sens, rude Jacobin Bailiffs made him drink
with them from his own wine-cellars, feast with them from his own larder;
and on the morrow morning, the miserable old man lies dead. This is the
end of Prime Minister, Cardinal Archbishop Lomenie de Brienne. Flimsier
mortal was seldom fated to do as weighty a mischief; to have a life as
despicable-envied, an exit as frightful. Fired, as the phrase is, with
ambition: blown, like a kindled rag, the sport of winds, not this way, not
that way, but of all ways, straight towards such a powder-mine,--which he
kindled! Let us pity the hapless Lomenie; and forgive him; and, as soon as
possible, forget him.
Chapter 1.3.IX.
Burial with Bonfire.
Besenval, during these extraordinary operations, of Payment two-fifths in
Paper, and change of Prime Minister, had been out on a tour through his
District of Command; and indeed, for the last months, peacefully drinking
the waters of Contrexeville. Returning now, in the end of August, towards
Moulins, and 'knowing nothing,' he arrives one evening at Langres; finds
the whole Town in a state of uproar (grande rumeur). Doubtless some
sedition; a thing too common in these days! He alights nevertheless;
inquires of a 'man tolerably dressed,' what the matter is?--"How?" answers
the man, "you have not heard the news? The Archbishop is thrown out, and
M. Necker is recalled; and all is going to go well!" (Besenval, iii. 366.)
Such rumeur and vociferous acclaim has risen round M. Necker, ever from
'that day when he issued from the Queen's Apartments,' a nominated
Minister. It was on the 24th of August: 'the galleries of the Chateau, the
courts, the streets of Versailles; in few hours, the Capital; and, as the
news flew, all France, resounded with the cry of Vive le Roi! Vive M.
Necker! (Weber, i. 342.) In Paris indeed it unfortunately got the length
of turbulence.' Petards, rockets go off, in the Place Dauphine, more than
enough. A 'wicker Figure (Mannequin d'osier),' in Archbishop's stole, made
emblematically, three-fifths of it satin, two-fifths of it paper, is
promenaded, not in silence, to the popular judgment-bar; is doomed; shriven
by a mock Abbe de Vermond; then solemnly consumed by fire, at the foot of
Henri's Statue on the Pont Neuf;--with such petarding and huzzaing that
Chevalier Dubois and his City-watch see good finally to make a charge (more
or less ineffectual); and there wanted not burning of sentry-boxes, forcing
of guard-houses, and also 'dead bodies thrown into the Seine over-night,'
to avoid new effervescence. (Histoire Parlementaire de la Revolution
Francaise; ou Journal des Assemblees Nationales depuis 1789 (Paris, 1833 et
seqq.), i. 253. Lameth, Assemblee Constituante, i. (Introd.) p. 89.)
Parlements therefore shall return from exile: Plenary Court, Payment two-
fifths in Paper have vanished; gone off in smoke, at the foot of Henri's
Statue. States-General (with a Political Millennium) are now certain; nay,
it shall be announced, in our fond haste, for January next: and all, as
the Langres man said, is 'going to go.'
To the prophetic glance of Besenval, one other thing is too apparent: that
Friend Lamoignon cannot keep his Keepership. Neither he nor War-minister
Comte de Brienne! Already old Foulon, with an eye to be war-minister
himself, is making underground movements. This is that same Foulon named
ame damnee du Parlement; a man grown gray in treachery, in griping,
projecting, intriguing and iniquity: who once when it was objected, to
some finance-scheme of his, "What will the people do?"--made answer, in the
fire of discussion, "The people may eat grass:" hasty words, which fly
abroad irrevocable,--and will send back tidings!
Foulon, to the relief of the world, fails on this occasion; and will always
fail. Nevertheless it steads not M. de Lamoignon. It steads not the
doomed man that he have interviews with the King; and be 'seen to return
radieux,' emitting rays. Lamoignon is the hated of Parlements: Comte de
Brienne is Brother to the Cardinal Archbishop. The 24th of August has
been; and the 14th September is not yet, when they two, as their great
Principal had done, descend,--made to fall soft, like him.
And now, as if the last burden had been rolled from its heart, and
assurance were at length perfect, Paris bursts forth anew into extreme
jubilee. The Basoche rejoices aloud, that the foe of Parlements is fallen;
Nobility, Gentry, Commonalty have rejoiced; and rejoice. Nay now, with new
emphasis, Rascality itself, starting suddenly from its dim depths, will
arise and do it,--for down even thither the new Political Evangel, in some
rude version or other, has penetrated. It is Monday, the 14th of September
1788: Rascality assembles anew, in great force, in the Place Dauphine;
lets off petards, fires blunderbusses, to an incredible extent, without
interval, for eighteen hours. There is again a wicker Figure, 'Mannequin
of osier:' the centre of endless howlings. Also Necker's Portrait
snatched, or purchased, from some Printshop, is borne processionally, aloft
on a perch, with huzzas;--an example to be remembered.
But chiefly on the Pont Neuf, where the Great Henri, in bronze, rides
sublime; there do the crowds gather. All passengers must stop, till they
have bowed to the People's King, and said audibly: Vive Henri Quatre; au
diable Lamoignon! No carriage but must stop; not even that of his Highness
d'Orleans. Your coach-doors are opened: Monsieur will please to put forth
his head and bow; or even, if refractory, to alight altogether, and kneel:
from Madame a wave of her plumes, a smile of her fair face, there where she
sits, shall suffice;--and surely a coin or two (to buy fusees) were not
unreasonable from the Upper Classes, friends of Liberty? In this manner it
proceeds for days; in such rude horse-play,--not without kicks. The City-
watch can do nothing; hardly save its own skin: for the last twelve-month,
as we have sometimes seen, it has been a kind of pastime to hunt the Watch.
Besenval indeed is at hand with soldiers; but they have orders to avoid
firing, and are not prompt to stir.
On Monday morning the explosion of petards began: and now it is near
midnight of Wednesday; and the 'wicker Mannequin' is to be buried,--
apparently in the Antique fashion. Long rows of torches, following it,
move towards the Hotel Lamoignon; but 'a servant of mine' (Besenval's) has
run to give warning, and there are soldiers come. Gloomy Lamoignon is not
to die by conflagration, or this night; not yet for a year, and then by
gunshot (suicidal or accidental is unknown). (Histoire de la Revolution,
par Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 50.) Foiled Rascality burns its 'Mannikin
of osier,' under his windows; 'tears up the sentry-box,' and rolls off: to
try Brienne; to try Dubois Captain of the Watch. Now, however, all is
bestirring itself; Gardes Francaises, Invalides, Horse-patrol: the Torch
Procession is met with sharp shot, with the thrusting of bayonets, the
slashing of sabres. Even Dubois makes a charge, with that Cavalry of his,
and the cruelest charge of all: 'there are a great many killed and
wounded.' Not without clangour, complaint; subsequent criminal trials, and
official persons dying of heartbreak! (Histoire de la Revolution, par Deux
Amis de la Liberte, i. 58.) So, however, with steel-besom, Rascality is
brushed back into its dim depths, and the streets are swept clear.
Not for a century and half had Rascality ventured to step forth in this
fashion; not for so long, showed its huge rude lineaments in the light of
day. A Wonder and new Thing: as yet gamboling merely, in awkward
Brobdingnag sport, not without quaintness; hardly in anger: yet in its
huge half-vacant laugh lurks a shade of grimness,--which could unfold
itself!
However, the thinkers invited by Lomenie are now far on with their
pamphlets: States-General, on one plan or another, will infallibly meet;
if not in January, as was once hoped, yet at latest in May. Old Duke de
Richelieu, moribund in these autumn days, opens his eyes once more,
murmuring, "What would Louis Fourteenth" (whom he remembers) "have said!"--
then closes them again, forever, before the evil time.
BOOK 1.IV.
STATES-GENERAL
Chapter 1.4.I.
The Notables Again.
The universal prayer, therefore, is to be fulfilled! Always in days of
national perplexity, when wrong abounded and help was not, this remedy of
States-General was called for; by a Malesherbes, nay by a Fenelon;
(Montgaillard, i. 461.) even Parlements calling for it were 'escorted with
blessings.' And now behold it is vouchsafed us; States-General shall
verily be!
To say, let States-General be, was easy; to say in what manner they shall
be, is not so easy. Since the year of 1614, there have no States-General
met in France, all trace of them has vanished from the living habits of
men. Their structure, powers, methods of procedure, which were never in
any measure fixed, have now become wholly a vague possibility. Clay which
the potter may shape, this way or that:--say rather, the twenty-five
millions of potters; for so many have now, more or less, a vote in it! How
to shape the States-General? There is a problem. Each Body-corporate,
each privileged, each organised Class has secret hopes of its own in that
matter; and also secret misgivings of its own,--for, behold, this monstrous
twenty-million Class, hitherto the dumb sheep which these others had to
agree about the manner of shearing, is now also arising with hopes! It has
ceased or is ceasing to be dumb; it speaks through Pamphlets, or at least
brays and growls behind them, in unison,--increasing wonderfully their
volume of sound.
As for the Parlement of Paris, it has at once declared for the 'old form of
1614.' Which form had this advantage, that the Tiers Etat, Third Estate,
or Commons, figured there as a show mainly: whereby the Noblesse and
Clergy had but to avoid quarrel between themselves, and decide unobstructed
what they thought best. Such was the clearly declared opinion of the Paris
Parlement. But, being met by a storm of mere hooting and howling from all
men, such opinion was blown straightway to the winds; and the popularity of
the Parlement along with it,--never to return. The Parlements part, we
said above, was as good as played. Concerning which, however, there is
this further to be noted: the proximity of dates. It was on the 22nd of
September that the Parlement returned from 'vacation' or 'exile in its
estates;' to be reinstalled amid boundless jubilee from all Paris.
Precisely next day it was, that this same Parlement came to its 'clearly
declared opinion:' and then on the morrow after that, you behold it
covered with outrages;' its outer court, one vast sibilation, and the glory
departed from it for evermore. (Weber, i. 347.) A popularity of twenty-
four hours was, in those times, no uncommon allowance.
On the other hand, how superfluous was that invitation of Lomenie's: the
invitation to thinkers! Thinkers and unthinkers, by the million, are
spontaneously at their post, doing what is in them. Clubs labour: Societe
Publicole; Breton Club; Enraged Club, Club des Enrages. Likewise Dinner-
parties in the Palais Royal; your Mirabeaus, Talleyrands dining there, in
company with Chamforts, Morellets, with Duponts and hot Parlementeers, not
without object! For a certain Neckerean Lion's-provider, whom one could
name, assembles them there; (Ibid. i. 360.)--or even their own private
determination to have dinner does it. And then as to Pamphlets--in
figurative language; 'it is a sheer snowing of pamphlets; like to snow up
the Government thoroughfares!' Now is the time for Friends of Freedom;
sane, and even insane.
Count, or self-styled Count, d'Aintrigues, 'the young Languedocian
gentleman,' with perhaps Chamfort the Cynic to help him, rises into furor
almost Pythic; highest, where many are high. (Memoire sur les Etats-
Generaux. See Montgaillard, i. 457-9.) Foolish young Languedocian
gentleman; who himself so soon, 'emigrating among the foremost,' must fly
indignant over the marches, with the Contrat Social in his pocket,--towards
outer darkness, thankless intriguings, ignis-fatuus hoverings, and death by
the stiletto! Abbe Sieyes has left Chartres Cathedral, and canonry and
book-shelves there; has let his tonsure grow, and come to Paris with a
secular head, of the most irrefragable sort, to ask three questions, and
answer them: What is the Third Estate? All.--What has it hitherto been in
our form of government? Nothing.--What does it want? To become Something.
D'Orleans,--for be sure he, on his way to Chaos, is in the thick of this,--
promulgates his Deliberations; (Deliberations a prendre pour les Assemblees
des Bailliages.) fathered by him, written by Laclos of the Liaisons
Dangereuses. The result of which comes out simply: 'The Third Estate is
the Nation.' On the other hand, Monseigneur d'Artois, with other Princes
of the Blood, publishes, in solemn Memorial to the King, that if such
things be listened to, Privilege, Nobility, Monarchy, Church, State and
Strongbox are in danger. (Memoire presente au Roi, par Monseigneur Comte
d'Artois, M. le Prince de Conde, M. le Duc de Bourbon, M. le Duc d'Enghien,
et M. le Prince de Conti. (Given in Hist. Parl. i. 256.)) In danger
truly: and yet if you do not listen, are they out of danger? It is the
voice of all France, this sound that rises. Immeasurable, manifold; as the
sound of outbreaking waters: wise were he who knew what to do in it,--if
not to fly to the mountains, and hide himself?
How an ideal, all-seeing Versailles Government, sitting there on such
principles, in such an environment, would have determined to demean itself
at this new juncture, may even yet be a question. Such a Government would
have felt too well that its long task was now drawing to a close; that,
under the guise of these States-General, at length inevitable, a new
omnipotent Unknown of Democracy was coming into being; in presence of which
no Versailles Government either could or should, except in a provisory
character, continue extant. To enact which provisory character, so
unspeakably important, might its whole faculties but have sufficed; and so
a peaceable, gradual, well-conducted Abdication and Domine-dimittas have
been the issue!
This for our ideal, all-seeing Versailles Government. But for the actual
irrational Versailles Government? Alas, that is a Government existing
there only for its own behoof: without right, except possession; and now
also without might. It foresees nothing, sees nothing; has not so much as
a purpose, but has only purposes,--and the instinct whereby all that exists
will struggle to keep existing. Wholly a vortex; in which vain counsels,
hallucinations, falsehoods, intrigues, and imbecilities whirl; like
withered rubbish in the meeting of winds! The Oeil-de-Boeuf has its
irrational hopes, if also its fears. Since hitherto all States-General
have done as good as nothing, why should these do more? The Commons,
indeed, look dangerous; but on the whole is not revolt, unknown now for
five generations, an impossibility? The Three Estates can, by management,
be set against each other; the Third will, as heretofore, join with the
King; will, out of mere spite and self-interest, be eager to tax and vex
the other two. The other two are thus delivered bound into our hands, that
we may fleece them likewise. Whereupon, money being got, and the Three
Estates all in quarrel, dismiss them, and let the future go as it can! As
good Archbishop Lomenie was wont to say: "There are so many accidents; and
it needs but one to save us."--How many to destroy us?
Poor Necker in the midst of such an anarchy does what is possible for him.
He looks into it with obstinately hopeful face; lauds the known rectitude
of the kingly mind; listens indulgent-like to the known perverseness of the
queenly and courtly;--emits if any proclamation or regulation, one
favouring the Tiers Etat; but settling nothing; hovering afar off rather,
and advising all things to settle themselves. The grand questions, for the
present, have got reduced to two: the Double Representation, and the Vote
by Head. Shall the Commons have a 'double representation,' that is to say,
have as many members as the Noblesse and Clergy united? Shall the States-
General, when once assembled, vote and deliberate, in one body, or in three
separate bodies; 'vote by head, or vote by class,'--ordre as they call it?
These are the moot-points now filling all France with jargon, logic and
eleutheromania. To terminate which, Necker bethinks him, Might not a
second Convocation of the Notables be fittest? Such second Convocation is
resolved on.
On the 6th of November of this year 1788, these Notables accordingly have
reassembled; after an interval of some eighteen months. They are Calonne's
old Notables, the same Hundred and Forty-four,--to show one's impartiality;
likewise to save time. They sit there once again, in their Seven Bureaus,
in the hard winter weather: it is the hardest winter seen since 1709;
thermometer below zero of Fahrenheit, Seine River frozen over. (Marmontel,
Memoires (London, 1805), iv. 33. Hist. Parl, &c.;) Cold, scarcity and
eleutheromaniac clamour: a changed world since these Notables were
'organed out,' in May gone a year! They shall see now whether, under their
Seven Princes of the Blood, in their Seven Bureaus, they can settle the
moot-points.
To the surprise of Patriotism, these Notables, once so patriotic, seem to
incline the wrong way; towards the anti-patriotic side. They stagger at
the Double Representation, at the Vote by Head: there is not affirmative
decision; there is mere debating, and that not with the best aspects. For,
indeed, were not these Notables themselves mostly of the Privileged
Classes? They clamoured once; now they have their misgivings; make their
dolorous representations. Let them vanish, ineffectual; and return no
more! They vanish after a month's session, on this 12th of December, year
1788: the last terrestrial Notables, not to reappear any other time, in
the History of the World.
And so, the clamour still continuing, and the Pamphlets; and nothing but
patriotic Addresses, louder and louder, pouting in on us from all corners
of France,--Necker himself some fortnight after, before the year is yet
done, has to present his Report, (Rapport fait au Roi dans son Conseil, le
27 Decembre 1788.) recommending at his own risk that same Double
Representation; nay almost enjoining it, so loud is the jargon and
eleutheromania. What dubitating, what circumambulating! These whole six
noisy months (for it began with Brienne in July,) has not Report followed
Report, and one Proclamation flown in the teeth of the other? (5th July;
8th August; 23rd September, &c.; &c.;)
However, that first moot-point, as we see, is now settled. As for the
second, that of voting by Head or by Order, it unfortunately is still left
hanging. It hangs there, we may say, between the Privileged Orders and the
Unprivileged; as a ready-made battle-prize, and necessity of war, from the
very first: which battle-prize whosoever seizes it--may thenceforth bear
as battle-flag, with the best omens!
But so, at least, by Royal Edict of the 24th of January, (Reglement du Roi
pour la Convocation des Etats-Generaux a Versailles. (Reprinted, wrong
dated, in Histoire Parlementaire, i. 262.)) does it finally, to impatient
expectant France, become not only indubitable that National Deputies are to
meet, but possible (so far and hardly farther has the royal Regulation
gone) to begin electing them.
Chapter 1.4.II.
The Election.
Up, then, and be doing! The royal signal-word flies through France, as
through vast forests the rushing of a mighty wind. At Parish Churches, in
Townhalls, and every House of Convocation; by Bailliages, by Seneschalsies,
in whatsoever form men convene; there, with confusion enough, are Primary
Assemblies forming. To elect your Electors; such is the form prescribed:
then to draw up your 'Writ of Plaints and Grievances (Cahier de plaintes et
doleances),' of which latter there is no lack.
With such virtue works this Royal January Edict; as it rolls rapidly, in
its leathern mails, along these frostbound highways, towards all the four
winds. Like some fiat, or magic spell-word;--which such things do
resemble! For always, as it sounds out 'at the market-cross,' accompanied
with trumpet-blast; presided by Bailli, Seneschal, or other minor
Functionary, with beef-eaters; or, in country churches is droned forth
after sermon, 'au prone des messes paroissales;' and is registered, posted
and let fly over all the world,--you behold how this multitudinous French
People, so long simmering and buzzing in eager expectancy, begins heaping
and shaping itself into organic groups. Which organic groups, again, hold
smaller organic grouplets: the inarticulate buzzing becomes articulate
speaking and acting. By Primary Assembly, and then by Secondary; by
'successive elections,' and infinite elaboration and scrutiny, according to
prescribed process--shall the genuine 'Plaints and Grievances' be at length
got to paper; shall the fit National Representative be at length laid hold
of.
How the whole People shakes itself, as if it had one life; and, in
thousand-voiced rumour, announces that it is awake, suddenly out of long
death-sleep, and will thenceforth sleep no more! The long looked-for has
come at last; wondrous news, of Victory, Deliverance, Enfranchisement,
sounds magical through every heart. To the proud strong man it has come;
whose strong hands shall no more be gyved; to whom boundless unconquered
continents lie disclosed. The weary day-drudge has heard of it; the beggar
with his crusts moistened in tears. What! To us also has hope reached;
down even to us? Hunger and hardship are not to be eternal? The bread we
extorted from the rugged glebe, and, with the toil of our sinews, reaped
and ground, and kneaded into loaves, was not wholly for another, then; but
we also shall eat of it, and be filled? Glorious news (answer the prudent
elders), but all-too unlikely!--Thus, at any rate, may the lower people,
who pay no money-taxes and have no right to vote, (Reglement du Roi (in
Histoire Parlementaire, as above, i. 267-307.) assiduously crowd round
those that do; and most Halls of Assembly, within doors and without, seem
animated enough.
Paris, alone of Towns, is to have Representatives; the number of them
twenty. Paris is divided into Sixty Districts; each of which (assembled in
some church, or the like) is choosing two Electors. Official deputations
pass from District to District, for all is inexperience as yet, and there
is endless consulting. The streets swarm strangely with busy crowds,
pacific yet restless and loquacious; at intervals, is seen the gleam of
military muskets; especially about the Palais, where Parlement, once more
on duty, sits querulous, almost tremulous.
Busy is the French world! In those great days, what poorest speculative
craftsman but will leave his workshop; if not to vote, yet to assist in
voting? On all highways is a rustling and bustling. Over the wide surface
of France, ever and anon, through the spring months, as the Sower casts his
corn abroad upon the furrows, sounds of congregating and dispersing; of
crowds in deliberation, acclamation, voting by ballot and by voice,--rise
discrepant towards the ear of Heaven. To which political phenomena add
this economical one, that Trade is stagnant, and also Bread getting dear;
for before the rigorous winter there was, as we said, a rigorous summer,
with drought, and on the 13th of July with destructive hail. What a
fearful day! all cried while that tempest fell. Alas, the next anniversary
of it will be a worse. (Bailly, Memoires, i. 336.) Under such aspects is
France electing National Representatives.
The incidents and specialties of these Elections belong not to Universal,
but to Local or Parish History: for which reason let not the new troubles
of Grenoble or Besancon; the bloodshed on the streets of Rennes, and
consequent march thither of the Breton 'Young Men' with Manifesto by their
'Mothers, Sisters and Sweethearts;' (Protestation et Arrete des Jeunes Gens
de la Ville de Nantes, du 28 Janvier 1789, avant leur depart pour Rennes.
Arrete des Jeunes Gens de la Ville d'Angers, du 4 Fevrier 1789. Arrete des
Meres, Soeurs, Epouses et Amantes des Jeunes Citoyens d'Angers, du 6
Fevrier 1789. (Reprinted in Histoire Parlementaire, i. 290-3.)) nor
suchlike, detain us here. It is the same sad history everywhere; with
superficial variations. A reinstated Parlement (as at Besancon), which
stands astonished at this Behemoth of a States-General it had itself
evoked, starts forward, with more or less audacity, to fix a thorn in its
nose; and, alas, is instantaneously struck down, and hurled quite out,--for
the new popular force can use not only arguments but brickbats! Or else,
and perhaps combined with this, it is an order of Noblesse (as in
Brittany), which will beforehand tie up the Third Estate, that it harm not
the old privileges. In which act of tying up, never so skilfully set
about, there is likewise no possibility of prospering; but the Behemoth-
Briareus snaps your cords like green rushes. Tie up? Alas, Messieurs!
And then, as for your chivalry rapiers, valour and wager-of-battle, think
one moment, how can that answer? The plebeian heart too has red life in
it, which changes not to paleness at glance even of you; and 'the six
hundred Breton gentlemen assembled in arms, for seventy-two hours, in the
Cordeliers' Cloister, at Rennes,'--have to come out again, wiser than they
entered. For the Nantes Youth, the Angers Youth, all Brittany was astir;
'mothers, sisters and sweethearts' shrieking after them, March! The Breton
Noblesse must even let the mad world have its way. (Hist. Parl. i. 287.
Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 105-128.)
In other Provinces, the Noblesse, with equal goodwill, finds it better to
stick to Protests, to well-redacted 'Cahiers of grievances,' and satirical
writings and speeches. Such is partially their course in Provence; whither
indeed Gabriel Honore Riquetti Comte de Mirabeau has rushed down from
Paris, to speak a word in season. In Provence, the Privileged, backed by
their Aix Parlement, discover that such novelties, enjoined though they be
by Royal Edict, tend to National detriment; and what is still more
indisputable, 'to impair the dignity of the Noblesse.' Whereupon Mirabeau
protesting aloud, this same Noblesse, amid huge tumult within doors and
without, flatly determines to expel him from their Assembly. No other
method, not even that of successive duels, would answer with him, the
obstreperous fierce-glaring man. Expelled he accordingly is.
'In all countries, in all times,' exclaims he departing, 'the Aristocrats
have implacably pursued every friend of the People; and with tenfold
implacability, if such a one were himself born of the Aristocracy. It was
thus that the last of the Gracchi perished, by the hands of the Patricians.
But he, being struck with the mortal stab, flung dust towards heaven, and
called on the Avenging Deities; and from this dust there was born Marius,--
Marius not so illustrious for exterminating the Cimbri, as for overturning
in Rome the tyranny of the Nobles.' (Fils Adoptif, v. 256.) Casting up
which new curious handful of dust (through the Printing-press), to breed
what it can and may, Mirabeau stalks forth into the Third Estate.
That he now, to ingratiate himself with this Third Estate, 'opened a cloth-
shop in Marseilles,' and for moments became a furnishing tailor, or even
the fable that he did so, is to us always among the pleasant memorabilities
of this era. Stranger Clothier never wielded the ell-wand, and rent webs
for men, or fractional parts of men. The Fils Adoptif is indignant at such
disparaging fable, (Memoires de Mirabeau, v. 307.)--which nevertheless was
widely believed in those days. (Marat, Ami-du-Peuple Newspaper (in
Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 103), &c.;) But indeed, if Achilles, in the
heroic ages, killed mutton, why should not Mirabeau, in the unheroic ones,
measure broadcloth?
More authentic are his triumph-progresses through that disturbed district,
with mob jubilee, flaming torches, 'windows hired for two louis,' and
voluntary guard of a hundred men. He is Deputy Elect, both of Aix and of
Marseilles; but will prefer Aix. He has opened his far-sounding voice, the
depths of his far-sounding soul; he can quell (such virtue is in a spoken
word) the pride-tumults of the rich, the hunger-tumults of the poor; and
wild multitudes move under him, as under the moon do billows of the sea:
he has become a world compeller, and ruler over men.
One other incident and specialty we note; with how different an interest!
It is of the Parlement of Paris; which starts forward, like the others
(only with less audacity, seeing better how it lay), to nose-ring that
Behemoth of a States-General. Worthy Doctor Guillotin, respectable
practitioner in Paris, has drawn up his little 'Plan of a Cahier of
doleances;'--as had he not, having the wish and gift, the clearest liberty
to do? He is getting the people to sign it; whereupon the surly Parlement
summons him to give an account of himself. He goes; but with all Paris at
his heels; which floods the outer courts, and copiously signs the Cahier
even there, while the Doctor is giving account of himself within! The
Parlement cannot too soon dismiss Guillotin, with compliments; to be borne
home shoulder-high. (Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 141.) This respectable
Guillotin we hope to behold once more, and perhaps only once; the Parlement
not even once, but let it be engulphed unseen by us.
Meanwhile such things, cheering as they are, tend little to cheer the
national creditor, or indeed the creditor of any kind. In the midst of
universal portentous doubt, what certainty can seem so certain as money in
the purse, and the wisdom of keeping it there? Trading Speculation,
Commerce of all kinds, has as far as possible come to a dead pause; and the
hand of the industrious lies idle in his bosom. Frightful enough, when now
the rigour of seasons has also done its part, and to scarcity of work is
added scarcity of food! In the opening spring, there come rumours of
forestalment, there come King's Edicts, Petitions of bakers against
millers; and at length, in the month of April--troops of ragged Lackalls,
and fierce cries of starvation! These are the thrice-famed Brigands: an
actual existing quotity of persons: who, long reflected and reverberated
through so many millions of heads, as in concave multiplying mirrors,
become a whole Brigand World; and, like a kind of Supernatural Machinery
wondrously move the Epos of the Revolution. The Brigands are here: the
Brigands are there; the Brigands are coming! Not otherwise sounded the
clang of Phoebus Apollos's silver bow, scattering pestilence and pale
terror; for this clang too was of the imagination; preternatural; and it
too walked in formless immeasurability, having made itself like to the
Night (Greek.)!
But remark at least, for the first time, the singular empire of Suspicion,
in those lands, in those days. If poor famishing men shall, prior to
death, gather in groups and crowds, as the poor fieldfares and plovers do
in bitter weather, were it but that they may chirp mournfully together, and
misery look in the eyes of misery; if famishing men (what famishing
fieldfares cannot do) should discover, once congregated, that they need not
die while food is in the land, since they are many, and with empty wallets
have right hands: in all this, what need were there of Preternatural
Machinery? To most people none; but not to French people, in a time of
Revolution. These Brigands (as Turgot's also were, fourteen years ago)
have all been set on; enlisted, though without tuck of drum,--by
Aristocrats, by Democrats, by D'Orleans, D'Artois, and enemies of the
public weal. Nay Historians, to this day, will prove it by one argument:
these Brigands pretending to have no victual, nevertheless contrive to
drink, nay, have been seen drunk. (Lacretelle, 18me Siecle, ii. 155.) An
unexampled fact! But on the whole, may we not predict that a people, with
such a width of Credulity and of Incredulity (the proper union of which
makes Suspicion, and indeed unreason generally), will see Shapes enough of
Immortals fighting in its battle-ranks, and never want for Epical
Machinery?
Be this as it may, the Brigands are clearly got to Paris, in considerable
multitudes: (Besenval, iii. 385, &c.;) with sallow faces, lank hair (the
true enthusiast complexion), with sooty rags; and also with large clubs,
which they smite angrily against the pavement! These mingle in the
Election tumult; would fain sign Guillotin's Cahier, or any Cahier or
Petition whatsoever, could they but write. Their enthusiast complexion,
the smiting of their sticks bodes little good to any one; least of all to
rich master-manufacturers of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, with whose workmen
they consort.
Chapter 1.4.III.
Grown Electric.
But now also National Deputies from all ends of France are in Paris, with
their commissions, what they call pouvoirs, or powers, in their pockets;
inquiring, consulting; looking out for lodgings at Versailles. The States-
General shall open there, if not on the First, then surely on the Fourth of
May, in grand procession and gala. The Salle des Menus is all new-
carpentered, bedizened for them; their very costume has been fixed; a grand
controversy which there was, as to 'slouch-hats or slouched-hats,' for the
Commons Deputies, has got as good as adjusted. Ever new strangers arrive;
loungers, miscellaneous persons, officers on furlough,--as the worthy
Captain Dampmartin, whom we hope to be acquainted with: these also, from
all regions, have repaired hither, to see what is toward. Our Paris
Committees, of the Sixty Districts, are busier than ever; it is now too
clear, the Paris Elections will be late.
On Monday, the 27th of April, Astronomer Bailly notices that the Sieur
Reveillon is not at his post. The Sieur Reveillon, 'extensive Paper
Manufacturer of the Rue St. Antoine;' he, commonly so punctual, is absent
from the Electoral Committee;--and even will never reappear there. In
those 'immense Magazines of velvet paper' has aught befallen? Alas, yes!
Alas, it is no Montgolfier rising there to-day; but Drudgery, Rascality and
the Suburb that is rising! Was the Sieur Reveillon, himself once a
journeyman, heard to say that 'a journeyman might live handsomely on
fifteen sous a-day?' Some sevenpence halfpenny: 'tis a slender sum! Or
was he only thought, and believed, to be heard saying it? By this long
chafing and friction it would appear the National temper has got electric.
Down in those dark dens, in those dark heads and hungry hearts, who knows
in what strange figure the new Political Evangel may have shaped itself;
what miraculous 'Communion of Drudges' may be getting formed! Enough:
grim individuals, soon waxing to grim multitudes, and other multitudes
crowding to see, beset that Paper-Warehouse; demonstrate, in loud
ungrammatical language (addressed to the passions too), the insufficiency
of sevenpence halfpenny a-day. The City-watch cannot dissipate them;
broils arise and bellowings; Reveillon, at his wits' end, entreats the
Populace, entreats the authorities. Besenval, now in active command,
Commandant of Paris, does, towards evening, to Reveillon's earnest prayer,
send some thirty Gardes Francaises. These clear the street, happily
without firing; and take post there for the night in hope that it may be
all over. (Besenval, iii. 385-8.)
Not so: on the morrow it is far worse. Saint-Antoine has arisen anew,
grimmer than ever;--reinforced by the unknown Tatterdemalion Figures, with
their enthusiast complexion and large sticks. The City, through all
streets, is flowing thitherward to see: 'two cartloads of paving-stones,
that happened to pass that way' have been seized as a visible godsend.
Another detachment of Gardes Francaises must be sent; Besenval and the
Colonel taking earnest counsel. Then still another; they hardly, with
bayonets and menace of bullets, penetrate to the spot. What a sight! A
street choked up, with lumber, tumult and the endless press of men. A
Paper-Warehouse eviscerated by axe and fire: mad din of Revolt; musket-
volleys responded to by yells, by miscellaneous missiles; by tiles raining
from roof and window,--tiles, execrations and slain men!
The Gardes Francaises like it not, but have to persevere. All day it
continues, slackening and rallying; the sun is sinking, and Saint-Antoine
has not yielded. The City flies hither and thither: alas, the sound of
that musket-volleying booms into the far dining-rooms of the Chaussee
d'Antin; alters the tone of the dinner-gossip there. Captain Dampmartin
leaves his wine; goes out with a friend or two, to see the fighting.
Unwashed men growl on him, with murmurs of "A bas les Aristocrates (Down
with the Aristocrats);" and insult the cross of St. Louis? They elbow him,
and hustle him; but do not pick his pocket;--as indeed at Reveillon's too
there was not the slightest stealing. (Evenemens qui se sont passes sous
mes yeux pendant la Revolution Francaise, par A. H. Dampmartin (Berlin,
1799), i. 25-27.)
At fall of night, as the thing will not end, Besenval takes his resolution:
orders out the Gardes Suisses with two pieces of artillery. The Swiss
Guards shall proceed thither; summon that rabble to depart, in the King's
name. If disobeyed, they shall load their artillery with grape-shot,
visibly to the general eye; shall again summon; if again disobeyed, fire,--
and keep firing 'till the last man' be in this manner blasted off, and the
street clear. With which spirited resolution, as might have been hoped,
the business is got ended. At sight of the lit matches, of the foreign
red-coated Switzers, Saint-Antoine dissipates; hastily, in the shades of
dusk. There is an encumbered street; there are 'from four to five hundred'
dead men. Unfortunate Reveillon has found shelter in the Bastille; does
therefrom, safe behind stone bulwarks, issue, plaint, protestation,
explanation, for the next month. Bold Besenval has thanks from all the
respectable Parisian classes; but finds no special notice taken of him at
Versailles,--a thing the man of true worth is used to. (Besenval, iii.
389.)
But how it originated, this fierce electric sputter and explosion? From
D'Orleans! cries the Court-party: he, with his gold, enlisted these
Brigands,--surely in some surprising manner, without sound of drum: he
raked them in hither, from all corners; to ferment and take fire; evil is
his good. From the Court! cries enlightened Patriotism: it is the cursed
gold and wiles of Aristocrats that enlisted them; set them upon ruining an
innocent Sieur Reveillon; to frighten the faint, and disgust men with the
career of Freedom.
Besenval, with reluctance, concludes that it came from 'the English, our
natural enemies.' Or, alas, might not one rather attribute it to Diana in
the shape of Hunger? To some twin Dioscuri, OPPRESSION and REVENGE; so
often seen in the battles of men? Poor Lackalls, all betoiled, besoiled,
encrusted into dim defacement; into whom nevertheless the breath of the
Almighty has breathed a living soul! To them it is clear only that
eleutheromaniac Philosophism has yet baked no bread; that Patrioti
Committee-men will level down to their own level, and no lower. Brigands,
or whatever they might be, it was bitter earnest with them. They bury
their dead with the title of Defenseurs de la Patrie, Martyrs of the good
Cause.
Or shall we say: Insurrection has now served its Apprenticeship; and this
was its proof-stroke, and no inconclusive one? Its next will be a master-
stroke; announcing indisputable Mastership to a whole astonished world.
Let that rock-fortress, Tyranny's stronghold, which they name Bastille, or
Building, as if there were no other building,--look to its guns!
But, in such wise, with primary and secondary Assemblies, and Cahiers of
Grievances; with motions, congregations of all kinds; with much thunder of
froth-eloquence, and at last with thunder of platoon-musquetry,--does
agitated France accomplish its Elections. With confused winnowing and
sifting, in this rather tumultuous manner, it has now (all except some
remnants of Paris) sifted out the true wheat-grains of National Deputies,
Twelve Hundred and Fourteen in number; and will forthwith open its States-
General.
Chapter 1.4.IV.
The Procession.
On the first Saturday of May, it is gala at Versailles; and Monday, fourth
of the month, is to be a still greater day. The Deputies have mostly got
thither, and sought out lodgings; and are now successively, in long well-
ushered files, kissing the hand of Majesty in the Chateau. Supreme Usher
de Breze does not give the highest satisfaction: we cannot but observe
that in ushering Noblesse or Clergy into the anointed Presence, he
liberally opens both his folding-doors; and on the other hand, for members
of the Third Estate opens only one! However, there is room to enter;
Majesty has smiles for all.
The good Louis welcomes his Honourable Members, with smiles of hope. He
has prepared for them the Hall of Menus, the largest near him; and often
surveyed the workmen as they went on. A spacious Hall: with raised
platform for Throne, Court and Blood-royal; space for six hundred Commons
Deputies in front; for half as many Clergy on this hand, and half as many
Noblesse on that. It has lofty galleries; wherefrom dames of honour,
splendent in gaze d'or; foreign Diplomacies, and other gilt-edged white-
frilled individuals to the number of two thousand,--may sit and look.
Broad passages flow through it; and, outside the inner wall, all round it.
There are committee-rooms, guard-rooms, robing-rooms: really a noble Hall;
where upholstery, aided by the subject fine-arts, has done its best; and
crimson tasseled cloths, and emblematic fleurs-de-lys are not wanting.
The Hall is ready: the very costume, as we said, has been settled; and the
Commons are not to wear that hated slouch-hat (chapeau clabaud), but one
not quite so slouched (chapeau rabattu). As for their manner of working,
when all dressed: for their 'voting by head or by order' and the rest,--
this, which it were perhaps still time to settle, and in few hours will be
no longer time, remains unsettled; hangs dubious in the breast of Twelve
Hundred men.
But now finally the Sun, on Monday the 4th of May, has risen;--unconcerned,
as if it were no special day. And yet, as his first rays could strike
music from the Memnon's Statue on the Nile, what tones were these, so
thrilling, tremulous of preparation and foreboding, which he awoke in every
bosom at Versailles! Huge Paris, in all conceivable and inconceivable
vehicles, is pouring itself forth; from each Town and Village come
subsidiary rills; Versailles is a very sea of men. But above all, from the
Church of St. Louis to the Church of Notre-Dame: one vast suspended-billow
of Life,--with spray scattered even to the chimney-pots! For on chimney-
tops too, as over the roofs, and up thitherwards on every lamp-iron, sign-
post, breakneck coign of vantage, sits patriotic Courage; and every window
bursts with patriotic Beauty: for the Deputies are gathering at St. Louis
Church; to march in procession to Notre-Dame, and hear sermon.
Yes, friends, ye may sit and look: boldly or in thought, all France, and
all Europe, may sit and look; for it is a day like few others. Oh, one
might weep like Xerxes:--So many serried rows sit perched there; like
winged creatures, alighted out of Heaven: all these, and so many more that
follow them, shall have wholly fled aloft again, vanishing into the blue
Deep; and the memory of this day still be fresh. It is the baptism-day of
Democracy; sick Time has given it birth, the numbered months being run.
The extreme-unction day of Feudalism! A superannuated System of Society,
decrepit with toils (for has it not done much; produced you, and what ye
have and know!)--and with thefts and brawls, named glorious-victories; and
with profligacies, sensualities, and on the whole with dotage and
senility,--is now to die: and so, with death-throes and birth-throes, a
new one is to be born. What a work, O Earth and Heavens, what a work!
Battles and bloodshed, September Massacres, Bridges of Lodi, retreats of
Moscow, Waterloos, Peterloos, Tenpound Franchises, Tarbarrels and
Guillotines;--and from this present date, if one might prophesy, some two
centuries of it still to fight! Two centuries; hardly less; before
Democracy go through its due, most baleful, stages of Quackocracy; and a
pestilential World be burnt up, and have begun to grow green and young
again.
Rejoice nevertheless, ye Versailles multitudes; to you, from whom all this
is hid, and glorious end of it is visible. This day, sentence of death is
pronounced on Shams; judgment of resuscitation, were it but far off, is
pronounced on Realities. This day it is declared aloud, as with a Doom-
trumpet, that a Lie is unbelievable. Believe that, stand by that, if more
there be not; and let what thing or things soever will follow it follow.
'Ye can no other; God be your help!' So spake a greater than any of you;
opening his Chapter of World-History.
Behold, however! The doors of St. Louis Church flung wide; and the
Procession of Processions advancing towards Notre-Dame! Shouts rend the
air; one shout, at which Grecian birds might drop dead. It is indeed a
stately, solemn sight. The Elected of France, and then the Court of
France; they are marshalled and march there, all in prescribed place and
costume. Our Commons 'in plain black mantle and white cravat;' Noblesse,
in gold-worked, bright-dyed cloaks of velvet, resplendent, rustling with
laces, waving with plumes; the Clergy in rochet, alb, or other best
pontificalibus: lastly comes the King himself, and King's Household, also
in their brightest blaze of pomp,--their brightest and final one. Some
Fourteen Hundred Men blown together from all winds, on the deepest errand.
Yes, in that silent marching mass there lies Futurity enough. No symbolic
Ark, like the old Hebrews, do these men bear: yet with them too is a
Covenant; they too preside at a new Era in the History of Men. The whole
Future is there, and Destiny dim-brooding over it; in the hearts and
unshaped thoughts of these men, it lies illegible, inevitable. Singular to
think: they have it in them; yet not they, not mortal, only the Eye above
can read it,--as it shall unfold itself, in fire and thunder, of siege, and
field-artillery; in the rustling of battle-banners, the tramp of hosts, in
the glow of burning cities, the shriek of strangled nations! Such things
lie hidden, safe-wrapt in this Fourth day of May;--say rather, had lain in
some other unknown day, of which this latter is the public fruit and
outcome. As indeed what wonders lie in every Day,--had we the sight, as
happily we have not, to decipher it: for is not every meanest Day 'the
conflux of two Eternities!'
Meanwhile, suppose we too, good Reader, should, as now without miracle Muse
Clio enables us--take our station also on some coign of vantage; and glance
momentarily over this Procession, and this Life-sea; with far other eyes
than the rest do, namely with prophetic? We can mount, and stand there,
without fear of falling.
As for the Life-sea, or onlooking unnumbered Multitude, it is unfortunately
all-too dim. Yet as we gaze fixedly, do not nameless Figures not a few,
which shall not always be nameless, disclose themselves; visible or
presumable there! Young Baroness de Stael--she evidently looks from a
window; among older honourable women. (Madame de Stael, Considerations sur
la Revolution Francaise (London, 1818), i. 114-191.) Her father is
Minister, and one of the gala personages; to his own eyes the chief one.
Young spiritual Amazon, thy rest is not there; nor thy loved Father's: 'as
Malebranche saw all things in God, so M. Necker sees all things in
Necker,'--a theorem that will not hold.
But where is the brown-locked, light-behaved, fire-hearted Demoiselle
Theroigne? Brown eloquent Beauty; who, with thy winged words and glances,
shalt thrill rough bosoms, whole steel battalions, and persuade an Austrian
Kaiser,--pike and helm lie provided for thee in due season; and, alas, also
strait-waistcoat and long lodging in the Salpetriere! Better hadst thou
staid in native Luxemburg, and been the mother of some brave man's
children: but it was not thy task, it was not thy lot.
Of the rougher sex how, without tongue, or hundred tongues, of iron,
enumerate the notabilities! Has not Marquis Valadi hastily quitted his
quaker broadbrim; his Pythagorean Greek in Wapping, and the city of
Glasgow? (Founders of the French Republic (London, 1798), para Valadi.)
De Morande from his Courrier de l'Europe; Linguet from his Annales, they
looked eager through the London fog, and became Ex-Editors,--that they
might feed the guillotine, and have their due. Does Louvet (of Faublas)
stand a-tiptoe? And Brissot, hight De Warville, friend of the Blacks? He,
with Marquis Condorcet, and Claviere the Genevese 'have created the
Moniteur Newspaper,' or are about creating it. Able Editors must give
account of such a day.
Or seest thou with any distinctness, low down probably, not in places of
honour, a Stanislas Maillard, riding-tipstaff (huissier a cheval) of the
Chatelet; one of the shiftiest of men? A Captain Hulin of Geneva, Captain
Elie of the Queen's Regiment; both with an air of half-pay? Jourdan, with
tile-coloured whiskers, not yet with tile-beard; an unjust dealer in mules?
He shall be, in a few months, Jourdan the Headsman, and have other work.
Surely also, in some place not of honour, stands or sprawls up querulous,
that he too, though short, may see,--one squalidest bleared mortal,
redolent of soot and horse-drugs: Jean Paul Marat of Neuchatel! O Marat,
Renovator of Human Science, Lecturer on Optics; O thou remarkablest
Horseleech, once in D'Artois' Stables,--as thy bleared soul looks forth,
through thy bleared, dull-acrid, wo-stricken face, what sees it in all
this? Any faintest light of hope; like dayspring after Nova-Zembla night?
Or is it but blue sulphur-light, and spectres; woe, suspicion, revenge
without end?
Of Draper Lecointre, how he shut his cloth-shop hard by, and stepped forth,
one need hardly speak. Nor of Santerre, the sonorous Brewer from the
Faubourg St. Antoine. Two other Figures, and only two, we signalise there.
The huge, brawny, Figure; through whose black brows, and rude flattened
face (figure ecrasee), there looks a waste energy as of Hercules not yet
furibund,--he is an esurient, unprovided Advocate; Danton by name: him
mark. Then that other, his slight-built comrade and craft-brother; he with
the long curling locks; with the face of dingy blackguardism, wondrously
irradiated with genius, as if a naphtha-lamp burnt within it: that Figure
is Camille Desmoulins. A fellow of infinite shrewdness, wit, nay humour;
one of the sprightliest clearest souls in all these millions. Thou poor
Camille, say of thee what they may, it were but falsehood to pretend one
did not almost love thee, thou headlong lightly-sparkling man! But the
brawny, not yet furibund Figure, we say, is Jacques Danton; a name that
shall be 'tolerably known in the Revolution.' He is President of the
electoral Cordeliers District at Paris, or about to be it; and shall open
his lungs of brass.
We dwell no longer on the mixed shouting Multitude: for now, behold, the
Commons Deputies are at hand!
Which of these Six Hundred individuals, in plain white cravat, that have
come up to regenerate France, might one guess would become their king? For
a king or leader they, as all bodies of men, must have: be their work what
it may, there is one man there who, by character, faculty, position, is
fittest of all to do it; that man, as future not yet elected king, walks
there among the rest. He with the thick black locks, will it be? With the
hure, as himself calls it, or black boar's-head, fit to be 'shaken' as a
senatorial portent? Through whose shaggy beetle-brows, and rough-hewn,
seamed, carbuncled face, there look natural ugliness, small-pox,
incontinence, bankruptcy,--and burning fire of genius; like comet-fire
glaring fuliginous through murkiest confusions? It is Gabriel Honore
Riquetti de Mirabeau, the world-compeller; man-ruling Deputy of Aix!
According to the Baroness de Stael, he steps proudly along, though looked
at askance here, and shakes his black chevelure, or lion's-mane; as if
prophetic of great deeds.
Yes, Reader, that is the Type-Frenchman of this epoch; as Voltaire was of
the last. He is French in his aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues,
in his vices; perhaps more French than any other man;--and intrinsically
such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The National Assembly were all
different without that one; nay, he might say with the old Despot: "The
National Assembly? I am that."
Of a southern climate, of wild southern blood: for the Riquettis, or
Arighettis, had to fly from Florence and the Guelfs, long centuries ago,
and settled in Provence; where from generation to generation they have ever
approved themselves a peculiar kindred: irascible, indomitable, sharp-
cutting, true, like the steel they wore; of an intensity and activity that
sometimes verged towards madness, yet did not reach it. One ancient
Riquetti, in mad fulfilment of a mad vow, chains two Mountains together;
and the chain, with its 'iron star of five rays,' is still to be seen. May
not a modern Riquetti unchain so much, and set it drifting,--which also
shall be seen?
Destiny has work for that swart burly-headed Mirabeau; Destiny has watched
over him, prepared him from afar. Did not his Grandfather, stout Col.
d'Argent (Silver-Stock, so they named him), shattered and slashed by seven-
and-twenty wounds in one fell day lie sunk together on the Bridge at
Casano; while Prince Eugene's cavalry galloped and regalloped over him,--
only the flying sergeant had thrown a camp-kettle over that loved head; and
Vendome, dropping his spyglass, moaned out, 'Mirabeau is dead, then!'
Nevertheless he was not dead: he awoke to breathe, and miraculous
surgery;--for Gabriel was yet to be. With his silver stock he kept his
scarred head erect, through long years; and wedded; and produced tough
Marquis Victor, the Friend of Men. Whereby at last in the appointed year
1749, this long-expected rough-hewn Gabriel Honore did likewise see the
light: roughest lion's-whelp ever littered of that rough breed. How the
old lion (for our old Marquis too was lion-like, most unconquerable,
kingly-genial, most perverse) gazed wonderingly on his offspring; and
determined to train him as no lion had yet been! It is in vain, O Marquis!
This cub, though thou slay him and flay him, will not learn to draw in
dogcart of Political Economy, and be a Friend of Men; he will not be Thou,
must and will be Himself, another than Thou. Divorce lawsuits, 'whole
family save one in prison, and three-score Lettres-de-Cachet' for thy own
sole use, do but astonish the world.
Our Luckless Gabriel, sinned against and sinning, has been in the Isle of
Rhe, and heard the Atlantic from his tower; in the Castle of If, and heard
the Mediterranean at Marseilles. He has been in the Fortress of Joux; and
forty-two months, with hardly clothing to his back, in the Dungeon of
Vincennes;--all by Lettre-de-Cachet, from his lion father. He has been in
Pontarlier Jails (self-constituted prisoner); was noticed fording estuaries
of the sea (at low water), in flight from the face of men. He has pleaded
before Aix Parlements (to get back his wife); the public gathering on
roofs, to see since they could not hear: "the clatter-teeth (claque-
dents)!" snarles singular old Mirabeau; discerning in such admired forensic
eloquence nothing but two clattering jaw-bones, and a head vacant,
sonorous, of the drum species.
But as for Gabriel Honore, in these strange wayfarings, what has he not
seen and tried! From drill-sergeants, to prime-ministers, to foreign and
domestic booksellers, all manner of men he has seen. All manner of men he
has gained; for at bottom it is a social, loving heart, that wild
unconquerable one:--more especially all manner of women. From the Archer's
Daughter at Saintes to that fair young Sophie Madame Monnier, whom he could
not but 'steal,' and be beheaded for--in effigy! For indeed hardly since
the Arabian Prophet lay dead to Ali's admiration, was there seen such a
Love-hero, with the strength of thirty men. In War, again, he has helped
to conquer Corsica; fought duels, irregular brawls; horsewhipped calumnious
barons. In Literature, he has written on Despotism, on Lettres-de-Cachet;
Erotics Sapphic-Werterean, Obscenities, Profanities; Books on the Prussian
Monarchy, on Cagliostro, on Calonne, on the Water Companies of Paris:--each
book comparable, we will say, to a bituminous alarum-fire; huge, smoky,
sudden! The firepan, the kindling, the bitumen were his own; but the
lumber, of rags, old wood and nameless combustible rubbish (for all is fuel
to him), was gathered from huckster, and ass-panniers, of every description
under heaven. Whereby, indeed, hucksters enough have been heard to
exclaim: Out upon it, the fire is mine!
Nay, consider it more generally, seldom had man such a talent for
borrowing. The idea, the faculty of another man he can make his; the man
himself he can make his. "All reflex and echo (tout de reflet et de
reverbere)!" snarls old Mirabeau, who can see, but will not. Crabbed old
Friend of Men! it is his sociality, his aggregative nature; and will now be
the quality of all for him. In that forty-years 'struggle against
despotism,' he has gained the glorious faculty of self-help, and yet not
lost the glorious natural gift of fellowship, of being helped. Rare union!
This man can live self-sufficing--yet lives also in the life of other men;
can make men love him, work with him: a born king of men!
But consider further how, as the old Marquis still snarls, he has "made
away with (hume, swallowed) all Formulas;"--a fact which, if we meditate
it, will in these days mean much. This is no man of system, then; he is
only a man of instincts and insights. A man nevertheless who will glare
fiercely on any object; and see through it, and conquer it: for he has
intellect, he has will, force beyond other men. A man not with logic-
spectacles; but with an eye! Unhappily without Decalogue, moral Code or
Theorem of any fixed sort; yet not without a strong living Soul in him, and
Sincerity there: a Reality, not an Artificiality, not a Sham! And so he,
having struggled 'forty years against despotism,' and 'made away with all
formulas,' shall now become the spokesman of a Nation bent to do the same.
For is it not precisely the struggle of France also to cast off despotism;
to make away with her old formulas,--having found them naught, worn out,
far from the reality? She will make away with such formulas;--and even go
bare, if need be, till she have found new ones.
Towards such work, in such manner, marches he, this singular Riquetti
Mirabeau. In fiery rough figure, with black Samson-locks under the slouch-
hat, he steps along there. A fiery fuliginous mass, which could not be
choked and smothered, but would fill all France with smoke. And now it has
got air; it will burn its whole substance, its whole smoke-atmosphere too,
and fill all France with flame. Strange lot! Forty years of that
smouldering, with foul fire-damp and vapour enough, then victory over
that;--and like a burning mountain he blazes heaven-high; and, for twenty-
three resplendent months, pours out, in flame and molten fire-torrents, all
that is in him, the Pharos and Wonder-sign of an amazed Europe;--and then
lies hollow, cold forever! Pass on, thou questionable Gabriel Honore, the
greatest of them all: in the whole National Deputies, in the whole Nation,
there is none like and none second to thee.
But now if Mirabeau is the greatest, who of these Six Hundred may be the
meanest? Shall we say, that anxious, slight, ineffectual-looking man,
under thirty, in spectacles; his eyes (were the glasses off) troubled,
careful; with upturned face, snuffing dimly the uncertain future-time;
complexion of a multiplex atrabiliar colour, the final shade of which may
be the pale sea-green. (See De Stael, Considerations (ii. 142); Barbaroux,
Memoires, &c.;) That greenish-coloured (verdatre) individual is an Advocate
of Arras; his name is Maximilien Robespierre. The son of an Advocate; his
father founded mason-lodges under Charles Edward, the English Prince or
Pretender. Maximilien the first-born was thriftily educated; he had brisk
Camille Desmoulins for schoolmate in the College of Louis le Grand, at
Paris. But he begged our famed Necklace-Cardinal, Rohan, the patron, to
let him depart thence, and resign in favour of a younger brother. The
strict-minded Max departed; home to paternal Arras; and even had a Law-case
there and pleaded, not unsuccessfully, 'in favour of the first Franklin
thunder-rod.' With a strict painful mind, an understanding small but clear
and ready, he grew in favour with official persons, who could foresee in
him an excellent man of business, happily quite free from genius. The
Bishop, therefore, taking counsel, appoints him Judge of his diocese; and
he faithfully does justice to the people: till behold, one day, a culprit
comes whose crime merits hanging; and the strict-minded Max must abdicate,
for his conscience will not permit the dooming of any son of Adam to die.
A strict-minded, strait-laced man! A man unfit for Revolutions? Whose
small soul, transparent wholesome-looking as small ale, could by no chance
ferment into virulent alegar,--the mother of ever new alegar; till all
France were grown acetous virulent? We shall see.
Between which two extremes of grandest and meanest, so many grand and mean
roll on, towards their several destinies, in that Procession! There is
Cazales, the learned young soldier; who shall become the eloquent orator of
Royalism, and earn the shadow of a name. Experienced Mounier, experienced
Malouet; whose Presidential Parlementary experience the stream of things
shall soon leave stranded. A Petion has left his gown and briefs at
Chartres for a stormier sort of pleading; has not forgotten his violin,
being fond of music. His hair is grizzled, though he is still young:
convictions, beliefs, placid-unalterable are in that man; not hindmost of
them, belief in himself. A Protestant-clerical Rabaut-St.-Etienne, a
slender young eloquent and vehement Barnave, will help to regenerate
France. There are so many of them young. Till thirty the Spartans did not
suffer a man to marry: but how many men here under thirty; coming to
produce not one sufficient citizen, but a nation and a world of such! The
old to heal up rents; the young to remove rubbish:--which latter, is it
not, indeed, the task here?
Dim, formless from this distance, yet authentically there, thou noticest
the Deputies from Nantes? To us mere clothes-screens, with slouch-hat and
cloak, but bearing in their pocket a Cahier of doleances with this singular
clause, and more such in it: 'That the master wigmakers of Nantes be not
troubled with new gild-brethren, the actually existing number of ninety-two
being more than sufficient!' (Histoire Parlementaire, i. 335.) The Rennes
people have elected Farmer Gerard, 'a man of natural sense and rectitude,
without any learning.' He walks there, with solid step; unique, 'in his
rustic farmer-clothes;' which he will wear always; careless of short-cloaks
and costumes. The name Gerard, or 'Pere Gerard, Father Gerard,' as they
please to call him, will fly far; borne about in endless banter; in
Royalist satires, in Republican didactic Almanacks. (Actes des Apotres (by
Peltier and others); Almanach du Pere Gerard (by Collot d'Herbois) &c.; &c.;)
As for the man Gerard, being asked once, what he did, after trial of it,
candidly think of this Parlementary work,--"I think," answered he, "that
there are a good many scoundrels among us." so walks Father Gerard; solid
in his thick shoes, whithersoever bound.
And worthy Doctor Guillotin, whom we hoped to behold one other time? If
not here, the Doctor should be here, and we see him with the eye of
prophecy: for indeed the Parisian Deputies are all a little late.
Singular Guillotin, respectable practitioner: doomed by a satiric destiny
to the strangest immortal glory that ever kept obscure mortal from his
resting-place, the bosom of oblivion! Guillotin can improve the
ventilation of the Hall; in all cases of medical police and hygiene be a
present aid: but, greater far, he can produce his 'Report on the Penal
Code;' and reveal therein a cunningly devised Beheading Machine, which
shall become famous and world-famous. This is the product of Guillotin's
endeavours, gained not without meditation and reading; which product
popular gratitude or levity christens by a feminine derivative name, as if
it were his daughter: La Guillotine! "With my machine, Messieurs, I whisk
off your head (vous fais sauter la tete) in a twinkling, and you have no
pain;"--whereat they all laugh. (Moniteur Newspaper, of December 1st, 1789
(in Histoire Parlementaire).) Unfortunate Doctor! For two-and-twenty
years he, unguillotined, shall near nothing but guillotine, see nothing but
guillotine; then dying, shall through long centuries wander, as it were, a
disconsolate ghost, on the wrong side of Styx and Lethe; his name like to
outlive Caesar's.
See Bailly, likewise of Paris, time-honoured Historian of Astronomy Ancient
and Modern. Poor Bailly, how thy serenely beautiful Philosophising, with
its soft moonshiny clearness and thinness, ends in foul thick confusion--of
Presidency, Mayorship, diplomatic Officiality, rabid Triviality, and the
throat of everlasting Darkness! Far was it to descend from the heavenly
Galaxy to the Drapeau Rouge: beside that fatal dung-heap, on that last
hell-day, thou must 'tremble,' though only with cold, 'de froid.'
Speculation is not practice: to be weak is not so miserable; but to be
weaker than our task. Wo the day when they mounted thee, a peaceable
pedestrian, on that wild Hippogriff of a Democracy; which, spurning the
firm earth, nay lashing at the very stars, no yet known Astolpho could have
ridden!
In the Commons Deputies there are Merchants, Artists, Men of Letters; three
hundred and seventy-four Lawyers; (Bouille, Memoires sur la Revolution
Francaise (London, 1797), i. 68.) and at least one Clergyman: the Abbe
Sieyes. Him also Paris sends, among its twenty. Behold him, the light
thin man; cold, but elastic, wiry; instinct with the pride of Logic;
passionless, or with but one passion, that of self-conceit. If indeed that
can be called a passion, which, in its independent concentrated greatness,
seems to have soared into transcendentalism; and to sit there with a kind
of godlike indifference, and look down on passion! He is the man, and
wisdom shall die with him. This is the Sieyes who shall be System-builder,
Constitution-builder General; and build Constitutions (as many as wanted)
skyhigh,--which shall all unfortunately fall before he get the scaffolding
away. "La Politique," said he to Dumont, "Polity is a science I think I
have completed (achevee)." (Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 64.) What
things, O Sieyes, with thy clear assiduous eyes, art thou to see! But were
it not curious to know how Sieyes, now in these days (for he is said to be
still alive) (A.D. 1834.) looks out on all that Constitution masonry,
through the rheumy soberness of extreme age? Might we hope, still with the
old irrefragable transcendentalism? The victorious cause pleased the gods,
the vanquished one pleased Sieyes (victa Catoni).
Thus, however, amid skyrending vivats, and blessings from every heart, has
the Procession of the Commons Deputies rolled by.
Next follow the Noblesse, and next the Clergy; concerning both of whom it
might be asked, What they specially have come for? Specially, little as
they dream of it, to answer this question, put in a voice of thunder: What
are you doing in God's fair Earth and Task-garden; where whosoever is not
working is begging or stealing? Wo, wo to themselves and to all, if they
can only answer: Collecting tithes, Preserving game!--Remark, meanwhile,
how D'Orleans affects to step before his own Order, and mingle with the
Commons. For him are vivats: few for the rest, though all wave in plumed
'hats of a feudal cut,' and have sword on thigh; though among them is
D'Antraigues, the young Languedocian gentleman,--and indeed many a Peer
more or less noteworthy.
There are Liancourt, and La Rochefoucault; the liberal Anglomaniac Dukes.
There is a filially pious Lally; a couple of liberal Lameths. Above all,
there is a Lafayette; whose name shall be Cromwell-Grandison, and fill the
world. Many a 'formula' has this Lafayette too made away with; yet not all
formulas. He sticks by the Washington-formula; and by that he will stick;-
-and hang by it, as by sure bower-anchor hangs and swings the tight war-
ship, which, after all changes of wildest weather and water, is found still
hanging. Happy for him; be it glorious or not! Alone of all Frenchmen he
has a theory of the world, and right mind to conform thereto; he can become
a hero and perfect character, were it but the hero of one idea. Note
further our old Parlementary friend, Crispin-Catiline d'Espremenil. He is
returned from the Mediterranean Islands, a redhot royalist, repentant to
the finger-ends;--unsettled-looking; whose light, dusky-glowing at best,
now flickers foul in the socket; whom the National Assembly will by and by,
to save time, 'regard as in a state of distraction.' Note lastly that
globular Younger Mirabeau; indignant that his elder Brother is among the
Commons: it is Viscomte Mirabeau; named oftener Mirabeau Tonneau (Barrel
Mirabeau), on account of his rotundity, and the quantities of strong liquor
he contains.
There then walks our French Noblesse. All in the old pomp of chivalry:
and yet, alas, how changed from the old position; drifted far down from
their native latitude, like Arctic icebergs got into the Equatorial sea,
and fast thawing there! Once these Chivalry Duces (Dukes, as they are
still named) did actually lead the world,--were it only towards battle-
spoil, where lay the world's best wages then: moreover, being the ablest
Leaders going, they had their lion's share, those Duces; which none could
grudge them. But now, when so many Looms, improved Ploughshares, Steam-
Engines and Bills of Exchange have been invented; and, for battle-brawling
itself, men hire Drill-Sergeants at eighteen-pence a-day,--what mean these
goldmantled Chivalry Figures, walking there 'in black-velvet cloaks,' in
high-plumed 'hats of a feudal cut'? Reeds shaken in the wind!
The Clergy have got up; with Cahiers for abolishing pluralities, enforcing
residence of bishops, better payment of tithes. (Hist. Parl. i. 322-27.)
The Dignitaries, we can observe, walk stately, apart from the numerous
Undignified,--who indeed are properly little other than Commons disguised
in Curate-frocks. Here, however, though by strange ways, shall the Precept
be fulfilled, and they that are greatest (much to their astonishment)
become least. For one example, out of many, mark that plausible Gregoire:
one day Cure Gregoire shall be a Bishop, when the now stately are wandering
distracted, as Bishops in partibus. With other thought, mark also the Abbe
Maury: his broad bold face; mouth accurately primmed; full eyes, that ray
out intelligence, falsehood,--the sort of sophistry which is astonished you
should find it sophistical. Skilfulest vamper-up of old rotten leather, to
make it look like new; always a rising man; he used to tell Mercier, "You
will see; I shall be in the Academy before you." (Mercier, Nouveau Paris.)
Likely indeed, thou skilfullest Maury; nay thou shalt have a Cardinal's
Hat, and plush and glory; but alas, also, in the longrun--mere oblivion,
like the rest of us; and six feet of earth! What boots it, vamping rotten
leather on these terms? Glorious in comparison is the livelihood thy good
old Father earns, by making shoes,--one may hope, in a sufficient manner.
Maury does not want for audacity. He shall wear pistols, by and by; and at
death-cries of "The Lamp-iron;" answer coolly, "Friends, will you see
better there?"
But yonder, halting lamely along, thou noticest next Bishop Talleyrand-
Perigord, his Reverence of Autun. A sardonic grimness lies in that
irreverent Reverence of Autun. He will do and suffer strange things; and
will become surely one of the strangest things ever seen, or like to be
seen. A man living in falsehood, and on falsehood; yet not what you can
call a false man: there is the specialty! It will be an enigma for future
ages, one may hope: hitherto such a product of Nature and Art was possible
only for this age of ours,--Age of Paper, and of the Burning of Paper.
Consider Bishop Talleyrand and Marquis Lafayette as the topmost of their
two kinds; and say once more, looking at what they did and what they were,
O Tempus ferax rerum!
On the whole, however, has not this unfortunate Clergy also drifted in the
Time-stream, far from its native latitude? An anomalous mass of men; of
whom the whole world has already a dim understanding that it can understand
nothing. They were once a Priesthood, interpreters of Wisdom, revealers of
the Holy that is in Man: a true Clerus (or Inheritance of God on Earth):
but now?--They pass silently, with such Cahiers as they have been able to
redact; and none cries, God bless them.
King Louis with his Court brings up the rear: he cheerful, in this day of
hope, is saluted with plaudits; still more Necker his Minister. Not so the
Queen; on whom hope shines not steadily any more. Ill-fated Queen! Her
hair is already gray with many cares and crosses; her first-born son is
dying in these weeks: black falsehood has ineffaceably soiled her name;
ineffaceably while this generation lasts. Instead of Vive la Reine, voices
insult her with Vive d'Orleans. Of her queenly beauty little remains
except its stateliness; not now gracious, but haughty, rigid, silently
enduring. With a most mixed feeling, wherein joy has no part, she resigns
herself to a day she hoped never to have seen. Poor Marie Antoinette; with
thy quick noble instincts; vehement glancings, vision all-too fitful narrow
for the work thou hast to do! O there are tears in store for thee;
bitterest wailings, soft womanly meltings, though thou hast the heart of an
imperial Theresa's Daughter. Thou doomed one, shut thy eyes on the
future!--
And so, in stately Procession, have passed the Elected of France. Some
towards honour and quick fire-consummation; most towards dishonour; not a
few towards massacre, confusion, emigration, desperation: all towards
Eternity!--So many heterogeneities cast together into the fermenting-vat;
there, with incalculable action, counteraction, elective affinities,
explosive developments, to work out healing for a sick moribund System of
Society! Probably the strangest Body of Men, if we consider well, that
ever met together on our Planet on such an errand. So thousandfold complex
a Society, ready to burst-up from its infinite depths; and these men, its
rulers and healers, without life-rule for themselves,--other life-rule than
a Gospel according to Jean Jacques! To the wisest of them, what we must
call the wisest, man is properly an Accident under the sky. Man is without
Duty round him; except it be 'to make the Constitution.' He is without
Heaven above him, or Hell beneath him; he has no God in the world.
What further or better belief can be said to exist in these Twelve Hundred?
Belief in high-plumed hats of a feudal cut; in heraldic scutcheons; in the
divine right of Kings, in the divine right of Game-destroyers. Belief, or
what is still worse, canting half-belief; or worst of all, mere
Macchiavellic pretence-of-belief,--in consecrated dough-wafers, and the
godhood of a poor old Italian Man! Nevertheless in that immeasurable
Confusion and Corruption, which struggles there so blindly to become less
confused and corrupt, there is, as we said, this one salient point of a New
Life discernible: the deep fixed Determination to have done with Shams. A
determination, which, consciously or unconsciously, is fixed; which waxes
ever more fixed, into very madness and fixed-idea; which in such embodiment
as lies provided there, shall now unfold itself rapidly: monstrous,
stupendous, unspeakable; new for long thousands of years!--How has the
Heaven's light, oftentimes in this Earth, to clothe itself in thunder and
electric murkiness; and descend as molten lightning, blasting, if
purifying! Nay is it not rather the very murkiness, and atmospheric
suffocation, that brings the lightning and the light? The new Evangel, as
the old had been, was it to be born in the Destruction of a World?
But how the Deputies assisted at High Mass, and heard sermon, and applauded
the preacher, church as it was, when he preached politics; how, next day,
with sustained pomp, they are, for the first time, installed in their
Salles des Menus (Hall no longer of Amusements), and become a States-
General,--readers can fancy for themselves. The King from his estrade,
gorgeous as Solomon in all his glory, runs his eye over that majestic Hall;
many-plumed, many-glancing; bright-tinted as rainbow, in the galleries and
near side spaces, where Beauty sits raining bright influence.
Satisfaction, as of one that after long voyaging had got to port, plays
over his broad simple face: the innocent King! He rises and speaks, with
sonorous tone, a conceivable speech. With which, still more with the
succeeding one-hour and two-hour speeches of Garde-des-Sceaux and M.
Necker, full of nothing but patriotism, hope, faith, and deficiency of the
revenue,--no reader of these pages shall be tried.
We remark only that, as his Majesty, on finishing the speech, put on his
plumed hat, and the Noblesse according to custom imitated him, our Tiers-
Etat Deputies did mostly, not without a shade of fierceness, in like manner
clap-on, and even crush on their slouched hats; and stand there awaiting
the issue. (Histoire Parlementaire (i. 356). Mercier, Nouveau Paris, &c.;)
Thick buzz among them, between majority and minority of Couvrezvous,
Decrouvrez-vous (Hats off, Hats on)! To which his Majesty puts end, by
taking off his own royal hat again.
The session terminates without further accident or omen than this; with
which, significantly enough, France has opened her States-General.
BOOK 1.V.
THE THIRD ESTATE
Chapter 1.5.I.
Inertia.
That exasperated France, in this same National Assembly of hers, has got
something, nay something great, momentous, indispensable, cannot be
doubted; yet still the question were: Specially what? A question hard to
solve, even for calm onlookers at this distance; wholly insoluble to actors
in the middle of it. The States-General, created and conflated by the
passionate effort of the whole nation, is there as a thing high and lifted
up. Hope, jubilating, cries aloud that it will prove a miraculous Brazen
Serpent in the Wilderness; whereon whosoever looks, with faith and
obedience, shall be healed of all woes and serpent-bites.
We may answer, it will at least prove a symbolic Banner; round which the
exasperating complaining Twenty-Five Millions, otherwise isolated and
without power, may rally, and work--what it is in them to work. If battle
must be the work, as one cannot help expecting, then shall it be a battle-
banner (say, an Italian Gonfalon, in its old Republican Carroccio); and
shall tower up, car-borne, shining in the wind: and with iron tongue peal
forth many a signal. A thing of prime necessity; which whether in the van
or in the centre, whether leading or led and driven, must do the fighting
multitude incalculable services. For a season, while it floats in the very
front, nay as it were stands solitary there, waiting whether force will
gather round it, this same National Carroccio, and the signal-peals it
rings, are a main object with us.
The omen of the 'slouch-hats clapt on' shows the Commons Deputies to have
made up their minds on one thing: that neither Noblesse nor Clergy shall
have precedence of them; hardly even Majesty itself. To such length has
the Contrat Social, and force of public opinion, carried us. For what is
Majesty but the Delegate of the Nation; delegated, and bargained with (even
rather tightly),--in some very singular posture of affairs, which Jean
Jacques has not fixed the date of?
Coming therefore into their Hall, on the morrow, an inorganic mass of Six
Hundred individuals, these Commons Deputies perceive, without terror, that
they have it all to themselves. Their Hall is also the Grand or general
Hall for all the Three Orders. But the Noblesse and Clergy, it would seem,
have retired to their two separate Apartments, or Halls; and are there
'verifying their powers,' not in a conjoint but in a separate capacity.
They are to constitute two separate, perhaps separately-voting Orders,
then? It is as if both Noblesse and Clergy had silently taken for granted
that they already were such! Two Orders against one; and so the Third
Order to be left in a perpetual minority?
Much may remain unfixed; but the negative of that is a thing fixed: in the
Slouch-hatted heads, in the French Nation's head. Double representation,
and all else hitherto gained, were otherwise futile, null. Doubtless, the
'powers must be verified;'--doubtless, the Commission, the electoral
Documents of your Deputy must be inspected by his brother Deputies, and
found valid: it is the preliminary of all. Neither is this question, of
doing it separately or doing it conjointly, a vital one: but if it lead to
such? It must be resisted; wise was that maxim, Resist the beginnings!
Nay were resistance unadvisable, even dangerous, yet surely pause is very
natural: pause, with Twenty-five Millions behind you, may become
resistance enough.--The inorganic mass of Commons Deputies will restrict
itself to a 'system of inertia,' and for the present remain inorganic.
Such method, recommendable alike to sagacity and to timidity, do the
Commons Deputies adopt; and, not without adroitness, and with ever more
tenacity, they persist in it, day after day, week after week. For six
weeks their history is of the kind named barren; which indeed, as
Philosophy knows, is often the fruitfulest of all. These were their still
creation-days; wherein they sat incubating! In fact, what they did was to
do nothing, in a judicious manner. Daily the inorganic body reassembles;
regrets that they cannot get organisation, 'verification of powers in
common, and begin regenerating France. Headlong motions may be made, but
let such be repressed; inertia alone is at once unpunishable and
unconquerable.
Cunning must be met by cunning; proud pretension by inertia, by a low tone
of patriotic sorrow; low, but incurable, unalterable. Wise as serpents;
harmless as doves: what a spectacle for France! Six Hundred inorganic
individuals, essential for its regeneration and salvation, sit there, on
their elliptic benches, longing passionately towards life; in painful
durance; like souls waiting to be born. Speeches are spoken; eloquent;
audible within doors and without. Mind agitates itself against mind; the
Nation looks on with ever deeper interest. Thus do the Commons Deputies
sit incubating.
There are private conclaves, supper-parties, consultations; Breton Club,
Club of Viroflay; germs of many Clubs. Wholly an element of confused
noise, dimness, angry heat;--wherein, however, the Eros-egg, kept at the
fit temperature, may hover safe, unbroken till it be hatched. In your
Mouniers, Malouets, Lechapeliers in science sufficient for that; fervour in
your Barnaves, Rabauts. At times shall come an inspiration from royal
Mirabeau: he is nowise yet recognised as royal; nay he was 'groaned at,'
when his name was first mentioned: but he is struggling towards
recognition.
In the course of the week, the Commons having called their Eldest to the
chair, and furnished him with young stronger-lunged assistants,--can speak
articulately; and, in audible lamentable words, declare, as we said, that
they are an inorganic body, longing to become organic. Letters arrive; but
an inorganic body cannot open letters; they lie on the table unopened. The
Eldest may at most procure for himself some kind of List or Muster-roll, to
take the votes by, and wait what will betide. Noblesse and Clergy are all
elsewhere: however, an eager public crowds all galleries and vacancies;
which is some comfort. With effort, it is determined, not that a
Deputation shall be sent,--for how can an inorganic body send deputations?-
-but that certain individual Commons Members shall, in an accidental way,
stroll into the Clergy Chamber, and then into the Noblesse one; and mention
there, as a thing they have happened to observe, that the Commons seem to
be sitting waiting for them, in order to verify their powers. That is the
wiser method!
The Clergy, among whom are such a multitude of Undignified, of mere Commons
in Curates' frocks, depute instant respectful answer that they are, and
will now more than ever be, in deepest study as to that very matter.
Contrariwise the Noblesse, in cavalier attitude, reply, after four days,
that they, for their part, are all verified and constituted; which, they
had trusted, the Commons also were; such separate verification being
clearly the proper constitutional wisdom-of-ancestors method;--as they the
Noblesse will have much pleasure in demonstrating by a Commission of their
number, if the Commons will meet them, Commission against Commission!
Directly in the rear of which comes a deputation of Clergy, reiterating, in
their insidious conciliatory way, the same proposal. Here, then, is a
complexity: what will wise Commons say to this?
Warily, inertly, the wise Commons, considering that they are, if not a
French Third Estate, at least an Aggregate of individuals pretending to
some title of that kind, determine, after talking on it five days, to name
such a Commission,--though, as it were, with proviso not to be convinced:
a sixth day is taken up in naming it; a seventh and an eighth day in
getting the forms of meeting, place, hour and the like, settled: so that
it is not till the evening of the 23rd of May that Noblesse Commission
first meets Commons Commission, Clergy acting as Conciliators; and begins
the impossible task of convincing it. One other meeting, on the 25th, will
suffice: the Commons are inconvincible, the Noblesse and Clergy
irrefragably convincing; the Commissions retire; each Order persisting in
its first pretensions. (Reported Debates, 6th May to 1st June, 1789 (in
Histoire Parlementaire, i. 379-422.)
Thus have three weeks passed. For three weeks, the Third-Estate Carroccio,
with far-seen Gonfalon, has stood stockstill, flouting the wind; waiting
what force would gather round it.
Fancy can conceive the feeling of the Court; and how counsel met counsel,
the loud-sounding inanity whirled in that distracted vortex, where wisdom
could not dwell. Your cunningly devised Taxing-Machine has been got
together; set up with incredible labour; and stands there, its three pieces
in contact; its two fly-wheels of Noblesse and Clergy, its huge working-
wheel of Tiers-Etat. The two fly-wheels whirl in the softest manner; but,
prodigious to look upon, the huge working-wheel hangs motionless, refuses
to stir! The cunningest engineers are at fault. How will it work, when it
does begin? Fearfully, my Friends; and to many purposes; but to gather
taxes, or grind court-meal, one may apprehend, never. Could we but have
continued gathering taxes by hand! Messeigneurs d'Artois, Conti, Conde
(named Court Triumvirate), they of the anti-democratic Memoire au Roi, has
not their foreboding proved true? They may wave reproachfully their high
heads; they may beat their poor brains; but the cunningest engineers can do
nothing. Necker himself, were he even listened to, begins to look blue.
The only thing one sees advisable is to bring up soldiers. New regiments,
two, and a battalion of a third, have already reached Paris; others shall
get in march. Good were it, in all circumstances, to have troops within
reach; good that the command were in sure hands. Let Broglie be appointed;
old Marshal Duke de Broglie; veteran disciplinarian, of a firm drill-
sergeant morality, such as may be depended on.
For, alas, neither are the Clergy, or the very Noblesse what they should
be; and might be, when so menaced from without: entire, undivided within.
The Noblesse, indeed, have their Catiline or Crispin D'Espremenil, dusky-
glowing, all in renegade heat; their boisterous Barrel-Mirabeau; but also
they have their Lafayettes, Liancourts, Lameths; above all, their
D'Orleans, now cut forever from his Court-moorings, and musing drowsily of
high and highest sea-prizes (for is not he too a son of Henri Quatre, and
partial potential Heir-Apparent?)--on his voyage towards Chaos. From the
Clergy again, so numerous are the Cures, actual deserters have run over:
two small parties; in the second party Cure Gregoire. Nay there is talk of
a whole Hundred and Forty-nine of them about to desert in mass, and only
restrained by an Archbishop of Paris. It seems a losing game.
But judge if France, if Paris sat idle, all this while! Addresses from far
and near flow in: for our Commons have now grown organic enough to open
letters. Or indeed to cavil at them! Thus poor Marquis de Breze, Supreme
Usher, Master of Ceremonies, or whatever his title was, writing about this
time on some ceremonial matter, sees no harm in winding up with a
'Monsieur, yours with sincere attachment.'--"To whom does it address
itself, this sincere attachment?" inquires Mirabeau. "To the Dean of the
Tiers-Etat."--"There is no man in France entitled to write that," rejoins
he; whereat the Galleries and the World will not be kept from applauding.
(Moniteur (in Histoire Parlementaire, i. 405).) Poor De Breze! These
Commons have a still older grudge at him; nor has he yet done with them.
In another way, Mirabeau has had to protest against the quick suppression
of his Newspaper, Journal of the States-General;--and to continue it under
a new name. In which act of valour, the Paris Electors, still busy
redacting their Cahier, could not but support him, by Address to his
Majesty: they claim utmost 'provisory freedom of the press;' they have
spoken even about demolishing the Bastille, and erecting a Bronze Patriot
King on the site!--These are the rich Burghers: but now consider how it
went, for example, with such loose miscellany, now all grown
eleutheromaniac, of Loungers, Prowlers, social Nondescripts (and the
distilled Rascality of our Planet), as whirls forever in the Palais Royal;-
-or what low infinite groan, first changing into a growl, comes from Saint-
Antoine, and the Twenty-five Millions in danger of starvation!
There is the indisputablest scarcity of corn;--be it Aristocrat-plot,
D'Orleans-plot, of this year; or drought and hail of last year: in city
and province, the poor man looks desolately towards a nameless lot. And
this States-General, that could make us an age of gold, is forced to stand
motionless; cannot get its powers verified! All industry necessarily
languishes, if it be not that of making motions.
In the Palais Royal there has been erected, apparently by subscription, a
kind of Wooden Tent (en planches de bois); (Histoire Parlementaire, i.
429.)-- most convenient; where select Patriotism can now redact
resolutions, deliver harangues, with comfort, let the weather but as it
will. Lively is that Satan-at-Home! On his table, on his chair, in every
cafe, stands a patriotic orator; a crowd round him within; a crowd
listening from without, open-mouthed, through open door and window; with
'thunders of applause for every sentiment of more than common hardiness.'
In Monsieur Dessein's Pamphlet-shop, close by, you cannot without strong
elbowing get to the counter: every hour produces its pamphlet, or litter
of pamphlets; 'there were thirteen to-day, sixteen yesterday, nine-two last
week.' (Arthur Young, Travels, i. 104.) Think of Tyranny and Scarcity;
Fervid-eloquence, Rumour, Pamphleteering; Societe Publicole, Breton Club,
Enraged Club;--and whether every tap-room, coffee-room, social reunion,
accidental street-group, over wide France, was not an Enraged Club!
To all which the Commons Deputies can only listen with a sublime inertia of
sorrow; reduced to busy themselves 'with their internal police.' Surer
position no Deputies ever occupied; if they keep it with skill. Let not
the temperature rise too high; break not the Eros-egg till it be hatched,
till it break itself! An eager public crowds all Galleries and vacancies!
'cannot be restrained from applauding.' The two Privileged Orders, the
Noblesse all verified and constituted, may look on with what face they
will; not without a secret tremor of heart. The Clergy, always acting the
part of conciliators, make a clutch at the Galleries, and the popularity
there; and miss it. Deputation of them arrives, with dolorous message
about the 'dearth of grains,' and the necessity there is of casting aside
vain formalities, and deliberating on this. An insidious proposal; which,
however, the Commons (moved thereto by seagreen Robespierre) dexterously
accept as a sort of hint, or even pledge, that the Clergy will forthwith
come over to them, constitute the States-General, and so cheapen grains!
(Bailly, Memoires, i. 114.)--Finally, on the 27th day of May, Mirabeau,
judging the time now nearly come, proposes that 'the inertia cease;' that,
leaving the Noblesse to their own stiff ways, the Clergy be summoned, 'in
the name of the God of Peace,' to join the Commons, and begin. (Histoire
Parlementaire, i. 413.) To which summons if they turn a deaf ear,--we
shall see! Are not one Hundred and Forty-nine of them ready to desert?
O Triumvirate of Princes, new Garde-des-Sceaux Barentin, thou Home-
Secretary Breteuil, Duchess Polignac, and Queen eager to listen,--what is
now to be done? This Third Estate will get in motion, with the force of
all France in it; Clergy-machinery with Noblesse-machinery, which were to
serve as beautiful counter-balances and drags, will be shamefully dragged
after it,--and take fire along with it. What is to be done? The Oeil-de-
Boeuf waxes more confused than ever. Whisper and counter-whisper; a very
tempest of whispers! Leading men from all the Three Orders are nightly
spirited thither; conjurors many of them; but can they conjure this?
Necker himself were now welcome, could he interfere to purpose.
Let Necker interfere, then; and in the King's name! Happily that
incendiary 'God-of-Peace' message is not yet answered. The Three Orders
shall again have conferences; under this Patriot Minister of theirs,
somewhat may be healed, clouted up;--we meanwhile getting forward Swiss
Regiments, and a 'hundred pieces of field-artillery.' This is what the
Oeil-de-Boeuf, for its part, resolves on.
But as for Necker--Alas, poor Necker, thy obstinate Third Estate has one
first-last word, verification in common, as the pledge of voting and
deliberating in common! Half-way proposals, from such a tried friend, they
answer with a stare. The tardy conferences speedily break up; the Third
Estate, now ready and resolute, the whole world backing it, returns to its
Hall of the Three Orders; and Necker to the Oeil-de-Boeuf, with the
character of a disconjured conjuror there--fit only for dismissal.
(Debates, 1st to 17th June 1789 (in Histoire Parlementaire, i. 422-478).)
And so the Commons Deputies are at last on their own strength getting under
way? Instead of Chairman, or Dean, they have now got a President:
Astronomer Bailly. Under way, with a vengeance! With endless vociferous
and temperate eloquence, borne on Newspaper wings to all lands, they have
now, on this 17th day of June, determined that their name is not Third
Estate, but--National Assembly! They, then, are the Nation? Triumvirate
of Princes, Queen, refractory Noblesse and Clergy, what, then, are you? A
most deep question;--scarcely answerable in living political dialects.
All regardless of which, our new National Assembly proceeds to appoint a
'committee of subsistences;' dear to France, though it can find little or
no grain. Next, as if our National Assembly stood quite firm on its legs,-
-to appoint 'four other standing committees;' then to settle the security
of the National Debt; then that of the Annual Taxation: all within eight-
and-forty hours. At such rate of velocity it is going: the conjurors of
the Oeil-de-Boeuf may well ask themselves, Whither?
Chapter 1.5.II.
Mercury de Breze.
Now surely were the time for a 'god from the machine;' there is a nodus
worthy of one. The only question is, Which god? Shall it be Mars de
Broglie, with his hundred pieces of cannon?--Not yet, answers prudence; so
soft, irresolute is King Louis. Let it be Messenger Mercury, our Supreme
Usher de Breze.
On the morrow, which is the 20th of June, these Hundred and Forty-nine
false Curates, no longer restrainable by his Grace of Paris, will desert in
a body: let De Breze intervene, and produce--closed doors! Not only shall
there be Royal Session, in that Salle des Menus; but no meeting, nor
working (except by carpenters), till then. Your Third Estate, self-styled
'National Assembly,' shall suddenly see itself extruded from its Hall, by
carpenters, in this dexterous way; and reduced to do nothing, not even to
meet, or articulately lament,--till Majesty, with Seance Royale and new
miracles, be ready! In this manner shall De Breze, as Mercury ex machina,
intervene; and, if the Oeil-de-Boeuf mistake not, work deliverance from the
nodus.
Of poor De Breze we can remark that he has yet prospered in none of his
dealings with these Commons. Five weeks ago, when they kissed the hand of
Majesty, the mode he took got nothing but censure; and then his 'sincere
attachment,' how was it scornfully whiffed aside! Before supper, this
night, he writes to President Bailly, a new Letter, to be delivered shortly
after dawn tomorrow, in the King's name. Which Letter, however, Bailly in
the pride of office, will merely crush together into his pocket, like a
bill he does not mean to pay.
Accordingly on Saturday morning the 20th of June, shrill-sounding heralds
proclaim through the streets of Versailles, that there is to be a Seance
Royale next Monday; and no meeting of the States-General till then. And
yet, we observe, President Bailly in sound of this, and with De Breze's
Letter in his pocket, is proceeding, with National Assembly at his heels,
to the accustomed Salles des Menus; as if De Breze and heralds were mere
wind. It is shut, this Salle; occupied by Gardes Francaises. "Where is
your Captain?" The Captain shows his royal order: workmen, he is grieved
to say, are all busy setting up the platform for his Majesty's Seance; most
unfortunately, no admission; admission, at furthest, for President and
Secretaries to bring away papers, which the joiners might destroy!--
President Bailly enters with Secretaries; and returns bearing papers:
alas, within doors, instead of patriotic eloquence, there is now no noise
but hammering, sawing, and operative screeching and rumbling! A
profanation without parallel.
The Deputies stand grouped on the Paris Road, on this umbrageous Avenue de
Versailles; complaining aloud of the indignity done them. Courtiers, it is
supposed, look from their windows, and giggle. The morning is none of the
comfortablest: raw; it is even drizzling a little. (Bailly, Memoires, i.
185-206.) But all travellers pause; patriot gallery-men, miscellaneous
spectators increase the groups. Wild counsels alternate. Some desperate
Deputies propose to go and hold session on the great outer Staircase at
Marly, under the King's windows; for his Majesty, it seems, has driven over
thither. Others talk of making the Chateau Forecourt, what they call Place
d'Armes, a Runnymede and new Champ de Mai of free Frenchmen: nay of
awakening, to sounds of indignant Patriotism, the echoes of the Oeil-de-
boeuf itself.--Notice is given that President Bailly, aided by judicious
Guillotin and others, has found place in the Tennis-Court of the Rue St.
Francois. Thither, in long-drawn files, hoarse-jingling, like cranes on
wing, the Commons Deputies angrily wend.
Strange sight was this in the Rue St. Francois, Vieux Versailles! A naked
Tennis-Court, as the pictures of that time still give it: four walls;
naked, except aloft some poor wooden penthouse, or roofed spectators'-
gallery, hanging round them:--on the floor not now an idle teeheeing, a
snapping of balls and rackets; but the bellowing din of an indignant
National Representation, scandalously exiled hither! However, a cloud of
witnesses looks down on them, from wooden penthouse, from wall-top, from
adjoining roof and chimney; rolls towards them from all quarters, with
passionate spoken blessings. Some table can be procured to write on; some
chair, if not to sit on, then to stand on. The Secretaries undo their
tapes; Bailly has constituted the Assembly.
Experienced Mounier, not wholly new to such things, in Parlementary
revolts, which he has seen or heard of, thinks that it were well, in these
lamentable threatening circumstances, to unite themselves by an Oath.--
Universal acclamation, as from smouldering bosoms getting vent! The Oath
is redacted; pronounced aloud by President Bailly,--and indeed in such a
sonorous tone, that the cloud of witnesses, even outdoors, hear it, and
bellow response to it. Six hundred right-hands rise with President
Bailly's, to take God above to witness that they will not separate for man
below, but will meet in all places, under all circumstances, wheresoever
two or three can get together, till they have made the Constitution. Made
the Constitution, Friends! That is a long task. Six hundred hands,
meanwhile, will sign as they have sworn: six hundred save one; one
Loyalist Abdiel, still visible by this sole light-point, and nameable, poor
'M. Martin d'Auch, from Castelnaudary, in Languedoc.' Him they permit to
sign or signify refusal; they even save him from the cloud of witnesses, by
declaring 'his head deranged.' At four o'clock, the signatures are all
appended; new meeting is fixed for Monday morning, earlier than the hour of
the Royal Session; that our Hundred and Forty-nine Clerical deserters be
not balked: we shall meet 'at the Recollets Church or elsewhere,' in hope
that our Hundred and Forty-nine will join us;--and now it is time to go to
dinner.
This, then, is the Session of the Tennis-Court, famed Seance du Jeu de
Paume; the fame of which has gone forth to all lands. This is Mercurius de
Breze's appearance as Deus ex machina; this is the fruit it brings! The
giggle of Courtiers in the Versailles Avenue has already died into gaunt
silence. Did the distracted Court, with Gardes-des-Sceaux Barentin,
Triumvirate and Company, imagine that they could scatter six hundred
National Deputies, big with a National Constitution, like as much barndoor
poultry, big with next to nothing,--by the white or black rod of a Supreme
Usher? Barndoor poultry fly cackling: but National Deputies turn round,
lion-faced; and, with uplifted right-hand, swear an Oath that makes the
four corners of France tremble.
President Bailly has covered himself with honour; which shall become
rewards. The National Assembly is now doubly and trebly the Nation's
Assembly; not militant, martyred only, but triumphant; insulted, and which
could not be insulted. Paris disembogues itself once more, to witness,
'with grim looks,' the Seance Royale: (See Arthur Young (Travels, i. 115-
118); A. Lameth, &c.;) which, by a new felicity, is postponed till Tuesday.
The Hundred and Forty-nine, and even with Bishops among them, all in
processional mass, have had free leisure to march off, and solemnly join
the Commons sitting waiting in their Church. The Commons welcomed them
with shouts, with embracings, nay with tears; (Dumont, Souvenirs sur
Mirabeau, c. 4.) for it is growing a life-and-death matter now.
As for the Seance itself, the Carpenters seem to have accomplished their
platform; but all else remains unaccomplished. Futile, we may say fatal,
was the whole matter. King Louis enters, through seas of people, all grim-
silent, angry with many things,--for it is a bitter rain too. Enters, to a
Third Estate, likewise grim-silent; which has been wetted waiting under
mean porches, at back-doors, while Court and Privileged were entering by
the front. King and Garde-des-Sceaux (there is no Necker visible) make
known, not without longwindedness, the determinations of the royal breast.
The Three Orders shall vote separately. On the other hand, France may look
for considerable constitutional blessings; as specified in these Five-and-
thirty Articles, (Histoire Parlementaire, i. 13.) which Garde-des-Sceaux is
waxing hoarse with reading. Which Five-and-Thirty Articles, adds his
Majesty again rising, if the Three Orders most unfortunately cannot agree
together to effect them, I myself will effect: "seul je ferai le bien de
mes peuples,"--which being interpreted may signify, You, contentious
Deputies of the States-General, have probably not long to be here! But, in
fine, all shall now withdraw for this day; and meet again, each Order in
its separate place, to-morrow morning, for despatch of business. This is
the determination of the royal breast: pithy and clear. And herewith
King, retinue, Noblesse, majority of Clergy file out, as if the whole
matter were satisfactorily completed.
These file out; through grim-silent seas of people. Only the Commons
Deputies file not out; but stand there in gloomy silence, uncertain what
they shall do. One man of them is certain; one man of them discerns and
dares! It is now that King Mirabeau starts to the Tribune, and lifts up
his lion-voice. Verily a word in season; for, in such scenes, the moment
is the mother of ages! Had not Gabriel Honore been there,--one can well
fancy, how the Commons Deputies, affrighted at the perils which now yawned
dim all round them, and waxing ever paler in each other's paleness, might
very naturally, one after one, have glided off; and the whole course of
European History have been different!
But he is there. List to the brool of that royal forest-voice; sorrowful,
low; fast swelling to a roar! Eyes kindle at the glance of his eye:--
National Deputies were missioned by a Nation; they have sworn an Oath;
they--but lo! while the lion's voice roars loudest, what Apparition is
this? Apparition of Mercurius de Breze, muttering somewhat!--"Speak out,"
cry several.--"Messieurs," shrills De Breze, repeating himself, "You have
heard the King's orders!"--Mirabeau glares on him with fire-flashing face;
shakes the black lion's mane: "Yes, Monsieur, we have heard what the King
was advised to say: and you who cannot be the interpreter of his orders to
the States-General; you, who have neither place nor right of speech here;
you are not the man to remind us of it. Go, Monsieur, tell these who sent
you that we are here by the will of the People, and that nothing shall send
us hence but the force of bayonets!" (Moniteur (Hist. Parl. ii. 22.).)
And poor De Breze shivers forth from the National Assembly;--and also (if
it be not in one faintest glimmer, months later) finally from the page of
History!--
Hapless De Breze; doomed to survive long ages, in men's memory, in this
faint way, with tremulent white rod! He was true to Etiquette, which was
his Faith here below; a martyr to respect of persons. Short woollen cloaks
could not kiss Majesty's hand as long velvet ones did. Nay lately, when
the poor little Dauphin lay dead, and some ceremonial Visitation came, was
he not punctual to announce it even to the Dauphin's dead body:
"Monseigneur, a Deputation of the States-General!" (Montgaillard, ii. 38.)
Sunt lachrymae rerum.
But what does the Oeil-de-Boeuf, now when De Breze shivers back thither?
Despatch that same force of bayonets? Not so: the seas of people still
hang multitudinous, intent on what is passing; nay rush and roll, loud-
billowing, into the Courts of the Chateau itself; for a report has risen
that Necker is to be dismissed. Worst of all, the Gardes Francaises seem
indisposed to act: 'two Companies of them do not fire when ordered!'
(Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 26.) Necker, for not being at the Seance,
shall be shouted for, carried home in triumph; and must not be dismissed.
His Grace of Paris, on the other hand, has to fly with broken coach-panels,
and owe his life to furious driving. The Gardes-du-Corps (Body-Guards),
which you were drawing out, had better be drawn in again. (Bailly, i.
217.) There is no sending of bayonets to be thought of.
Instead of soldiers, the Oeil-de-Boeuf sends--carpenters, to take down the
platform. Ineffectual shift! In few instants, the very carpenters cease
wrenching and knocking at their platform; stand on it, hammer in hand, and
listen open-mouthed. (Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 23.) The Third Estate
is decreeing that it is, was, and will be, nothing but a National Assembly;
and now, moreover, an inviolable one, all members of it inviolable:
'infamous, traitorous, towards the Nation, and guilty of capital crime, is
any person, body-corporate, tribunal, court or commission that now or
henceforth, during the present session or after it, shall dare to pursue,
interrogate, arrest, or cause to be arrested, detain or cause to be
detained, any,' &c.; &c.; 'on whose part soever the same be commanded.'
(Montgaillard, ii. 47.) Which done, one can wind up with this comfortable
reflection from Abbe Sieyes: "Messieurs, you are today what you were
yesterday."
Courtiers may shriek; but it is, and remains, even so. Their well-charged
explosion has exploded through the touch-hole; covering themselves with
scorches, confusion, and unseemly soot! Poor Triumvirate, poor Queen; and
above all, poor Queen's Husband, who means well, had he any fixed meaning!
Folly is that wisdom which is wise only behindhand. Few months ago these
Thirty-five Concessions had filled France with a rejoicing, which might
have lasted for several years. Now it is unavailing, the very mention of
it slighted; Majesty's express orders set at nought.
All France is in a roar; a sea of persons, estimated at 'ten thousand,'
whirls 'all this day in the Palais Royal.' (Arthur Young, i. 119.) The
remaining Clergy, and likewise some Forty-eight Noblesse, D'Orleans among
them, have now forthwith gone over to the victorious Commons; by whom, as
is natural, they are received 'with acclamation.'
The Third Estate triumphs; Versailles Town shouting round it; ten thousand
whirling all day in the Palais Royal; and all France standing a-tiptoe, not
unlike whirling! Let the Oeil-de-Boeuf look to it. As for King Louis, he
will swallow his injuries; will temporise, keep silence; will at all costs
have present peace. It was Tuesday the 23d of June, when he spoke that
peremptory royal mandate; and the week is not done till he has written to
the remaining obstinate Noblesse, that they also must oblige him, and give
in. D'Espremenil rages his last; Barrel Mirabeau 'breaks his sword,'
making a vow,--which he might as well have kept. The 'Triple Family' is
now therefore complete; the third erring brother, the Noblesse, having
joined it;--erring but pardonable; soothed, so far as possible, by sweet
eloquence from President Bailly.
So triumphs the Third Estate; and States-General are become National
Assembly; and all France may sing Te Deum. By wise inertia, and wise
cessation of inertia, great victory has been gained. It is the last night
of June: all night you meet nothing on the streets of Versailles but 'men
running with torches' with shouts of jubilation. From the 2nd of May when
they kissed the hand of Majesty, to this 30th of June when men run with
torches, we count seven weeks complete. For seven weeks the National
Carroccio has stood far-seen, ringing many a signal; and, so much having
now gathered round it, may hope to stand.
Chapter 1.5.III.
Broglie the War-God.
The Court feels indignant that it is conquered; but what then? Another
time it will do better. Mercury descended in vain; now has the time come
for Mars.--The gods of the Oeil-de-Boeuf have withdrawn into the darkness
of their cloudy Ida; and sit there, shaping and forging what may be
needful, be it 'billets of a new National Bank,' munitions of war, or
things forever inscrutable to men.
Accordingly, what means this 'apparatus of troops'? The National Assembly
can get no furtherance for its Committee of Subsistences; can hear only
that, at Paris, the Bakers' shops are besieged; that, in the Provinces,
people are living on 'meal-husks and boiled grass.' But on all highways
there hover dust-clouds, with the march of regiments, with the trailing of
cannon: foreign Pandours, of fierce aspect; Salis-Samade, Esterhazy,
Royal-Allemand; so many of them foreign, to the number of thirty thousand,-
-which fear can magnify to fifty: all wending towards Paris and
Versailles! Already, on the heights of Montmartre, is a digging and
delving; too like a scarping and trenching. The effluence of Paris is
arrested Versailles-ward by a barrier of cannon at Sevres Bridge. From the
Queen's Mews, cannon stand pointed on the National Assembly Hall itself.
The National Assembly has its very slumbers broken by the tramp of
soldiery, swarming and defiling, endless, or seemingly endless, all round
those spaces, at dead of night, 'without drum-music, without audible word
of command.' (A. Lameth, Assemblee Constituante, i. 41.) What means it?
Shall eight, or even shall twelve Deputies, our Mirabeaus, Barnaves at the
head of them, be whirled suddenly to the Castle of Ham; the rest
ignominiously dispersed to the winds? No National Assembly can make the
Constitution with cannon levelled on it from the Queen's Mews! What means
this reticence of the Oeil-de-Boeuf, broken only by nods and shrugs? In
the mystery of that cloudy Ida, what is it that they forge and shape?--Such
questions must distracted Patriotism keep asking, and receive no answer but
an echo.
Enough of themselves! But now, above all, while the hungry food-year,
which runs from August to August, is getting older; becoming more and more
a famine-year? With 'meal-husks and boiled grass,' Brigands may actually
collect; and, in crowds, at farm and mansion, howl angrily, Food! Food! It
is in vain to send soldiers against them: at sight of soldiers they
disperse, they vanish as under ground; then directly reassemble elsewhere
for new tumult and plunder. Frightful enough to look upon; but what to
hear of, reverberated through Twenty-five Millions of suspicious minds!
Brigands and Broglie, open Conflagration, preternatural Rumour are driving
mad most hearts in France. What will the issue of these things be?
At Marseilles, many weeks ago, the Townsmen have taken arms; for
'suppressing of Brigands,' and other purposes: the military commandant may
make of it what he will. Elsewhere, everywhere, could not the like be
done? Dubious, on the distracted Patriot imagination, wavers, as a last
deliverance, some foreshadow of a National Guard. But conceive, above all,
the Wooden Tent in the Palais Royal! A universal hubbub there, as of
dissolving worlds: their loudest bellows the mad, mad-making voice of
Rumour; their sharpest gazes Suspicion into the pale dim World-Whirlpool;
discerning shapes and phantasms; imminent bloodthirsty Regiments camped on
the Champ-de-Mars; dispersed National Assembly; redhot cannon-balls (to
burn Paris);--the mad War-god and Bellona's sounding thongs. To the
calmest man it is becoming too plain that battle is inevitable.
Inevitable, silently nod Messeigneurs and Broglie: Inevitable and brief!
Your National Assembly, stopped short in its Constitutional labours, may
fatigue the royal ear with addresses and remonstrances: those cannon of
ours stand duly levelled; those troops are here. The King's Declaration,
with its Thirty-five too generous Articles, was spoken, was not listened
to; but remains yet unrevoked: he himself shall effect it, seul il fera!
As for Broglie, he has his headquarters at Versailles, all as in a seat of
war: clerks writing; significant staff-officers, inclined to taciturnity;
plumed aides-de-camp, scouts, orderlies flying or hovering. He himself
looks forth, important, impenetrable; listens to Besenval Commandant of
Paris, and his warning and earnest counsels (for he has come out repeatedly
on purpose), with a silent smile. (Besenval, iii. 398.) The Parisians
resist? scornfully cry Messeigneurs. As a meal-mob may! They have sat
quiet, these five generations, submitting to all. Their Mercier declared,
in these very years, that a Parisian revolt was henceforth 'impossible.'
(Mercier, Tableau de Paris, vi. 22.) Stand by the royal Declaration, of
the Twenty-third of June. The Nobles of France, valorous, chivalrous as of
old, will rally round us with one heart;--and as for this which you call
Third Estate, and which we call canaille of unwashed Sansculottes, of
Patelins, Scribblers, factious Spouters,--brave Broglie, 'with a whiff of
grapeshot (salve de canons), if need be, will give quick account of it.
Thus reason they: on their cloudy Ida; hidden from men,--men also hidden
from them.
Good is grapeshot, Messeigneurs, on one condition: that the shooter also
were made of metal! But unfortunately he is made of flesh; under his buffs
and bandoleers your hired shooter has instincts, feelings, even a kind of
thought. It is his kindred, bone of his bone, this same canaille that
shall be whiffed; he has brothers in it, a father and mother,--living on
meal-husks and boiled grass. His very doxy, not yet 'dead i' the spital,'
drives him into military heterodoxy; declares that if he shed Patriot
blood, he shall be accursed among men. The soldier, who has seen his pay
stolen by rapacious Foulons, his blood wasted by Soubises, Pompadours, and
the gates of promotion shut inexorably on him if he were not born noble,--
is himself not without griefs against you. Your cause is not the soldier's
cause; but, as would seem, your own only, and no other god's nor man's.
For example, the world may have heard how, at Bethune lately, when there
rose some 'riot about grains,' of which sort there are so many, and the
soldiers stood drawn out, and the word 'Fire!; was given,--not a trigger
stirred; only the butts of all muskets rattled angrily against the ground;
and the soldiers stood glooming, with a mixed expression of countenance;--
till clutched 'each under the arm of a patriot householder,' they were all
hurried off, in this manner, to be treated and caressed, and have their pay
increased by subscription! (Histoire Parlementaire.)
Neither have the Gardes Francaises, the best regiment of the line, shown
any promptitude for street-firing lately. They returned grumbling from
Reveillon's; and have not burnt a single cartridge since; nay, as we saw,
not even when bid. A dangerous humour dwells in these Gardes. Notable men
too, in their way! Valadi the Pythagorean was, at one time, an officer of
theirs. Nay, in the ranks, under the three-cornered felt and cockade, what
hard heads may there not be, and reflections going on,--unknown to the
public! One head of the hardest we do now discern there: on the shoulders
of a certain Sergeant Hoche. Lazare Hoche, that is the name of him; he
used to be about the Versailles Royal Stables, nephew of a poor herbwoman;
a handy lad; exceedingly addicted to reading. He is now Sergeant Hoche,
and can rise no farther: he lays out his pay in rushlights, and cheap
editions of books. (Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans, Londres (Paris),
1800, ii. 198.)
On the whole, the best seems to be: Consign these Gardes Francaises to
their Barracks. So Besenval thinks, and orders. Consigned to their
barracks, the Gardes Francaises do but form a 'Secret Association,' an
Engagement not to act against the National Assembly. Debauched by Valadi
the Pythagorean; debauched by money and women! cry Besenval and innumerable
others. Debauched by what you will, or in need of no debauching, behold
them, long files of them, their consignment broken, arrive, headed by their
Sergeants, on the 26th day of June, at the Palais Royal! Welcomed with
vivats, with presents, and a pledge of patriot liquor; embracing and
embraced; declaring in words that the cause of France is their cause! Next
day and the following days the like. What is singular too, except this
patriot humour, and breaking of their consignment, they behave otherwise
with 'the most rigorous accuracy.' (Besenval, iii. 394-6.)
They are growing questionable, these Gardes! Eleven ring-leaders of them
are put in the Abbaye Prison. It boots not in the least. The imprisoned
Eleven have only, 'by the hand of an individual,' to drop, towards
nightfall, a line in the Cafe de Foy; where Patriotism harangues loudest on
its table. 'Two hundred young persons, soon waxing to four thousand,' with
fit crowbars, roll towards the Abbaye; smite asunder the needful doors; and
bear out their Eleven, with other military victims:--to supper in the
Palais Royal Garden; to board, and lodging 'in campbeds, in the Theatre des
Varietes;' other national Prytaneum as yet not being in readiness. Most
deliberate! Nay so punctual were these young persons, that finding one
military victim to have been imprisoned for real civil crime, they returned
him to his cell, with protest.
Why new military force was not called out? New military force was called
out. New military force did arrive, full gallop, with drawn sabre: but
the people gently 'laid hold of their bridles;' the dragoons sheathed their
swords; lifted their caps by way of salute, and sat like mere statues of
dragoons,--except indeed that a drop of liquor being brought them, they
'drank to the King and Nation with the greatest cordiality.' (Histoire
Parlementaire, ii. 32.)
And now, ask in return, why Messeigneurs and Broglie the great god of war,
on seeing these things, did not pause, and take some other course, any
other course? Unhappily, as we said, they could see nothing. Pride, which
goes before a fall; wrath, if not reasonable, yet pardonable, most natural,
had hardened their hearts and heated their heads; so, with imbecility and
violence (ill-matched pair), they rush to seek their hour. All Regiments
are not Gardes Francaises, or debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean: let
fresh undebauched Regiments come up; let Royal-Allemand, Salais-Samade,
Swiss Chateau-Vieux come up,--which can fight, but can hardly speak except
in German gutturals; let soldiers march, and highways thunder with
artillery-waggons: Majesty has a new Royal Session to hold,--and miracles
to work there! The whiff of grapeshot can, if needful, become a blast and
tempest.
In which circumstances, before the redhot balls begin raining, may not the
Hundred-and-twenty Paris Electors, though their Cahier is long since
finished, see good to meet again daily, as an 'Electoral Club'? They meet
first 'in a Tavern;'--where 'the largest wedding-party' cheerfully give
place to them. (Dusaulx, Prise de la Bastille (Collection des Memoires,
par Berville et Barriere, Paris, 1821), p. 269.) But latterly they meet in
the Hotel-de-Ville, in the Townhall itself. Flesselles, Provost of
Merchants, with his Four Echevins (Scabins, Assessors), could not prevent
it; such was the force of public opinion. He, with his Echevins, and the
Six-and-Twenty Town-Councillors, all appointed from Above, may well sit
silent there, in their long gowns; and consider, with awed eye, what
prelude this is of convulsion coming from Below, and how themselves shall
fare in that!
Chapter 1.5.IV.
To Arms!
So hangs it, dubious, fateful, in the sultry days of July. It is the
passionate printed advice of M. Marat, to abstain, of all things, from
violence. (Avis au Peuple, ou les Ministres devoiles, 1st July, 1789 (in
Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 37.) Nevertheless the hungry poor are already
burning Town Barriers, where Tribute on eatables is levied; getting
clamorous for food.
The twelfth July morning is Sunday; the streets are all placarded with an
enormous-sized De par le Roi, 'inviting peaceable citizens to remain within
doors,' to feel no alarm, to gather in no crowd. Why so? What mean these
'placards of enormous size'? Above all, what means this clatter of
military; dragoons, hussars, rattling in from all points of the compass
towards the Place Louis Quinze; with a staid gravity of face, though
saluted with mere nicknames, hootings and even missiles? (Besenval, iii.
411.) Besenval is with them. Swiss Guards of his are already in the
Champs Elysees, with four pieces of artillery.
Have the destroyers descended on us, then? From the Bridge of Sevres to
utmost Vincennes, from Saint-Denis to the Champ-de-Mars, we are begirt!
Alarm, of the vague unknown, is in every heart. The Palais Royal has
become a place of awestruck interjections, silent shakings of the head:
one can fancy with what dolorous sound the noon-tide cannon (which the Sun
fires at the crossing of his meridian) went off there; bodeful, like an
inarticulate voice of doom. (Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 81.) Are these
troops verily come out 'against Brigands'? Where are the Brigands? What
mystery is in the wind?--Hark! a human voice reporting articulately the
Job's-news: Necker, People's Minister, Saviour of France, is dismissed.
Impossible; incredible! Treasonous to the public peace! Such a voice
ought to be choked in the water-works; (Ibid.)--had not the news-bringer
quickly fled. Nevertheless, friends, make of it what you will, the news is
true. Necker is gone. Necker hies northward incessantly, in obedient
secrecy, since yesternight. We have a new Ministry: Broglie the War-god;
Aristocrat Breteuil; Foulon who said the people might eat grass!
Rumour, therefore, shall arise; in the Palais Royal, and in broad France.
Paleness sits on every face; confused tremor and fremescence; waxing into
thunder-peals, of Fury stirred on by Fear.
But see Camille Desmoulins, from the Cafe de Foy, rushing out, sibylline in
face; his hair streaming, in each hand a pistol! He springs to a table:
the Police satellites are eyeing him; alive they shall not take him, not
they alive him alive. This time he speaks without stammering:--Friends,
shall we die like hunted hares? Like sheep hounded into their pinfold;
bleating for mercy, where is no mercy, but only a whetted knife? The hour
is come; the supreme hour of Frenchman and Man; when Oppressors are to try
conclusions with Oppressed; and the word is, swift Death, or Deliverance
forever. Let such hour be well-come! Us, meseems, one cry only befits:
To Arms! Let universal Paris, universal France, as with the throat of the
whirlwind, sound only: To arms!--"To arms!" yell responsive the
innumerable voices: like one great voice, as of a Demon yelling from the
air: for all faces wax fire-eyed, all hearts burn up into madness. In
such, or fitter words, (Ibid.) does Camille evoke the Elemental Powers, in
this great moment.--Friends, continues Camille, some rallying sign!
Cockades; green ones;--the colour of hope!--As with the flight of locusts,
these green tree leaves; green ribands from the neighbouring shops; all
green things are snatched, and made cockades of. Camille descends from his
table, 'stifled with embraces, wetted with tears;' has a bit of green
riband handed him; sticks it in his hat. And now to Curtius' Image-shop
there; to the Boulevards; to the four winds; and rest not till France be on
fire! (Vieux Cordelier, par Camille Desmoulins, No. 5 (reprinted in
Collection des Memoires, par Baudouin Freres, Paris, 1825), p. 81.)
France, so long shaken and wind-parched, is probably at the right
inflammable point.--As for poor Curtius, who, one grieves to think, might
be but imperfectly paid,--he cannot make two words about his Images. The
Wax-bust of Necker, the Wax-bust of D'Orleans, helpers of France: these,
covered with crape, as in funeral procession, or after the manner of
suppliants appealing to Heaven, to Earth, and Tartarus itself, a mixed
multitude bears off. For a sign! As indeed man, with his singular
imaginative faculties, can do little or nothing without signs: thus Turks
look to their Prophet's banner; also Osier Mannikins have been burnt, and
Necker's Portrait has erewhile figured, aloft on its perch.
In this manner march they, a mixed, continually increasing multitude; armed
with axes, staves and miscellanea; grim, many-sounding, through the
streets. Be all Theatres shut; let all dancing, on planked floor, or on
the natural greensward, cease! Instead of a Christian Sabbath, and feast
of guinguette tabernacles, it shall be a Sorcerer's Sabbath; and Paris,
gone rabid, dance,--with the Fiend for piper!
However, Besenval, with horse and foot, is in the Place Louis Quinze.
Mortals promenading homewards, in the fall of the day, saunter by, from
Chaillot or Passy, from flirtation and a little thin wine; with sadder step
than usual. Will the Bust-Procession pass that way! Behold it; behold
also Prince Lambesc dash forth on it, with his Royal-Allemands! Shots
fall, and sabre-strokes; Busts are hewn asunder; and, alas, also heads of
men. A sabred Procession has nothing for it but to explode, along what
streets, alleys, Tuileries Avenues it finds; and disappear. One unarmed
man lies hewed down; a Garde Francaise by his uniform: bear him (or bear
even the report of him) dead and gory to his Barracks;--where he has
comrades still alive!
But why not now, victorious Lambesc, charge through that Tuileries Garden
itself, where the fugitives are vanishing? Not show the Sunday promenaders
too, how steel glitters, besprent with blood; that it be told of, and men's
ears tingle?--Tingle, alas, they did; but the wrong way. Victorious
Lambesc, in this his second or Tuileries charge, succeeds but in
overturning (call it not slashing, for he struck with the flat of his
sword) one man, a poor old schoolmaster, most pacifically tottering there;
and is driven out, by barricade of chairs, by flights of 'bottles and
glasses,' by execrations in bass voice and treble. Most delicate is the
mob-queller's vocation; wherein Too-much may be as bad as Not-enough. For
each of these bass voices, and more each treble voice, borne to all points
of the City, rings now nothing but distracted indignation; will ring all
another. The cry, To arms! roars tenfold; steeples with their metal storm-
voice boom out, as the sun sinks; armorer's shops are broken open,
plundered; the streets are a living foam-sea, chafed by all the winds.
Such issue came of Lambesc's charge on the Tuileries Garden: no striking
of salutary terror into Chaillot promenaders; a striking into broad
wakefulness of Frenzy and the three Furies,--which otherwise were not
asleep! For they lie always, those subterranean Eumenides (fabulous and
yet so true), in the dullest existence of man;--and can dance, brandishing
their dusky torches, shaking their serpent-hair. Lambesc with Royal-
Allemand may ride to his barracks, with curses for his marching-music; then
ride back again, like one troubled in mind: vengeful Gardes Francaises,
sacreing, with knit brows, start out on him, from their barracks in the
Chaussee d'Antin; pour a volley into him (killing and wounding); which he
must not answer, but ride on. (Weber, ii. 75-91.)
Counsel dwells not under the plumed hat. If the Eumenides awaken, and
Broglie has given no orders, what can a Besenval do? When the Gardes
Francaises, with Palais-Royal volunteers, roll down, greedy of more
vengeance, to the Place Louis Quinze itself, they find neither Besenval,
Lambesc, Royal-Allemand, nor any soldier now there. Gone is military
order. On the far Eastern Boulevard, of Saint-Antoine, the Chasseurs
Normandie arrive, dusty, thirsty, after a hard day's ride; but can find no
billet-master, see no course in this City of confusions; cannot get to
Besenval, cannot so much as discover where he is: Normandie must even
bivouac there, in its dust and thirst,--unless some patriot will treat it
to a cup of liquor, with advices.
Raging multitudes surround the Hotel-de-Ville, crying: Arms! Orders! The
Six-and-twenty Town-Councillors, with their long gowns, have ducked under
(into the raging chaos);--shall never emerge more. Besenval is painfully
wriggling himself out, to the Champ-de-Mars; he must sit there 'in the
cruelest uncertainty:' courier after courier may dash off for Versailles;
but will bring back no answer, can hardly bring himself back. For the
roads are all blocked with batteries and pickets, with floods of carriages
arrested for examination: such was Broglie's one sole order; the Oeil-de-
Boeuf, hearing in the distance such mad din, which sounded almost like
invasion, will before all things keep its own head whole. A new Ministry,
with, as it were, but one foot in the stirrup, cannot take leaps. Mad
Paris is abandoned altogether to itself.
What a Paris, when the darkness fell! A European metropolitan City hurled
suddenly forth from its old combinations and arrangements; to crash
tumultuously together, seeking new. Use and wont will now no longer direct
any man; each man, with what of originality he has, must begin thinking; or
following those that think. Seven hundred thousand individuals, on the
sudden, find all their old paths, old ways of acting and deciding, vanish
from under their feet. And so there go they, with clangour and terror,
they know not as yet whether running, swimming or flying,--headlong into
the New Era. With clangour and terror: from above, Broglie the war-god
impends, preternatural, with his redhot cannon-balls; and from below, a
preternatural Brigand-world menaces with dirk and firebrand: madness rules
the hour.
Happily, in place of the submerged Twenty-six, the Electoral Club is
gathering; has declared itself a 'Provisional Municipality.' On the morrow
it will get Provost Flesselles, with an Echevin or two, to give help in
many things. For the present it decrees one most essential thing: that
forthwith a 'Parisian Militia' shall be enrolled. Depart, ye heads of
Districts, to labour in this great work; while we here, in Permanent
Committee, sit alert. Let fencible men, each party in its own range of
streets, keep watch and ward, all night. Let Paris court a little fever-
sleep; confused by such fever-dreams, of 'violent motions at the Palais
Royal;'--or from time to time start awake, and look out, palpitating, in
its nightcap, at the clash of discordant mutually-unintelligible Patrols;
on the gleam of distant Barriers, going up all-too ruddy towards the vault
of Night. (Deux Amis, i. 267-306.)
Chapter 1.5.V.
Give us Arms.
On Monday the huge City has awoke, not to its week-day industry: to what a
different one! The working man has become a fighting man; has one want
only: that of arms. The industry of all crafts has paused;--except it be
the smith's, fiercely hammering pikes; and, in a faint degree, the
kitchener's, cooking off-hand victuals; for bouche va toujours. Women too
are sewing cockades;--not now of green, which being D'Artois colour, the
Hotel-de-Ville has had to interfere in it; but of red and blue, our old
Paris colours: these, once based on a ground of constitutional white, are
the famed TRICOLOR,--which (if Prophecy err not) 'will go round the world.'
All shops, unless it be the Bakers' and Vintners', are shut: Paris is in
the streets;--rushing, foaming like some Venice wine-glass into which you
had dropped poison. The tocsin, by order, is pealing madly from all
steeples. Arms, ye Elector Municipals; thou Flesselles with thy Echevins,
give us arms! Flesselles gives what he can: fallacious, perhaps insidious
promises of arms from Charleville; order to seek arms here, order to seek
them there. The new Municipals give what they can; some three hundred and
sixty indifferent firelocks, the equipment of the City-Watch: 'a man in
wooden shoes, and without coat, directly clutches one of them, and mounts
guard.' Also as hinted, an order to all Smiths to make pikes with their
whole soul.
Heads of Districts are in fervent consultation; subordinate Patriotism
roams distracted, ravenous for arms. Hitherto at the Hotel-de-Ville was
only such modicum of indifferent firelocks as we have seen. At the so-
called Arsenal, there lies nothing but rust, rubbish and saltpetre,--
overlooked too by the guns of the Bastille. His Majesty's Repository, what
they call Garde-Meuble, is forced and ransacked: tapestries enough, and
gauderies; but of serviceable fighting-gear small stock! Two silver-
mounted cannons there are; an ancient gift from his Majesty of Siam to
Louis Fourteenth: gilt sword of the Good Henri; antique Chivalry arms and
armour. These, and such as these, a necessitous Patriotism snatches
greedily, for want of better. The Siamese cannons go trundling, on an
errand they were not meant for. Among the indifferent firelocks are seen
tourney-lances; the princely helm and hauberk glittering amid ill-hatted
heads,--as in a time when all times and their possessions are suddenly sent
jumbling!
At the Maison de Saint-Lazare, Lazar-House once, now a Correction-House
with Priests, there was no trace of arms; but, on the other hand, corn,
plainly to a culpable extent. Out with it, to market; in this scarcity of
grains!--Heavens, will 'fifty-two carts,' in long row, hardly carry it to
the Halle aux Bleds? Well, truly, ye reverend Fathers, was your pantry
filled; fat are your larders; over-generous your wine-bins, ye plotting
exasperators of the Poor; traitorous forestallers of bread!
Vain is protesting, entreaty on bare knees: the House of Saint-Lazarus has
that in it which comes not out by protesting. Behold, how, from every
window, it vomits: mere torrents of furniture, of bellowing and
hurlyburly;--the cellars also leaking wine. Till, as was natural, smoke
rose,--kindled, some say, by the desperate Saint-Lazaristes themselves,
desperate of other riddance; and the Establishment vanished from this world
in flame. Remark nevertheless that 'a thief' (set on or not by
Aristocrats), being detected there, is 'instantly hanged.'
Look also at the Chatelet Prison. The Debtors' Prison of La Force is
broken from without; and they that sat in bondage to Aristocrats go free:
hearing of which the Felons at the Chatelet do likewise 'dig up their
pavements,' and stand on the offensive; with the best prospects,--had not
Patriotism, passing that way, 'fired a volley' into the Felon world; and
crushed it down again under hatches. Patriotism consorts not with thieving
and felony: surely also Punishment, this day, hitches (if she still hitch)
after Crime, with frightful shoes-of-swiftness! 'Some score or two' of
wretched persons, found prostrate with drink in the cellars of that Saint-
Lazare, are indignantly haled to prison; the Jailor has no room; whereupon,
other place of security not suggesting itself, it is written, 'on les
pendit, they hanged them.' (Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 96.) Brief is the
word; not without significance, be it true or untrue!
In such circumstances, the Aristocrat, the unpatriotic rich man is packing-
up for departure. But he shall not get departed. A wooden-shod force has
seized all Barriers, burnt or not: all that enters, all that seeks to
issue, is stopped there, and dragged to the Hotel-de-Ville: coaches,
tumbrils, plate, furniture, 'many meal-sacks,' in time even 'flocks and
herds' encumber the Place de Greve. (Dusaulx, Prise de la Bastille, p.
20.)
And so it roars, and rages, and brays; drums beating, steeples pealing;
criers rushing with hand-bells: "Oyez, oyez. All men to their Districts
to be enrolled!" The Districts have met in gardens, open squares; are
getting marshalled into volunteer troops. No redhot ball has yet fallen
from Besenval's Camp; on the contrary, Deserters with their arms are
continually dropping in: nay now, joy of joys, at two in the afternoon,
the Gardes Francaises, being ordered to Saint-Denis, and flatly declining,
have come over in a body! It is a fact worth many. Three thousand six
hundred of the best fighting men, with complete accoutrement; with
cannoneers even, and cannon! Their officers are left standing alone; could
not so much as succeed in 'spiking the guns.' The very Swiss, it may now
be hoped, Chateau-Vieux and the others, will have doubts about fighting.
Our Parisian Militia,--which some think it were better to name National
Guard,--is prospering as heart could wish. It promised to be forty-eight
thousand; but will in few hours double and quadruple that number:
invincible, if we had only arms!
But see, the promised Charleville Boxes, marked Artillerie! Here, then,
are arms enough?--Conceive the blank face of Patriotism, when it found them
filled with rags, foul linen, candle-ends, and bits of wood! Provost of
the Merchants, how is this? Neither at the Chartreux Convent, whither we
were sent with signed order, is there or ever was there any weapon of war.
Nay here, in this Seine Boat, safe under tarpaulings (had not the nose of
Patriotism been of the finest), are 'five thousand-weight of gunpowder;'
not coming in, but surreptitiously going out! What meanest thou,
Flesselles? 'Tis a ticklish game, that of 'amusing' us. Cat plays with
captive mouse: but mouse with enraged cat, with enraged National Tiger?
Meanwhile, the faster, O ye black-aproned Smiths, smite; with strong arm
and willing heart. This man and that, all stroke from head to heel, shall
thunder alternating, and ply the great forge-hammer, till stithy reel and
ring again; while ever and anon, overhead, booms the alarm-cannon,--for the
City has now got gunpowder. Pikes are fabricated; fifty thousand of them,
in six-and-thirty hours: judge whether the Black-aproned have been idle.
Dig trenches, unpave the streets, ye others, assiduous, man and maid; cram
the earth in barrel-barricades, at each of them a volunteer sentry; pile
the whinstones in window-sills and upper rooms. Have scalding pitch, at
least boiling water ready, ye weak old women, to pour it and dash it on
Royal-Allemand, with your old skinny arms: your shrill curses along with
it will not be wanting!--Patrols of the newborn National Guard, bearing
torches, scour the streets, all that night; which otherwise are vacant, yet
illuminated in every window by order. Strange-looking; like some naphtha-
lighted City of the Dead, with here and there a flight of perturbed Ghosts.
O poor mortals, how ye make this Earth bitter for each other; this fearful
and wonderful Life fearful and horrible; and Satan has his place in all
hearts! Such agonies and ragings and wailings ye have, and have had, in
all times:--to be buried all, in so deep silence; and the salt sea is not
swoln with your tears.
Great meanwhile is the moment, when tidings of Freedom reach us; when the
long-enthralled soul, from amid its chains and squalid stagnancy, arises,
were it still only in blindness and bewilderment, and swears by Him that
made it, that it will be free! Free? Understand that well, it is the deep
commandment, dimmer or clearer, of our whole being, to be free. Freedom is
the one purport, wisely aimed at, or unwisely, of all man's struggles,
toilings and sufferings, in this Earth. Yes, supreme is such a moment (if
thou have known it): first vision as of a flame-girt Sinai, in this our
waste Pilgrimage,--which thenceforth wants not its pillar of cloud by day,
and pillar of fire by night! Something it is even,--nay, something
considerable, when the chains have grown corrosive, poisonous, to be free
'from oppression by our fellow-man.' Forward, ye maddened sons of France;
be it towards this destiny or towards that! Around you is but starvation,
falsehood, corruption and the clam of death. Where ye are is no abiding.
Imagination may, imperfectly, figure how Commandant Besenval, in the Champ-
de-Mars, has worn out these sorrowful hours Insurrection all round; his men
melting away! From Versailles, to the most pressing messages, comes no
answer; or once only some vague word of answer which is worse than none. A
Council of Officers can decide merely that there is no decision: Colonels
inform him, 'weeping,' that they do not think their men will fight. Cruel
uncertainty is here: war-god Broglie sits yonder, inaccessible in his
Olympus; does not descend terror-clad, does not produce his whiff of
grapeshot; sends no orders.
Truly, in the Chateau of Versailles all seems mystery: in the Town of
Versailles, were we there, all is rumour, alarm and indignation. An august
National Assembly sits, to appearance, menaced with death; endeavouring to
defy death. It has resolved 'that Necker carries with him the regrets of
the Nation.' It has sent solemn Deputation over to the Chateau, with
entreaty to have these troops withdrawn. In vain: his Majesty, with a
singular composure, invites us to be busy rather with our own duty, making
the Constitution! Foreign Pandours, and suchlike, go pricking and
prancing, with a swashbuckler air; with an eye too probably to the Salle
des Menus,--were it not for the 'grim-looking countenances' that crowd all
avenues there. (See Lameth; Ferrieres, &c.;) Be firm, ye National
Senators; the cynosure of a firm, grim-looking people!
The august National Senators determine that there shall, at least, be
Permanent Session till this thing end. Wherein, however, consider that
worthy Lafranc de Pompignan, our new President, whom we have named Bailly's
successor, is an old man, wearied with many things. He is the Brother of
that Pompignan who meditated lamentably on the Book of Lamentations:
Saves-voux pourquoi Jeremie
Se lamentait toute sa vie?
C'est qu'il prevoyait
Que Pompignan le traduirait!
Poor Bishop Pompignan withdraws; having got Lafayette for helper or
substitute: this latter, as nocturnal Vice-President, with a thin house in
disconsolate humour, sits sleepless, with lights unsnuffed;--waiting what
the hours will bring.
So at Versailles. But at Paris, agitated Besenval, before retiring for the
night, has stept over to old M. de Sombreuil, of the Hotel des Invalides
hard by. M. de Sombreuil has, what is a great secret, some eight-and-
twenty thousand stand of muskets deposited in his cellars there; but no
trust in the temper of his Invalides. This day, for example, he sent
twenty of the fellows down to unscrew those muskets; lest Sedition might
snatch at them; but scarcely, in six hours, had the twenty unscrewed twenty
gun-locks, or dogsheads (chiens) of locks,--each Invalide his dogshead! If
ordered to fire, they would, he imagines, turn their cannon against
himself.
Unfortunate old military gentlemen, it is your hour, not of glory! Old
Marquis de Launay too, of the Bastille, has pulled up his drawbridges long
since, 'and retired into his interior;' with sentries walking on his
battlements, under the midnight sky, aloft over the glare of illuminated
Paris;--whom a National Patrol, passing that way, takes the liberty of
firing at; 'seven shots towards twelve at night,' which do not take effect.
(Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 312.) This was the 13th day of July, 1789; a
worse day, many said, than the last 13th was, when only hail fell out of
Heaven, not madness rose out of Tophet, ruining worse than crops!
In these same days, as Chronology will teach us, hot old Marquis Mirabeau
lies stricken down, at Argenteuil,--not within sound of these alarm-guns;
for he properly is not there, and only the body of him now lies, deaf and
cold forever. It was on Saturday night that he, drawing his last life-
breaths, gave up the ghost there;--leaving a world, which would never go to
his mind, now broken out, seemingly, into deliration and the culbute
generale. What is it to him, departing elsewhither, on his long journey?
The old Chateau Mirabeau stands silent, far off, on its scarped rock, in
that 'gorge of two windy valleys;' the pale-fading spectre now of a
Chateau: this huge World-riot, and France, and the World itself, fades
also, like a shadow on the great still mirror-sea; and all shall be as God
wills.
Young Mirabeau, sad of heart, for he loved this crabbed brave old Father,
sad of heart, and occupied with sad cares,--is withdrawn from Public
History. The great crisis transacts itself without him. (Fils Adoptif,
Mirabeau, vi. l. 1.)
Chapter 1.5.VI.
Storm and Victory.
But, to the living and the struggling, a new, Fourteenth morning dawns.
Under all roofs of this distracted City, is the nodus of a drama, not
untragical, crowding towards solution. The bustlings and preparings, the
tremors and menaces; the tears that fell from old eyes! This day, my sons,
ye shall quit you like men. By the memory of your fathers' wrongs, by the
hope of your children's rights! Tyranny impends in red wrath: help for
you is none if not in your own right hands. This day ye must do or die.
From earliest light, a sleepless Permanent Committee has heard the old cry,
now waxing almost frantic, mutinous: Arms! Arms! Provost Flesselles, or
what traitors there are among you, may think of those Charleville Boxes. A
hundred-and-fifty thousand of us; and but the third man furnished with so
much as a pike! Arms are the one thing needful: with arms we are an
unconquerable man-defying National Guard; without arms, a rabble to be
whiffed with grapeshot.
Happily the word has arisen, for no secret can be kept,--that there lie
muskets at the Hotel des Invalides. Thither will we: King's Procureur M.
Ethys de Corny, and whatsoever of authority a Permanent Committee can lend,
shall go with us. Besenval's Camp is there; perhaps he will not fire on
us; if he kill us we shall but die.
Alas, poor Besenval, with his troops melting away in that manner, has not
the smallest humour to fire! At five o'clock this morning, as he lay
dreaming, oblivious in the Ecole Militaire, a 'figure' stood suddenly at
his bedside: 'with face rather handsome; eyes inflamed, speech rapid and
curt, air audacious:' such a figure drew Priam's curtains! The message
and monition of the figure was, that resistance would be hopeless; that if
blood flowed, wo to him who shed it. Thus spoke the figure; and vanished.
'Withal there was a kind of eloquence that struck one.' Besenval admits
that he should have arrested him, but did not. (Besenval, iii. 414.) Who
this figure, with inflamed eyes, with speech rapid and curt, might be?
Besenval knows but mentions not. Camille Desmoulins? Pythagorean Marquis
Valadi, inflamed with 'violent motions all night at the Palais Royal?'
Fame names him, 'Young M. Meillar'; (Tableaux de la Revolution, Prise de la
Bastille (a folio Collection of Pictures and Portraits, with letter-press,
not always uninstructive,--part of it said to be by Chamfort).) Then shuts
her lips about him for ever.
In any case, behold about nine in the morning, our National Volunteers
rolling in long wide flood, south-westward to the Hotel des Invalides; in
search of the one thing needful. King's procureur M. Ethys de Corny and
officials are there; the Cure of Saint-Etienne du Mont marches unpacific,
at the head of his militant Parish; the Clerks of the Bazoche in red coats
we see marching, now Volunteers of the Bazoche; the Volunteers of the
Palais Royal:--National Volunteers, numerable by tens of thousands; of one
heart and mind. The King's muskets are the Nation's; think, old M. de
Sombreuil, how, in this extremity, thou wilt refuse them! Old M. de
Sombreuil would fain hold parley, send Couriers; but it skills not: the
walls are scaled, no Invalide firing a shot; the gates must be flung open.
Patriotism rushes in, tumultuous, from grundsel up to ridge-tile, through
all rooms and passages; rummaging distractedly for arms. What cellar, or
what cranny can escape it? The arms are found; all safe there; lying
packed in straw,--apparently with a view to being burnt! More ravenous
than famishing lions over dead prey, the multitude, with clangour and
vociferation, pounces on them; struggling, dashing, clutching:--to the
jamming-up, to the pressure, fracture and probable extinction, of the
weaker Patriot. (Deux Amis, i. 302.) And so, with such protracted crash
of deafening, most discordant Orchestra-music, the Scene is changed: and
eight-and-twenty thousand sufficient firelocks are on the shoulders of so
many National Guards, lifted thereby out of darkness into fiery light.
Let Besenval look at the glitter of these muskets, as they flash by!
Gardes Francaises, it is said, have cannon levelled on him; ready to open,
if need were, from the other side of the River. (Besenval, iii. 416.)
Motionless sits he; 'astonished,' one may flatter oneself, 'at the proud
bearing (fiere contenance) of the Parisians.'--And now, to the Bastille, ye
intrepid Parisians! There grapeshot still threatens; thither all men's
thoughts and steps are now tending.
Old de Launay, as we hinted, withdrew 'into his interior' soon after
midnight of Sunday. He remains there ever since, hampered, as all military
gentlemen now are, in the saddest conflict of uncertainties. The Hotel-de-
Ville 'invites' him to admit National Soldiers, which is a soft name for
surrendering. On the other hand, His Majesty's orders were precise. His
garrison is but eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced by thirty-two young
Swiss; his walls indeed are nine feet thick, he has cannon and powder; but,
alas, only one day's provision of victuals. The city too is French, the
poor garrison mostly French. Rigorous old de Launay, think what thou wilt
do!
All morning, since nine, there has been a cry everywhere: To the Bastille!
Repeated 'deputations of citizens' have been here, passionate for arms;
whom de Launay has got dismissed by soft speeches through portholes.
Towards noon, Elector Thuriot de la Rosiere gains admittance; finds de
Launay indisposed for surrender; nay disposed for blowing up the place
rather. Thuriot mounts with him to the battlements: heaps of paving-
stones, old iron and missiles lie piled; cannon all duly levelled; in every
embrasure a cannon,--only drawn back a little! But outwards behold, O
Thuriot, how the multitude flows on, welling through every street; tocsin
furiously pealing, all drums beating the generale: the Suburb Saint-
Antoine rolling hitherward wholly, as one man! Such vision (spectral yet
real) thou, O Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, beholdest in this
moment: prophetic of what other Phantasmagories, and loud-gibbering
Spectral Realities, which, thou yet beholdest not, but shalt! "Que voulez
vous?" said de Launay, turning pale at the sight, with an air of reproach,
almost of menace. "Monsieur," said Thuriot, rising into the moral-sublime,
"What mean you? Consider if I could not precipitate both of us from this
height,"--say only a hundred feet, exclusive of the walled ditch!
Whereupon de Launay fell silent. Thuriot shews himself from some pinnacle,
to comfort the multitude becoming suspicious, fremescent: then descends;
departs with protest; with warning addressed also to the Invalides,--on
whom, however, it produces but a mixed indistinct impression. The old
heads are none of the clearest; besides, it is said, de Launay has been
profuse of beverages (prodigua des buissons). They think, they will not
fire,--if not fired on, if they can help it; but must, on the whole, be
ruled considerably by circumstances.
Wo to thee, de Launay, in such an hour, if thou canst not, taking some one
firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve; hard
grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between the two is unquestionable.
Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder,
into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,--which latter,
on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has
been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third, and
noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the Outer Court: soft speeches
producing no clearance of these, de Launay gives fire; pulls up his
Drawbridge. A slight sputter;--which has kindled the too combustible
chaos; made it a roaring fire-chaos! Bursts forth insurrection, at sight
of its own blood (for there were deaths by that sputter of fire), into
endless rolling explosion of musketry, distraction, execration;--and
overhead, from the Fortress, let one great gun, with its grape-shot, go
booming, to shew what we could do. The Bastille is besieged!
On, then, all Frenchmen that have hearts in their bodies! Roar with all
your throats, of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty; stir
spasmodically whatsoever of utmost faculty is in you, soul, body or spirit;
for it is the hour! Smite, thou Louis Tournay, cartwright of the Marais,
old-soldier of the Regiment Dauphine; smite at that Outer Drawbridge chain,
though the fiery hail whistles round thee! Never, over nave or felloe, did
thy axe strike such a stroke. Down with it, man; down with it to Orcus:
let the whole accursed Edifice sink thither, and Tyranny be swallowed up
for ever! Mounted, some say on the roof of the guard-room, some 'on
bayonets stuck into joints of the wall,' Louis Tournay smites, brave Aubin
Bonnemere (also an old soldier) seconding him: the chain yields, breaks;
the huge Drawbridge slams down, thundering (avec fracas). Glorious: and
yet, alas, it is still but the outworks. The Eight grim Towers, with their
Invalides' musketry, their paving stones and cannon-mouths, still soar
aloft intact;--Ditch yawning impassable, stone-faced; the inner Drawbridge
with its back towards us: the Bastille is still to take!
To describe this Siege of the Bastille (thought to be one of the most
important in history) perhaps transcends the talent of mortals. Could one
but, after infinite reading, get to understand so much as the plan of the
building! But there is open Esplanade, at the end of the Rue Saint-
Antoine; there are such Forecourts, Cour Avance, Cour de l'Orme, arched
Gateway (where Louis Tournay now fights); then new drawbridges, dormant-
bridges, rampart-bastions, and the grim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic Mass,
high-frowning there, of all ages from twenty years to four hundred and
twenty;--beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, by mere Chaos come
again! Ordnance of all calibres; throats of all capacities; men of all
plans, every man his own engineer: seldom since the war of Pygmies and
Cranes was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half-pay Elie is home for a
suit of regimentals; no one would heed him in coloured clothes: half-pay
Hulin is haranguing Gardes Francaises in the Place de Greve. Frantic
Patriots pick up the grape-shots; bear them, still hot (or seemingly so),
to the Hotel-de-Ville:--Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt! Flesselles is
'pale to the very lips' for the roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris
wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; whirled, all ways, by panic
madness. At every street-barricade, there whirls simmering, a minor
whirlpool,--strengthening the barricade, since God knows what is coming;
and all minor whirlpools play distractedly into that grand Fire-Mahlstrom
which is lashing round the Bastille.
And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the wine-merchant has become an
impromptu cannoneer. See Georget, of the Marine Service, fresh from Brest,
ply the King of Siam's cannon. Singular (if we were not used to the like):
Georget lay, last night, taking his ease at his inn; the King of Siam's
cannon also lay, knowing nothing of him, for a hundred years. Yet now, at
the right instant, they have got together, and discourse eloquent music.
For, hearing what was toward, Georget sprang from the Brest Diligence, and
ran. Gardes Francaises also will be here, with real artillery: were not
the walls so thick!--Upwards from the Esplanade, horizontally from all
neighbouring roofs and windows, flashes one irregular deluge of musketry,--
without effect. The Invalides lie flat, firing comparatively at their ease
from behind stone; hardly through portholes, shew the tip of a nose. We
fall, shot; and make no impression!
Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is combustible! Guard-rooms are
burnt, Invalides mess-rooms. A distracted 'Peruke-maker with two fiery
torches' is for burning 'the saltpetres of the Arsenal;'--had not a woman
run screaming; had not a Patriot, with some tincture of Natural Philosophy,
instantly struck the wind out of him (butt of musket on pit of stomach),
overturned barrels, and stayed the devouring element. A young beautiful
lady, seized escaping in these Outer Courts, and thought falsely to be de
Launay's daughter, shall be burnt in de Launay's sight; she lies swooned on
a paillasse: but again a Patriot, it is brave Aubin Bonnemere the old
soldier, dashes in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt; three cartloads of
it, hauled thither, go up in white smoke: almost to the choking of
Patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with singed brows, to drag back one
cart; and Reole the 'gigantic haberdasher' another. Smoke as of Tophet;
confusion as of Babel; noise as of the Crack of Doom!
Blood flows, the aliment of new madness. The wounded are carried into
houses of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their last mandate not to yield
till the accursed Stronghold fall. And yet, alas, how fall? The walls are
so thick! Deputations, three in number, arrive from the Hotel-de-Ville;
Abbe Fouchet (who was of one) can say, with what almost superhuman courage
of benevolence. (Fauchet's Narrative (Deux Amis, i. 324.).) These wave
their Town-flag in the arched Gateway; and stand, rolling their drum; but
to no purpose. In such Crack of Doom, de Launay cannot hear them, dare not
believe them: they return, with justified rage, the whew of lead still
singing in their ears. What to do? The Firemen are here, squirting with
their fire-pumps on the Invalides' cannon, to wet the touchholes; they
unfortunately cannot squirt so high; but produce only clouds of spray.
Individuals of classical knowledge propose catapults. Santerre, the
sonorous Brewer of the Suburb Saint-Antoine, advises rather that the place
be fired, by a 'mixture of phosphorous and oil-of-turpentine spouted up
through forcing pumps:' O Spinola-Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready?
Every man his own engineer! And still the fire-deluge abates not; even
women are firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with her sweetheart), and
one Turk. (Deux Amis (i. 319); Dusaulx, &c.;) Gardes Francaises have come:
real cannon, real cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; half-pay Elie, half-
pay Hulin rage in the midst of thousands.
How the great Bastille Clock ticks (inaudible) in its Inner Court there, at
its ease, hour after hour; as if nothing special, for it or the world, were
passing! It tolled One when the firing began; and is now pointing towards
Five, and still the firing slakes not.--Far down, in their vaults, the
seven Prisoners hear muffled din as of earthquakes; their Turnkeys answer
vaguely.
Wo to thee, de Launay, with thy poor hundred Invalides! Broglie is
distant, and his ears heavy: Besenval hears, but can send no help. One
poor troop of Hussars has crept, reconnoitring, cautiously along the Quais,
as far as the Pont Neuf. "We are come to join you," said the Captain; for
the crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed dwarfish individual, of smoke-
bleared aspect, shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for there is sense
in him; and croaks: "Alight then, and give up your arms!" the Hussar-
Captain is too happy to be escorted to the Barriers, and dismissed on
parole. Who the squat individual was? Men answer, it is M. Marat, author
of the excellent pacific Avis au Peuple! Great truly, O thou remarkable
Dogleech, is this thy day of emergence and new birth: and yet this same
day come four years--!--But let the curtains of the future hang.
What shall de Launay do? One thing only de Launay could have done: what
he said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from the first, with lighted
taper, within arm's length of the Powder-Magazine; motionless, like old
Roman Senator, or bronze Lamp-holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all
men, by a slight motion of his eye, what his resolution was:--Harmless he
sat there, while unharmed; but the King's Fortress, meanwhile, could,
might, would, or should, in nowise, be surrendered, save to the King's
Messenger: one old man's life worthless, so it be lost with honour; but
think, ye brawling canaille, how will it be when a whole Bastille springs
skyward!--In such statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one fancies de Launay
might have left Thuriot, the red Clerks of the Bazoche, Cure of Saint-
Stephen and all the tagrag-and-bobtail of the world, to work their will.
And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast thou considered how each man's
heart is so tremulously responsive to the hearts of all men; hast thou
noted how omnipotent is the very sound of many men? How their shriek of
indignation palsies the strong soul; their howl of contumely withers with
unfelt pangs? The Ritter Gluck confessed that the ground-tone of the
noblest passage, in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice of the
Populace he had heard at Vienna, crying to their Kaiser: Bread! Bread!
Great is the combined voice of men; the utterance of their instincts, which
are truer than their thoughts: it is the greatest a man encounters, among
the sounds and shadows, which make up this World of Time. He who can
resist that, has his footing some where beyond Time. De Launay could not
do it. Distracted, he hovers between the two; hopes in the middle of
despair; surrenders not his Fortress; declares that he will blow it up,
seizes torches to blow it up, and does not blow it. Unhappy old de Launay,
it is the death-agony of thy Bastille and thee! Jail, Jailoring and
Jailor, all three, such as they may have been, must finish.
For four hours now has the World-Bedlam roared: call it the World-
Chimaera, blowing fire! The poor Invalides have sunk under their
battlements, or rise only with reversed muskets: they have made a white
flag of napkins; go beating the chamade, or seeming to beat, for one can
hear nothing. The very Swiss at the Portcullis look weary of firing;
disheartened in the fire-deluge: a porthole at the drawbridge is opened,
as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his
plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone-Ditch; plank resting on
parapet, balanced by weight of Patriots,--he hovers perilous: such a Dove
towards such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher: one man already fell; and
lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry! Usher Maillard falls
not: deftly, unerring he walks, with outspread palm. The Swiss holds a
paper through his porthole; the shifty Usher snatches it, and returns.
Terms of surrender: Pardon, immunity to all! Are they accepted?--"Foi
d'officier, On the word of an officer," answers half-pay Hulin,--or half-
pay Elie, for men do not agree on it, "they are!" Sinks the drawbridge,--
Usher Maillard bolting it when down; rushes-in the living deluge: the
Bastille is fallen! Victoire! La Bastille est prise! (Histoire de la
Revolution, par Deux Amis de la Liberte, i. 267-306; Besenval, iii. 410-
434; Dusaulx, Prise de la Bastille, 291-301. Bailly, Memoires (Collection
de Berville et Barriere), i. 322 et seqq.)
Chapter 1.5.VII.
Not a Revolt.
Why dwell on what follows? Hulin's foi d'officer should have been kept,
but could not. The Swiss stand drawn up; disguised in white canvas smocks;
the Invalides without disguise; their arms all piled against the wall. The
first rush of victors, in ecstacy that the death-peril is passed, 'leaps
joyfully on their necks;' but new victors rush, and ever new, also in
ecstacy not wholly of joy. As we said, it was a living deluge, plunging
headlong; had not the Gardes Francaises, in their cool military way,
'wheeled round with arms levelled,' it would have plunged suicidally, by
the hundred or the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch.
And so it goes plunging through court and corridor; billowing
uncontrollable, firing from windows--on itself: in hot frenzy of triumph,
of grief and vengeance for its slain. The poor Invalides will fare ill;
one Swiss, running off in his white smock, is driven back, with a death-
thrust. Let all prisoners be marched to the Townhall, to be judged!--Alas,
already one poor Invalide has his right hand slashed off him; his maimed
body dragged to the Place de Greve, and hanged there. This same right
hand, it is said, turned back de Launay from the Powder-Magazine, and saved
Paris.
De Launay, 'discovered in gray frock with poppy-coloured riband,' is for
killing himself with the sword of his cane. He shall to the Hotel-de-
Ville; Hulin Maillard and others escorting him; Elie marching foremost
'with the capitulation-paper on his sword's point.' Through roarings and
cursings; through hustlings, clutchings, and at last through strokes! Your
escort is hustled aside, felled down; Hulin sinks exhausted on a heap of
stones. Miserable de Launay! He shall never enter the Hotel de Ville:
only his 'bloody hair-queue, held up in a bloody hand;' that shall enter,
for a sign. The bleeding trunk lies on the steps there; the head is off
through the streets; ghastly, aloft on a pike.
Rigorous de Launay has died; crying out, "O friends, kill me fast!"
Merciful de Losme must die; though Gratitude embraces him, in this fearful
hour, and will die for him; it avails not. Brothers, your wrath is cruel!
Your Place de Greve is become a Throat of the Tiger; full of mere fierce
bellowings, and thirst of blood. One other officer is massacred; one other
Invalide is hanged on the Lamp-iron: with difficulty, with generous
perseverance, the Gardes Francaises will save the rest. Provost Flesselles
stricken long since with the paleness of death, must descend from his seat,
'to be judged at the Palais Royal:'--alas, to be shot dead, by an unknown
hand, at the turning of the first street!--
O evening sun of July, how, at this hour, thy beams fall slant on reapers
amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in cottages; on ships far
out in the silent main; on Balls at the Orangerie of Versailles, where
high-rouged Dames of the Palace are even now dancing with double-jacketted
Hussar-Officers;--and also on this roaring Hell porch of a Hotel-de-Ville!
Babel Tower, with the confusion of tongues, were not Bedlam added with the
conflagration of thoughts, was no type of it. One forest of distracted
steel bristles, endless, in front of an Electoral Committee; points itself,
in horrid radii, against this and the other accused breast. It was the
Titans warring with Olympus; and they scarcely crediting it, have
conquered: prodigy of prodigies; delirious,--as it could not but be.
Denunciation, vengeance; blaze of triumph on a dark ground of terror: all
outward, all inward things fallen into one general wreck of madness!
Electoral Committee? Had it a thousand throats of brass, it would not
suffice. Abbe Lefevre, in the Vaults down below, is black as Vulcan,
distributing that 'five thousand weight of Powder;' with what perils, these
eight-and-forty hours! Last night, a Patriot, in liquor, insisted on
sitting to smoke on the edge of one of the Powder-barrels; there smoked he,
independent of the world,--till the Abbe 'purchased his pipe for three
francs,' and pitched it far.
Elie, in the grand Hall, Electoral Committee looking on, sits 'with drawn
sword bent in three places;' with battered helm, for he was of the Queen's
Regiment, Cavalry; with torn regimentals, face singed and soiled;
comparable, some think, to 'an antique warrior;'--judging the people;
forming a list of Bastille Heroes. O Friends, stain not with blood the
greenest laurels ever gained in this world: such is the burden of Elie's
song; could it but be listened to. Courage, Elie! Courage, ye Municipal
Electors! A declining sun; the need of victuals, and of telling news, will
bring assuagement, dispersion: all earthly things must end.
Along the streets of Paris circulate Seven Bastille Prisoners, borne
shoulder-high: seven Heads on pikes; the Keys of the Bastille; and much
else. See also the Garde Francaises, in their steadfast military way,
marching home to their barracks, with the Invalides and Swiss kindly
enclosed in hollow square. It is one year and two months since these same
men stood unparticipating, with Brennus d'Agoust at the Palais de Justice,
when Fate overtook d'Espremenil; and now they have participated; and will
participate. Not Gardes Francaises henceforth, but Centre Grenadiers of
the National Guard: men of iron discipline and humour,--not without a kind
of thought in them!
Likewise ashlar stones of the Bastille continue thundering through the
dusk; its paper-archives shall fly white. Old secrets come to view; and
long-buried Despair finds voice. Read this portion of an old Letter:
(Dated, a la Bastille, 7 Octobre, 1752; signed Queret-Demery. Bastille
Devoilee, in Linguet, Memoires sur la Bastille (Paris, 1821), p. 199.) 'If
for my consolation Monseigneur would grant me for the sake of God and the
Most Blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my dear wife; were it only
her name on card to shew that she is alive! It were the greatest
consolation I could receive; and I should for ever bless the greatness of
Monseigneur.' Poor Prisoner, who namest thyself Queret Demery, and hast no
other history,--she is dead, that dear wife of thine, and thou art dead!
'Tis fifty years since thy breaking heart put this question; to be heard
now first, and long heard, in the hearts of men.
But so does the July twilight thicken; so must Paris, as sick children, and
all distracted creatures do, brawl itself finally into a kind of sleep.
Municipal Electors, astonished to find their heads still uppermost, are
home: only Moreau de Saint-Mery of tropical birth and heart, of coolest
judgment; he, with two others, shall sit permanent at the Townhall. Paris
sleeps; gleams upward the illuminated City: patrols go clashing, without
common watchword; there go rumours; alarms of war, to the extent of
'fifteen thousand men marching through the Suburb Saint-Antoine,'--who
never got it marched through. Of the day's distraction judge by this of
the night: Moreau de Saint-Mery, 'before rising from his seat, gave
upwards of three thousand orders.' (Dusaulx.) What a head; comparable to
Friar Bacon's Brass Head! Within it lies all Paris. Prompt must the
answer be, right or wrong; in Paris is no other Authority extant.
Seriously, a most cool clear head;--for which also thou O brave Saint-Mery,
in many capacities, from august Senator to Merchant's-Clerk, Book-dealer,
Vice-King; in many places, from Virginia to Sardinia, shalt, ever as a
brave man, find employment. (Biographie Universelle, para Moreau Saint-
Mery (by Fournier-Pescay).)
Besenval has decamped, under cloud of dusk, 'amid a great affluence of
people,' who did not harm him; he marches, with faint-growing tread, down
the left bank of the Seine, all night,--towards infinite space. Resummoned
shall Besenval himself be; for trial, for difficult acquittal. His King's-
troops, his Royal Allemand, are gone hence for ever.
The Versailles Ball and lemonade is done; the Orangery is silent except for
nightbirds. Over in the Salle des Menus, Vice-president Lafayette, with
unsnuffed lights, 'with some hundred of members, stretched on tables round
him,' sits erect; outwatching the Bear. This day, a second solemn
Deputation went to his Majesty; a second, and then a third: with no
effect. What will the end of these things be?
In the Court, all is mystery, not without whisperings of terror; though ye
dream of lemonade and epaulettes, ye foolish women! His Majesty, kept in
happy ignorance, perhaps dreams of double-barrels and the Woods of Meudon.
Late at night, the Duke de Liancourt, having official right of entrance,
gains access to the Royal Apartments; unfolds, with earnest clearness, in
his constitutional way, the Job's-news. "Mais," said poor Louis, "c'est
une revolte, Why, that is a revolt!"--"Sire," answered Liancourt, "It is
not a revolt, it is a revolution."
Chapter 1.5.VIII.
Conquering your King.
On the morrow a fourth Deputation to the Chateau is on foot: of a more
solemn, not to say awful character, for, besides 'orgies in the Orangery,'
it seems, 'the grain convoys are all stopped;' nor has Mirabeau's thunder
been silent. Such Deputation is on the point of setting out--when lo, his
Majesty himself attended only by his two Brothers, step in; quite in the
paternal manner; announces that the troops, and all causes of offence, are
gone, and henceforth there shall be nothing but trust, reconcilement, good-
will; whereof he 'permits and even requests,' a National Assembly to assure
Paris in his name! Acclamation, as of men suddenly delivered from death,
gives answer. The whole Assembly spontaneously rises to escort his Majesty
back; 'interlacing their arms to keep off the excessive pressure from him;'
for all Versailles is crowding and shouting. The Chateau Musicians, with a
felicitous promptitude, strike up the Sein de sa Famille (Bosom of one's
Family): the Queen appears at the balcony with her little boy and girl,
'kissing them several times;' infinite Vivats spread far and wide;--and
suddenly there has come, as it were, a new Heaven-on-Earth.
Eighty-eight august Senators, Bailly, Lafayette, and our repentant
Archbishop among them, take coach for Paris, with the great intelligence;
benedictions without end on their heads. From the Place Louis Quinze,
where they alight, all the way to the Hotel-de-Ville, it is one sea of
Tricolor cockades, of clear National muskets; one tempest of huzzaings,
hand-clappings, aided by 'occasional rollings' of drum-music. Harangues of
due fervour are delivered; especially by Lally Tollendal, pious son of the
ill-fated murdered Lally; on whose head, in consequence, a civic crown (of
oak or parsley) is forced,--which he forcibly transfers to Bailly's.
But surely, for one thing, the National Guard must have a General! Moreau
de Saint-Mery, he of the 'three thousand orders,' casts one of his
significant glances on the Bust of Lafayette, which has stood there ever
since the American War of Liberty. Whereupon, by acclamation, Lafayette is
nominated. Again, in room of the slain traitor or quasi-traitor
Flesselles, President Bailly shall be--Provost of the Merchants? No:
Mayor of Paris! So be it. Maire de Paris! Mayor Bailly, General
Lafayette; vive Bailly, vive Lafayette--the universal out-of-doors
multitude rends the welkin in confirmation.--And now, finally, let us to
Notre-Dame for a Te Deum.
Towards Notre-Dame Cathedral, in glad procession, these Regenerators of the
Country walk, through a jubilant people; in fraternal manner; Abbe Lefevre,
still black with his gunpowder services, walking arm in arm with the white-
stoled Archbishop. Poor Bailly comes upon the Foundling Children, sent to
kneel to him; and 'weeps.' Te Deum, our Archbishop officiating, is not
only sung, but shot--with blank cartridges. Our joy is boundless as our wo
threatened to be. Paris, by her own pike and musket, and the valour of her
own heart, has conquered the very wargods,--to the satisfaction now of
Majesty itself. A courier is, this night, getting under way for Necker:
the People's Minister, invited back by King, by National Assembly, and
Nation, shall traverse France amid shoutings, and the sound of trumpet and
timbrel.
Seeing which course of things, Messeigneurs of the Court Triumvirate,
Messieurs of the dead-born Broglie-Ministry, and others such, consider that
their part also is clear: to mount and ride. Off, ye too-loyal Broglies,
Polignacs, and Princes of the Blood; off while it is yet time! Did not the
Palais-Royal in its late nocturnal 'violent motions,' set a specific price
(place of payment not mentioned) on each of your heads?--With precautions,
with the aid of pieces of cannon and regiments that can be depended on,
Messeigneurs, between the 16th night and the 17th morning, get to their
several roads. Not without risk! Prince Conde has (or seems to have) 'men
galloping at full speed;' with a view, it is thought, to fling him into the
river Oise, at Pont-Sainte-Mayence. (Weber, ii. 126.) The Polignacs
travel disguised; friends, not servants, on their coach-box. Broglie has
his own difficulties at Versailles, runs his own risks at Metz and Verdun;
does nevertheless get safe to Luxemburg, and there rests.
This is what they call the First Emigration; determined on, as appears, in
full Court-conclave; his Majesty assisting; prompt he, for his share of it,
to follow any counsel whatsoever. 'Three Sons of France, and four Princes
of the blood of Saint Louis,' says Weber, 'could not more effectually
humble the Burghers of Paris 'than by appearing to withdraw in fear of
their life.' Alas, the Burghers of Paris bear it with unexpected Stoicism!
The Man d'Artois indeed is gone; but has he carried, for example, the Land
D'Artois with him? Not even Bagatelle the Country-house (which shall be
useful as a Tavern); hardly the four-valet Breeches, leaving the Breeches-
maker!--As for old Foulon, one learns that he is dead; at least a
'sumptuous funeral' is going on; the undertakers honouring him, if no other
will. Intendant Berthier, his son-in-law, is still living; lurking: he
joined Besenval, on that Eumenides' Sunday; appearing to treat it with
levity; and is now fled no man knows whither.
The Emigration is not gone many miles, Prince Conde hardly across the Oise,
when his Majesty, according to arrangement, for the Emigration also thought
it might do good,--undertakes a rather daring enterprise: that of visiting
Paris in person. With a Hundred Members of Assembly; with small or no
military escort, which indeed he dismissed at the Bridge of Sevres, poor
Louis sets out; leaving a desolate Palace; a Queen weeping, the Present,
the Past, and the Future all so unfriendly for her.
At the Barrier of Passy, Mayor Bailly, in grand gala, presents him with the
keys; harangues him, in Academic style; mentions that it is a great day;
that in Henri Quatre's case, the King had to make conquest of his People,
but in this happier case, the People makes conquest of its King (a conquis
son Roi). The King, so happily conquered, drives forward, slowly, through
a steel people, all silent, or shouting only Vive la Nation; is harangued
at the Townhall, by Moreau of the three-thousand orders, by King's
Procureur M. Ethys de Corny, by Lally Tollendal, and others; knows not what
to think of it, or say of it; learns that he is 'Restorer of French
Liberty,'--as a Statue of him, to be raised on the site of the Bastille,
shall testify to all men. Finally, he is shewn at the Balcony, with a
Tricolor cockade in his hat; is greeted now, with vehement acclamation,
from Square and Street, from all windows and roofs:--and so drives home
again amid glad mingled and, as it were, intermarried shouts, of Vive le
Roi and Vive la Nation; wearied but safe.
It was Sunday when the red-hot balls hung over us, in mid air: it is now
but Friday, and 'the Revolution is sanctioned.' An August National
Assembly shall make the Constitution; and neither foreign Pandour, domestic
Triumvirate, with levelled Cannon, Guy-Faux powder-plots (for that too was
spoken of); nor any tyrannic Power on the Earth, or under the Earth, shall
say to it, What dost thou?--So jubilates the people; sure now of a
Constitution. Cracked Marquis Saint-Huruge is heard under the windows of
the Chateau; murmuring sheer speculative-treason. (Campan, ii. 46-64.)
Chapter 1.5.IX.
The Lanterne.
The Fall of the Bastille may be said to have shaken all France to the
deepest foundations of its existence. The rumour of these wonders flies
every where: with the natural speed of Rumour; with an effect thought to
be preternatural, produced by plots. Did d'Orleans or Laclos, nay did
Mirabeau (not overburdened with money at this time) send riding Couriers
out from Paris; to gallop 'on all radii,' or highways, towards all points
of France? It is a miracle, which no penetrating man will call in
question. (Toulongeon, (i. 95); Weber, &c.; &c.;)
Already in most Towns, Electoral Committees were met; to regret Necker, in
harangue and resolution. In many a Town, as Rennes, Caen, Lyons, an
ebullient people was already regretting him in brickbats and musketry. But
now, at every Town's-end in France, there do arrive, in these days of
terror,--'men,' as men will arrive; nay, 'men on horseback,' since Rumour
oftenest travels riding. These men declare, with alarmed countenance, The
BRIGANDS to be coming, to be just at hand; and do then--ride on, about
their further business, be what it might! Whereupon the whole population
of such Town, defensively flies to arms. Petition is soon thereafter
forwarded to National Assembly; in such peril and terror of peril, leave to
organise yourself cannot be withheld: the armed population becomes
everywhere an enrolled National Guard. Thus rides Rumour, careering along
all radii, from Paris outwards, to such purpose: in few days, some say in
not many hours, all France to the utmost borders bristles with bayonets.
Singular, but undeniable,--miraculous or not!--But thus may any chemical
liquid; though cooled to the freezing-point, or far lower, still continue
liquid; and then, on the slightest stroke or shake, it at once rushes
wholly into ice. Thus has France, for long months and even years, been
chemically dealt with; brought below zero; and now, shaken by the Fall of a
Bastille, it instantaneously congeals: into one crystallised mass, of
sharp-cutting steel! Guai a chi la tocca; 'Ware who touches it!
In Paris, an Electoral Committee, with a new Mayor and General, is urgent
with belligerent workmen to resume their handicrafts. Strong Dames of the
Market (Dames de la Halle) deliver congratulatory harangues; present
'bouquets to the Shrine of Sainte Genevieve.' Unenrolled men deposit their
arms,--not so readily as could be wished; and receive 'nine francs.' With
Te Deums, Royal Visits, and sanctioned Revolution, there is halcyon
weather; weather even of preternatural brightness; the hurricane being
overblown.
Nevertheless, as is natural, the waves still run high, hollow rocks
retaining their murmur. We are but at the 22nd of the month, hardly above
a week since the Bastille fell, when it suddenly appears that old Foulon is
alive; nay, that he is here, in early morning, in the streets of Paris; the
extortioner, the plotter, who would make the people eat grass, and was a
liar from the beginning!--It is even so. The deceptive 'sumptuous funeral'
(of some domestic that died); the hiding-place at Vitry towards
Fontainbleau, have not availed that wretched old man. Some living domestic
or dependant, for none loves Foulon, has betrayed him to the Village.
Merciless boors of Vitry unearth him; pounce on him, like hell-hounds:
Westward, old Infamy; to Paris, to be judged at the Hotel-de-Ville! His
old head, which seventy-four years have bleached, is bare; they have tied
an emblematic bundle of grass on his back; a garland of nettles and
thistles is round his neck: in this manner; led with ropes; goaded on with
curses and menaces, must he, with his old limbs, sprawl forward; the
pitiablest, most unpitied of all old men.
Sooty Saint-Antoine, and every street, mustering its crowds as he passes,--
the Place de Greve, the Hall of the Hotel-de-Ville will scarcely hold his
escort and him. Foulon must not only be judged righteously; but judged
there where he stands, without any delay. Appoint seven judges, ye
Municipals, or seventy-and-seven; name them yourselves, or we will name
them: but judge him! (Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 146-9.) Electoral
rhetoric, eloquence of Mayor Bailly, is wasted explaining the beauty of the
Law's delay. Delay, and still delay! Behold, O Mayor of the People, the
morning has worn itself into noon; and he is still unjudged!--Lafayette,
pressingly sent for, arrives; gives voice: This Foulon, a known man, is
guilty almost beyond doubt; but may he not have accomplices? Ought not the
truth to be cunningly pumped out of him,--in the Abbaye Prison? It is a
new light! Sansculottism claps hands;--at which hand-clapping, Foulon (in
his fainness, as his Destiny would have it) also claps. "See! they
understand one another!" cries dark Sansculottism, blazing into fury of
suspicion.--"Friends," said 'a person in good clothes,' stepping forward,
"what is the use of judging this man? Has he not been judged these thirty
years?" With wild yells, Sansculottism clutches him, in its hundred hands:
he is whirled across the Place de Greve, to the 'Lanterne,' Lamp-iron which
there is at the corner of the Rue de la Vannerie; pleading bitterly for
life,--to the deaf winds. Only with the third rope (for two ropes broke,
and the quavering voice still pleaded), can he be so much as got hanged!
His Body is dragged through the streets; his Head goes aloft on a pike, the
mouth filled with grass: amid sounds as of Tophet, from a grass-eating
people. (Deux Amis de la Liberte, ii. 60-6.)
Surely if Revenge is a 'kind of Justice,' it is a 'wild' kind! O mad
Sansculottism hast thou risen, in thy mad darkness, in thy soot and rags;
unexpectedly, like an Enceladus, living-buried, from under his Trinacria?
They that would make grass be eaten do now eat grass, in this manner?
After long dumb-groaning generations, has the turn suddenly become thine?--
To such abysmal overturns, and frightful instantaneous inversions of the
centre-of-gravity, are human Solecisms all liable, if they but knew it; the
more liable, the falser (and topheavier) they are!--
To add to the horror of Mayor Bailly and his Municipals, word comes that
Berthier has also been arrested; that he is on his way hither from
Compiegne. Berthier, Intendant (say, Tax-levier) of Paris; sycophant and
tyrant; forestaller of Corn; contriver of Camps against the people;--
accused of many things: is he not Foulon's son-in-law; and, in that one
point, guilty of all? In these hours too, when Sansculottism has its blood
up! The shuddering Municipals send one of their number to escort him, with
mounted National Guards.
At the fall of day, the wretched Berthier, still wearing a face of courage,
arrives at the Barrier; in an open carriage; with the Municipal beside him;
five hundred horsemen with drawn sabres; unarmed footmen enough, not
without noise! Placards go brandished round him; bearing legibly his
indictment, as Sansculottism, with unlegal brevity, 'in huge letters,'
draws it up. ('Il a vole le Roi et la France (He robbed the King and
France).' 'He devoured the substance of the People.' 'He was the slave of
the rich, and the tyrant of the poor.' 'He drank the blood of the widow
and orphan.' 'He betrayed his country.' See Deux Amis, ii. 67-73.) Paris
is come forth to meet him: with hand-clappings, with windows flung up;
with dances, triumph-songs, as of the Furies! Lastly the Head of Foulon:
this also meets him on a pike. Well might his 'look become glazed,' and
sense fail him, at such sight!--Nevertheless, be the man's conscience what
it may, his nerves are of iron. At the Hotel-de-Ville, he will answer
nothing. He says, he obeyed superior order; they have his papers; they may
judge and determine: as for himself, not having closed an eye these two
nights, he demands, before all things, to have sleep. Leaden sleep, thou
miserable Berthier! Guards rise with him, in motion towards the Abbaye.
At the very door of the Hotel-de-Ville, they are clutched; flung asunder,
as by a vortex of mad arms; Berthier whirls towards the Lanterne. He
snatches a musket; fells and strikes, defending himself like a mad lion; is
borne down, trampled, hanged, mangled: his Head too, and even his Heart,
flies over the City on a pike.
Horrible, in Lands that had known equal justice! Not so unnatural in Lands
that had never known it. Le sang qui coule est-il donc si pure? asks
Barnave; intimating that the Gallows, though by irregular methods, has its
own.--Thou thyself, O Reader, when thou turnest that corner of the Rue de
la Vannerie, and discernest still that same grim Bracket of old Iron, wilt
not want for reflections. 'Over a grocer's shop,' or otherwise; with 'a
bust of Louis XIV. in the niche under it,' or now no longer in the niche,--
it still sticks there: still holding out an ineffectual light, of fish-
oil; and has seen worlds wrecked, and says nothing.
But to the eye of enlightened Patriotism, what a thunder-cloud was this;
suddenly shaping itself in the radiance of the halcyon weather! Cloud of
Erebus blackness: betokening latent electricity without limit. Mayor
Bailly, General Lafayette throw up their commissions, in an indignant
manner;--need to be flattered back again. The cloud disappears, as
thunder-clouds do. The halcyon weather returns, though of a grayer
complexion; of a character more and more evidently not supernatural.
Thus, in any case, with what rubs soever, shall the Bastille be abolished
from our Earth; and with it, Feudalism, Despotism; and, one hopes,
Scoundrelism generally, and all hard usage of man by his brother man.
Alas, the Scoundrelism and hard usage are not so easy of abolition! But as
for the Bastille, it sinks day after day, and month after month; its
ashlars and boulders tumbling down continually, by express order of our
Municipals. Crowds of the curious roam through its caverns; gaze on the
skeletons found walled up, on the oubliettes, iron cages, monstrous stone-
blocks with padlock chains. One day we discern Mirabeau there; along with
the Genevese Dumont. (Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 305.) Workers
and onlookers make reverent way for him; fling verses, flowers on his path,
Bastille-papers and curiosities into his carriage, with vivats.
Able Editors compile Books from the Bastille Archives; from what of them
remain unburnt. The Key of that Robber-Den shall cross the Atlantic; shall
lie on Washington's hall-table. The great Clock ticks now in a private
patriotic Clockmaker's apartment; no longer measuring hours of mere
heaviness. Vanished is the Bastille, what we call vanished: the body, or
sandstones, of it hanging, in benign metamorphosis, for centuries to come,
over the Seine waters, as Pont Louis Seize; (Dulaure: Histoire de Paris,
viii. 434.) the soul of it living, perhaps still longer, in the memories of
men.
So far, ye august Senators, with your Tennis-Court Oaths, your inertia and
impetus, your sagacity and pertinacity, have ye brought us. "And yet
think, Messieurs," as the Petitioner justly urged, "you who were our
saviours, did yourselves need saviours,"--the brave Bastillers, namely;
workmen of Paris; many of them in straightened pecuniary circumstances!
(Moniteur: Seance du Samedi 18 Juillet 1789 (in Histoire Parlementaire,
ii. 137.) Subscriptions are opened; Lists are formed, more accurate than
Elie's; harangues are delivered. A Body of Bastille Heroes, tolerably
complete, did get together;--comparable to the Argonauts; hoping to endure
like them. But in little more than a year, the whirlpool of things threw
them asunder again, and they sank. So many highest superlatives achieved
by man are followed by new higher; and dwindle into comparatives and
positives! The Siege of the Bastille, weighed with which, in the
Historical balance, most other sieges, including that of Troy Town, are
gossamer, cost, as we find, in killed and mortally wounded, on the part of
the Besiegers, some Eighty-three persons: on the part of the Besieged,
after all that straw-burning, fire-pumping, and deluge of musketry, One
poor solitary invalid, shot stone-dead (roide-mort) on the battlements;
(Dusaulx: Prise de la Bastille, p. 447, &c.;) The Bastille Fortress, like
the City of Jericho, was overturned by miraculous sound.
BOOK VI.
CONSOLIDATION
Chapter 1.6.I.
Make the Constitution.
Here perhaps is the place to fix, a little more precisely, what these two
words, French Revolution, shall mean; for, strictly considered, they may
have as many meanings as there are speakers of them. All things are in
revolution; in change from moment to moment, which becomes sensible from
epoch to epoch: in this Time-World of ours there is properly nothing else
but revolution and mutation, and even nothing else conceivable.
Revolution, you answer, means speedier change. Whereupon one has still to
ask: How speedy? At what degree of speed; in what particular points of
this variable course, which varies in velocity, but can never stop till
Time itself stops, does revolution begin and end; cease to be ordinary
mutation, and again become such? It is a thing that will depend on
definition more or less arbitrary.
For ourselves we answer that French Revolution means here the open violent
Rebellion, and Victory, of disimprisoned Anarchy against corrupt worn-out
Authority: how Anarchy breaks prison; bursts up from the infinite Deep,
and rages uncontrollable, immeasurable, enveloping a world; in phasis after
phasis of fever-frenzy;--'till the frenzy burning itself out, and what
elements of new Order it held (since all Force holds such) developing
themselves, the Uncontrollable be got, if not reimprisoned, yet harnessed,
and its mad forces made to work towards their object as sane regulated
ones. For as Hierarchies and Dynasties of all kinds, Theocracies,
Aristocracies, Autocracies, Strumpetocracies, have ruled over the world; so
it was appointed, in the decrees of Providence, that this same Victorious
Anarchy, Jacobinism, Sansculottism, French Revolution, Horrors of French
Revolution, or what else mortals name it, should have its turn. The
'destructive wrath' of Sansculottism: this is what we speak, having
unhappily no voice for singing.
Surely a great Phenomenon: nay it is a transcendental one, overstepping
all rules and experience; the crowning Phenomenon of our Modern Time. For
here again, most unexpectedly, comes antique Fanaticism in new and newest
vesture; miraculous, as all Fanaticism is. Call it the Fanaticism of
'making away with formulas, de humer les formulas.' The world of formulas,
the formed regulated world, which all habitable world is,--must needs hate
such Fanaticism like death; and be at deadly variance with it. The world
of formulas must conquer it; or failing that, must die execrating it,
anathematising it;--can nevertheless in nowise prevent its being and its
having been. The Anathemas are there, and the miraculous Thing is there.
Whence it cometh? Whither it goeth? These are questions! When the age of
Miracles lay faded into the distance as an incredible tradition, and even
the age of Conventionalities was now old; and Man's Existence had for long
generations rested on mere formulas which were grown hollow by course of
time; and it seemed as if no Reality any longer existed but only Phantasms
of realities, and God's Universe were the work of the Tailor and
Upholsterer mainly, and men were buckram masks that went about becking and
grimacing there,--on a sudden, the Earth yawns asunder, and amid Tartarean
smoke, and glare of fierce brightness, rises SANSCULOTTISM, many-headed,
fire-breathing, and asks: What think ye of me? Well may the buckram masks
start together, terror-struck; 'into expressive well-concerted groups!' It
is indeed, Friends, a most singular, most fatal thing. Let whosoever is
but buckram and a phantasm look to it: ill verily may it fare with him;
here methinks he cannot much longer be. Wo also to many a one who is not
wholly buckram, but partially real and human! The age of Miracles has come
back! 'Behold the World-Phoenix, in fire-consummation and fire-creation;
wide are her fanning wings; loud is her death-melody, of battle-thunders
and falling towns; skyward lashes the funeral flame, enveloping all things:
it is the Death-Birth of a World!'
Whereby, however, as we often say, shall one unspeakable blessing seem
attainable. This, namely: that Man and his Life rest no more on
hollowness and a Lie, but on solidity and some kind of Truth. Welcome, the
beggarliest truth, so it be one, in exchange for the royallest sham! Truth
of any kind breeds ever new and better truth; thus hard granite rock will
crumble down into soil, under the blessed skyey influences; and cover
itself with verdure, with fruitage and umbrage. But as for Falsehood,
which in like contrary manner, grows ever falser,--what can it, or what
should it do but decease, being ripe; decompose itself, gently or even
violently, and return to the Father of it,--too probably in flames of fire?
Sansculottism will burn much; but what is incombustible it will not burn.
Fear not Sansculottism; recognise it for what it is, the portentous,
inevitable end of much, the miraculous beginning of much. One other thing
thou mayest understand of it: that it too came from God; for has it not
been? From of old, as it is written, are His goings forth; in the great
Deep of things; fearful and wonderful now as in the beginning: in the
whirlwind also He speaks! and the wrath of men is made to praise Him.--But
to gauge and measure this immeasurable Thing, and what is called account
for it, and reduce it to a dead logic-formula, attempt not! Much less
shalt thou shriek thyself hoarse, cursing it; for that, to all needful
lengths, has been already done. As an actually existing Son of Time, look,
with unspeakable manifold interest, oftenest in silence, at what the Time
did bring: therewith edify, instruct, nourish thyself, or were it but to
amuse and gratify thyself, as it is given thee.
Another question which at every new turn will rise on us, requiring ever
new reply is this: Where the French Revolution specially is? In the
King's Palace, in his Majesty's or her Majesty's managements, and
maltreatments, cabals, imbecilities and woes, answer some few:--whom we do
not answer. In the National Assembly, answer a large mixed multitude: who
accordingly seat themselves in the Reporter's Chair; and therefrom noting
what Proclamations, Acts, Reports, passages of logic-fence, bursts of
parliamentary eloquence seem notable within doors, and what tumults and
rumours of tumult become audible from without,--produce volume on volume;
and, naming it History of the French Revolution, contentedly publish the
same. To do the like, to almost any extent, with so many Filed Newspapers,
Choix des Rapports, Histoires Parlementaires as there are, amounting to
many horseloads, were easy for us. Easy but unprofitable. The National
Assembly, named now Constituent Assembly, goes its course; making the
Constitution; but the French Revolution also goes its course.
In general, may we not say that the French Revolution lies in the heart and
head of every violent-speaking, of every violent-thinking French Man? How
the Twenty-five Millions of such, in their perplexed combination, acting
and counter-acting may give birth to events; which event successively is
the cardinal one; and from what point of vision it may best be surveyed:
this is a problem. Which problem the best insight, seeking light from all
possible sources, shifting its point of vision whithersoever vision or
glimpse of vision can be had, may employ itself in solving; and be well
content to solve in some tolerably approximate way.
As to the National Assembly, in so far as it still towers eminent over
France, after the manner of a car-borne Carroccio, though now no longer in
the van; and rings signals for retreat or for advance,--it is and continues
a reality among other realities. But in so far as it sits making the
Constitution, on the other hand, it is a fatuity and chimera mainly. Alas,
in the never so heroic building of Montesquieu-Mably card-castles, though
shouted over by the world, what interest is there? Occupied in that way,
an august National Assembly becomes for us little other than a Sanhedrim of
pedants, not of the gerund-grinding, yet of no fruitfuller sort; and its
loud debatings and recriminations about Rights of Man, Right of Peace and
War, Veto suspensif, Veto absolu, what are they but so many Pedant's-
curses, 'May God confound you for your Theory of Irregular Verbs!'
A Constitution can be built, Constitutions enough a la Sieyes: but the
frightful difficulty is that of getting men to come and live in them!
Could Sieyes have drawn thunder and lightning out of Heaven to sanction his
Constitution, it had been well: but without any thunder? Nay, strictly
considered, is it not still true that without some such celestial sanction,
given visibly in thunder or invisibly otherwise, no Constitution can in the
long run be worth much more than the waste-paper it is written on? The
Constitution, the set of Laws, or prescribed Habits of Acting, that men
will live under, is the one which images their Convictions,--their Faith as
to this wondrous Universe, and what rights, duties, capabilities they have
there; which stands sanctioned therefore, by Necessity itself, if not by a
seen Deity, then by an unseen one. Other laws, whereof there are always
enough ready-made, are usurpations; which men do not obey, but rebel
against, and abolish, by their earliest convenience.
The question of questions accordingly were, Who is it that especially for
rebellers and abolishers, can make a Constitution? He that can image forth
the general Belief when there is one; that can impart one when, as here,
there is none. A most rare man; ever as of old a god-missioned man! Here,
however, in defect of such transcendent supreme man, Time with its infinite
succession of merely superior men, each yielding his little contribution,
does much. Force likewise (for, as Antiquarian Philosophers teach, the
royal Sceptre was from the first something of a Hammer, to crack such heads
as could not be convinced) will all along find somewhat to do. And thus in
perpetual abolition and reparation, rending and mending, with struggle and
strife, with present evil and the hope and effort towards future good, must
the Constitution, as all human things do, build itself forward; or unbuild
itself, and sink, as it can and may. O Sieyes, and ye other Committeemen,
and Twelve Hundred miscellaneous individuals from all parts of France!
What is the Belief of France, and yours, if ye knew it? Properly that
there shall be no Belief; that all formulas be swallowed. The Constitution
which will suit that? Alas, too clearly, a No-Constitution, an Anarchy;--
which also, in due season, shall be vouchsafed you.
But, after all, what can an unfortunate National Assembly do? Consider
only this, that there are Twelve Hundred miscellaneous individuals; not a
unit of whom but has his own thinking-apparatus, his own speaking-
apparatus! In every unit of them is some belief and wish, different for
each, both that France should be regenerated, and also that he individually
should do it. Twelve Hundred separate Forces, yoked miscellaneously to any
object, miscellaneously to all sides of it; and bid pull for life!
Or is it the nature of National Assemblies generally to do, with endless
labour and clangour, Nothing? Are Representative Governments mostly at
bottom Tyrannies too! Shall we say, the Tyrants, the ambitious contentious
Persons, from all corners of the country do, in this manner, get gathered
into one place; and there, with motion and counter-motion, with jargon and
hubbub, cancel one another, like the fabulous Kilkenny Cats; and produce,
for net-result, zero;--the country meanwhile governing or guiding itself,
by such wisdom, recognised or for most part unrecognised, as may exist in
individual heads here and there?--Nay, even that were a great improvement:
for, of old, with their Guelf Factions and Ghibelline Factions, with their
Red Roses and White Roses, they were wont to cancel the whole country as
well. Besides they do it now in a much narrower cockpit; within the four
walls of their Assembly House, and here and there an outpost of Hustings
and Barrel-heads; do it with tongues too, not with swords:--all which
improvements, in the art of producing zero, are they not great? Nay, best
of all, some happy Continents (as the Western one, with its Savannahs,
where whosoever has four willing limbs finds food under his feet, and an
infinite sky over his head) can do without governing.--What Sphinx-
questions; which the distracted world, in these very generations, must
answer or die!
Chapter 1.6.II.
The Constituent Assembly.
One thing an elected Assembly of Twelve Hundred is fit for: Destroying.
Which indeed is but a more decided exercise of its natural talent for Doing
Nothing. Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will
destroy themselves.
So and not otherwise proved it with an august National Assembly. It took
the name, Constituent, as if its mission and function had been to construct
or build; which also, with its whole soul, it endeavoured to do: yet, in
the fates, in the nature of things, there lay for it precisely of all
functions the most opposite to that. Singular, what Gospels men will
believe; even Gospels according to Jean Jacques! It was the fixed Faith of
these National Deputies, as of all thinking Frenchmen, that the
Constitution could be made; that they, there and then, were called to make
it. How, with the toughness of Old Hebrews or Ishmaelite Moslem, did the
otherwise light unbelieving People persist in this their Credo quia
impossibile ; and front the armed world with it; and grow fanatic, and even
heroic, and do exploits by it! The Constituent Assembly's Constitution,
and several others, will, being printed and not manuscript, survive to
future generations, as an instructive well-nigh incredible document of the
Time: the most significant Picture of the then existing France; or at
lowest, Picture of these men's Picture of it.
But in truth and seriousness, what could the National Assembly have done?
The thing to be done was, actually as they said, to regenerate France; to
abolish the old France, and make a new one; quietly or forcibly, by
concession or by violence, this, by the Law of Nature, has become
inevitable. With what degree of violence, depends on the wisdom of those
that preside over it. With perfect wisdom on the part of the National
Assembly, it had all been otherwise; but whether, in any wise, it could
have been pacific, nay other than bloody and convulsive, may still be a
question.
Grant, meanwhile, that this Constituent Assembly does to the last continue
to be something. With a sigh, it sees itself incessantly forced away from
its infinite divine task, of perfecting 'the Theory of Irregular Verbs,'--
to finite terrestrial tasks, which latter have still a significance for us.
It is the cynosure of revolutionary France, this National Assembly. All
work of Government has fallen into its hands, or under its control; all men
look to it for guidance. In the middle of that huge Revolt of Twenty-five
millions, it hovers always aloft as Carroccio or Battle-Standard, impelling
and impelled, in the most confused way; if it cannot give much guidance, it
will still seem to give some. It emits pacificatory Proclamations, not a
few; with more or with less result. It authorises the enrolment of
National Guards,--lest Brigands come to devour us, and reap the unripe
crops. It sends missions to quell 'effervescences;' to deliver men from
the Lanterne. It can listen to congratulatory Addresses, which arrive
daily by the sackful; mostly in King Cambyses' vein: also to Petitions and
complaints from all mortals; so that every mortal's complaint, if it cannot
get redressed, may at least hear itself complain. For the rest, an august
National Assembly can produce Parliamentary Eloquence; and appoint
Committees. Committees of the Constitution, of Reports, of Researches; and
of much else: which again yield mountains of Printed Paper; the theme of
new Parliamentary Eloquence, in bursts, or in plenteous smooth-flowing
floods. And so, from the waste vortex whereon all things go whirling and
grinding, Organic Laws, or the similitude of such, slowly emerge.
With endless debating, we get the Rights of Man written down and
promulgated: true paper basis of all paper Constitutions. Neglecting, cry
the opponents, to declare the Duties of Man! Forgetting, answer we, to
ascertain the Mights of Man;--one of the fatalest omissions!--Nay,
sometimes, as on the Fourth of August, our National Assembly, fired
suddenly by an almost preternatural enthusiasm, will get through whole
masses of work in one night. A memorable night, this Fourth of August:
Dignitaries temporal and spiritual; Peers, Archbishops, Parlement-
Presidents, each outdoing the other in patriotic devotedness, come
successively to throw their (untenable) possessions on the 'altar of the
fatherland.' With louder and louder vivats, for indeed it is 'after
dinner' too,--they abolish Tithes, Seignorial Dues, Gabelle, excessive
Preservation of Game; nay Privilege, Immunity, Feudalism root and branch;
then appoint a Te Deum for it; and so, finally, disperse about three in the
morning, striking the stars with their sublime heads. Such night,
unforeseen but for ever memorable, was this of the Fourth of August 1789.
Miraculous, or semi-miraculous, some seem to think it. A new Night of
Pentecost, shall we say, shaped according to the new Time, and new Church
of Jean Jacques Rousseau? It had its causes; also its effects.
In such manner labour the National Deputies; perfecting their Theory of
Irregular Verbs; governing France, and being governed by it; with toil and
noise;--cutting asunder ancient intolerable bonds; and, for new ones,
assiduously spinning ropes of sand. Were their labours a nothing or a
something, yet the eyes of all France being reverently fixed on them,
History can never very long leave them altogether out of sight.
For the present, if we glance into that Assembly Hall of theirs, it will be
found, as is natural, 'most irregular.' As many as 'a hundred members are
on their feet at once;' no rule in making motions, or only commencements of
a rule; Spectators' Gallery allowed to applaud, and even to hiss; (Arthur
Young, i. 111.) President, appointed once a fortnight, raising many times
no serene head above the waves. Nevertheless, as in all human Assemblages,
like does begin arranging itself to like; the perennial rule, Ubi homines
sunt modi sunt, proves valid. Rudiments of Methods disclose themselves;
rudiments of Parties. There is a Right Side (Cote Droit), a Left Side
(Cote Gauche); sitting on M. le President's right hand, or on his left:
the Cote Droit conservative; the Cote Gauche destructive. Intermediate is
Anglomaniac Constitutionalism, or Two-Chamber Royalism; with its Mouniers,
its Lallys,--fast verging towards nonentity. Preeminent, on the Right
Side, pleads and perorates Cazales, the Dragoon-captain, eloquent, mildly
fervent; earning for himself the shadow of a name. There also blusters
Barrel-Mirabeau, the Younger Mirabeau, not without wit: dusky d'Espremenil
does nothing but sniff and ejaculate; might, it is fondly thought, lay
prostrate the Elder Mirabeau himself, would he but try, (Biographie
Universelle, para D'Espremenil (by Beaulieu).)--which he does not. Last
and greatest, see, for one moment, the Abbe Maury; with his jesuitic eyes,
his impassive brass face, 'image of all the cardinal sins.' Indomitable,
unquenchable, he fights jesuitico-rhetorically; with toughest lungs and
heart; for Throne, especially for Altar and Tithes. So that a shrill voice
exclaims once, from the Gallery: "Messieurs of the Clergy, you have to be
shaved; if you wriggle too much, you will get cut." (Dictionnaire des
Hommes Marquans, ii. 519.)
The Left side is also called the d'Orleans side; and sometimes derisively,
the Palais Royal. And yet, so confused, real-imaginary seems everything,
'it is doubtful,' as Mirabeau said, 'whether d'Orleans himself belong to
that same d'Orleans Party.' What can be known and seen is, that his moon-
visage does beam forth from that point of space. There likewise sits
seagreen Robespierre; throwing in his light weight, with decision, not yet
with effect. A thin lean Puritan and Precisian; he would make away with
formulas; yet lives, moves, and has his being, wholly in formulas, of
another sort. 'Peuple,' such according to Robespierre ought to be the
Royal method of promulgating laws, 'Peuple, this is the Law I have framed
for thee; dost thou accept it?'--answered from Right Side, from Centre and
Left, by inextinguishable laughter. (Moniteur, No. 67 (in Hist.Parl.).)
Yet men of insight discern that the Seagreen may by chance go far: "this
man," observes Mirabeau, "will do somewhat; he believes every word he
says."
Abbe Sieyes is busy with mere Constitutional work: wherein, unluckily,
fellow-workmen are less pliable than, with one who has completed the
Science of Polity, they ought to be. Courage, Sieyes nevertheless! Some
twenty months of heroic travail, of contradiction from the stupid, and the
Constitution shall be built; the top-stone of it brought out with
shouting,--say rather, the top-paper, for it is all Paper; and thou hast
done in it what the Earth or the Heaven could require, thy utmost. Note
likewise this Trio; memorable for several things; memorable were it only
that their history is written in an epigram: 'whatsoever these Three have
in hand,' it is said, 'Duport thinks it, Barnave speaks it, Lameth does
it.' (See Toulongeon, i. c. 3.)
But royal Mirabeau? Conspicuous among all parties, raised above and beyond
them all, this man rises more and more. As we often say, he has an eye, he
is a reality; while others are formulas and eye-glasses. In the Transient
he will detect the Perennial, find some firm footing even among Paper-
vortexes. His fame is gone forth to all lands; it gladdened the heart of
the crabbed old Friend of Men himself before he died. The very Postilions
of inns have heard of Mirabeau: when an impatient Traveller complains that
the team is insufficient, his Postilion answers, "Yes, Monsieur, the
wheelers are weak; but my mirabeau (main horse), you see, is a right one,
mais mon mirabeau est excellent." (Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p.
255.)
And now, Reader, thou shalt quit this noisy Discrepancy of a National
Assembly; not (if thou be of humane mind) without pity. Twelve Hundred
brother men are there, in the centre of Twenty-five Millions; fighting so
fiercely with Fate and with one another; struggling their lives out, as
most sons of Adam do, for that which profiteth not. Nay, on the whole, it
is admitted further to be very dull. "Dull as this day's Assembly," said
some one. "Why date, Pourquoi dater?" answered Mirabeau.
Consider that they are Twelve Hundred; that they not only speak, but read
their speeches; and even borrow and steal speeches to read! With Twelve
Hundred fluent speakers, and their Noah's Deluge of vociferous commonplace,
unattainable silence may well seem the one blessing of Life. But figure
Twelve Hundred pamphleteers; droning forth perpetual pamphlets: and no man
to gag them! Neither, as in the American Congress, do the arrangements
seem perfect. A Senator has not his own Desk and Newspaper here; of
Tobacco (much less of Pipes) there is not the slightest provision.
Conversation itself must be transacted in a low tone, with continual
interruption: only 'pencil Notes' circulate freely; 'in incredible numbers
to the foot of the very tribune.' (See Dumont (pp. 159-67); Arthur Young,
&c.;)--Such work is it, regenerating a Nation; perfecting one's Theory of
Irregular Verbs!
Chapter 1.6.III.
The General Overturn.
Of the King's Court, for the present, there is almost nothing whatever to
be said. Silent, deserted are these halls; Royalty languishes forsaken of
its war-god and all its hopes, till once the Oeil-de-Boeuf rally again.
The sceptre is departed from King Louis; is gone over to the Salles des
Menus, to the Paris Townhall, or one knows not whither. In the July days,
while all ears were yet deafened by the crash of the Bastille, and
Ministers and Princes were scattered to the four winds, it seemed as if the
very Valets had grown heavy of hearing. Besenval, also in flight towards
Infinite Space, but hovering a little at Versailles, was addressing his
Majesty personally for an Order about post-horses; when, lo, 'the Valet in
waiting places himself familiarly between his Majesty and me,' stretching
out his rascal neck to learn what it was! His Majesty, in sudden choler,
whirled round; made a clutch at the tongs: 'I gently prevented him; he
grasped my hand in thankfulness; and I noticed tears in his eyes.'
(Besenval, iii. 419.)
Poor King; for French Kings also are men! Louis Fourteenth himself once
clutched the tongs, and even smote with them; but then it was at Louvois,
and Dame Maintenon ran up.--The Queen sits weeping in her inner apartments,
surrounded by weak women: she is 'at the height of unpopularity;'
universally regarded as the evil genius of France. Her friends and
familiar counsellors have all fled; and fled, surely, on the foolishest
errand. The Chateau Polignac still frowns aloft, on its 'bold and
enormous' cubical rock, amid the blooming champaigns, amid the blue
girdling mountains of Auvergne: (Arthur Young, i. 165.) but no Duke and
Duchess Polignac look forth from it; they have fled, they have 'met Necker
at Bale;' they shall not return. That France should see her Nobles resist
the Irresistible, Inevitable, with the face of angry men, was unhappy, not
unexpected: but with the face and sense of pettish children? This was her
peculiarity. They understood nothing; would understand nothing. Does not,
at this hour, a new Polignac, first-born of these Two, sit reflective in
the Castle of Ham; (A.D. 1835.) in an astonishment he will never recover
from; the most confused of existing mortals?
King Louis has his new Ministry: mere Popularities; Old-President
Pompignan; Necker, coming back in triumph; and other such. (Montgaillard,
ii. 108.) But what will it avail him? As was said, the sceptre, all but
the wooden gilt sceptre, has departed elsewhither. Volition, determination
is not in this man: only innocence, indolence; dependence on all persons
but himself, on all circumstances but the circumstances he were lord of.
So troublous internally is our Versailles and its work. Beautiful, if seen
from afar, resplendent like a Sun; seen near at hand, a mere Sun's-
Atmosphere, hiding darkness, confused ferment of ruin!
But over France, there goes on the indisputablest 'destruction of
formulas;' transaction of realities that follow therefrom. So many
millions of persons, all gyved, and nigh strangled, with formulas; whose
Life nevertheless, at least the digestion and hunger of it, was real
enough! Heaven has at length sent an abundant harvest; but what profits it
the poor man, when Earth with her formulas interposes? Industry, in these
times of Insurrection, must needs lie dormant; capital, as usual, not
circulating, but stagnating timorously in nooks. The poor man is short of
work, is therefore short of money; nay even had he money, bread is not to
be bought for it. Were it plotting of Aristocrats, plotting of d'Orleans;
were it Brigands, preternatural terror, and the clang of Phoebus Apollo's
silver bow,--enough, the markets are scarce of grain, plentiful only in
tumult. Farmers seem lazy to thresh;--being either 'bribed;' or needing no
bribe, with prices ever rising, with perhaps rent itself no longer so
pressing. Neither, what is singular, do municipal enactments, 'That along
with so many measures of wheat you shall sell so many of rye,' and other
the like, much mend the matter. Dragoons with drawn swords stand ranked
among the corn-sacks, often more dragoons than sacks. (Arthur Young, i.
129, &c.;) Meal-mobs abound; growing into mobs of a still darker quality.
Starvation has been known among the French Commonalty before this; known
and familiar. Did we not see them, in the year 1775, presenting, in sallow
faces, in wretchedness and raggedness, their Petition of Grievances; and,
for answer, getting a brand-new Gallows forty feet high? Hunger and
Darkness, through long years! For look back on that earlier Paris Riot,
when a Great Personage, worn out by debauchery, was believed to be in want
of Blood-baths; and Mothers, in worn raiment, yet with living hearts under
it, 'filled the public places' with their wild Rachel-cries,--stilled also
by the Gallows. Twenty years ago, the Friend of Men (preaching to the
deaf) described the Limousin Peasants as wearing a pain-stricken (souffre-
douleur) look, a look past complaint, 'as if the oppression of the great
were like the hail and the thunder, a thing irremediable, the ordinance of
Nature.' (Fils Adoptif: Memoires de Mirabeau, i. 364-394.) And now, if
in some great hour, the shock of a falling Bastille should awaken you; and
it were found to be the ordinance of Art merely; and remediable,
reversible!
Or has the Reader forgotten that 'flood of savages,' which, in sight of the
same Friend of Men, descended from the mountains at Mont d'Or? Lank-haired
haggard faces; shapes rawboned, in high sabots; in woollen jupes, with
leather girdles studded with copper-nails! They rocked from foot to foot,
and beat time with their elbows too, as the quarrel and battle which was
not long in beginning went on; shouting fiercely; the lank faces distorted
into the similitude of a cruel laugh. For they were darkened and hardened:
long had they been the prey of excise-men and tax-men; of 'clerks with the
cold spurt of their pen.' It was the fixed prophecy of our old Marquis,
which no man would listen to, that 'such Government by Blind-man's-buff,
stumbling along too far, would end by the General Overturn, the Culbute
Generale!'
No man would listen, each went his thoughtless way;--and Time and Destiny
also travelled on. The Government by Blind-man's-buff, stumbling along,
has reached the precipice inevitable for it. Dull Drudgery, driven on, by
clerks with the cold dastard spurt of their pen, has been driven--into a
Communion of Drudges! For now, moreover, there have come the strangest
confused tidings; by Paris Journals with their paper wings; or still more
portentous, where no Journals are, (See Arthur Young, i. 137, 150, &c.;) by
rumour and conjecture: Oppression not inevitable; a Bastille prostrate,
and the Constitution fast getting ready! Which Constitution, if it be
something and not nothing, what can it be but bread to eat?
The Traveller, 'walking up hill bridle in hand,' overtakes 'a poor woman;'
the image, as such commonly are, of drudgery and scarcity; 'looking sixty
years of age, though she is not yet twenty-eight.' They have seven
children, her poor drudge and she: a farm, with one cow, which helps to
make the children soup; also one little horse, or garron. They have rents
and quit-rents, Hens to pay to this Seigneur, Oat-sacks to that; King's
taxes, Statute-labour, Church-taxes, taxes enough;--and think the times
inexpressible. She has heard that somewhere, in some manner, something is
to be done for the poor: "God send it soon; for the dues and taxes crush
us down (nous ecrasent)!" (Ibid. i. 134.)
Fair prophecies are spoken, but they are not fulfilled. There have been
Notables, Assemblages, turnings out and comings in. Intriguing and
manoeuvring; Parliamentary eloquence and arguing, Greek meeting Greek in
high places, has long gone on; yet still bread comes not. The harvest is
reaped and garnered; yet still we have no bread. Urged by despair and by
hope, what can Drudgery do, but rise, as predicted, and produce the General
Overturn?
Fancy, then, some Five full-grown Millions of such gaunt figures, with
their haggard faces (figures haves); in woollen jupes, with copper-studded
leather girths, and high sabots,--starting up to ask, as in forest-
roarings, their washed Upper-Classes, after long unreviewed centuries,
virtually this question: How have ye treated us; how have ye taught us,
fed us, and led us, while we toiled for you? The answer can be read in
flames, over the nightly summer sky. This is the feeding and leading we
have had of you: EMPTINESS,--of pocket, of stomach, of head, and of heart.
Behold there is nothing in us; nothing but what Nature gives her wild
children of the desert: Ferocity and Appetite; Strength grounded on
Hunger. Did ye mark among your Rights of Man, that man was not to die of
starvation, while there was bread reaped by him? It is among the Mights of
Man.
Seventy-two Chateaus have flamed aloft in the Maconnais and Beaujolais
alone: this seems the centre of the conflagration; but it has spread over
Dauphine, Alsace, the Lyonnais; the whole South-East is in a blaze. All
over the North, from Rouen to Metz, disorder is abroad: smugglers of salt
go openly in armed bands: the barriers of towns are burnt; toll-gatherers,
tax-gatherers, official persons put to flight. 'It was thought,' says
Young, 'the people, from hunger, would revolt;' and we see they have done
it. Desperate Lackalls, long prowling aimless, now finding hope in
desperation itself, everywhere form a nucleus. They ring the Church bell
by way of tocsin: and the Parish turns out to the work. (See Hist. Parl.
ii. 243-6.) Ferocity, atrocity; hunger and revenge: such work as we can
imagine!
Ill stands it now with the Seigneur, who, for example, 'has walled up the
only Fountain of the Township;' who has ridden high on his chartier and
parchments; who has preserved Game not wisely but too well. Churches also,
and Canonries, are sacked, without mercy; which have shorn the flock too
close, forgetting to feed it. Wo to the land over which Sansculottism, in
its day of vengeance, tramps roughshod,--shod in sabots! Highbred
Seigneurs, with their delicate women and little ones, had to 'fly half-
naked,' under cloud of night; glad to escape the flames, and even worse.
You meet them at the tables-d'hote of inns; making wise reflections or
foolish that 'rank is destroyed;' uncertain whither they shall now wend.
(See Young, i. 149, &c.;) The metayer will find it convenient to be slack
in paying rent. As for the Tax-gatherer, he, long hunting as a biped of
prey, may now get hunted as one; his Majesty's Exchequer will not 'fill up
the Deficit,' this season: it is the notion of many that a Patriot
Majesty, being the Restorer of French Liberty, has abolished most taxes,
though, for their private ends, some men make a secret of it.
Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophecy; whither all Delusions
are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion has now arrived. For
if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no
Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time
to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written
down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast,
advance incessantly towards their hour. 'The sign of a Grand Seigneur
being landlord,' says the vehement plain-spoken Arthur Young, 'are wastes,
landes, deserts, ling: go to his residence, you will find it in the middle
of a forest, peopled with deer, wild boars and wolves. The fields are
scenes of pitiable management, as the houses are of misery. To see so many
millions of hands, that would be industrious, all idle and starving: Oh,
if I were legislator of France, for one day, I would make these great lords
skip again!' (Arthur Young, i. 12, 48, 84, &c.;) O Arthur, thou now
actually beholdest them skip:--wilt thou grow to grumble at that too?
For long years and generations it lasted, but the time came. Featherbrain,
whom no reasoning and no pleading could touch, the glare of the firebrand
had to illuminate: there remained but that method. Consider it, look at
it! The widow is gathering nettles for her children's dinner; a perfumed
Seigneur, delicately lounging in the Oeil-de-Boeuf, has an alchemy whereby
he will extract from her the third nettle, and name it Rent and Law: such
an arrangement must end. Ought it? But, O most fearful is such an ending!
Let those, to whom God, in His great mercy, has granted time and space,
prepare another and milder one.
To women it is a matter of wonder that the Seigneurs did not do something
to help themselves; say, combine, and arm: for there were a 'hundred and
fifty thousand of them,' all violent enough. Unhappily, a hundred and
fifty thousand, scattered over wide Provinces, divided by mutual ill-will,
cannot combine. The highest Seigneurs, as we have seen, had already
emigrated,--with a view of putting France to the blush. Neither are arms
now the peculiar property of Seigneurs; but of every mortal who has ten
shillings, wherewith to buy a secondhand firelock.
Besides, those starving Peasants, after all, have not four feet and claws,
that you could keep them down permanently in that manner. They are not
even of black colour; they are mere Unwashed Seigneurs; and a Seigneur too
has human bowels!--The Seigneurs did what they could; enrolled in National
Guards; fled, with shrieks, complaining to Heaven and Earth. One Seigneur,
famed Memmay of Quincey, near Vesoul, invited all the rustics of his
neighbourhood to a banquet; blew up his Chateau and them with gunpowder;
and instantaneously vanished, no man yet knows whither. (Hist. Parl. ii.
161.) Some half dozen years after, he came back; and demonstrated that it
was by accident.
Nor are the authorities idle: though unluckily, all Authorities,
Municipalities and such like, are in the uncertain transitionary state;
getting regenerated from old Monarchic to new Democratic; no Official yet
knows clearly what he is. Nevertheless, Mayors old or new do gather
Marechaussees, National Guards, Troops of the line; justice, of the most
summary sort, is not wanting. The Electoral Committee of Macon, though but
a Committee, goes the length of hanging, for its own behoof, as many as
twenty. The Prevot of Dauphine traverses the country 'with a movable
column,' with tipstaves, gallows-ropes; for gallows any tree will serve,
and suspend its culprit, or 'thirteen' culprits.
Unhappy country! How is the fair gold-and-green of the ripe bright Year
defaced with horrid blackness: black ashes of Chateaus, black bodies of
gibetted Men! Industry has ceased in it; not sounds of the hammer and saw,
but of the tocsin and alarm-drum. The sceptre has departed, whither one
knows not;--breaking itself in pieces: here impotent, there tyrannous.
National Guards are unskilful, and of doubtful purpose; Soldiers are
inclined to mutiny: there is danger that they two may quarrel, danger that
they may agree. Strasburg has seen riots: a Townhall torn to shreds, its
archives scattered white on the winds; drunk soldiers embracing drunk
citizens for three days, and Mayor Dietrich and Marshal Rochambeau reduced
nigh to desperation. (Arthur Young, i. 141.--Dampmartin: Evenemens qui se
sont passes sous mes yeux, i. 105-127.)
Through the middle of all which phenomena, is seen, on his triumphant
transit, 'escorted,' through Befort for instance, 'by fifty National
Horsemen and all the military music of the place,'--M. Necker, returning
from Bale! Glorious as the meridian; though poor Necker himself partly
guesses whither it is leading. (Biographie Universelle, para Necker (by
Lally-Tollendal).) One highest culminating day, at the Paris Townhall;
with immortal vivats, with wife and daughter kneeling publicly to kiss his
hand; with Besenval's pardon granted,--but indeed revoked before sunset:
one highest day, but then lower days, and ever lower, down even to lowest!
Such magic is in a name; and in the want of a name. Like some enchanted
Mambrino's Helmet, essential to victory, comes this 'Saviour of France;'
beshouted, becymballed by the world:--alas, so soon, to be disenchanted, to
be pitched shamefully over the lists as a Barber's Bason! Gibbon 'could
wish to shew him' (in this ejected, Barber's-Bason state) to any man of
solidity, who were minded to have the soul burnt out of him, and become a
caput mortuum, by Ambition, unsuccessful or successful. (Gibbon's
Letters.)
Another small phasis we add, and no more: how, in the Autumn months, our
sharp-tempered Arthur has been 'pestered for some days past,' by shot,
lead-drops and slugs, 'rattling five or six times into my chaise and about
my ears;' all the mob of the country gone out to kill game! (Young, i.
176.) It is even so. On the Cliffs of Dover, over all the Marches of
France, there appear, this autumn, two Signs on the Earth: emigrant
flights of French Seigneurs; emigrant winged flights of French Game!
Finished, one may say, or as good as finished, is the Preservation of Game
on this Earth; completed for endless Time. What part it had to play in the
History of Civilisation is played plaudite; exeat!
In this manner does Sansculottism blaze up, illustrating many things;--
producing, among the rest, as we saw, on the Fourth of August, that semi-
miraculous Night of Pentecost in the National Assembly; semi miraculous,
which had its causes, and its effects. Feudalism is struck dead; not on
parchment only, and by ink; but in very fact, by fire; say, by self-
combustion. This conflagration of the South-East will abate; will be got
scattered, to the West, or elsewhither: extinguish it will not, till the
fuel be all done.
Chapter 1.6.IV.
In Queue.
If we look now at Paris, one thing is too evident: that the Baker's shops
have got their Queues, or Tails; their long strings of purchasers, arranged
in tail, so that the first come be the first served,--were the shop once
open! This waiting in tail, not seen since the early days of July, again
makes its appearance in August. In time, we shall see it perfected by
practice to the rank almost of an art; and the art, or quasi-art, of
standing in tail become one of the characteristics of the Parisian People,
distinguishing them from all other Peoples whatsoever.
But consider, while work itself is so scarce, how a man must not only
realise money; but stand waiting (if his wife is too weak to wait and
struggle) for half days in the Tail, till he get it changed for dear bad
bread! Controversies, to the length, sometimes of blood and battery, must
arise in these exasperated Queues. Or if no controversy, then it is but
one accordant Pange Lingua of complaint against the Powers that be. France
has begun her long Curriculum of Hungering, instructive and productive
beyond Academic Curriculums; which extends over some seven most strenuous
years. As Jean Paul says, of his own Life, 'to a great height shall the
business of Hungering go.'
Or consider, in strange contrast, the jubilee Ceremonies; for, in general,
the aspect of Paris presents these two features: jubilee ceremonials and
scarcity of victual. Processions enough walk in jubilee; of Young Women,
decked and dizened, their ribands all tricolor; moving with song and tabor,
to the Shrine of Sainte Genevieve, to thank her that the Bastille is down.
The Strong Men of the Market, and the Strong Women, fail not with their
bouquets and speeches. Abbe Fauchet, famed in such work (for Abbe Lefevre
could only distribute powder) blesses tricolor cloth for the National
Guard; and makes it a National Tricolor Flag; victorious, or to be
victorious, in the cause of civil and religious liberty all over the world.
Fauchet, we say, is the man for Te-Deums, and public Consecrations;--to
which, as in this instance of the Flag, our National Guard will 'reply with
volleys of musketry,' Church and Cathedral though it be; (See Hist. Parl.
iii. 20; Mercier, Nouveau Paris, &c.;) filling Notre Dame with such noisiest
fuliginous Amen, significant of several things.
On the whole, we will say our new Mayor Bailly; our new Commander
Lafayette, named also 'Scipio-Americanus,' have bought their preferment
dear. Bailly rides in gilt state-coach, with beefeaters and sumptuosity;
Camille Desmoulins, and others, sniffing at him for it: Scipio bestrides
the 'white charger,' and waves with civic plumes in sight of all France.
Neither of them, however, does it for nothing; but, in truth, at an
exorbitant rate. At this rate, namely: of feeding Paris, and keeping it
from fighting. Out of the City-funds, some seventeen thousand of the
utterly destitute are employed digging on Montmartre, at tenpence a day,
which buys them, at market price, almost two pounds of bad bread;--they
look very yellow, when Lafayette goes to harangue them. The Townhall is in
travail, night and day; it must bring forth Bread, a Municipal
Constitution, regulations of all kinds, curbs on the Sansculottic Press;
above all, Bread, Bread.
Purveyors prowl the country far and wide, with the appetite of lions;
detect hidden grain, purchase open grain; by gentle means or forcible, must
and will find grain. A most thankless task; and so difficult, so
dangerous,--even if a man did gain some trifle by it! On the 19th August,
there is food for one day. (See Bailly, Memoires, ii. 137-409.)
Complaints there are that the food is spoiled, and produces an effect on
the intestines: not corn but plaster-of-Paris! Which effect on the
intestines, as well as that 'smarting in the throat and palate,' a Townhall
Proclamation warns you to disregard, or even to consider as drastic-
beneficial. The Mayor of Saint-Denis, so black was his bread, has, by a
dyspeptic populace, been hanged on the Lanterne there. National Guards
protect the Paris Corn-Market: first ten suffice; then six hundred.
(Hist. Parl. ii. 421.) Busy are ye, Bailly, Brissot de Warville,
Condorcet, and ye others!
For, as just hinted, there is a Municipal Constitution to be made too. The
old Bastille Electors, after some ten days of psalmodying over their
glorious victory, began to hear it asked, in a splenetic tone, Who put you
there? They accordingly had to give place, not without moanings, and
audible growlings on both sides, to a new larger Body, specially elected
for that post. Which new Body, augmented, altered, then fixed finally at
the number of Three Hundred, with the title of Town Representatives
(Representans de la Commune), now sits there; rightly portioned into
Committees; assiduous making a Constitution; at all moments when not
seeking flour.
And such a Constitution; little short of miraculous: one that shall
'consolidate the Revolution'! The Revolution is finished, then? Mayor
Bailly and all respectable friends of Freedom would fain think so. Your
Revolution, like jelly sufficiently boiled, needs only to be poured into
shapes, of Constitution, and 'consolidated' therein? Could it, indeed,
contrive to cool; which last, however, is precisely the doubtful thing, or
even the not doubtful!
Unhappy friends of Freedom; consolidating a Revolution! They must sit at
work there, their pavilion spread on very Chaos; between two hostile
worlds, the Upper Court-world, the Nether Sansculottic one; and, beaten on
by both, toil painfully, perilously,--doing, in sad literal earnest, 'the
impossible.'
Chapter 1.6.V.
The Fourth Estate.
Pamphleteering opens its abysmal throat wider and wider: never to close
more. Our Philosophes, indeed, rather withdraw; after the manner of
Marmontel, 'retiring in disgust the first day.' Abbe Raynal, grown gray
and quiet in his Marseilles domicile, is little content with this work; the
last literary act of the man will again be an act of rebellion: an
indignant Letter to the Constituent Assembly; answered by 'the order of the
day.' Thus also Philosophe Morellet puckers discontented brows; being
indeed threatened in his benefices by that Fourth of August: it is clearly
going too far. How astonishing that those 'haggard figures in woollen
jupes' would not rest as satisfied with Speculation, and victorious
Analysis, as we!
Alas, yes: Speculation, Philosophism, once the ornament and wealth of the
saloon, will now coin itself into mere Practical Propositions, and
circulate on street and highway, universally; with results! A Fourth
Estate, of Able Editors, springs up; increases and multiplies;
irrepressible, incalculable. New Printers, new Journals, and ever new (so
prurient is the world), let our Three Hundred curb and consolidate as they
can! Loustalot, under the wing of Prudhomme dull-blustering Printer, edits
weekly his Revolutions de Paris; in an acrid, emphatic manner. Acrid,
corrosive, as the spirit of sloes and copperas, is Marat, Friend of the
People; struck already with the fact that the National Assembly, so full of
Aristocrats, 'can do nothing,' except dissolve itself, and make way for a
better; that the Townhall Representatives are little other than babblers
and imbeciles, if not even knaves. Poor is this man; squalid, and dwells
in garrets; a man unlovely to the sense, outward and inward; a man forbid;-
-and is becoming fanatical, possessed with fixed-idea. Cruel lusus of
Nature! Did Nature, O poor Marat, as in cruel sport, knead thee out of her
leavings, and miscellaneous waste clay; and fling thee forth stepdamelike,
a Distraction into this distracted Eighteenth Century? Work is appointed
thee there; which thou shalt do. The Three Hundred have summoned and will
again summon Marat: but always he croaks forth answer sufficient; always
he will defy them, or elude them; and endure no gag.
Carra, 'Ex-secretary of a decapitated Hospodar,' and then of a Necklace-
Cardinal; likewise pamphleteer, Adventurer in many scenes and lands,--draws
nigh to Mercier, of the Tableau de Paris; and, with foam on his lips,
proposes an Annales Patriotiques. The Moniteur goes its prosperous way;
Barrere 'weeps,' on Paper as yet loyal; Rivarol, Royou are not idle. Deep
calls to deep: your Domine Salvum Fac Regem shall awaken Pange Lingua;
with an Ami-du-Peuple there is a King's-Friend Newspaper, Ami-du-Roi.
Camille Desmoulins has appointed himself Procureur-General de la Lanterne,
Attorney-General of the Lamp-iron; and pleads, not with atrocity, under an
atrocious title; editing weekly his brilliant Revolutions of Paris and
Brabant. Brilliant, we say: for if, in that thick murk of Journalism,
with its dull blustering, with its fixed or loose fury, any ray of genius
greet thee, be sure it is Camille's. The thing that Camille teaches he,
with his light finger, adorns: brightness plays, gentle, unexpected, amid
horrible confusions; often is the word of Camille worth reading, when no
other's is. Questionable Camille, how thou glitterest with a fallen,
rebellious, yet still semi-celestial light; as is the star-light on the
brow of Lucifer! Son of the Morning, into what times and what lands, art
thou fallen!
But in all things is good;--though not good for 'consolidating
Revolutions.' Thousand wagon-loads of this Pamphleteering and Newspaper
matter, lie rotting slowly in the Public Libraries of our Europe. Snatched
from the great gulf, like oysters by bibliomaniac pearl-divers, there must
they first rot, then what was pearl, in Camille or others, may be seen as
such, and continue as such.
Nor has public speaking declined, though Lafayette and his Patrols look
sour on it. Loud always is the Palais Royal, loudest the Cafe de Foy; such
a miscellany of Citizens and Citizenesses circulating there. 'Now and
then,' according to Camille, 'some Citizens employ the liberty of the press
for a private purpose; so that this or the other Patriot finds himself
short of his watch or pocket-handkerchief!' But, for the rest, in
Camille's opinion, nothing can be a livelier image of the Roman Forum. 'A
Patriot proposes his motion; if it finds any supporters, they make him
mount on a chair, and speak. If he is applauded, he prospers and redacts;
if he is hissed, he goes his ways.' Thus they, circulating and perorating.
Tall shaggy Marquis Saint-Huruge, a man that has had losses, and has
deserved them, is seen eminent, and also heard. 'Bellowing' is the
character of his voice, like that of a Bull of Bashan; voice which drowns
all voices, which causes frequently the hearts of men to leap. Cracked or
half-cracked is this tall Marquis's head; uncracked are his lungs; the
cracked and the uncracked shall alike avail him.
Consider further that each of the Forty-eight Districts has its own
Committee; speaking and motioning continually; aiding in the search for
grain, in the search for a Constitution; checking and spurring the poor
Three Hundred of the Townhall. That Danton, with a 'voice reverberating
from the domes,' is President of the Cordeliers District; which has already
become a Goshen of Patriotism. That apart from the 'seventeen thousand
utterly necessitous, digging on Montmartre,' most of whom, indeed, have got
passes, and been dismissed into Space 'with four shillings,'--there is a
strike, or union, of Domestics out of place; who assemble for public
speaking: next, a strike of Tailors, for even they will strike and speak;
further, a strike of Journeymen Cordwainers; a strike of Apothecaries: so
dear is bread. (Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 359, 417, 423.) All these,
having struck, must speak; generally under the open canopy; and pass
resolutions;--Lafayette and his Patrols watching them suspiciously from the
distance.
Unhappy mortals: such tugging and lugging, and throttling of one another,
to divide, in some not intolerable way, the joint Felicity of man in this
Earth; when the whole lot to be divided is such a 'feast of shells!'--
Diligent are the Three Hundred; none equals Scipio Americanus in dealing
with mobs. But surely all these things bode ill for the consolidating of a
Revolution.
BOOK VII.
THE INSURRECTION OF WOMEN
Chapter 1.7.I.
Patrollotism.
No, Friends, this Revolution is not of the consolidating kind. Do not
fires, fevers, sown seeds, chemical mixtures, men, events; all embodiments
of Force that work in this miraculous Complex of Forces, named Universe,--
go on growing, through their natural phases and developments, each
according to its kind; reach their height, reach their visible decline;
finally sink under, vanishing, and what we call die? They all grow; there
is nothing but what grows, and shoots forth into its special expansion,--
once give it leave to spring. Observe too that each grows with a rapidity
proportioned, in general, to the madness and unhealthiness there is in it:
slow regular growth, though this also ends in death, is what we name health
and sanity.
A Sansculottism, which has prostrated Bastilles, which has got pike and
musket, and now goes burning Chateaus, passing resolutions and haranguing
under roof and sky, may be said to have sprung; and, by law of Nature, must
grow. To judge by the madness and diseasedness both of itself, and of the
soil and element it is in, one might expect the rapidity and monstrosity
would be extreme.
Many things too, especially all diseased things, grow by shoots and fits.
The first grand fit and shooting forth of Sansculottism with that of Paris
conquering its King; for Bailly's figure of rhetoric was all-too sad a
reality. The King is conquered; going at large on his parole; on
condition, say, of absolutely good behaviour,--which, in these
circumstances, will unhappily mean no behaviour whatever. A quite
untenable position, that of Majesty put on its good behaviour! Alas, is it
not natural that whatever lives try to keep itself living? Whereupon his
Majesty's behaviour will soon become exceptionable; and so the Second grand
Fit of Sansculottism, that of putting him in durance, cannot be distant.
Necker, in the National Assembly, is making moan, as usual about his
Deficit: Barriers and Customhouses burnt; the Tax-gatherer hunted, not
hunting; his Majesty's Exchequer all but empty. The remedy is a Loan of
thirty millions; then, on still more enticing terms, a Loan of eighty
millions: neither of which Loans, unhappily, will the Stockjobbers venture
to lend. The Stockjobber has no country, except his own black pool of
Agio.
And yet, in those days, for men that have a country, what a glow of
patriotism burns in many a heart; penetrating inwards to the very purse!
So early as the 7th of August, a Don Patriotique, 'a Patriotic Gift of
jewels to a considerable extent,' has been solemnly made by certain
Parisian women; and solemnly accepted, with honourable mention. Whom
forthwith all the world takes to imitating and emulating. Patriotic Gifts,
always with some heroic eloquence, which the President must answer and the
Assembly listen to, flow in from far and near: in such number that the
honourable mention can only be performed in 'lists published at stated
epochs.' Each gives what he can: the very cordwainers have behaved
munificently; one landed proprietor gives a forest; fashionable society
gives its shoebuckles, takes cheerfully to shoe-ties. Unfortunate females
give what they 'have amassed in loving.' (Histoire Parlementaire, ii.
427.) The smell of all cash, as Vespasian thought, is good.
Beautiful, and yet inadequate! The Clergy must be 'invited' to melt their
superfluous Church-plate,--in the Royal Mint. Nay finally, a Patriotic
Contribution, of the forcible sort, must be determined on, though
unwillingly: let the fourth part of your declared yearly revenue, for this
once only, be paid down; so shall a National Assembly make the
Constitution, undistracted at least by insolvency. Their own wages, as
settled on the 17th of August, are but Eighteen Francs a day, each man; but
the Public Service must have sinews, must have money. To appease the
Deficit; not to 'combler, or choke the Deficit,' if you or mortal could!
For withal, as Mirabeau was heard saying, "it is the Deficit that saves
us."
Towards the end of August, our National Assembly in its constitutional
labours, has got so far as the question of Veto: shall Majesty have a Veto
on the National Enactments; or not have a Veto? What speeches were spoken,
within doors and without; clear, and also passionate logic; imprecations,
comminations; gone happily, for most part, to Limbo! Through the cracked
brain, and uncracked lungs of Saint-Huruge, the Palais Royal rebellows with
Veto. Journalism is busy, France rings with Veto. 'I shall never forget,'
says Dumont, 'my going to Paris, one of these days, with Mirabeau; and the
crowd of people we found waiting for his carriage, about Le Jay the
Bookseller's shop. They flung themselves before him; conjuring him with
tears in their eyes not to suffer the Veto Absolu. They were in a frenzy:
"Monsieur le Comte, you are the people's father; you must save us; you must
defend us against those villains who are bringing back Despotism. If the
King get this Veto, what is the use of National Assembly? We are slaves,
all is done."' (Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 156.) Friends, if the sky
fall, there will be catching of larks! Mirabeau, adds Dumont, was eminent
on such occasions: he answered vaguely, with a Patrician imperturbability,
and bound himself to nothing.
Deputations go to the Hotel-de-Ville; anonymous Letters to Aristocrats in
the National Assembly, threatening that fifteen thousand, or sometimes that
sixty thousand, 'will march to illuminate you.' The Paris Districts are
astir; Petitions signing: Saint-Huruge sets forth from the Palais Royal,
with an escort of fifteen hundred individuals, to petition in person.
Resolute, or seemingly so, is the tall shaggy Marquis, is the Cafe de Foy:
but resolute also is Commandant-General Lafayette. The streets are all
beset by Patrols: Saint-Huruge is stopped at the Barriere des Bon Hommes;
he may bellow like the bulls of Bashan; but absolutely must return. The
brethren of the Palais Royal 'circulate all night,' and make motions, under
the open canopy; all Coffee-houses being shut. Nevertheless Lafayette and
the Townhall do prevail: Saint-Huruge is thrown into prison; Veto Absolu
adjusts itself into Suspensive Veto, prohibition not forever, but for a
term of time; and this doom's-clamour will grow silent, as the others have
done.
So far has Consolidation prospered, though with difficulty; repressing the
Nether Sansculottic world; and the Constitution shall be made. With
difficulty: amid jubilee and scarcity; Patriotic Gifts, Bakers'-queues;
Abbe-Fauchet Harangues, with their Amen of platoon-musketry! Scipio
Americanus has deserved thanks from the National Assembly and France. They
offer him stipends and emoluments, to a handsome extent; all which stipends
and emoluments he, covetous of far other blessedness than mere money, does,
in his chivalrous way, without scruple, refuse.
To the Parisian common man, meanwhile, one thing remains inconceivable:
that now when the Bastille is down, and French Liberty restored, grain
should continue so dear. Our Rights of Man are voted, Feudalism and all
Tyranny abolished; yet behold we stand in queue! Is it Aristocrat
forestallers; a Court still bent on intrigues? Something is rotten,
somewhere.
And yet, alas, what to do? Lafayette, with his Patrols prohibits every
thing, even complaint. Saint-Huruge and other heroes of the Veto lie in
durance. People's-Friend Marat was seized; Printers of Patriotic Journals
are fettered and forbidden; the very Hawkers cannot cry, till they get
license, and leaden badges. Blue National Guards ruthlessly dissipate all
groups; scour, with levelled bayonets, the Palais Royal itself. Pass, on
your affairs, along the Rue Taranne, the Patrol, presenting his bayonet,
cries, To the left! Turn into the Rue Saint-Benoit, he cries, To the
right! A judicious Patriot (like Camille Desmoulins, in this instance) is
driven, for quietness's sake, to take the gutter.
O much-suffering People, our glorious Revolution is evaporating in tricolor
ceremonies, and complimentary harangues! Of which latter, as Loustalot
acridly calculates, 'upwards of two thousand have been delivered within the
last month, at the Townhall alone.' (Revolutions de Paris Newspaper (cited
in Histoire Parlementaire, ii. 357).) And our mouths, unfilled with bread,
are to be shut, under penalties? The Caricaturist promulgates his
emblematic Tablature: Le Patrouillotisme chassant le Patriotisme,
Patriotism driven out by Patrollotism. Ruthless Patrols; long superfine
harangues; and scanty ill-baked loaves, more like baked Bath bricks,--which
produce an effect on the intestines! Where will this end? In
consolidation?
Chapter 1.7.II.
O Richard, O my King.
For, alas, neither is the Townhall itself without misgivings. The Nether
Sansculottic world has been suppressed hitherto: but then the Upper Court-
world! Symptoms there are that the Oeil-de-Boeuf is rallying.
More than once in the Townhall Sanhedrim; often enough, from those
outspoken Bakers'-queues, has the wish uttered itself: O that our Restorer
of French Liberty were here; that he could see with his own eyes, not with
the false eyes of Queens and Cabals, and his really good heart be
enlightened! For falsehood still environs him; intriguing Dukes de Guiche,
with Bodyguards; scouts of Bouille; a new flight of intriguers, now that
the old is flown. What else means this advent of the Regiment de Flandre;
entering Versailles, as we hear, on the 23rd of September, with two pieces
of cannon? Did not the Versailles National Guard do duty at the Chateau?
Had they not Swiss; Hundred Swiss; Gardes-du-Corps, Bodyguards so-called?
Nay, it would seem, the number of Bodyguards on duty has, by a manoeuvre,
been doubled: the new relieving Battalion of them arrived at its time; but
the old relieved one does not depart!
Actually, there runs a whisper through the best informed Upper-Circles, or
a nod still more potentous than whispering, of his Majesty's flying to
Metz; of a Bond (to stand by him therein) which has been signed by Noblesse
and Clergy, to the incredible amount of thirty, or even of sixty thousand.
Lafayette coldly whispers it, and coldly asseverates it, to Count d'Estaing
at the Dinner-table; and d'Estaing, one of the bravest men, quakes to the
core lest some lackey overhear it; and tumbles thoughtful, without sleep,
all night. (Brouillon de Lettre de M. d'Estaing a la Reine (in Histoire
Parlementaire, iii. 24.) Regiment Flandre, as we said, is clearly arrived.
His Majesty, they say, hesitates about sanctioning the Fourth of August;
makes observations, of chilling tenor, on the very Rights of Man!
Likewise, may not all persons, the Bakers'-queues themselves discern on the
streets of Paris, the most astonishing number of Officers on furlough,
Crosses of St. Louis, and such like? Some reckon 'from a thousand to
twelve hundred.' Officers of all uniforms; nay one uniform never before
seen by eye: green faced with red! The tricolor cockade is not always
visible: but what, in the name of Heaven, may these black cockades, which
some wear, foreshadow?
Hunger whets everything, especially Suspicion and Indignation. Realities
themselves, in this Paris, have grown unreal: preternatural. Phantasms
once more stalk through the brain of hungry France. O ye laggards and
dastards, cry shrill voices from the Queues, if ye had the hearts of men,
ye would take your pikes and secondhand firelocks, and look into it; not
leave your wives and daughters to be starved, murdered, and worse!--Peace,
women! The heart of man is bitter and heavy; Patriotism, driven out by
Patrollotism, knows not what to resolve on.
The truth is, the Oeil-de-Boeuf has rallied; to a certain unknown extent.
A changed Oeil-de-Boeuf; with Versailles National Guards, in their tricolor
cockades, doing duty there; a Court all flaring with tricolor! Yet even to
a tricolor Court men will rally. Ye loyal hearts, burnt-out Seigneurs,
rally round your Queen! With wishes; which will produce hopes; which will
produce attempts!
For indeed self-preservation being such a law of Nature, what can a rallied
Court do, but attempt and endeavour, or call it plot,--with such wisdom and
unwisdom as it has? They will fly, escorted, to Metz, where brave Bouille
commands; they will raise the Royal Standard: the Bond-signatures shall
become armed men. Were not the King so languid! Their Bond, if at all
signed, must be signed without his privity.--Unhappy King, he has but one
resolution: not to have a civil war. For the rest, he still hunts, having
ceased lockmaking; he still dozes, and digests; is clay in the hands of the
potter. Ill will it fare with him, in a world where all is helping itself;
where, as has been written, 'whosoever is not hammer must be stithy;' and
'the very hyssop on the wall grows there, in that chink, because the whole
Universe could not prevent its growing!'
But as for the coming up of this Regiment de Flandre, may it not be urged
that there were Saint-Huruge Petitions, and continual meal-mobs?
Undebauched Soldiers, be there plot, or only dim elements of a plot, are
always good. Did not the Versailles Municipality (an old Monarchic one,
not yet refounded into a Democratic) instantly second the proposal? Nay
the very Versailles National Guard, wearied with continual duty at the
Chateau, did not object; only Draper Lecointre, who is now Major Lecointre,
shook his head.--Yes, Friends, surely it was natural this Regiment de
Flandre should be sent for, since it could be got. It was natural that, at
sight of military bandoleers, the heart of the rallied Oeil-de-Boeuf should
revive; and Maids of Honour, and gentlemen of honour, speak comfortable
words to epauletted defenders, and to one another. Natural also, and mere
common civility, that the Bodyguards, a Regiment of Gentlemen, should
invite their Flandre brethren to a Dinner of welcome!--Such invitation, in
the last days of September, is given and accepted.
Dinners are defined as 'the ultimate act of communion;' men that can have
communion in nothing else, can sympathetically eat together, can still rise
into some glow of brotherhood over food and wine. The dinner is fixed on,
for Thursday the First of October; and ought to have a fine effect.
Further, as such Dinner may be rather extensive, and even the
Noncommissioned and the Common man be introduced, to see and to hear, could
not His Majesty's Opera Apartment, which has lain quite silent ever since
Kaiser Joseph was here, be obtained for the purpose?--The Hall of the Opera
is granted; the Salon d'Hercule shall be drawingroom. Not only the
Officers of Flandre, but of the Swiss, of the Hundred Swiss, nay of the
Versailles National Guard, such of them as have any loyalty, shall feast:
it will be a Repast like few.
And now suppose this Repast, the solid part of it, transacted; and the
first bottle over. Suppose the customary loyal toasts drunk; the King's
health, the Queen's with deafening vivats;--that of the Nation 'omitted,'
or even 'rejected.' Suppose champagne flowing; with pot-valorous speech,
with instrumental music; empty feathered heads growing ever the noisier, in
their own emptiness, in each other's noise! Her Majesty, who looks
unusually sad to-night (his Majesty sitting dulled with the day's hunting),
is told that the sight of it would cheer her. Behold! She enters there,
issuing from her State-rooms, like the Moon from the clouds, this fairest
unhappy Queen of Hearts; royal Husband by her side, young Dauphin in her
arms! She descends from the Boxes, amid splendour and acclaim; walks
queen-like, round the Tables; gracefully escorted, gracefully nodding; her
looks full of sorrow, yet of gratitude and daring, with the hope of France
on her mother-bosom! And now, the band striking up, O Richard, O mon Roi,
l'univers t'abandonne (O Richard, O my King, and world is all forsaking
thee)--could man do other than rise to height of pity, of loyal valour?
Could featherheaded young ensigns do other than, by white Bourbon Cockades,
handed them from fair fingers; by waving of swords, drawn to pledge the
Queen's health; by trampling of National Cockades; by scaling the Boxes,
whence intrusive murmurs may come; by vociferation, tripudiation, sound,
fury and distraction, within doors and without,--testify what tempest-tost
state of vacuity they are in? Till champagne and tripudiation do their
work; and all lie silent, horizontal; passively slumbering, with meed-of-
battle dreams!--
A natural Repast, in ordinary times, a harmless one: now fatal, as that of
Thyestes; as that of Job's Sons, when a strong wind smote the four corners
of their banquet-house! Poor ill-advised Marie-Antoinette; with a woman's
vehemence, not with a sovereign's foresight! It was so natural, yet so
unwise. Next day, in public speech of ceremony, her Majesty declares
herself 'delighted with the Thursday.'
The heart of the Oeil-de-Boeuf glows into hope; into daring, which is
premature. Rallied Maids of Honour, waited on by Abbes, sew 'white
cockades;' distribute them, with words, with glances, to epauletted youths;
who in return, may kiss, not without fervour, the fair sewing fingers.
Captains of horse and foot go swashing with 'enormous white cockades;' nay
one Versailles National Captain had mounted the like, so witching were the
words and glances; and laid aside his tricolor! Well may Major Lecointre
shake his head with a look of severity; and speak audible resentful words.
But now a swashbuckler, with enormous white cockade, overhearing the Major,
invites him insolently, once and then again elsewhere, to recant; and
failing that, to duel. Which latter feat Major Lecointre declares that he
will not perform, not at least by any known laws of fence; that he
nevertheless will, according to mere law of Nature, by dirk and blade,
'exterminate' any 'vile gladiator,' who may insult him or the Nation;--
whereupon (for the Major is actually drawing his implement) 'they are
parted,' and no weasands slit. (Moniteur (in Histoire Parlementaire, iii.
59); Deux Amis (iii. 128-141); Campan (ii. 70-85), &c.; &c.;)
Chapter 1.7.III.
Black Cockades.
But fancy what effect this Thyestes Repast and trampling on the National
Cockade, must have had in the Salle des Menus; in the famishing Bakers'-
queues at Paris! Nay such Thyestes Repasts, it would seem, continue.
Flandre has given its Counter-Dinner to the Swiss and Hundred Swiss; then
on Saturday there has been another.
Yes, here with us is famine; but yonder at Versailles is food; enough and
to spare! Patriotism stands in queue, shivering hungerstruck, insulted by
Patrollotism; while bloodyminded Aristocrats, heated with excess of high
living, trample on the National Cockade. Can the atrocity be true? Nay,
look: green uniforms faced with red; black cockades,--the colour of Night!
Are we to have military onfall; and death also by starvation? For behold
the Corbeil Cornboat, which used to come twice a-day, with its Plaster-of-
Paris meal, now comes only once. And the Townhall is deaf; and the men are
laggard and dastard!--At the Cafe de Foy, this Saturday evening, a new
thing is seen, not the last of its kind: a woman engaged in public
speaking. Her poor man, she says, was put to silence by his District;
their Presidents and Officials would not let him speak. Wherefore she here
with her shrill tongue will speak; denouncing, while her breath endures,
the Corbeil-Boat, the Plaster-of-Paris bread, sacrilegious Opera-dinners,
green uniforms, Pirate Aristocrats, and those black cockades of theirs!--
Truly, it is time for the black cockades at least, to vanish. Them
Patrollotism itself will not protect. Nay, sharp-tempered 'M. Tassin,' at
the Tuileries parade on Sunday morning, forgets all National military rule;
starts from the ranks, wrenches down one black cockade which is swashing
ominous there; and tramples it fiercely into the soil of France.
Patrollotism itself is not without suppressed fury. Also the Districts
begin to stir; the voice of President Danton reverberates in the
Cordeliers: People's-Friend Marat has flown to Versailles and back again;-
-swart bird, not of the halcyon kind! (Camille's Newspaper, Revolutions de
Paris et de Brabant (in Histoire Parlementaire, iii. 108.)
And so Patriot meets promenading Patriot, this Sunday; and sees his own
grim care reflected on the face of another. Groups, in spite of
Patrollotism, which is not so alert as usual, fluctuate deliberative:
groups on the Bridges, on the Quais, at the patriotic Cafes. And ever as
any black cockade may emerge, rises the many-voiced growl and bark: A bas,
Down! All black cockades are ruthlessly plucked off: one individual picks
his up again; kisses it, attempts to refix it; but a 'hundred canes start
into the air,' and he desists. Still worse went it with another
individual; doomed, by extempore Plebiscitum, to the Lanterne; saved, with
difficulty, by some active Corps-de-Garde.--Lafayette sees signs of an
effervescence; which he doubles his Patrols, doubles his diligence, to
prevent. So passes Sunday, the 4th of October 1789.
Sullen is the male heart, repressed by Patrollotism; vehement is the
female, irrepressible. The public-speaking woman at the Palais Royal was
not the only speaking one:--Men know not what the pantry is, when it grows
empty, only house-mothers know. O women, wives of men that will only
calculate and not act! Patrollotism is strong; but Death, by starvation
and military onfall, is stronger. Patrollotism represses male Patriotism:
but female Patriotism? Will Guards named National thrust their bayonets
into the bosoms of women? Such thought, or rather such dim unshaped raw-
material of a thought, ferments universally under the female night-cap;
and, by earliest daybreak, on slight hint, will explode.
Chapter 1.7.IV.
The Menads.
If Voltaire once, in splenetic humour, asked his countrymen: "But you,
Gualches, what have you invented?" they can now answer: The Art of
Insurrection. It was an art needed in these last singular times: an art,
for which the French nature, so full of vehemence, so free from depth, was
perhaps of all others the fittest.
Accordingly, to what a height, one may well say of perfection, has this
branch of human industry been carried by France, within the last half-
century! Insurrection, which, Lafayette thought, might be 'the most sacred
of duties,' ranks now, for the French people, among the duties which they
can perform. Other mobs are dull masses; which roll onwards with a dull
fierce tenacity, a dull fierce heat, but emit no light-flashes of genius as
they go. The French mob, again, is among the liveliest phenomena of our
world. So rapid, audacious; so clear-sighted, inventive, prompt to seize
the moment; instinct with life to its finger-ends! That talent, were there
no other, of spontaneously standing in queue, distinguishes, as we said,
the French People from all Peoples, ancient and modern.
Let the Reader confess too that, taking one thing with another, perhaps few
terrestrial Appearances are better worth considering than mobs. Your mob
is a genuine outburst of Nature; issuing from, or communicating with, the
deepest deep of Nature. When so much goes grinning and grimacing as a
lifeless Formality, and under the stiff buckram no heart can be felt
beating, here once more, if nowhere else, is a Sincerity and Reality.
Shudder at it; or even shriek over it, if thou must; nevertheless consider
it. Such a Complex of human Forces and Individualities hurled forth, in
their transcendental mood, to act and react, on circumstances and on one
another; to work out what it is in them to work. The thing they will do is
known to no man; least of all to themselves. It is the inflammablest
immeasurable Fire-work, generating, consuming itself. With what phases, to
what extent, with what results it will burn off, Philosophy and
Perspicacity conjecture in vain.
'Man,' as has been written, 'is for ever interesting to man; nay properly
there is nothing else interesting.' In which light also, may we not
discern why most Battles have become so wearisome? Battles, in these ages,
are transacted by mechanism; with the slightest possible developement of
human individuality or spontaneity: men now even die, and kill one
another, in an artificial manner. Battles ever since Homer's time, when
they were Fighting Mobs, have mostly ceased to be worth looking at, worth
reading of, or remembering. How many wearisome bloody Battles does History
strive to represent; or even, in a husky way, to sing:--and she would omit
or carelessly slur-over this one Insurrection of Women?
A thought, or dim raw-material of a thought, was fermenting all night,
universally in the female head, and might explode. In squalid garret, on
Monday morning, Maternity awakes, to hear children weeping for bread.
Maternity must forth to the streets, to the herb-markets and Bakers'--
queues; meets there with hunger-stricken Maternity, sympathetic,
exasperative. O we unhappy women! But, instead of Bakers'-queues, why not
to Aristocrats' palaces, the root of the matter? Allons! Let us assemble.
To the Hotel-de-Ville; to Versailles; to the Lanterne!
In one of the Guardhouses of the Quartier Saint-Eustache, 'a young woman'
seizes a drum,--for how shall National Guards give fire on women, on a
young woman? The young woman seizes the drum; sets forth, beating it,
'uttering cries relative to the dearth of grains.' Descend, O mothers;
descend, ye Judiths, to food and revenge!--All women gather and go; crowds
storm all stairs, force out all women: the female Insurrectionary Force,
according to Camille, resembles the English Naval one; there is a universal
'Press of women.' Robust Dames of the Halle, slim Mantua-makers,
assiduous, risen with the dawn; ancient Virginity tripping to matins; the
Housemaid, with early broom; all must go. Rouse ye, O women; the laggard
men will not act; they say, we ourselves may act!
And so, like snowbreak from the mountains, for every staircase is a melted
brook, it storms; tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards the Hotel-de-Ville.
Tumultuous, with or without drum-music: for the Faubourg Saint-Antoine
also has tucked up its gown; and, with besom-staves, fire-irons, and even
rusty pistols (void of ammunition), is flowing on. Sound of it flies, with
a velocity of sound, to the outmost Barriers. By seven o'clock, on this
raw October morning, fifth of the month, the Townhall will see wonders.
Nay, as chance would have it, a male party are already there; clustering
tumultuously round some National Patrol, and a Baker who has been seized
with short weights. They are there; and have even lowered the rope of the
Lanterne. So that the official persons have to smuggle forth the short-
weighing Baker by back doors, and even send 'to all the Districts' for more
force.
Grand it was, says Camille, to see so many Judiths, from eight to ten
thousand of them in all, rushing out to search into the root of the matter!
Not unfrightful it must have been; ludicro-terrific, and most unmanageable.
At such hour the overwatched Three Hundred are not yet stirring: none but
some Clerks, a company of National Guards; and M. de Gouvion, the Major-
general. Gouvion has fought in America for the cause of civil Liberty; a
man of no inconsiderable heart, but deficient in head. He is, for the
moment, in his back apartment; assuaging Usher Maillard, the Bastille-
serjeant, who has come, as too many do, with 'representations.' The
assuagement is still incomplete when our Judiths arrive.
The National Guards form on the outer stairs, with levelled bayonets; the
ten thousand Judiths press up, resistless; with obtestations, with
outspread hands,--merely to speak to the Mayor. The rear forces them; nay,
from male hands in the rear, stones already fly: the National Guards must
do one of two things; sweep the Place de Greve with cannon, or else open to
right and left. They open; the living deluge rushes in. Through all rooms
and cabinets, upwards to the topmost belfry: ravenous; seeking arms,
seeking Mayors, seeking justice;--while, again, the better-cressed
(dressed?) speak kindly to the Clerks; point out the misery of these poor
women; also their ailments, some even of an interesting sort. (Deux Amis,
iii. 141-166.)
Poor M. de Gouvion is shiftless in this extremity;--a man shiftless,
perturbed; who will one day commit suicide. How happy for him that Usher
Maillard, the shifty, was there, at the moment, though making
representations! Fly back, thou shifty Maillard; seek the Bastille
Company; and O return fast with it; above all, with thy own shifty head!
For, behold, the Judiths can find no Mayor or Municipal; scarcely, in the
topmost belfry, can they find poor Abbe Lefevre the Powder-distributor.
Him, for want of a better, they suspend there; in the pale morning light;
over the top of all Paris, which swims in one's failing eyes:--a horrible
end? Nay, the rope broke, as French ropes often did; or else an Amazon cut
it. Abbe Lefevre falls, some twenty feet, rattling among the leads; and
lives long years after, though always with 'a tremblement in the limbs.'
(Dusaulx, Prise de la Bastille (note, p. 281.).)
And now doors fly under hatchets; the Judiths have broken the Armoury; have
seized guns and cannons, three money-bags, paper-heaps; torches flare: in
few minutes, our brave Hotel-de-Ville which dates from the Fourth Henry,
will, with all that it holds, be in flames!
Chapter 1.7.V.
Usher Maillard.
In flames, truly,--were it not that Usher Maillard, swift of foot, shifty
of head, has returned!
Maillard, of his own motion, for Gouvion or the rest would not even
sanction him,--snatches a drum; descends the Porch-stairs, ran-tan, beating
sharp, with loud rolls, his Rogues'-march: To Versailles! Allons; a
Versailles! As men beat on kettle or warmingpan, when angry she-bees, or
say, flying desperate wasps, are to be hived; and the desperate insects
hear it, and cluster round it,--simply as round a guidance, where there was
none: so now these Menads round shifty Maillard, Riding-Usher of the
Chatelet. The axe pauses uplifted; Abbe Lefevre is left half-hanged; from
the belfry downwards all vomits itself. What rub-a-dub is that? Stanislas
Maillard, Bastille-hero, will lead us to Versailles? Joy to thee,
Maillard; blessed art thou above Riding-Ushers! Away then, away!
The seized cannon are yoked with seized cart-horses: brown-locked
Demoiselle Theroigne, with pike and helmet, sits there as gunneress, 'with
haughty eye and serene fair countenance;' comparable, some think, to the
Maid of Orleans, or even recalling 'the idea of Pallas Athene.' (Deux
Amis, iii. 157.) Maillard (for his drum still rolls) is, by heaven-rending
acclamation, admitted General. Maillard hastens the languid march.
Maillard, beating rhythmic, with sharp ran-tan, all along the Quais, leads
forward, with difficulty his Menadic host. Such a host--marched not in
silence! The bargeman pauses on the River; all wagoners and coachdrivers
fly; men peer from windows,--not women, lest they be pressed. Sight of
sights: Bacchantes, in these ultimate Formalized Ages! Bronze Henri looks
on, from his Pont-Neuf; the Monarchic Louvre, Medicean Tuileries see a day
not theretofore seen.
And now Maillard has his Menads in the Champs Elysees (Fields Tartarean
rather); and the Hotel-de-Ville has suffered comparatively nothing. Broken
doors; an Abbe Lefevre, who shall never more distribute powder; three sacks
of money, most part of which (for Sansculottism, though famishing, is not
without honour) shall be returned: (Hist. Parl. iii. 310.) this is all the
damage. Great Maillard! A small nucleus of Order is round his drum; but
his outskirts fluctuate like the mad Ocean: for Rascality male and female
is flowing in on him, from the four winds; guidance there is none but in
his single head and two drumsticks.
O Maillard, when, since War first was, had General of Force such a task
before him, as thou this day? Walter the Penniless still touches the
feeling heart: but then Walter had sanction; had space to turn in; and
also his Crusaders were of the male sex. Thou, this day, disowned of
Heaven and Earth, art General of Menads. Their inarticulate frenzy thou
must on the spur of the instant, render into articulate words, into actions
that are not frantic. Fail in it, this way or that! Pragmatical
Officiality, with its penalties and law-books, waits before thee; Menads
storm behind. If such hewed off the melodious head of Orpheus, and hurled
it into the Peneus waters, what may they not make of thee,--thee rhythmic
merely, with no music but a sheepskin drum!--Maillard did not fail.
Remarkable Maillard, if fame were not an accident, and History a
distillation of Rumour, how remarkable wert thou!
On the Elysian Fields, there is pause and fluctuation; but, for Maillard,
no return. He persuades his Menads, clamorous for arms and the Arsenal,
that no arms are in the Arsenal; that an unarmed attitude, and petition to
a National Assembly, will be the best: he hastily nominates or sanctions
generalesses, captains of tens and fifties;--and so, in loosest-flowing
order, to the rhythm of some 'eight drums' (having laid aside his own),
with the Bastille Volunteers bringing up his rear, once more takes the
road.
Chaillot, which will promptly yield baked loaves, is not plundered; nor are
the Sevres Potteries broken. The old arches of Sevres Bridge echo under
Menadic feet; Seine River gushes on with his perpetual murmur; and Paris
flings after us the boom of tocsin and alarm-drum,--inaudible, for the
present, amid shrill-sounding hosts, and the splash of rainy weather. To
Meudon, to Saint Cloud, on both hands, the report of them is gone abroad;
and hearths, this evening, will have a topic. The press of women still
continues, for it is the cause of all Eve's Daughters, mothers that are, or
that hope to be. No carriage-lady, were it with never such hysterics, but
must dismount, in the mud roads, in her silk shoes, and walk. (Deux Amis,
iii. 159.) In this manner, amid wild October weather, they a wild unwinged
stork-flight, through the astonished country, wend their way. Travellers
of all sorts they stop; especially travellers or couriers from Paris.
Deputy Lechapelier, in his elegant vesture, from his elegant vehicle, looks
forth amazed through his spectacles; apprehensive for life;--states eagerly
that he is Patriot-Deputy Lechapelier, and even Old-President Lechapelier,
who presided on the Night of Pentecost, and is original member of the
Breton Club. Thereupon 'rises huge shout of Vive Lechapelier, and several
armed persons spring up behind and before to escort him.' (Ibid. iii. 177;
Dictionnaire des Hommes Marquans, ii. 379.)
Nevertheless, news, despatches from Lafayette, or vague noise of rumour,
have pierced through, by side roads. In the National Assembly, while all
is busy discussing the order of the day; regretting that there should be
Anti-national Repasts in Opera-Halls; that his Majesty should still
hesitate about accepting the Rights of Man, and hang conditions and
peradventures on them,--Mirabeau steps up to the President, experienced
Mounier as it chanced to be; and articulates, in bass under-tone:
"Mounier, Paris marche sur nous (Paris is marching on us)."--"May be (Je
n'en sais rien)!"--"Believe it or disbelieve it, that is not my concern;
but Paris, I say, is marching on us. Fall suddenly unwell; go over to the
Chateau; tell them this. There is not a moment to lose.'--"Paris marching
on us?" responds Mounier, with an atrabiliar accent" "Well, so much the
better! We shall the sooner be a Republic." Mirabeau quits him, as one
quits an experienced President getting blindfold into deep waters; and the
order of the day continues as before.
Yes, Paris is marching on us; and more than the women of Paris! Scarcely
was Maillard gone, when M. de Gouvion's message to all the Districts, and
such tocsin and drumming of the generale, began to take effect. Armed
National Guards from every District; especially the Grenadiers of the
Centre, who are our old Gardes Francaises, arrive, in quick sequence, on
the Place de Greve. An 'immense people' is there; Saint-Antoine, with pike
and rusty firelock, is all crowding thither, be it welcome or unwelcome.
The Centre Grenadiers are received with cheering: "it is not cheers that
we want," answer they gloomily; "the nation has been insulted; to arms, and
come with us for orders!" Ha, sits the wind so? Patriotism and
Patrollotism are now one!
The Three Hundred have assembled; 'all the Committees are in activity;'
Lafayette is dictating despatches for Versailles, when a Deputation of the
Centre Grenadiers introduces itself to him. The Deputation makes military
obeisance; and thus speaks, not without a kind of thought in it: "Mon
General, we are deputed by the Six Companies of Grenadiers. We do not
think you a traitor, but we think the Government betrays you; it is time
that this end. We cannot turn our bayonets against women crying to us for
bread. The people are miserable, the source of the mischief is at
Versailles: we must go seek the King, and bring him to Paris. We must
exterminate (exterminer) the Regiment de Flandre and the Gardes-du-Corps,
who have dared to trample on the National Cockade. If the King be too weak
to wear his crown, let him lay it down. You will crown his Son, you will
name a Council of Regency; and all will go better." (Deux Amis, iii. 161.)
Reproachful astonishment paints itself on the face of Lafayette; speaks
itself from his eloquent chivalrous lips: in vain. "My General, we would
shed the last drop of our blood for you; but the root of the mischief is at
Versailles; we must go and bring the King to Paris; all the people wish it,
tout le peuple le veut."
My General descends to the outer staircase; and harangues: once more in
vain. "To Versailles! To Versailles!" Mayor Bailly, sent for through
floods of Sansculottism, attempts academic oratory from his gilt state-
coach; realizes nothing but infinite hoarse cries of: "Bread! To
Versailles!"--and gladly shrinks within doors. Lafayette mounts the white
charger; and again harangues and reharangues: with eloquence, with
firmness, indignant demonstration; with all things but persuasion. "To
Versailles! To Versailles!" So lasts it, hour after hour; for the space
of half a day.
The great Scipio Americanus can do nothing; not so much as escape.
"Morbleu, mon General," cry the Grenadiers serrying their ranks as the
white charger makes a motion that way, "You will not leave us, you will
abide with us!" A perilous juncture: Mayor Bailly and the Municipals sit
quaking within doors; My General is prisoner without: the Place de Greve,
with its thirty thousand Regulars, its whole irregular Saint-Antoine and
Saint-Marceau, is one minatory mass of clear or rusty steel; all hearts
set, with a moody fixedness, on one object. Moody, fixed are all hearts:
tranquil is no heart,--if it be not that of the white charger, who paws
there, with arched neck, composedly champing his bit; as if no world, with
its Dynasties and Eras, were now rushing down. The drizzly day tends
westward; the cry is still: "To Versailles!"
Nay now, borne from afar, come quite sinister cries; hoarse, reverberating
in longdrawn hollow murmurs, with syllables too like those of Lanterne! Or
else, irregular Sansculottism may be marching off, of itself; with pikes,
nay with cannon. The inflexible Scipio does at length, by aide-de-camp,
ask of the Municipals: Whether or not he may go? A Letter is handed out
to him, over armed heads; sixty thousand faces flash fixedly on his, there
is stillness and no bosom breathes, till he have read. By Heaven, he grows
suddenly pale! Do the Municipals permit? 'Permit and even order,'--since
he can no other. Clangour of approval rends the welkin. To your ranks,
then; let us march!
It is, as we compute, towards three in the afternoon. Indignant National
Guards may dine for once from their haversack: dined or undined, they
march with one heart. Paris flings up her windows, claps hands, as the
Avengers, with their shrilling drums and shalms tramp by; she will then sit
pensive, apprehensive, and pass rather a sleepless night. (Deux Amis, iii.
165.) On the white charger, Lafayette, in the slowest possible manner,
going and coming, and eloquently haranguing among the ranks, rolls onward
with his thirty thousand. Saint-Antoine, with pike and cannon, has
preceded him; a mixed multitude, of all and of no arms, hovers on his
flanks and skirts; the country once more pauses agape: Paris marche sur
nous.
Chapter 1.7.VI.
To Versailles.
For, indeed, about this same moment, Maillard has halted his draggled
Menads on the last hill-top; and now Versailles, and the Chateau of
Versailles, and far and wide the inheritance of Royalty opens to the
wondering eye. From far on the right, over Marly and Saint-Germains-en-
Laye; round towards Rambouillet, on the left: beautiful all; softly
embosomed; as if in sadness, in the dim moist weather! And near before us
is Versailles, New and Old; with that broad frondent Avenue de Versailles
between,--stately-frondent, broad, three hundred feet as men reckon, with
four Rows of Elms; and then the Chateau de Versailles, ending in royal
Parks and Pleasances, gleaming lakelets, arbours, Labyrinths, the
Menagerie, and Great and Little Trianon. High-towered dwellings, leafy
pleasant places; where the gods of this lower world abide: whence,
nevertheless, black Care cannot be excluded; whither Menadic Hunger is even
now advancing, armed with pike-thyrsi!
Yes, yonder, Mesdames, where our straight frondent Avenue, joined, as you
note, by Two frondent brother Avenues from this hand and from that, spreads
out into Place Royale and Palace Forecourt; yonder is the Salle des Menus.
Yonder an august Assembly sits regenerating France. Forecourt, Grand
Court, Court of Marble, Court narrowing into Court you may discern next, or
fancy: on the extreme verge of which that glass-dome, visibly glittering
like a star of hope, is the--Oeil-de-Boeuf! Yonder, or nowhere in the
world, is bread baked for us. But, O Mesdames, were not one thing good:
That our cannons, with Demoiselle Theroigne and all show of war, be put to
the rear? Submission beseems petitioners of a National Assembly; we are
strangers in Versailles,--whence, too audibly, there comes even now sound
as of tocsin and generale! Also to put on, if possible, a cheerful
countenance, hiding our sorrows; and even to sing? Sorrow, pitied of the
Heavens, is hateful, suspicious to the Earth.--So counsels shifty Maillard;
haranguing his Menads, on the heights near Versailles. (See Hist. Parl.
iii. 70-117; Deux Amis, iii. 166-177, &c.;)
Cunning Maillard's dispositions are obeyed. The draggled Insurrectionists
advance up the Avenue, 'in three columns, among the four Elm-rows; 'singing
Henri Quatre,' with what melody they can; and shouting Vive le Roi.
Versailles, though the Elm-rows are dripping wet, crowds from both sides,
with: "Vivent nos Parisiennes, Our Paris ones for ever!"
Prickers, scouts have been out towards Paris, as the rumour deepened:
whereby his Majesty, gone to shoot in the Woods of Meudon, has been happily
discovered, and got home; and the generale and tocsin set a-sounding. The
Bodyguards are already drawn up in front of the Palace Grates; and look
down the Avenue de Versailles; sulky, in wet buckskins. Flandre too is
there, repentant of the Opera-Repast. Also Dragoons dismounted are there.
Finally Major Lecointre, and what he can gather of the Versailles National
Guard; though, it is to be observed, our Colonel, that same sleepless Count
d'Estaing, giving neither order nor ammunition, has vanished most
improperly; one supposes, into the Oeil-de-Boeuf. Red-coated Swiss stand
within the Grates, under arms. There likewise, in their inner room, 'all
the Ministers,' Saint-Priest, Lamentation Pompignan and the rest, are
assembled with M. Necker: they sit with him there; blank, expecting what
the hour will bring.
President Mounier, though he answered Mirabeau with a tant mieux, and
affected to slight the matter, had his own forebodings. Surely, for these
four weary hours, he has reclined not on roses! The order of the day is
getting forward: a Deputation to his Majesty seems proper, that it might
please him to grant 'Acceptance pure and simple' to those Constitution-
Articles of ours; the 'mixed qualified Acceptance,' with its peradventures,
is satisfactory to neither gods nor men.
So much is clear. And yet there is more, which no man speaks, which all
men now vaguely understand. Disquietude, absence of mind is on every face;
Members whisper, uneasily come and go: the order of the day is evidently
not the day's want. Till at length, from the outer gates, is heard a
rustling and justling, shrill uproar and squabbling, muffled by walls;
which testifies that the hour is come! Rushing and crushing one hears now;
then enter Usher Maillard, with a Deputation of Fifteen muddy dripping
Women,--having by incredible industry, and aid of all the macers, persuaded
the rest to wait out of doors. National Assembly shall now, therefore,
look its august task directly in the face: regenerative Constitutionalism
has an unregenerate Sansculottism bodily in front of it; crying, "Bread!
Bread!"
Shifty Maillard, translating frenzy into articulation; repressive with the
one hand, expostulative with the other, does his best; and really, though
not bred to public speaking, manages rather well:--In the present dreadful
rarity of grains, a Deputation of Female Citizens has, as the august
Assembly can discern, come out from Paris to petition. Plots of
Aristocrats are too evident in the matter; for example, one miller has been
bribed 'by a banknote of 200 livres' not to grind,--name unknown to the
Usher, but fact provable, at least indubitable. Further, it seems, the
National Cockade has been trampled on; also there are Black Cockades, or
were. All which things will not an august National Assembly, the hope of
France, take into its wise immediate consideration?
And Menadic Hunger, impressible, crying "Black Cockades," crying Bread,
Bread," adds, after such fashion: Will it not?--Yes, Messieurs, if a
Deputation to his Majesty, for the 'Acceptance pure and simple,' seemed
proper,--how much more now, for 'the afflicting situation of Paris;' for
the calming of this effervescence! President Mounier, with a speedy
Deputation, among whom we notice the respectable figure of Doctor
Guillotin, gets himself forthwith on march. Vice-President shall continue
the order of the day; Usher Maillard shall stay by him to repress the
women. It is four o'clock, of the miserablest afternoon, when Mounier
steps out.
O experienced Mounier, what an afternoon; the last of thy political
existence! Better had it been to 'fall suddenly unwell,' while it was yet
time. For, behold, the Esplanade, over all its spacious expanse, is
covered with groups of squalid dripping Women; of lankhaired male
Rascality, armed with axes, rusty pikes, old muskets, ironshod clubs (baton
ferres, which end in knives or sword-blades, a kind of extempore
billhook);--looking nothing but hungry revolt. The rain pours: Gardes-du-
Corps go caracoling through the groups 'amid hisses;' irritating and
agitating what is but dispersed here to reunite there.
Innumerable squalid women beleaguer the President and Deputation; insist on
going with him: has not his Majesty himself, looking from the window, sent
out to ask, What we wanted? "Bread and speech with the King (Du pain, et
parler au Roi)," that was the answer. Twelve women are clamorously added
to the Deputation; and march with it, across the Esplanade; through
dissipated groups, caracoling Bodyguards, and the pouring rain.
President Mounier, unexpectedly augmented by Twelve Women, copiously
escorted by Hunger and Rascality, is himself mistaken for a group: himself
and his Women are dispersed by caracolers; rally again with difficulty,
among the mud. (Mounier, Expose Justificatif (cited in Deux Amis, iii.
185).) Finally the Grates are opened: the Deputation gets access, with
the Twelve Women too in it; of which latter, Five shall even see the face
of his Majesty. Let wet Menadism, in the best spirits it can expect their
return.
Chapter 1.7.VII.
At Versailles.
But already Pallas Athene (in the shape of Demoiselle Theroigne) is busy
with Flandre and the dismounted Dragoons. She, and such women as are
fittest, go through the ranks; speak with an earnest jocosity; clasp rough
troopers to their patriot bosom, crush down spontoons and musketoons with
soft arms: can a man, that were worthy of the name of man, attack
famishing patriot women?
One reads that Theroigne had bags of money, which she distributed over
Flandre:--furnished by whom? Alas, with money-bags one seldom sits on
insurrectionary cannon. Calumnious Royalism! Theroigne had only the
limited earnings of her profession of unfortunate-female; money she had
not, but brown locks, the figure of a heathen Goddess, and an eloquent
tongue and heart.
Meanwhile, Saint-Antoine, in groups and troops, is continually arriving;
wetted, sulky; with pikes and impromptu billhooks: driven thus far by
popular fixed-idea. So many hirsute figures driven hither, in that manner:
figures that have come to do they know not what; figures that have come to
see it done! Distinguished among all figures, who is this, of gaunt
stature, with leaden breastplate, though a small one; (See Weber, ii. 185-
231.) bushy in red grizzled locks; nay, with long tile-beard? It is
Jourdan, unjust dealer in mules; a dealer no longer, but a Painter's
Layfigure, playing truant this day. From the necessities of Art comes his
long tile-beard; whence his leaden breastplate (unless indeed he were some
Hawker licensed by leaden badge) may have come,--will perhaps remain for
ever a Historical Problem. Another Saul among the people we discern:
'Pere Adam, Father Adam,' as the groups name him; to us better known as
bull-voiced Marquis Saint-Huruge; hero of the Veto; a man that has had
losses, and deserved them. The tall Marquis, emitted some days ago from
limbo, looks peripatetically on this scene, from under his umbrella, not
without interest. All which persons and things, hurled together as we see;
Pallas Athene, busy with Flandre; patriotic Versailles National Guards,
short of ammunition, and deserted by d'Estaing their Colonel, and commanded
by Lecointre their Major; then caracoling Bodyguards, sour, dispirited,
with their buckskins wet; and finally this flowing sea of indignant
Squalor,--may they not give rise to occurrences?
Behold, however, the Twelve She-deputies return from the Chateau. Without
President Mounier, indeed; but radiant with joy, shouting "Life to the King
and his House." Apparently the news are good, Mesdames? News of the best!
Five of us were admitted to the internal splendours, to the Royal Presence.
This slim damsel, 'Louison Chabray, worker in sculpture, aged only
seventeen,' as being of the best looks and address, her we appointed
speaker. On whom, and indeed on all of us, his Majesty looked nothing but
graciousness. Nay, when Louison, addressing him, was like to faint, he
took her in his royal arms; and said gallantly, "It was well worth while
(Elle en valut bien la peine)." Consider, O women, what a King! His words
were of comfort, and that only: there shall be provision sent to Paris, if
provision is in the world; grains shall circulate free as air; millers
shall grind, or do worse, while their millstones endure; and nothing be
left wrong which a Restorer of French Liberty can right.
Good news these; but, to wet Menads, all too incredible! There seems no
proof, then? Words of comfort are words only; which will feed nothing. O
miserable people, betrayed by Aristocrats, who corrupt thy very messengers!
In his royal arms, Mademoiselle Louison? In his arms? Thou shameless
minx, worthy of a name--that shall be nameless! Yes, thy skin is soft:
ours is rough with hardship; and well wetted, waiting here in the rain. No
children hast thou hungry at home; only alabaster dolls, that weep not!
The traitress! To the Lanterne!--And so poor Louison Chabray, no
asseveration or shrieks availing her, fair slim damsel, late in the arms of
Royalty, has a garter round her neck, and furibund Amazons at each end; is
about to perish so,--when two Bodyguards gallop up, indignantly
dissipating; and rescue her. The miscredited Twelve hasten back to the
Chateau, for an 'answer in writing.'
Nay, behold, a new flight of Menads, with 'M. Brunout Bastille Volunteer,'
as impressed-commandant, at the head of it. These also will advance to the
Grate of the Grand Court, and see what is toward. Human patience, in wet
buckskins, has its limits. Bodyguard Lieutenant, M. de Savonnieres, for
one moment, lets his temper, long provoked, long pent, give way. He not
only dissipates these latter Menads; but caracoles and cuts, or indignantly
flourishes, at M. Brunout, the impressed-commandant; and, finding great
relief in it, even chases him; Brunout flying nimbly, though in a pirouette
manner, and now with sword also drawn. At which sight of wrath and victory
two other Bodyguards (for wrath is contagious, and to pent Bodyguards is so
solacing) do likewise give way; give chase, with brandished sabre, and in
the air make horrid circles. So that poor Brunout has nothing for it but
to retreat with accelerated nimbleness, through rank after rank; Parthian-
like, fencing as he flies; above all, shouting lustily, "On nous laisse
assassiner, They are getting us assassinated?"
Shameful! Three against one! Growls come from the Lecointrian ranks;
bellowings,--lastly shots. Savonnieres' arm is raised to strike: the
bullet of a Lecointrian musket shatters it; the brandished sabre jingles
down harmless. Brunout has escaped, this duel well ended: but the wild
howl of war is everywhere beginning to pipe!
The Amazons recoil; Saint-Antoine has its cannon pointed (full of
grapeshot); thrice applies the lit flambeau; which thrice refuses to
catch,--the touchholes are so wetted; and voices cry: "Arretez, il n'est
pas temps encore, Stop, it is not yet time!" (Deux Amis, iii. 192-201.)
Messieurs of the Garde-du-Corps, ye had orders not to fire; nevertheless
two of you limp dismounted, and one war-horse lies slain. Were it not well
to draw back out of shot-range; finally to file off,--into the interior?
If in so filing off, there did a musketoon or two discharge itself, at
these armed shopkeepers, hooting and crowing, could man wonder? Draggled
are your white cockades of an enormous size; would to Heaven they were got
exchanged for tricolor ones! Your buckskins are wet, your hearts heavy.
Go, and return not!
The Bodyguards file off, as we hint; giving and receiving shots; drawing no
life-blood; leaving boundless indignation. Some three times in the
thickening dusk, a glimpse of them is seen, at this or the other Portal:
saluted always with execrations, with the whew of lead. Let but a
Bodyguard shew face, he is hunted by Rascality;--for instance, poor 'M. de
Moucheton of the Scotch Company,' owner of the slain war-horse; and has to
be smuggled off by Versailles Captains. Or rusty firelocks belch after
him, shivering asunder his--hat. In the end, by superior Order, the
Bodyguards, all but the few on immediate duty, disappear; or as it were
abscond; and march, under cloud of night, to Rambouillet. (Weber, ubi
supra.)
We remark also that the Versaillese have now got ammunition: all
afternoon, the official Person could find none; till, in these so critical
moments, a patriotic Sublieutenant set a pistol to his ear, and would thank
him to find some,--which he thereupon succeeded in doing. Likewise that
Flandre, disarmed by Pallas Athene, says openly, it will not fight with
citizens; and for token of peace, has exchanged cartridges with the
Versaillese.
Sansculottism is now among mere friends; and can 'circulate freely;'
indignant at Bodyguards;--complaining also considerably of hunger.
Chapter 1.7.VIII.
The Equal Diet.
But why lingers Mounier; returns not with his Deputation? It is six, it is
seven o'clock; and still no Mounier, no Acceptance pure and simple.
And, behold, the dripping Menads, not now in deputation but in mass, have
penetrated into the Assembly: to the shamefullest interruption of public
speaking and order of the day. Neither Maillard nor Vice-President can
restrain them, except within wide limits; not even, except for minutes, can
the lion-voice of Mirabeau, though they applaud it: but ever and anon they
break in upon the regeneration of France with cries of: "Bread; not so
much discoursing! Du pain; pas tant de longs discours!"--So insensible
were these poor creatures to bursts of Parliamentary eloquence!
One learns also that the royal Carriages are getting yoked, as if for Metz.
Carriages, royal or not, have verily showed themselves at the back Gates.
They even produced, or quoted, a written order from our Versailles
Municipality,--which is a Monarchic not a Democratic one. However,
Versailles Patroles drove them in again; as the vigilant Lecointre had
strictly charged them to do.
A busy man, truly, is Major Lecointre, in these hours. For Colonel
d'Estaing loiters invisible in the Oeil-de-Boeuf; invisible, or still more
questionably visible, for instants: then also a too loyal Municipality
requires supervision: no order, civil or military, taken about any of these
thousand things! Lecointre is at the Versailles Townhall: he is at the
Grate of the Grand Court; communing with Swiss and Bodyguards. He is in
the ranks of Flandre; he is here, he is there: studious to prevent
bloodshed; to prevent the Royal Family from flying to Metz; the Menads from
plundering Versailles.
At the fall of night, we behold him advance to those armed groups of Saint-
Antoine, hovering all-too grim near the Salle des Menus. They receive him
in a half-circle; twelve speakers behind cannons, with lighted torches in
hand, the cannon-mouths towards Lecointre: a picture for Salvator! He
asks, in temperate but courageous language: What they, by this their
journey to Versailles, do specially want? The twelve speakers reply, in
few words inclusive of much: "Bread, and the end of these brabbles, Du
pain, et la fin des affaires." When the affairs will end, no Major
Lecointre, nor no mortal, can say; but as to bread, he inquires, How many
are you?--learns that they are six hundred, that a loaf each will suffice;
and rides off to the Municipality to get six hundred loaves.
Which loaves, however, a Municipality of Monarchic temper will not give.
It will give two tons of rice rather,--could you but know whether it should
be boiled or raw. Nay when this too is accepted, the Municipals have
disappeared;--ducked under, as the Six-and-Twenty Long-gowned of Paris did;
and, leaving not the smallest vestage of rice, in the boiled or raw state,
they there vanish from History!
Rice comes not; one's hope of food is baulked; even one's hope of
vengeance: is not M. de Moucheton of the Scotch Company, as we said,
deceitfully smuggled off? Failing all which, behold only M. de Moucheton's
slain warhorse, lying on the Esplanade there! Saint-Antoine, baulked,
esurient, pounces on the slain warhorse; flays it; roasts it, with such
fuel, of paling, gates, portable timber as can be come at,--not without
shouting: and, after the manner of ancient Greek Heroes, they lifted their
hands to the daintily readied repast; such as it might be. (Weber, Deux
Amis, &c.;) Other Rascality prowls discursive; seeking what it may devour.
Flandre will retire to its barracks; Lecointre also with his Versaillese,--
all but the vigilant Patrols, charged to be doubly vigilant.
So sink the shadows of Night, blustering, rainy; and all paths grow dark.
Strangest Night ever seen in these regions,--perhaps since the Bartholomew
Night, when Versailles, as Bassompierre writes of it, was a chetif chateau.
O for the Lyre of some Orpheus, to constrain, with touch of melodious
strings, these mad masses into Order! For here all seems fallen asunder,
in wide-yawning dislocation. The highest, as in down-rushing of a World,
is come in contact with the lowest: the Rascality of France beleaguering
the Royalty of France; 'ironshod batons' lifted round the diadem, not to
guard it! With denunciations of bloodthirsty Anti-national Bodyguards, are
heard dark growlings against a Queenly Name.
The Court sits tremulous, powerless; varies with the varying temper of the
Esplanade, with the varying colour of the rumours from Paris. Thick-coming
rumours; now of peace, now of war. Necker and all the Ministers consult;
with a blank issue. The Oeil-de-Boeuf is one tempest of whispers:--We will
fly to Metz; we will not fly. The royal Carriages again attempt egress;--
though for trial merely; they are again driven in by Lecointre's Patrols.
In six hours, nothing has been resolved on; not even the Acceptance pure
and simple.
In six hours? Alas, he who, in such circumstances, cannot resolve in six
minutes, may give up the enterprise: him Fate has already resolved for.
And Menadism, meanwhile, and Sansculottism takes counsel with the National
Assembly; grows more and more tumultuous there. Mounier returns not;
Authority nowhere shews itself: the Authority of France lies, for the
present, with Lecointre and Usher Maillard.--This then is the abomination
of desolation; come suddenly, though long foreshadowed as inevitable! For,
to the blind, all things are sudden. Misery which, through long ages, had
no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.
The dialect, one of the rudest, is, what it could be, this.
At eight o'clock there returns to our Assembly not the Deputation; but
Doctor Guillotin announcing that it will return; also that there is hope of
the Acceptance pure and simple. He himself has brought a Royal Letter,
authorising and commanding the freest 'circulation of grains.' Which Royal
Letter Menadism with its whole heart applauds. Conformably to which the
Assembly forthwith passes a Decree; also received with rapturous Menadic
plaudits:--Only could not an august Assembly contrive further to "fix the
price of bread at eight sous the half-quartern; butchers'-meat at six sous
the pound;" which seem fair rates? Such motion do 'a multitude of men and
women,' irrepressible by Usher Maillard, now make; does an august Assembly
hear made. Usher Maillard himself is not always perfectly measured in
speech; but if rebuked, he can justly excuse himself by the peculiarity of
the circumstances. (Moniteur (in Hist. Parl. ii. 105).)
But finally, this Decree well passed, and the disorder continuing; and
Members melting away, and no President Mounier returning,--what can the
Vice-President do but also melt away? The Assembly melts, under such
pressure, into deliquium; or, as it is officially called, adjourns.
Maillard is despatched to Paris, with the 'Decree concerning Grains' in his
pocket; he and some women, in carriages belonging to the King. Thitherward
slim Louison Chabray has already set forth, with that 'written answer,'
which the Twelve She-deputies returned in to seek. Slim sylph, she has set
forth, through the black muddy country: she has much to tell, her poor
nerves so flurried; and travels, as indeed to-day on this road all persons
do, with extreme slowness. President Mounier has not come, nor the
Acceptance pure and simple; though six hours with their events have come;
though courier on courier reports that Lafayette is coming. Coming, with
war or with peace? It is time that the Chateau also should determine on
one thing or another; that the Chateau also should show itself alive, if it
would continue living!
Victorious, joyful after such delay, Mounier does arrive at last, and the
hard-earned Acceptance with him; which now, alas, is of small value. Fancy
Mounier's surprise to find his Senate, whom he hoped to charm by the
Acceptance pure and simple,--all gone; and in its stead a Senate of Menads!
For as Erasmus's Ape mimicked, say with wooden splint, Erasmus shaving, so
do these Amazons hold, in mock majesty, some confused parody of National
Assembly. They make motions; deliver speeches; pass enactments; productive
at least of loud laughter. All galleries and benches are filled; a strong
Dame of the Market is in Mounier's Chair. Not without difficulty, Mounier,
by aid of macers, and persuasive speaking, makes his way to the Female-
President: the Strong Dame before abdicating signifies that, for one
thing, she and indeed her whole senate male and female (for what was one
roasted warhorse among so many?) are suffering very considerably from
hunger.
Experienced Mounier, in these circumstances, takes a twofold resolution:
To reconvoke his Assembly Members by sound of drum; also to procure a
supply of food. Swift messengers fly, to all bakers, cooks, pastrycooks,
vintners, restorers; drums beat, accompanied with shrill vocal
proclamation, through all streets. They come: the Assembly Members come;
what is still better, the provisions come. On tray and barrow come these
latter; loaves, wine, great store of sausages. The nourishing baskets
circulate harmoniously along the benches; nor, according to the Father of
Epics, did any soul lack a fair share of victual ((Greek), an equal diet);
highly desirable, at the moment. (Deux Amis, iii. 208.)
Gradually some hundred or so of Assembly members get edged in, Menadism
making way a little, round Mounier's Chair; listen to the Acceptance pure
and simple; and begin, what is the order of the night, 'discussion of the
Penal Code.' All benches are crowded; in the dusky galleries, duskier with
unwashed heads, is a strange 'coruscation,'--of impromptu billhooks.
(Courier de Provence (Mirabeau's Newspaper), No. 50, p. 19.) It is exactly
five months this day since these same galleries were filled with high-
plumed jewelled Beauty, raining bright influences; and now? To such length
have we got in regenerating France. Methinks the travail-throes are of the
sharpest!--Menadism will not be restrained from occasional remarks; asks,
"What is use of the Penal Code? The thing we want is Bread." Mirabeau
turns round with lion-voiced rebuke; Menadism applauds him; but
recommences.
Thus they, chewing tough sausages, discussing the Penal Code, make night
hideous. What the issue will be? Lafayette with his thirty thousand must
arrive first: him, who cannot now be distant, all men expect, as the
messenger of Destiny.
Chapter 1.7.IX.
Lafayette.
Towards midnight lights flare on the hill; Lafayette's lights! The roll of
his drums comes up the Avenue de Versailles. With peace, or with war?
Patience, friends! With neither. Lafayette is come, but not yet the
catastrophe.
He has halted and harangued so often, on the march; spent nine hours on
four leagues of road. At Montreuil, close on Versailles, the whole Host
had to pause; and, with uplifted right hand, in the murk of Night, to these
pouring skies, swear solemnly to respect the King's Dwelling; to be
faithful to King and National Assembly. Rage is driven down out of sight,
by the laggard march; the thirst of vengeance slaked in weariness and
soaking clothes. Flandre is again drawn out under arms: but Flandre,
grown so patriotic, now needs no 'exterminating.' The wayworn Batallions
halt in the Avenue: they have, for the present, no wish so pressing as
that of shelter and rest.
Anxious sits President Mounier; anxious the Chateau. There is a message
coming from the Chateau, that M. Mounier would please return thither with a
fresh Deputation, swiftly; and so at least unite our two anxieties.
Anxious Mounier does of himself send, meanwhile, to apprise the General
that his Majesty has been so gracious as to grant us the Acceptance pure
and simple. The General, with a small advance column, makes answer in
passing; speaks vaguely some smooth words to the National President,--
glances, only with the eye, at that so mixtiform National Assembly; then
fares forward towards the Chateau. There are with him two Paris
Municipals; they were chosen from the Three Hundred for that errand. He
gets admittance through the locked and padlocked Grates, through sentries
and ushers, to the Royal Halls.
The Court, male and female, crowds on his passage, to read their doom on
his face; which exhibits, say Historians, a mixture 'of sorrow, of fervour
and valour,' singular to behold. (Memoire de M. le Comte de Lally-
Tollendal (Janvier 1790), p. 161-165.) The King, with Monsieur, with
Ministers and Marshals, is waiting to receive him: He "is come," in his
highflown chivalrous way, "to offer his head for the safety of his
Majesty's." The two Municipals state the wish of Paris: four things, of
quite pacific tenor. First, that the honour of Guarding his sacred person
be conferred on patriot National Guards;--say, the Centre Grenadiers, who
as Gardes Francaises were wont to have that privilege. Second, that
provisions be got, if possible. Third, that the Prisons, all crowded with
political delinquents, may have judges sent them. Fourth, that it would
please his Majesty to come and live in Paris. To all which four wishes,
except the fourth, his Majesty answers readily, Yes; or indeed may almost
say that he has already answered it. To the fourth he can answer only, Yes
or No; would so gladly answer, Yes and No!--But, in any case, are not their
dispositions, thank Heaven, so entirely pacific? There is time for
deliberation. The brunt of the danger seems past!
Lafayette and d'Estaing settle the watches; Centre Grenadiers are to take
the Guard-room they of old occupied as Gardes Francaises;--for indeed the
Gardes du Corps, its late ill-advised occupants, are gone mostly to
Rambouillet. That is the order of this night; sufficient for the night is
the evil thereof. Whereupon Lafayette and the two Municipals, with
highflown chivalry, take their leave.
So brief has the interview been, Mounier and his Deputation were not yet
got up. So brief and satisfactory. A stone is rolled from every heart.
The fair Palace Dames publicly declare that this Lafayette, detestable
though he be, is their saviour for once. Even the ancient vinaigrous
Tantes admit it; the King's Aunts, ancient Graille and Sisterhood, known to
us of old. Queen Marie-Antoinette has been heard often say the like. She
alone, among all women and all men, wore a face of courage, of lofty
calmness and resolve, this day. She alone saw clearly what she meant to
do; and Theresa's Daughter dares do what she means, were all France
threatening her: abide where her children are, where her husband is.
Towards three in the morning all things are settled: the watches set, the
Centre Grenadiers put into their old Guard-room, and harangued; the Swiss,
and few remaining Bodyguards harangued. The wayworn Paris Batallions,
consigned to 'the hospitality of Versailles,' lie dormant in spare-beds,
spare-barracks, coffeehouses, empty churches. A troop of them, on their
way to the Church of Saint-Louis, awoke poor Weber, dreaming troublous, in
the Rue Sartory. Weber has had his waistcoat-pocket full of balls all day;
'two hundred balls, and two pears of powder!' For waistcoats were
waistcoats then, and had flaps down to mid-thigh. So many balls he has had
all day; but no opportunity of using them: he turns over now, execrating
disloyal bandits; swears a prayer or two, and straight to sleep again.
Finally, the National Assembly is harangued; which thereupon, on motion of
Mirabeau, discontinues the Penal Code, and dismisses for this night.
Menadism, Sansculottism has cowered into guard-houses, barracks of Flandre,
to the light of cheerful fire; failing that, to churches, office-houses,
sentry-boxes, wheresoever wretchedness can find a lair. The troublous Day
has brawled itself to rest: no lives yet lost but that of one warhorse.
Insurrectionary Chaos lies slumbering round the Palace, like Ocean round a
Diving-bell,--no crevice yet disclosing itself.
Deep sleep has fallen promiscuously on the high and on the low; suspending
most things, even wrath and famine. Darkness covers the Earth. But, far
on the North-east, Paris flings up her great yellow gleam; far into the wet
black Night. For all is illuminated there, as in the old July Nights; the
streets deserted, for alarm of war; the Municipals all wakeful; Patrols
hailing, with their hoarse Who-goes. There, as we discover, our poor slim
Louison Chabray, her poor nerves all fluttered, is arriving about this very
hour. There Usher Maillard will arrive, about an hour hence, 'towards four
in the morning.' They report, successively, to a wakeful Hotel-de-Ville
what comfort they can report; which again, with early dawn, large
comfortable Placards, shall impart to all men.
Lafayette, in the Hotel de Noailles, not far from the Chateau, having now
finished haranguing, sits with his Officers consulting: at five o'clock
the unanimous best counsel is, that a man so tost and toiled for twenty-
four hours and more, fling himself on a bed, and seek some rest.
Thus, then, has ended the First Act of the Insurrection of Women. How it
will turn on the morrow? The morrow, as always, is with the Fates! But
his Majesty, one may hope, will consent to come honourably to Paris; at all
events, he can visit Paris. Anti-national Bodyguards, here and elsewhere,
must take the National Oath; make reparation to the Tricolor; Flandre will
swear. There may be much swearing; much public speaking there will
infallibly be: and so, with harangues and vows, may the matter in some
handsome way, wind itself up.
Or, alas, may it not be all otherwise, unhandsome: the consent not
honourable, but extorted, ignominious? Boundless Chaos of Insurrection
presses slumbering round the Palace, like Ocean round a Diving-bell; and
may penetrate at any crevice. Let but that accumulated insurrectionary
mass find entrance! Like the infinite inburst of water; or say rather, of
inflammable, self-igniting fluid; for example, 'turpentine-and-phosphorus
oil,'--fluid known to Spinola Santerre!
Chapter 1.7.X.
The Grand Entries.
The dull dawn of a new morning, drizzly and chill, had but broken over
Versailles, when it pleased Destiny that a Bodyguard should look out of
window, on the right wing of the Chateau, to see what prospect there was in
Heaven and in Earth. Rascality male and female is prowling in view of him.
His fasting stomach is, with good cause, sour; he perhaps cannot forbear a
passing malison on them; least of all can he forbear answering such.
Ill words breed worse: till the worst word came; and then the ill deed.
Did the maledicent Bodyguard, getting (as was too inevitable) better
malediction than he gave, load his musketoon, and threaten to fire; and
actually fire? Were wise who wist! It stands asserted; to us not
credibly. Be this as it may, menaced Rascality, in whinnying scorn, is
shaking at all Grates: the fastening of one (some write, it was a chain
merely) gives way; Rascality is in the Grand Court, whinnying louder still.
The maledicent Bodyguard, more Bodyguards than he do now give fire; a man's
arm is shattered. Lecointre will depose (Deposition de Lecointre (in Hist.
Parl. iii. 111-115.) that 'the Sieur Cardaine, a National Guard without
arms, was stabbed.' But see, sure enough, poor Jerome l'Heritier, an
unarmed National Guard he too, 'cabinet-maker, a saddler's son, of Paris,'
with the down of youthhood still on his chin,--he reels death-stricken;
rushes to the pavement, scattering it with his blood and brains!--Allelew!
Wilder than Irish wakes, rises the howl: of pity; of infinite revenge. In
few moments, the Grate of the inner and inmost Court, which they name Court
of Marble, this too is forced, or surprised, and burst open: the Court of
Marble too is overflowed: up the Grand Staircase, up all stairs and
entrances rushes the living Deluge! Deshuttes and Varigny, the two sentry
Bodyguards, are trodden down, are massacred with a hundred pikes. Women
snatch their cutlasses, or any weapon, and storm-in Menadic:--other women
lift the corpse of shot Jerome; lay it down on the Marble steps; there
shall the livid face and smashed head, dumb for ever, speak.
Wo now to all Bodyguards, mercy is none for them! Miomandre de Sainte-
Marie pleads with soft words, on the Grand Staircase, 'descending four
steps:'--to the roaring tornado. His comrades snatch him up, by the skirts
and belts; literally, from the jaws of Destruction; and slam-to their Door.
This also will stand few instants; the panels shivering in, like potsherds.
Barricading serves not: fly fast, ye Bodyguards; rabid Insurrection, like
the hellhound Chase, uproaring at your heels!
The terrorstruck Bodyguards fly, bolting and barricading; it follows.
Whitherward? Through hall on hall: wo, now! towards the Queen's Suite of
Rooms, in the furtherest room of which the Queen is now asleep. Five
sentinels rush through that long Suite; they are in the Anteroom knocking
loud: "Save the Queen!" Trembling women fall at their feet with tears;
are answered: "Yes, we will die; save ye the Queen!"
Tremble not, women, but haste: for, lo, another voice shouts far through
the outermost door, "Save the Queen!" and the door shut. It is brave
Miomandre's voice that shouts this second warning. He has stormed across
imminent death to do it; fronts imminent death, having done it. Brave
Tardivet du Repaire, bent on the same desperate service, was borne down
with pikes; his comrades hardly snatched him in again alive. Miomandre and
Tardivet: let the names of these two Bodyguards, as the names of brave men
should, live long.
Trembling Maids of Honour, one of whom from afar caught glimpse of
Miomandre as well as heard him, hastily wrap the Queen; not in robes of
State. She flies for her life, across the Oeil-de-Boeuf; against the main
door of which too Insurrection batters. She is in the King's Apartment, in
the King's arms; she clasps her children amid a faithful few. The
Imperial-hearted bursts into mother's tears: "O my friends, save me and my
children, O mes amis, sauvez moi et mes enfans!" The battering of
Insurrectionary axes clangs audible across the Oeil-de-Boeuf. What an
hour!
Yes, Friends: a hideous fearful hour; shameful alike to Governed and
Governor; wherein Governed and Governor ignominiously testify that their
relation is at an end. Rage, which had brewed itself in twenty thousand
hearts, for the last four-and-twenty hours, has taken fire: Jerome's
brained corpse lies there as live-coal. It is, as we said, the infinite
Element bursting in: wild-surging through all corridors and conduits.
Meanwhile, the poor Bodyguards have got hunted mostly into the Oeil-de-
Boeuf. They may die there, at the King's threshhold; they can do little to
defend it. They are heaping tabourets (stools of honour), benches and all
moveables, against the door; at which the axe of Insurrection thunders.--
But did brave Miomandre perish, then, at the Queen's door? No, he was
fractured, slashed, lacerated, left for dead; he has nevertheless crawled
hither; and shall live, honoured of loyal France. Remark also, in flat
contradiction to much which has been said and sung, that Insurrection did
not burst that door he had defended; but hurried elsewhither, seeking new
bodyguards. (Campan, ii. 75-87.)
Poor Bodyguards, with their Thyestes' Opera-Repast! Well for them, that
Insurrection has only pikes and axes; no right sieging tools! It shakes
and thunders. Must they all perish miserably, and Royalty with them?
Deshuttes and Varigny, massacred at the first inbreak, have been beheaded
in the Marble Court: a sacrifice to Jerome's manes: Jourdan with the
tile-beard did that duty willingly; and asked, If there were no more?
Another captive they are leading round the corpse, with howl-chauntings:
may not Jourdan again tuck up his sleeves?
And louder and louder rages Insurrection within, plundering if it cannot
kill; louder and louder it thunders at the Oeil-de-Boeuf: what can now
hinder its bursting in?--On a sudden it ceases; the battering has ceased!
Wild rushing: the cries grow fainter: there is silence, or the tramp of
regular steps; then a friendly knocking: "We are the Centre Grenadiers,
old Gardes Francaises: Open to us, Messieurs of the Garde-du-Corps; we
have not forgotten how you saved us at Fontenoy!" (Toulongeon, i. 144.)
The door is opened; enter Captain Gondran and the Centre Grenadiers: there
are military embracings; there is sudden deliverance from death into life.
Strange Sons of Adam! It was to 'exterminate' these Gardes-du-Corps that
the Centre Grenadiers left home: and now they have rushed to save them
from extermination. The memory of common peril, of old help, melts the
rough heart; bosom is clasped to bosom, not in war. The King shews
himself, one moment, through the door of his Apartment, with: "Do not hurt
my Guards!"--"Soyons freres, Let us be brothers!" cries Captain Gondran;
and again dashes off, with levelled bayonets, to sweep the Palace clear.
Now too Lafayette, suddenly roused, not from sleep (for his eyes had not
yet closed), arrives; with passionate popular eloquence, with prompt
military word of command. National Guards, suddenly roused, by sound of
trumpet and alarm-drum, are all arriving. The death-melly ceases: the
first sky-lambent blaze of Insurrection is got damped down; it burns now,
if unextinguished, yet flameless, as charred coals do, and not
inextinguishable. The King's Apartments are safe. Ministers, Officials,
and even some loyal National deputies are assembling round their Majesties.
The consternation will, with sobs and confusion, settle down gradually,
into plan and counsel, better or worse.
But glance now, for a moment, from the royal windows! A roaring sea of
human heads, inundating both Courts; billowing against all passages:
Menadic women; infuriated men, mad with revenge, with love of mischief,
love of plunder! Rascality has slipped its muzzle; and now bays, three-
throated, like the Dog of Erebus. Fourteen Bodyguards are wounded; two
massacred, and as we saw, beheaded; Jourdan asking, "Was it worth while to
come so far for two?" Hapless Deshuttes and Varigny! Their fate surely
was sad. Whirled down so suddenly to the abyss; as men are, suddenly, by
the wide thunder of the Mountain Avalanche, awakened not by them, awakened
far off by others! When the Chateau Clock last struck, they two were
pacing languid, with poised musketoon; anxious mainly that the next hour
would strike. It has struck; to them inaudible. Their trunks lie mangled:
their heads parade, 'on pikes twelve feet long,' through the streets of
Versailles; and shall, about noon reach the Barriers of Paris,--a too
ghastly contradiction to the large comfortable Placards that have been
posted there!
The other captive Bodyguard is still circling the corpse of Jerome, amid
Indian war-whooping; bloody Tilebeard, with tucked sleeves, brandishing his
bloody axe; when Gondran and the Grenadiers come in sight. "Comrades, will
you see a man massacred in cold blood?"--"Off, butchers!" answer they; and
the poor Bodyguard is free. Busy runs Gondran, busy run Guards and
Captains; scouring at all corridors; dispersing Rascality and Robbery;
sweeping the Palace clear. The mangled carnage is removed; Jerome's body
to the Townhall, for inquest: the fire of Insurrection gets damped, more
and more, into measurable, manageable heat.
Transcendent things of all sorts, as in the general outburst of
multitudinous Passion, are huddled together; the ludicrous, nay the
ridiculous, with the horrible. Far over the billowy sea of heads, may be
seen Rascality, caprioling on horses from the Royal Stud. The Spoilers
these; for Patriotism is always infected so, with a proportion of mere
thieves and scoundrels. Gondran snatched their prey from them in the
Chateau; whereupon they hurried to the Stables, and took horse there. But
the generous Diomedes' steeds, according to Weber, disdained such
scoundrel-burden; and, flinging up their royal heels, did soon project most
of it, in parabolic curves, to a distance, amid peals of laughter: and
were caught. Mounted National Guards secured the rest.
Now too is witnessed the touching last-flicker of Etiquette; which sinks
not here, in the Cimmerian World-wreckage, without a sign, as the house-
cricket might still chirp in the pealing of a Trump of Doom. "Monsieur,"
said some Master of Ceremonies (one hopes it might be de Breze), as
Lafayette, in these fearful moments, was rushing towards the inner Royal
Apartments, "Monsieur, le Roi vous accorde les grandes entrees, Monsieur,
the King grants you the Grand Entries,"--not finding it convenient to
refuse them!" (Toulongeon, 1 App. 120.)
Chapter 1.7.XI.
From Versailles.
However, the Paris National Guard, wholly under arms, has cleared the
Palace, and even occupies the nearer external spaces; extruding
miscellaneous Patriotism, for most part, into the Grand Court, or even into
the Forecourt.
The Bodyguards, you can observe, have now of a verity, 'hoisted the
National Cockade:' for they step forward to the windows or balconies, hat
aloft in hand, on each hat a huge tricolor; and fling over their bandoleers
in sign of surrender; and shout Vive la Nation. To which how can the
generous heart respond but with, Vive le Roi; vivent les Gardes-du-Corps?
His Majesty himself has appeared with Lafayette on the balcony, and again
appears: Vive le Roi greets him from all throats; but also from some one
throat is heard "Le Roi a Paris, The King to Paris!"
Her Majesty too, on demand, shows herself, though there is peril in it:
she steps out on the balcony, with her little boy and girl. "No children,
Point d'enfans!" cry the voices. She gently pushes back her children; and
stands alone, her hands serenely crossed on her breast: "should I die,"
she had said, "I will do it." Such serenity of heroism has its effect.
Lafayette, with ready wit, in his highflown chivalrous way, takes that fair
queenly hand; and reverently kneeling, kisses it: thereupon the people do
shout Vive la Reine. Nevertheless, poor Weber 'saw' (or even thought he
saw; for hardly the third part of poor Weber's experiences, in such
hysterical days, will stand scrutiny) 'one of these brigands level his
musket at her Majesty,'--with or without intention to shoot; for another of
the brigands 'angrily struck it down.'
So that all, and the Queen herself, nay the very Captain of the Bodyguards,
have grown National! The very Captain of the Bodyguards steps out now with
Lafayette. On the hat of the repentant man is an enormous tricolor; large
as a soup-platter, or sun-flower; visible to the utmost Forecourt. He
takes the National Oath with a loud voice, elevating his hat; at which
sight all the army raise their bonnets on their bayonets, with shouts.
Sweet is reconcilement to the heart of man. Lafayette has sworn Flandre;
he swears the remaining Bodyguards, down in the Marble Court; the people
clasp them in their arms:--O, my brothers, why would ye force us to slay
you? Behold there is joy over you, as over returning prodigal sons!--The
poor Bodyguards, now National and tricolor, exchange bonnets, exchange
arms; there shall be peace and fraternity. And still "Vive le Roi;" and
also "Le Roi a Paris," not now from one throat, but from all throats as
one, for it is the heart's wish of all mortals.
Yes, The King to Paris: what else? Ministers may consult, and National
Deputies wag their heads: but there is now no other possibility. You have
forced him to go willingly. "At one o'clock!" Lafayette gives audible
assurance to that purpose; and universal Insurrection, with immeasurable
shout, and a discharge of all the firearms, clear and rusty, great and
small, that it has, returns him acceptance. What a sound; heard for
leagues: a doom peal!--That sound too rolls away, into the Silence of
Ages. And the Chateau of Versailles stands ever since vacant, hushed
still; its spacious Courts grassgrown, responsive to the hoe of the weeder.
Times and generations roll on, in their confused Gulf-current; and
buildings like builders have their destiny.
Till one o'clock, then, there will be three parties, National Assembly,
National Rascality, National Royalty, all busy enough. Rascality rejoices;
women trim themselves with tricolor. Nay motherly Paris has sent her
Avengers sufficient 'cartloads of loaves;' which are shouted over, which
are gratefully consumed. The Avengers, in return, are searching for grain-
stores; loading them in fifty waggons; that so a National King, probable
harbinger of all blessings, may be the evident bringer of plenty, for one.
And thus has Sansculottism made prisoner its King; revoking his parole.
The Monarchy has fallen; and not so much as honourably: no, ignominiously;
with struggle, indeed, oft repeated; but then with unwise struggle; wasting
its strength in fits and paroxysms; at every new paroxysm, foiled more
pitifully than before. Thus Broglie's whiff of grapeshot, which might have
been something, has dwindled to the pot-valour of an Opera Repast, and O
Richard, O mon Roi. Which again we shall see dwindle to a Favras'
Conspiracy, a thing to be settled by the hanging of one Chevalier.
Poor Monarchy! But what save foulest defeat can await that man, who wills,
and yet wills not? Apparently the King either has a right, assertible as
such to the death, before God and man; or else he has no right.
Apparently, the one or the other; could he but know which! May Heaven pity
him! Were Louis wise he would this day abdicate.--Is it not strange so few
Kings abdicate; and none yet heard of has been known to commit suicide?
Fritz the First, of Prussia, alone tried it; and they cut the rope.
As for the National Assembly, which decrees this morning that it 'is
inseparable from his Majesty,' and will follow him to Paris, there may one
thing be noted: its extreme want of bodily health. After the Fourteenth
of July there was a certain sickliness observable among honourable Members;
so many demanding passports, on account of infirm health. But now, for
these following days, there is a perfect murrian: President Mounier, Lally
Tollendal, Clermont Tonnere, and all Constitutional Two-Chamber Royalists
needing change of air; as most No-Chamber Royalists had formerly done.
For, in truth, it is the second Emigration this that has now come; most
extensive among Commons Deputies, Noblesse, Clergy: so that 'to
Switzerland alone there go sixty thousand.' They will return in the day of
accounts! Yes, and have hot welcome.--But Emigration on Emigration is the
peculiarity of France. One Emigration follows another; grounded on
reasonable fear, unreasonable hope, largely also on childish pet. The
highflyers have gone first, now the lower flyers; and ever the lower will
go down to the crawlers. Whereby, however, cannot our National Assembly so
much the more commodiously make the Constitution; your Two-Chamber
Anglomaniacs being all safe, distant on foreign shores? Abbe Maury is
seized, and sent back again: he, tough as tanned leather, with eloquent
Captain Cazales and some others, will stand it out for another year.
But here, meanwhile, the question arises: Was Philippe d'Orleans seen,
this day, 'in the Bois de Boulogne, in grey surtout;' waiting under the wet
sere foliage, what the day might bring forth? Alas, yes, the Eidolon of
him was,--in Weber's and other such brains. The Chatelet shall make large
inquisition into the matter, examining a hundred and seventy witnesses, and
Deputy Chabroud publish his Report; but disclose nothing further. (Rapport
de Chabroud (Moniteur, du 31 December, 1789).) What then has caused these
two unparalleled October Days? For surely such dramatic exhibition never
yet enacted itself without Dramatist and Machinist. Wooden Punch emerges
not, with his domestic sorrows, into the light of day, unless the wire be
pulled: how can human mobs? Was it not d'Orleans then, and Laclos,
Marquis Sillery, Mirabeau and the sons of confusion, hoping to drive the
King to Metz, and gather the spoil? Nay was it not, quite contrariwise,
the Oeil-de-Boeuf, Bodyguard Colonel de Guiche, Minister Saint-Priest and
highflying Loyalists; hoping also to drive him to Metz; and try it by the
sword of civil war? Good Marquis Toulongeon, the Historian and Deputy,
feels constrained to admit that it was both. (Toulongeon, i. 150.)
Alas, my Friends, credulous incredulity is a strange matter. But when a
whole Nation is smitten with Suspicion, and sees a dramatic miracle in the
very operation of the gastric juices, what help is there? Such Nation is
already a mere hypochondriac bundle of diseases; as good as changed into
glass; atrabiliar, decadent; and will suffer crises. Is not Suspicion
itself the one thing to be suspected, as Montaigne feared only fear?
Now, however, the short hour has struck. His Majesty is in his carriage,
with his Queen, sister Elizabeth, and two royal children. Not for another
hour can the infinite Procession get marshalled, and under way. The
weather is dim drizzling; the mind confused; and noise great.
Processional marches not a few our world has seen; Roman triumphs and
ovations, Cabiric cymbal-beatings, Royal progresses, Irish funerals: but
this of the French Monarchy marching to its bed remained to be seen. Miles
long, and of breadth losing itself in vagueness, for all the neighbouring
country crowds to see. Slow; stagnating along, like shoreless Lake, yet
with a noise like Niagara, like Babel and Bedlam. A splashing and a
tramping; a hurrahing, uproaring, musket-volleying;--the truest segment of
Chaos seen in these latter Ages! Till slowly it disembogue itself, in the
thickening dusk, into expectant Paris, through a double row of faces all
the way from Passy to the Hotel-de-Ville.
Consider this: Vanguard of National troops; with trains of artillery; of
pikemen and pikewomen, mounted on cannons, on carts, hackney-coaches, or on
foot;--tripudiating, in tricolor ribbons from head to heel; loaves stuck on
the points of bayonets, green boughs stuck in gun barrels. (Mercier,
Nouveau Paris, iii. 21.) Next, as main-march, 'fifty cartloads of corn,'
which have been lent, for peace, from the stores of Versailles. Behind
which follow stragglers of the Garde-du-Corps; all humiliated, in Grenadier
bonnets. Close on these comes the Royal Carriage; come Royal Carriages:
for there are an Hundred National Deputies too, among whom sits Mirabeau,--
his remarks not given. Then finally, pellmell, as rearguard, Flandre,
Swiss, Hundred Swiss, other Bodyguards, Brigands, whosoever cannot get
before. Between and among all which masses, flows without limit Saint-
Antoine, and the Menadic Cohort. Menadic especially about the Royal
Carriage; tripudiating there, covered with tricolor; singing 'allusive
songs;' pointing with one hand to the Royal Carriage, which the illusions
hit, and pointing to the Provision-wagons, with the other hand, and these
words: "Courage, Friends! We shall not want bread now; we are bringing you
the Baker, the Bakeress, and Baker's Boy (le Boulanger, la Boulangere, et
le petit Mitron)." (Toulongeon, i. 134-161; Deux Amis (iii. c. 9); &c.;
&c.;)
The wet day draggles the tricolor, but the joy is unextinguishable. Is not
all well now? "Ah, Madame, notre bonne Reine," said some of these Strong-
women some days hence, "Ah Madame, our good Queen, don't be a traitor any
more (ne soyez plus traitre), and we will all love you!" Poor Weber went
splashing along, close by the Royal carriage, with the tear in his eye:
'their Majesties did me the honour,' or I thought they did it, 'to testify,
from time to time, by shrugging of the shoulders, by looks directed to
Heaven, the emotions they felt.' Thus, like frail cockle, floats the Royal
Life-boat, helmless, on black deluges of Rascality.
Mercier, in his loose way, estimates the Procession and assistants at two
hundred thousand. He says it was one boundless inarticulate Haha;--
transcendent World-Laughter; comparable to the Saturnalia of the Ancients.
Why not? Here too, as we said, is Human Nature once more human; shudder at
it whoso is of shuddering humour: yet behold it is human. It has
'swallowed all formulas;' it tripudiates even so. For which reason they
that collect Vases and Antiques, with figures of Dancing Bacchantes 'in
wild and all but impossible positions,' may look with some interest on it.
Thus, however, has the slow-moving Chaos or modern Saturnalia of the
Ancients, reached the Barrier; and must halt, to be harangued by Mayor
Bailly. Thereafter it has to lumber along, between the double row of
faces, in the transcendent heaven-lashing Haha; two hours longer, towards
the Hotel-de-Ville. Then again to be harangued there, by several persons;
by Moreau de Saint-Mery, among others; Moreau of the Three-thousand orders,
now National Deputy for St. Domingo. To all which poor Louis, who seemed
to 'experience a slight emotion' on entering this Townhall, can answer only
that he "comes with pleasure, with confidence among his people." Mayor
Bailly, in reporting it, forgets 'confidence;' and the poor Queen says
eagerly: "Add, with confidence."--"Messieurs," rejoins Bailly, "You are
happier than if I had not forgot."
Finally, the King is shewn on an upper balcony, by torchlight, with a huge
tricolor in his hat: 'And all the "people," says Weber, grasped one
another's hands;--thinking now surely the New Era was born.' Hardly till
eleven at night can Royalty get to its vacant, long-deserted Palace of the
Tuileries: to lodge there, somewhat in strolling-player fashion. It is
Tuesday, the sixth of October, 1789.
Poor Louis has Two other Paris Processions to make: one ludicrous-
ignominious like this; the other not ludicrous nor ignominious, but
serious, nay sublime.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
VOLUME II.
THE CONSTITUTION
BOOK 2.I.
THE FEAST OF PIKES
Chapter 2.1.I.
In the Tuileries.
The victim having once got his stroke-of-grace, the catastrophe can be
considered as almost come. There is small interest now in watching his
long low moans: notable only are his sharper agonies, what convulsive
struggles he may take to cast the torture off from him; and then finally
the last departure of life itself, and how he lies extinct and ended,
either wrapt like Caesar in decorous mantle-folds, or unseemly sunk
together, like one that had not the force even to die.
Was French Royalty, when wrenched forth from its tapestries in that
fashion, on that Sixth of October 1789, such a victim? Universal France,
and Royal Proclamation to all the Provinces, answers anxiously, No;
nevertheless one may fear the worst. Royalty was beforehand so decrepit,
moribund, there is little life in it to heal an injury. How much of its
strength, which was of the imagination merely, has fled; Rascality having
looked plainly in the King's face, and not died! When the assembled crows
can pluck up their scarecrow, and say to it, Here shalt thou stand and not
there; and can treat with it, and make it, from an infinite, a quite finite
Constitutional scarecrow,--what is to be looked for? Not in the finite
Constitutional scarecrow, but in what still unmeasured, infinite-seeming
force may rally round it, is there thenceforth any hope. For it is most
true that all available Authority is mystic in its conditions, and comes
'by the grace of God.'
Cheerfuller than watching the death-struggles of Royalism will it be to
watch the growth and gambollings of Sansculottism; for, in human things,
especially in human society, all death is but a death-birth: thus if the
sceptre is departing from Louis, it is only that, in other forms, other
sceptres, were it even pike-sceptres, may bear sway. In a prurient
element, rich with nutritive influences, we shall find that Sansculottism
grows lustily, and even frisks in not ungraceful sport: as indeed most
young creatures are sportful; nay, may it not be noted further, that as the
grown cat, and cat-species generally, is the cruellest thing known, so the
merriest is precisely the kitten, or growing cat?
But fancy the Royal Family risen from its truckle-beds on the morrow of
that mad day: fancy the Municipal inquiry, "How would your Majesty please
to lodge?"--and then that the King's rough answer, "Each may lodge as he
can, I am well enough," is congeed and bowed away, in expressive grins, by
the Townhall Functionaries, with obsequious upholsterers at their back; and
how the Chateau of the Tuileries is repainted, regarnished into a golden
Royal Residence; and Lafayette with his blue National Guards lies
encompassing it, as blue Neptune (in the language of poets) does an island,
wooingly. Thither may the wrecks of rehabilitated Loyalty gather; if it
will become Constitutional; for Constitutionalism thinks no evil;
Sansculottism itself rejoices in the King's countenance. The rubbish of a
Menadic Insurrection, as in this ever-kindly world all rubbish can and must
be, is swept aside; and so again, on clear arena, under new conditions,
with something even of a new stateliness, we begin a new course of action.
Arthur Young has witnessed the strangest scene: Majesty walking unattended
in the Tuileries Gardens; and miscellaneous tricolor crowds, who cheer it,
and reverently make way for it: the very Queen commands at lowest
respectful silence, regretful avoidance. (Arthur Young's Travels, i. 264-
280.) Simple ducks, in those royal waters, quackle for crumbs from young
royal fingers: the little Dauphin has a little railed garden, where he is
seen delving, with ruddy cheeks and flaxen curled hair; also a little hutch
to put his tools in, and screen himself against showers. What peaceable
simplicity! Is it peace of a Father restored to his children? Or of a
Taskmaster who has lost his whip? Lafayette and the Municipality and
universal Constitutionalism assert the former, and do what is in them to
realise it. Such Patriotism as snarls dangerously, and shows teeth,
Patrollotism shall suppress; or far better, Royalty shall soothe down the
angry hair of it, by gentle pattings; and, most effectual of all, by fuller
diet. Yes, not only shall Paris be fed, but the King's hand be seen in
that work. The household goods of the Poor shall, up to a certain amount,
by royal bounty, be disengaged from pawn, and that insatiable Mont de Piete
disgorge: rides in the city with their vive-le-roi need not fail; and so
by substance and show, shall Royalty, if man's art can popularise it, be
popularised. (Deux Amis, iii. c. 10.)
Or, alas, is it neither restored Father nor diswhipped Taskmaster that
walks there; but an anomalous complex of both these, and of innumerable
other heterogeneities; reducible to no rubric, if not to this newly devised
one: King Louis Restorer of French Liberty? Man indeed, and King Louis
like other men, lives in this world to make rule out of the ruleless; by
his living energy, he shall force the absurd itself to become less absurd.
But then if there be no living energy; living passivity only? King
Serpent, hurled into his unexpected watery dominion, did at least bite, and
assert credibly that he was there: but as for the poor King Log, tumbled
hither and thither as thousandfold chance and other will than his might
direct, how happy for him that he was indeed wooden; and, doing nothing,
could also see and suffer nothing! It is a distracted business.
For his French Majesty, meanwhile, one of the worst things is that he can
get no hunting. Alas, no hunting henceforth; only a fatal being-hunted!
Scarcely, in the next June weeks, shall he taste again the joys of the
game-destroyer; in next June, and never more. He sends for his smith-
tools; gives, in the course of the day, official or ceremonial business
being ended, 'a few strokes of the file, quelques coups de lime. (Le
Chateau des Tuileries, ou recit, &c.;, par Roussel (in Hist. Parl. iv. 195-
219).) Innocent brother mortal, why wert thou not an obscure substantial
maker of locks; but doomed in that other far-seen craft, to be a maker only
of world-follies, unrealities; things self destructive, which no mortal
hammering could rivet into coherence!
Poor Louis is not without insight, nor even without the elements of will;
some sharpness of temper, spurting at times from a stagnating character.
If harmless inertness could save him, it were well; but he will slumber and
painfully dream, and to do aught is not given him. Royalist Antiquarians
still shew the rooms where Majesty and suite, in these extraordinary
circumstances, had their lodging. Here sat the Queen; reading,--for she
had her library brought hither, though the King refused his; taking
vehement counsel of the vehement uncounselled; sorrowing over altered
times; yet with sure hope of better: in her young rosy Boy, has she not
the living emblem of hope! It is a murky, working sky; yet with golden
gleams--of dawn, or of deeper meteoric night? Here again this chamber, on
the other side of the main entrance, was the King's: here his Majesty
breakfasted, and did official work; here daily after breakfast he received
the Queen; sometimes in pathetic friendliness; sometimes in human
sulkiness, for flesh is weak; and, when questioned about business would
answer: "Madame, your business is with the children." Nay, Sire, were it
not better you, your Majesty's self, took the children? So asks impartial
History; scornful that the thicker vessel was not also the stronger; pity-
struck for the porcelain-clay of humanity rather than for the tile-clay,--
though indeed both were broken!
So, however, in this Medicean Tuileries, shall the French King and Queen
now sit, for one-and-forty months; and see a wild-fermenting France work
out its own destiny, and theirs. Months bleak, ungenial, of rapid
vicissitude; yet with a mild pale splendour, here and there: as of an
April that were leading to leafiest Summer; as of an October that led only
to everlasting Frost. Medicean Tuileries, how changed since it was a
peaceful Tile field! Or is the ground itself fate-stricken, accursed: an
Atreus' Palace; for that Louvre window is still nigh, out of which a Capet,
whipt of the Furies, fired his signal of the Saint Bartholomew! Dark is
the way of the Eternal as mirrored in this world of Time: God's way is in
the sea, and His path in the great deep.
Chapter 2.1.II.
In the Salle de Manege.
To believing Patriots, however, it is now clear, that the Constitution will
march, marcher,--had it once legs to stand on. Quick, then, ye Patriots,
bestir yourselves, and make it; shape legs for it! In the Archeveche, or
Archbishop's Palace, his Grace himself having fled; and afterwards in the
Riding-hall, named Manege, close on the Tuileries: there does a National
Assembly apply itself to the miraculous work. Successfully, had there been
any heaven-scaling Prometheus among them; not successfully since there was
none! There, in noisy debate, for the sessions are occasionally
'scandalous,' and as many as three speakers have been seen in the Tribune
at once,--let us continue to fancy it wearing the slow months.
Tough, dogmatic, long of wind is Abbe Maury; Ciceronian pathetic is
Cazales. Keen-trenchant, on the other side, glitters a young Barnave;
abhorrent of sophistry; sheering, like keen Damascus sabre, all sophistry
asunder,--reckless what else he sheer with it. Simple seemest thou, O
solid Dutch-built Petion; if solid, surely dull. Nor lifegiving in that
tone of thine, livelier polemical Rabaut. With ineffable serenity sniffs
great Sieyes, aloft, alone; his Constitution ye may babble over, ye may
mar, but can by no possibility mend: is not Polity a science he has
exhausted? Cool, slow, two military Lameths are visible, with their
quality sneer, or demi-sneer; they shall gallantly refund their Mother's
Pension, when the Red Book is produced; gallantly be wounded in duels. A
Marquis Toulongeon, whose Pen we yet thank, sits there; in stoical
meditative humour, oftenest silent, accepts what destiny will send.
Thouret and Parlementary Duport produce mountains of Reformed Law; liberal,
Anglomaniac, available and unavailable. Mortals rise and fall. Shall
goose Gobel, for example,--or Go(with an umlaut)bel, for he is of Strasburg
German breed, be a Constitutional Archbishop?
Alone of all men there, Mirabeau may begin to discern clearly whither all
this is tending. Patriotism, accordingly, regrets that his zeal seems to
be getting cool. In that famed Pentecost-Night of the Fourth of August,
when new Faith rose suddenly into miraculous fire, and old Feudality was
burnt up, men remarked that Mirabeau took no hand in it; that, in fact, he
luckily happened to be absent. But did he not defend the Veto, nay Veto
Absolu; and tell vehement Barnave that six hundred irresponsible senators
would make of all tyrannies the insupportablest? Again, how anxious was he
that the King's Ministers should have seat and voice in the National
Assembly;--doubtless with an eye to being Minister himself! Whereupon the
National Assembly decides, what is very momentous, that no Deputy shall be
Minister; he, in his haughty stormful manner, advising us to make it, 'no
Deputy called Mirabeau.' (Moniteur, Nos. 65, 86 (29th September, 7th
November, 1789).) A man of perhaps inveterate Feudalisms; of stratagems;
too often visible leanings towards the Royalist side: a man suspect; whom
Patriotism will unmask! Thus, in these June days, when the question Who
shall have right to declare war? comes on, you hear hoarse Hawkers sound
dolefully through the streets, "Grand Treason of Count Mirabeau, price only
one sou;"--because he pleads that it shall be not the Assembly but the
King! Pleads; nay prevails: for in spite of the hoarse Hawkers, and an
endless Populace raised by them to the pitch even of 'Lanterne,' he mounts
the Tribune next day; grim-resolute; murmuring aside to his friends that
speak of danger: "I know it: I must come hence either in triumph, or else
torn in fragments;" and it was in triumph that he came.
A man of stout heart; whose popularity is not of the populace, 'pas
populaciere;' whom no clamour of unwashed mobs without doors, or of washed
mobs within, can scarce from his way! Dumont remembers hearing him deliver
a Report on Marseilles; 'every word was interrupted on the part of the Cote
Droit by abusive epithets; calumniator, liar, assassin, scoundrel
(scelerat): Mirabeau pauses a moment, and, in a honeyed tone, addressing
the most furious, says: "I wait, Messieurs, till these amenities be
exhausted."' (Dumont, Souvenirs, p. 278.) A man enigmatic, difficult to
unmask! For example, whence comes his money? Can the profit of a
Newspaper, sorely eaten into by Dame Le Jay; can this, and the eighteen
francs a-day your National Deputy has, be supposed equal to this
expenditure? House in the Chaussee d'Antin; Country-house at Argenteuil;
splendours, sumptuosities, orgies;--living as if he had a mint! All
saloons barred against Adventurer Mirabeau, are flung wide open to King
Mirabeau, the cynosure of Europe, whom female France flutters to behold,--
though the Man Mirabeau is one and the same. As for money, one may
conjecture that Royalism furnishes it; which if Royalism do, will not the
same be welcome, as money always is to him?
'Sold,' whatever Patriotism thinks, he cannot readily be: the spiritual
fire which is in that man; which shining through such confusions is
nevertheless Conviction, and makes him strong, and without which he had no
strength,--is not buyable nor saleable; in such transference of barter, it
would vanish and not be. Perhaps 'paid and not sold, paye pas vendu:' as
poor Rivarol, in the unhappier converse way, calls himself 'sold and not
paid!' A man travelling, comet-like, in splendour and nebulosity, his wild
way; whom telescopic Patriotism may long watch, but, without higher
mathematics, will not make out. A questionable most blameable man; yet to
us the far notablest of all. With rich munificence, as we often say, in a
most blinkard, bespectacled, logic-chopping generation, Nature has gifted
this man with an eye. Welcome is his word, there where he speaks and
works; and growing ever welcomer; for it alone goes to the heart of the
business: logical cobwebbery shrinks itself together; and thou seest a
thing, how it is, how is may be worked with.
Unhappily our National Assembly has much to do: a France to regenerate;
and France is short of so many requisites; short even of cash! These same
Finances give trouble enough; no choking of the Deficit; which gapes ever,
Give, give! To appease the Deficit we venture on a hazardous step, sale of
the Clergy's Lands and superfluous Edifices; most hazardous. Nay, given
the sale, who is to buy them, ready-money having fled? Wherefore, on the
19th day of December, a paper-money of 'Assignats,' of Bonds secured, or
assigned, on that Clerico-National Property, and unquestionable at least in
payment of that,--is decreed: the first of a long series of like financial
performances, which shall astonish mankind. So that now, while old rags
last, there shall be no lack of circulating medium; whether of commodities
to circulate thereon is another question. But, after all, does not this
Assignat business speak volumes for modern science? Bankruptcy, we may
say, was come, as the end of all Delusions needs must come: yet how
gently, in softening diffusion, in mild succession, was it hereby made to
fall;--like no all-destroying avalanche; like gentle showers of a powdery
impalpable snow, shower after shower, till all was indeed buried, and yet
little was destroyed that could not be replaced , be dispensed with! To
such length has modern machinery reached. Bankruptcy, we said, was great;
but indeed Money itself is a standing miracle.
On the whole, it is a matter of endless difficulty, that of the Clergy.
Clerical property may be made the Nation's, and the Clergy hired servants
of the State; but if so, is it not an altered Church? Adjustment enough,
of the most confused sort, has become unavoidable. Old landmarks, in any
sense, avail not in a new France. Nay literally, the very Ground is new
divided; your old party-coloured Provinces become new uniform Departments,
Eighty-three in number;--whereby, as in some sudden shifting of the Earth's
axis, no mortal knows his new latitude at once. The Twelve old Parlements
too, what is to be done with them? The old Parlements are declared to be
all 'in permanent vacation,'--till once the new equal-justice, of
Departmental Courts, National Appeal-Court, of elective Justices, Justices
of Peace, and other Thouret-and-Duport apparatus be got ready. They have
to sit there, these old Parlements, uneasily waiting; as it were, with the
rope round their neck; crying as they can, Is there none to deliver us?
But happily the answer being, None, none, they are a manageable class,
these Parlements. They can be bullied, even into silence; the Paris
Parliament, wiser than most, has never whimpered. They will and must sit
there; in such vacation as is fit; their Chamber of Vacation distributes in
the interim what little justice is going. With the rope round their neck,
their destiny may be succinct! On the 13th of November 1790, Mayor Bailly
shall walk to the Palais de Justice, few even heeding him; and with
municipal seal-stamp and a little hot wax, seal up the Parlementary Paper-
rooms,--and the dread Parlement of Paris pass away, into Chaos, gently as
does a Dream! So shall the Parlements perish, succinctly; and innumerable
eyes be dry.
Not so the Clergy. For granting even that Religion were dead; that it had
died, half-centuries ago, with unutterable Dubois; or emigrated lately, to
Alsace, with Necklace-Cardinal Rohan; or that it now walked as goblin
revenant with Bishop Talleyrand of Autun; yet does not the Shadow of
Religion, the Cant of Religion, still linger? The Clergy have means and
material: means, of number, organization, social weight; a material, at
lowest, of public ignorance, known to be the mother of devotion. Nay,
withal, is it incredible that there might, in simple hearts, latent here
and there like gold grains in the mud-beach, still dwell some real Faith in
God, of so singular and tenacious a sort that even a Maury or a Talleyrand,
could still be the symbol for it?--Enough, and Clergy has strength, the
Clergy has craft and indignation. It is a most fatal business this of the
Clergy. A weltering hydra-coil, which the National Assembly has stirred up
about its ears; hissing, stinging; which cannot be appeased, alive; which
cannot be trampled dead! Fatal, from first to last! Scarcely after
fifteen months' debating, can a Civil Constitution of the Clergy be so much
as got to paper; and then for getting it into reality? Alas, such Civil
Constitution is but an agreement to disagree. It divides France from end
to end, with a new split, infinitely complicating all the other splits;--
Catholicism, what of it there is left, with the Cant of Catholicism, raging
on the one side, and sceptic Heathenism on the other; both, by
contradiction , waxing fanatic. What endless jarring, of Refractory hated
Priests, and Constitutional despised ones; of tender consciences, like the
King's, and consciences hot-seared, like certain of his People's: the
whole to end in Feasts of Reason and a War of La Vendee! So deep-seated is
Religion in the heart of man, and holds of all infinite passions. If the
dead echo of it still did so much, what could not the living voice of it
once do?
Finance and Constitution, Law and Gospel: this surely were work enough;
yet this is not all. In fact, the Ministry, and Necker himself whom a
brass inscription 'fastened by the people over his door-lintel' testifies
to be the 'Ministre adore,' are dwindling into clearer and clearer nullity.
Execution or legislation, arrangement or detail, from their nerveless
fingers all drops undone; all lights at last on the toiled shoulders of an
august Representative Body. Heavy-laden National Assembly! It has to hear
of innumerable fresh revolts, Brigand expeditions; of Chateaus in the West,
especially of Charter-chests, Chartiers, set on fire; for there too the
overloaded Ass frightfully recalcitrates. Of Cities in the South full of
heats and jealousies; which will end in crossed sabres, Marseilles against
Toulon, and Carpentras beleaguered by Avignon;--such Royalist collision in
a career of Freedom; nay Patriot collision, which a mere difference of
velocity will bring about! Of a Jourdan Coup-tete, who has skulked
thitherward, from the claws of the Chatelet; and will raise whole
scoundrel-regiments.
Also it has to hear of Royalist Camp of Jales: Jales mountain-girdled
Plain, amid the rocks of the Cevennes; whence Royalism, as is feared and
hoped, may dash down like a mountain deluge, and submerge France! A
singular thing this camp of Jales; existing mostly on paper. For the
Soldiers at Jales, being peasants or National Guards, were in heart sworn
Sansculottes; and all that the Royalist Captains could do was, with false
words, to keep them, or rather keep the report of them, drawn up there,
visible to all imaginations, for a terror and a sign,--if peradventure
France might be reconquered by theatrical machinery, by the picture of a
Royalist Army done to the life! (Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 208.) Not till
the third summer was this portent, burning out by fits and then fading, got
finally extinguished; was the old Castle of Jales, no Camp being visible to
the bodily eye, got blown asunder by some National Guards.
Also it has to hear not only of Brissot and his Friends of the Blacks, but
by and by of a whole St. Domingo blazing skyward; blazing in literal fire,
and in far worse metaphorical; beaconing the nightly main. Also of the
shipping interest, and the landed-interest, and all manner of interests,
reduced to distress. Of Industry every where manacled, bewildered; and
only Rebellion thriving. Of sub-officers, soldiers and sailors in mutiny
by land and water. Of soldiers, at Nanci, as we shall see, needing to be
cannonaded by a brave Bouille. Of sailors, nay the very galley-slaves, at
Brest, needing also to be cannonaded; but with no Bouille to do it. For
indeed, to say it in a word, in those days there was no King in Israel, and
every man did that which was right in his own eyes. (See Deux Amis, iii.
c. 14; iv. c. 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 14. Expedition des Volontaires de Brest sur
Lannion; Les Lyonnais Sauveurs des Dauphinois; Massacre au Mans; Troubles
du Maine (Pamphlets and Excerpts, in Hist. Parl. iii. 251; iv. 162-168),
&c.;)
Such things has an august National Assembly to hear of, as it goes on
regenerating France. Sad and stern: but what remedy? Get the
Constitution ready; and all men will swear to it: for do not 'Addresses of
adhesion' arrive by the cartload? In this manner, by Heaven's blessing,
and a Constitution got ready, shall the bottomless fire-gulf be vaulted in,
with rag-paper; and Order will wed Freedom, and live with her there,--till
it grow too hot for them. O Cote Gauche, worthy are ye, as the adhesive
Addresses generally say, to 'fix the regards of the Universe;' the regards
of this one poor Planet, at lowest!--
Nay, it must be owned, the Cote Droit makes a still madder figure. An
irrational generation; irrational, imbecile, and with the vehement
obstinacy characteristic of that; a generation which will not learn.
Falling Bastilles, Insurrections of Women, thousands of smoking
Manorhouses, a country bristling with no crop but that of Sansculottic
steel: these were tolerably didactic lessons; but them they have not
taught. There are still men, of whom it was of old written, Bray them in a
mortar! Or, in milder language, They have wedded their delusions: fire
nor steel, nor any sharpness of Experience, shall sever the bond; till
death do us part! Of such may the Heavens have mercy; for the Earth, with
her rigorous Necessity, will have none.
Admit, at the same time, that it was most natural. Man lives by Hope:
Pandora when her box of gods'-gifts flew all out, and became gods'-curses,
still retained Hope. How shall an irrational mortal, when his high-place
is never so evidently pulled down, and he, being irrational, is left
resourceless,--part with the belief that it will be rebuilt? It would make
all so straight again; it seems so unspeakably desirable; so reasonable,--
would you but look at it aright! For, must not the thing which was
continue to be; or else the solid World dissolve? Yes, persist, O
infatuated Sansculottes of France! Revolt against constituted Authorities;
hunt out your rightful Seigneurs, who at bottom so loved you, and readily
shed their blood for you,--in country's battles as at Rossbach and
elsewhere; and, even in preserving game, were preserving you, could ye but
have understood it: hunt them out, as if they were wild wolves; set fire
to their Chateaus and Chartiers as to wolf-dens; and what then? Why, then
turn every man his hand against his fellow! In confusion, famine,
desolation, regret the days that are gone; rueful recall them, recall us
with them. To repentant prayers we will not be deaf.
So, with dimmer or clearer consciousness, must the Right Side reason and
act. An inevitable position perhaps; but a most false one for them. Evil,
be thou our good: this henceforth must virtually be their prayer. The
fiercer the effervescence grows, the sooner will it pass; for after all it
is but some mad effervescence; the World is solid, and cannot dissolve.
For the rest, if they have any positive industry, it is that of plots, and
backstairs conclaves. Plots which cannot be executed; which are mostly
theoretic on their part;--for which nevertheless this and the other
practical Sieur Augeard, Sieur Maillebois, Sieur Bonne Savardin, gets into
trouble, gets imprisoned, and escapes with difficulty. Nay there is a poor
practical Chevalier Favras who, not without some passing reflex on Monsieur
himself, gets hanged for them, amid loud uproar of the world. Poor Favras,
he keeps dictating his last will at the 'Hotel-de-Ville, through the whole
remainder of the day,' a weary February day; offers to reveal secrets, if
they will save him; handsomely declines since they will not; then dies, in
the flare of torchlight, with politest composure; remarking, rather than
exclaiming, with outspread hands: "People, I die innocent; pray for me."
(See Deux Amis, iv. c. 14, 7; Hist. Parl. vi. 384.) Poor Favras;--type of
so much that has prowled indefatigable over France, in days now ending;
and, in freer field, might have earned instead of prowling,--to thee it is
no theory!
In the Senate-house again, the attitude of the Right Side is that of calm
unbelief. Let an august National Assembly make a Fourth-of-August
Abolition of Feudality; declare the Clergy State-servants who shall have
wages; vote Suspensive Vetos, new Law-Courts; vote or decree what contested
thing it will; have it responded to from the four corners of France, nay
get King's Sanction, and what other Acceptance were conceivable,--the Right
Side, as we find, persists, with imperturbablest tenacity, in considering,
and ever and anon shews that it still considers, all these so-called
Decrees as mere temporary whims, which indeed stand on paper, but in
practice and fact are not, and cannot be. Figure the brass head of an Abbe
Maury flooding forth Jesuitic eloquence in this strain; dusky d'Espremenil,
Barrel Mirabeau (probably in liquor), and enough of others, cheering him
from the Right; and, for example, with what visage a seagreen Robespierre
eyes him from the Left. And how Sieyes ineffably sniffs on him, or does
not deign to sniff; and how the Galleries groan in spirit, or bark rabid on
him: so that to escape the Lanterne, on stepping forth, he needs presence
of mind, and a pair of pistols in his girdle! For he is one of the
toughest of men.
Here indeed becomes notable one great difference between our two kinds of
civil war; between the modern lingual or Parliamentary-logical kind, and
the ancient, or manual kind, in the steel battle-field;--much to the
disadvantage of the former. In the manual kind, where you front your foe
with drawn weapon, one right stroke is final; for, physically speaking,
when the brains are out the man does honestly die, and trouble you no more.
But how different when it is with arguments you fight! Here no victory yet
definable can be considered as final. Beat him down, with Parliamentary
invective, till sense be fled; cut him in two, hanging one half in this
dilemma-horn, the other on that; blow the brains or thinking-faculty quite
out of him for the time: it skills not; he rallies and revives on the
morrow; to-morrow he repairs his golden fires! The think that will
logically extinguish him is perhaps still a desideratum in Constitutional
civilisation. For how, till a man know, in some measure, at what point he
becomes logically defunct, can Parliamentary Business be carried on, and
Talk cease or slake?
Doubtless it was some feeling of this difficulty; and the clear insight how
little such knowledge yet existed in the French Nation, new in the
Constitutional career, and how defunct Aristocrats would continue to walk
for unlimited periods, as Partridge the Alamanack-maker did,--that had sunk
into the deep mind of People's-friend Marat, an eminently practical mind;
and had grown there, in that richest putrescent soil, into the most
original plan of action ever submitted to a People. Not yet has it grown;
but it has germinated, it is growing; rooting itself into Tartarus,
branching towards Heaven: the second season hence, we shall see it risen
out of the bottomless Darkness, full-grown, into disastrous Twilight,--a
Hemlock-tree, great as the world; on or under whose boughs all the
People's-friends of the world may lodge. 'Two hundred and sixty thousand
Aristocrat heads:' that is the precisest calculation, though one would not
stand on a few hundreds; yet we never rise as high as the round three
hundred thousand. Shudder at it, O People; but it is as true as that ye
yourselves, and your People's-friend, are alive. These prating Senators of
yours hover ineffectual on the barren letter, and will never save the
Revolution. A Cassandra-Marat cannot do it, with his single shrunk arm;
but with a few determined men it were possible. "Give me," said the
People's-friend, in his cold way, when young Barbaroux, once his pupil in a
course of what was called Optics, went to see him, "Give me two hundred
Naples Bravoes, armed each with a good dirk, and a muff on his left arm by
way of shield: with them I will traverse France, and accomplish the
Revolution." (Memoires de Barbaroux (Paris, 1822), p. 57.) Nay, be brave,
young Barbaroux; for thou seest, there is no jesting in those rheumy eyes;
in that soot-bleared figure, most earnest of created things; neither indeed
is there madness, of the strait-waistcoat sort.
Such produce shall the Time ripen in cavernous Marat, the man forbid;
living in Paris cellars, lone as fanatic Anchorite in his Thebaid; say, as
far-seen Simon on his Pillar,--taking peculiar views therefrom. Patriots
may smile; and, using him as bandog now to be muzzled, now to be let bark,
name him, as Desmoulins does, 'Maximum of Patriotism' and 'Cassandra-
Marat:' but were it not singular if this dirk-and-muff plan of his (with
superficial modifications) proved to be precisely the plan adopted?
After this manner, in these circumstances, do august Senators regenerate
France. Nay, they are, in very deed, believed to be regenerating it; on
account of which great fact, main fact of their history, the wearied eye
can never be permitted wholly to ignore them.
But looking away now from these precincts of the Tuileries, where
Constitutional Royalty, let Lafayette water it as he will, languishes too
like a cut branch; and august Senators are perhaps at bottom only
perfecting their 'theory of defective verbs,'--how does the young Reality,
young Sansculottism thrive? The attentive observer can answer: It thrives
bravely; putting forth new buds; expanding the old buds into leaves, into
boughs. Is not French Existence, as before, most prurient, all loosened,
most nutrient for it? Sansculottism has the property of growing by what
other things die of: by agitation, contention, disarrangement; nay in a
word, by what is the symbol and fruit of all these: Hunger.
In such a France as this, Hunger, as we have remarked, can hardly fail.
The Provinces, the Southern Cities feel it in their turn; and what it
brings: Exasperation, preternatural Suspicion. In Paris some halcyon days
of abundance followed the Menadic Insurrection, with its Versailles grain-
carts, and recovered Restorer of Liberty; but they could not continue. The
month is still October when famishing Saint-Antoine, in a moment of
passion, seizes a poor Baker, innocent 'Francois the Baker;' (21st October,
1789 (Moniteur, No. 76).) and hangs him, in Constantinople wise;--but even
this, singular as it my seem, does not cheapen bread! Too clear it is, no
Royal bounty, no Municipal dexterity can adequately feed a Bastille-
destroying Paris. Wherefore, on view of the hanged Baker,
Constitutionalism in sorrow and anger demands 'Loi Martiale,' a kind of
Riot Act;--and indeed gets it, most readily, almost before the sun goes
down.
This is that famed Martial law, with its Red Flag, its 'Drapeau Rouge:' in
virtue of which Mayor Bailly, or any Mayor, has but henceforth to hang out
that new Oriflamme of his; then to read or mumble something about the
King's peace; and, after certain pauses, serve any undispersing Assemblage
with musket-shot, or whatever shot will disperse it. A decisive Law; and
most just on one proviso: that all Patrollotism be of God, and all mob-
assembling be of the Devil;--otherwise not so just. Mayor Bailly be
unwilling to use it! Hang not out that new Oriflamme, flame not of gold
but of the want of gold! The thrice-blessed Revolution is done, thou
thinkest? If so it will be well with thee.
But now let no mortal say henceforth that an august National Assembly wants
riot: all it ever wanted was riot enough to balance Court-plotting; all it
now wants, of Heaven or of Earth, is to get its theory of defective verbs
perfected.
Chapter 2.1.III.
The Muster.
With famine and a Constitutional theory of defective verbs going on, all
other excitement is conceivable. A universal shaking and sifting of French
Existence this is: in the course of which, for one thing, what a multitude
of low-lying figures are sifted to the top, and set busily to work there!
Dogleech Marat, now for-seen as Simon Stylites, we already know; him and
others, raised aloft. The mere sample, these, of what is coming, of what
continues coming, upwards from the realm of Night!--Chaumette, by and by
Anaxagoras Chaumette, one already descries: mellifluous in street-groups;
not now a sea-boy on the high and giddy mast: a mellifluous tribune of the
common people, with long curling locks, on bourne-stone of the
thoroughfares; able sub-editor too; who shall rise--to the very gallows.
Clerk Tallien, he also is become sub-editor; shall become able editor; and
more. Bibliopolic Momoro, Typographic Pruhomme see new trades opening.
Collot d'Herbois, tearing a passion to rags, pauses on the Thespian boards;
listens, with that black bushy head, to the sound of the world's drama:
shall the Mimetic become Real? Did ye hiss him, O men of Lyons? (Buzot,
Memoires (Paris, 1823), p. 90.) Better had ye clapped!
Happy now, indeed, for all manner of mimetic, half-original men! Tumid
blustering, with more or less of sincerity, which need not be entirely
sincere, yet the sincerer the better, is like to go far. Shall we say, the
Revolution-element works itself rarer and rarer; so that only lighter and
lighter bodies will float in it; till at last the mere blown-bladder is
your only swimmer? Limitation of mind, then vehemence, promptitude,
audacity, shall all be available; to which add only these two: cunning and
good lungs. Good fortune must be presupposed. Accordingly, of all classes
the rising one, we observe, is now the Attorney class: witness Bazires,
Carriers, Fouquier-Tinvilles, Bazoche-Captain Bourdons: more than enough.
Such figures shall Night, from her wonder-bearing bosom, emit; swarm after
swarm. Of another deeper and deepest swarm, not yet dawned on the
astonished eye; of pilfering Candle-snuffers, Thief-valets, disfrocked
Capuchins, and so many Heberts, Henriots, Ronsins, Rossignols, let us, as
long as possible, forbear speaking.
Thus, over France, all stirs that has what the Physiologists call
irritability in it: how much more all wherein irritability has perfected
itself into vitality; into actual vision, and force that can will! All
stirs; and if not in Paris, flocks thither. Great and greater waxes
President Danton in his Cordeliers Section; his rhetorical tropes are all
'gigantic:' energy flashes from his black brows, menaces in his athletic
figure, rolls in the sound of his voice 'reverberating from the domes;'
this man also, like Mirabeau, has a natural eye, and begins to see whither
Constitutionalism is tending, though with a wish in it different from
Mirabeau's.
Remark, on the other hand, how General Dumouriez has quitted Normandy and
the Cherbourg Breakwater, to come--whither we may guess. It is his second
or even third trial at Paris, since this New Era began; but now it is in
right earnest, for he has quitted all else. Wiry, elastic unwearied man;
whose life was but a battle and a march! No, not a creature of Choiseul's;
"the creature of God and of my sword,"--he fiercely answered in old days.
Overfalling Corsican batteries, in the deadly fire-hail; wriggling
invincible from under his horse, at Closterkamp of the Netherlands, though
tethered with 'crushed stirrup-iron and nineteen wounds;' tough, minatory,
standing at bay, as forlorn hope, on the skirts of Poland; intriguing,
battling in cabinet and field; roaming far out, obscure, as King's spial,
or sitting sealed up, enchanted in Bastille; fencing, pamphleteering,
scheming and struggling from the very birth of him, (Dumouriez, Memoires,
i. 28, &c.;)--the man has come thus far. How repressed, how irrepressible!
Like some incarnate spirit in prison, which indeed he was; hewing on
granite walls for deliverance; striking fire flashes from them. And now
has the general earthquake rent his cavern too? Twenty years younger, what
might he not have done! But his hair has a shade of gray: his way of
thought is all fixed, military. He can grow no further, and the new world
is in such growth. We will name him, on the whole, one of Heaven's Swiss;
without faith; wanting above all things work, work on any side. Work also
is appointed him; and he will do it.
Not from over France only are the unrestful flocking towards Paris; but
from all sides of Europe. Where the carcase is, thither will the eagles
gather. Think how many a Spanish Guzman, Martinico Fournier named
'Fournier l'Americain,' Engineer Miranda from the very Andes, were flocking
or had flocked! Walloon Pereyra might boast of the strangest parentage:
him, they say, Prince Kaunitz the Diplomatist heedlessly dropped;' like
ostrich-egg, to be hatched of Chance--into an ostrich-eater! Jewish or
German Freys do business in the great Cesspool of Agio; which Cesspool this
Assignat-fiat has quickened, into a Mother of dead dogs. Swiss Claviere
could found no Socinian Genevese Colony in Ireland; but he paused, years
ago, prophetic before the Minister's Hotel at Paris; and said, it was borne
on his mind that he one day was to be Minister, and laughed. (Dumont,
Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, p. 399.) Swiss Pachc, on the other hand, sits
sleekheaded, frugal; the wonder of his own alley, and even of neighbouring
ones, for humility of mind, and a thought deeper than most men's: sit
there, Tartuffe, till wanted! Ye Italian Dufournys, Flemish Prolys, flit
hither all ye bipeds of prey! Come whosesoever head is hot; thou of mind
ungoverned, be it chaos as of undevelopment or chaos as of ruin; the man
who cannot get known, the man who is too well known; if thou have any
vendible faculty, nay if thou have but edacity and loquacity, come! They
come; with hot unutterabilities in their heart; as Pilgrims towards a
miraculous shrine. Nay how many come as vacant Strollers, aimless, of whom
Europe is full merely towards something! For benighted fowls, when you
beat their bushes, rush towards any light. Thus Frederick Baron Trenck too
is here; mazed, purblind, from the cells of Magdeburg; Minotauric cells,
and his Ariadne lost! Singular to say, Trenck, in these years, sells wine;
not indeed in bottle, but in wood.
Nor is our England without her missionaries. She has her live-saving
Needham; to whom was solemnly presented a 'civic sword,'--long since rusted
into nothingness. Her Paine: rebellious Staymaker; unkempt; who feels
that he, a single Needleman, did by his 'Common Sense' Pamphlet, free
America;--that he can and will free all this World; perhaps even the other.
Price-Stanhope Constitutional Association sends over to congratulate;
(Moniteur, 10 Novembre, 7 Decembre, 1789.) welcomed by National Assembly,
though they are but a London Club; whom Burke and Toryism eye askance.
On thee too, for country's sake, O Chevalier John Paul, be a word spent, or
misspent! In faded naval uniform, Paul Jones lingers visible here; like a
wine-skin from which the wine is all drawn. Like the ghost of himself!
Low is his once loud bruit; scarcely audible, save, with extreme tedium in
ministerial ante-chambers; in this or the other charitable dining-room,
mindful of the past. What changes; culminatings and declinings! Not now,
poor Paul, thou lookest wistful over the Solway brine, by the foot of
native Criffel, into blue mountainous Cumberland, into blue Infinitude;
environed with thrift, with humble friendliness; thyself, young fool,
longing to be aloft from it, or even to be away from it. Yes, beyond that
sapphire Promontory, which men name St. Bees, which is not sapphire either,
but dull sandstone, when one gets close to it, there is a world. Which
world thou too shalt taste of!--From yonder White Haven rise his smoke-
clouds; ominous though ineffectual. Proud Forth quakes at his bellying
sails; had not the wind suddenly shifted. Flamborough reapers, homegoing,
pause on the hill-side: for what sulphur-cloud is that that defaces the
sleek sea; sulphur-cloud spitting streaks of fire? A sea cockfight it is,
and of the hottest; where British Serapis and French-American Bon Homme
Richard do lash and throttle each other, in their fashion; and lo the
desperate valour has suffocated the deliberate, and Paul Jones too is of
the Kings of the Sea!
The Euxine, the Meotian waters felt thee next, and long-skirted Turks, O
Paul; and thy fiery soul has wasted itself in thousand contradictions;--to
no purpose. For, in far lands, with scarlet Nassau-Siegens, with sinful
Imperial Catherines, is not the heart-broken, even as at home with the
mean? Poor Paul! hunger and dispiritment track thy sinking footsteps:
once or at most twice, in this Revolution-tumult the figure of thee
emerges; mute, ghost-like, as 'with stars dim-twinkling through.' And
then, when the light is gone quite out, a National Legislature grants
'ceremonial funeral!' As good had been the natural Presbyterian Kirk-bell,
and six feet of Scottish earth, among the dust of thy loved ones.--Such
world lay beyond the Promontory of St. Bees. Such is the life of sinful
mankind here below.
But of all strangers, far the notablest for us is Baron Jean Baptiste de
Clootz;--or, dropping baptisms and feudalisms, World-Citizen Anacharsis
Clootz, from Cleves. Him mark, judicious Reader. Thou hast known his
Uncle, sharp-sighted thorough-going Cornelius de Pauw, who mercilessly cuts
down cherished illusions; and of the finest antique Spartans, will make
mere modern cutthroat Mainots. (De Pauw, Recherches sur les Grecs, &c.;)
The like stuff is in Anacharsis: hot metal; full of scoriae, which should
and could have been smelted out, but which will not. He has wandered over
this terraqueous Planet; seeking, one may say, the Paradise we lost long
ago. He has seen English Burke; has been seen of the Portugal Inquisition;
has roamed, and fought, and written; is writing, among other things,
'Evidences of the Mahometan Religion.' But now, like his Scythian adoptive
godfather, he finds himself in the Paris Athens; surely, at last, the haven
of his soul. A dashing man, beloved at Patriotic dinner-tables; with
gaiety, nay with humour; headlong, trenchant, of free purse; in suitable
costume; though what mortal ever more despised costumes? Under all
costumes Anacharsis seeks the man; not Stylites Marat will more freely
trample costumes, if they hold no man. This is the faith of Anacharsis:
That there is a Paradise discoverable; that all costumes ought to hold men.
O Anacharsis, it is a headlong, swift-going faith. Mounted thereon,
meseems, thou art bound hastily for the City of Nowhere; and wilt arrive!
At best, we may say, arrive in good riding attitude; which indeed is
something.
So many new persons, and new things, have come to occupy this France. Her
old Speech and Thought, and Activity which springs from those, are all
changing; fermenting towards unknown issues. To the dullest peasant, as he
sits sluggish, overtoiled, by his evening hearth, one idea has come: that
of Chateaus burnt; of Chateaus combustible. How altered all Coffeehouses,
in Province or Capital! The Antre de Procope has now other questions than
the Three Stagyrite Unities to settle; not theatre-controversies, but a
world-controversy: there, in the ancient pigtail mode, or with modern
Brutus' heads, do well-frizzed logicians hold hubbub, and Chaos umpire
sits. The ever-enduring Melody of Paris Saloons has got a new ground-tone:
ever-enduring; which has been heard, and by the listening Heaven too, since
Julian the Apostate's time and earlier; mad now as formerly.
Ex-Censor Suard, Ex-Censor, for we have freedom of the Press; he may be
seen there; impartial, even neutral. Tyrant Grimm rolls large eyes, over a
questionable coming Time. Atheist Naigeon, beloved disciple of Diderot,
crows, in his small difficult way, heralding glad dawn. (Naigeon:
Addresse a l'Assemblee Nationale (Paris, 1790) sur la liberte des
opinions.) But, on the other hand, how many Morellets, Marmontels, who had
sat all their life hatching Philosophe eggs, cackle now, in a state
bordering on distraction, at the brood they have brought out! (See
Marmontel, Memoires, passim; Morellet, Memoires, &c.;) It was so delightful
to have one's Philosophe Theorem demonstrated, crowned in the saloons: and
now an infatuated people will not continue speculative, but have Practice?
There also observe Preceptress Genlis, or Sillery, or Sillery-Genlis,--for
our husband is both Count and Marquis, and we have more than one title.
Pretentious, frothy; a puritan yet creedless; darkening counsel by words
without wisdom! For, it is in that thin element of the Sentimentalist and
Distinguished-Female that Sillery-Genlis works; she would gladly be
sincere, yet can grow no sincerer than sincere-cant: sincere-cant of many
forms, ending in the devotional form. For the present, on a neck still of
moderate whiteness, she wears as jewel a miniature Bastille, cut on mere
sandstone, but then actual Bastille sandstone. M. le Marquis is one of
d'Orleans's errandmen; in National Assembly, and elsewhere. Madame, for
her part, trains up a youthful d'Orleans generation in what superfinest
morality one can; gives meanwhile rather enigmatic account of fair
Mademoiselle Pamela, the Daughter whom she has adopted. Thus she, in
Palais Royal saloon;--whither, we remark, d'Orleans himself, spite of
Lafayette, has returned from that English 'mission' of his: surely no
pleasant mission: for the English would not speak to him; and Saint Hannah
More of England, so unlike Saint Sillery-Genlis of France, saw him shunned,
in Vauxhall Gardens, like one pest-struck, (Hannah More's Life and
Correspondence, ii. c. 5.) and his red-blue impassive visage waxing hardly
a shade bluer.
Chapter 2.1.IV.
Journalism.
As for Constitutionalism, with its National Guards, it is doing what it
can; and has enough to do: it must, as ever, with one hand wave
persuasively, repressing Patriotism; and keep the other clenched to menace
Royalty plotters. A most delicate task; requiring tact.
Thus, if People's-friend Marat has to-day his writ of 'prise de corps, or
seizure of body,' served on him, and dives out of sight, tomorrow he is
left at large; or is even encouraged, as a sort of bandog whose baying may
be useful. President Danton, in open Hall, with reverberating voice,
declares that, in a case like Marat's, "force may be resisted by force."
Whereupon the Chatelet serves Danton also with a writ;--which, however, as
the whole Cordeliers District responds to it, what Constable will be prompt
to execute? Twice more, on new occasions, does the Chatelet launch its
writ; and twice more in vain: the body of Danton cannot be seized by
Chatelet; he unseized, should he even fly for a season, shall behold the
Chatelet itself flung into limbo.
Municipality and Brissot, meanwhile, are far on with their Municipal
Constitution. The Sixty Districts shall become Forty-eight Sections; much
shall be adjusted, and Paris have its Constitution. A Constitution wholly
Elective; as indeed all French Government shall and must be. And yet, one
fatal element has been introduced: that of citoyen actif. No man who does
not pay the marc d'argent, or yearly tax equal to three days' labour, shall
be other than a passive citizen: not the slightest vote for him; were he
acting, all the year round, with sledge hammer, with forest-levelling axe!
Unheard of! cry Patriot Journals. Yes truly, my Patriot Friends, if
Liberty, the passion and prayer of all men's souls, means Liberty to send
your fifty-thousandth part of a new Tongue-fencer into National Debating-
club, then, be the gods witness, ye are hardly entreated. Oh, if in
National Palaver (as the Africans name it), such blessedness is verily
found, what tyrant would deny it to Son of Adam! Nay, might there not be a
Female Parliament too, with 'screams from the Opposition benches,' and 'the
honourable Member borne out in hysterics?' To a Children's Parliament
would I gladly consent; or even lower if ye wished it. Beloved Brothers!
Liberty, one might fear, is actually, as the ancient wise men said, of
Heaven. On this Earth, where, thinks the enlightened public, did a brave
little Dame de Staal (not Necker's Daughter, but a far shrewder than she)
find the nearest approach to Liberty? After mature computation, cool as
Dilworth's, her answer is, In the Bastille. (See De Staal: Memoires
(Paris, 1821), i. 169-280.) "Of Heaven?" answer many, asking. Wo that
they should ask; for that is the very misery! "Of Heaven" means much;
share in the National Palaver it may, or may as probably not mean.
One Sansculottic bough that cannot fail to flourish is Journalism. The
voice of the People being the voice of God, shall not such divine voice
make itself heard? To the ends of France; and in as many dialects as when
the first great Babel was to be built! Some loud as the lion; some small
as the sucking dove. Mirabeau himself has his instructive Journal or
Journals, with Geneva hodmen working in them; and withal has quarrels
enough with Dame le Jay, his Female Bookseller, so ultra-compliant
otherwise. (See Dumont: Souvenirs, 6.)
King's-friend Royou still prints himself. Barrere sheds tears of loyal
sensibility in Break of Day Journal, though with declining sale. But why
is Freron so hot, democratic; Freron, the King's-friend's Nephew? He has
it by kind, that heat of his: wasp Freron begot him; Voltaire's Frelon;
who fought stinging, while sting and poison-bag were left, were it only as
Reviewer, and over Printed Waste-paper. Constant, illuminative, as the
nightly lamplighter, issues the useful Moniteur, for it is now become
diurnal: with facts and few commentaries; official, safe in the middle:--
its able Editors sunk long since, recoverably or irrecoverably, in deep
darkness. Acid Loustalot, with his 'vigour,' as of young sloes, shall
never ripen, but die untimely: his Prudhomme, however, will not let that
Revolutions de Paris die; but edit it himself, with much else,--dull-
blustering Printer though he be.
Of Cassandra-Marat we have spoken often; yet the most surprising truth
remains to be spoken: that he actually does not want sense; but, with
croaking gelid throat, croaks out masses of the truth, on several things.
Nay sometimes, one might almost fancy he had a perception of humour, and
were laughing a little, far down in his inner man. Camille is wittier than
ever, and more outspoken, cynical; yet sunny as ever. A light melodious
creature; 'born,' as he shall yet say with bitter tears, 'to write verses;'
light Apollo, so clear, soft-lucent, in this war of the Titans, wherein he
shall not conquer!
Folded and hawked Newspapers exist in all countries; but, in such a
Journalistic element as this of France, other and stranger sorts are to be
anticipated. What says the English reader to a Journal-Affiche, Placard
Journal; legible to him that has no halfpenny; in bright prismatic colours,
calling the eye from afar? Such, in the coming months, as Patriot
Associations, public and private, advance, and can subscribe funds, shall
plenteously hang themselves out: leaves, limed leaves, to catch what they
can! The very Government shall have its Pasted Journal; Louvet, busy yet
with a new 'charming romance,' shall write Sentinelles, and post them with
effect; nay Bertrand de Moleville, in his extremity, shall still more
cunningly try it. (See Bertrand-Moleville: Memoires, ii. 100, &c.;) Great
is Journalism. Is not every Able Editor a Ruler of the World, being a
persuader of it; though self-elected, yet sanctioned, by the sale of his
Numbers? Whom indeed the world has the readiest method of deposing, should
need be: that of merely doing nothing to him; which ends in starvation!
Nor esteem it small what those Bill-stickers had to do in Paris: above
Three Score of them: all with their crosspoles, haversacks, pastepots; nay
with leaden badges, for the Municipality licenses them. A Sacred College,
properly of World-rulers' Heralds, though not respected as such, in an Era
still incipient and raw. They made the walls of Paris didactic, suasive,
with an ever fresh Periodical Literature, wherein he that ran might read:
Placard Journals, Placard Lampoons, Municipal Ordinances, Royal
Proclamations; the whole other or vulgar Placard-department super-added,--
or omitted from contempt! What unutterable things the stone-walls spoke,
during these five years! But it is all gone; To-day swallowing Yesterday,
and then being in its turn swallowed of To-morrow, even as Speech ever is.
Nay what, O thou immortal Man of Letters, is Writing itself but Speech
conserved for a time? The Placard Journal conserved it for one day; some
Books conserve it for the matter of ten years; nay some for three thousand:
but what then? Why, then, the years being all run, it also dies, and the
world is rid of it. Oh, were there not a spirit in the word of man, as in
man himself, that survived the audible bodied word, and tended either
Godward, or else Devilward for evermore, why should he trouble himself much
with the truth of it, or the falsehood of it, except for commercial
purposes? His immortality indeed, and whether it shall last half a
lifetime, or a lifetime and half; is not that a very considerable thing?
As mortality, was to the runaway, whom Great Fritz bullied back into the
battle with a: "R--, wollt ihr ewig leben, Unprintable Off-scouring of
Scoundrels, would ye live for ever!"
This is the Communication of Thought: how happy when there is any Thought
to communicate! Neither let the simpler old methods be neglected, in their
sphere. The Palais-Royal Tent, a tyrannous Patrollotism has removed; but
can it remove the lungs of man? Anaxagoras Chaumette we saw mounted on
bourne-stones, while Tallien worked sedentary at the subeditorial desk. In
any corner of the civilised world, a tub can be inverted, and an
articulate-speaking biped mount thereon. Nay, with contrivance, a portable
trestle, or folding-stool, can be procured, for love or money; this the
peripatetic Orator can take in his hand, and, driven out here, set it up
again there; saying mildly, with a Sage Bias, Omnia mea mecum porto.
Such is Journalism, hawked, pasted, spoken. How changed since One old
Metra walked this same Tuileries Garden, in gilt cocked hat, with Journal
at his nose, or held loose-folded behind his back; and was a notability of
Paris, 'Metra the Newsman;' (Dulaure, Histoire de Paris, viii. 483;
Mercier, Nouveau Paris, &c.;) and Louis himself was wont to say: Qu'en dit
Metra? Since the first Venetian News-sheet was sold for a gazza, or
farthing, and named Gazette! We live in a fertile world.
Chapter 2.1.V.
Clubbism.
Where the heart is full, it seeks, for a thousand reasons, in a thousand
ways, to impart itself. How sweet, indispensable, in such cases, is
fellowship; soul mystically strengthening soul! The meditative Germans,
some think, have been of opinion that Enthusiasm in the general means
simply excessive Congregating--Schwarmerey, or Swarming. At any rate, do
we not see glimmering half-red embers, if laid together, get into the
brightest white glow?
In such a France, gregarious Reunions will needs multiply, intensify;
French Life will step out of doors, and, from domestic, become a public
Club Life. Old Clubs, which already germinated, grow and flourish; new
every where bud forth. It is the sure symptom of Social Unrest: in such
way, most infallibly of all, does Social Unrest exhibit itself; find
solacement, and also nutriment. In every French head there hangs now,
whether for terror or for hope, some prophetic picture of a New France:
prophecy which brings, nay which almost is, its own fulfilment; and in all
ways, consciously and unconsciously, works towards that.
Observe, moreover, how the Aggregative Principle, let it be but deep
enough, goes on aggregating, and this even in a geometrical progression:
how when the whole world, in such a plastic time, is forming itself into
Clubs, some One Club, the strongest or luckiest, shall, by friendly
attracting, by victorious compelling, grow ever stronger, till it become
immeasurably strong; and all the others, with their strength, be either
lovingly absorbed into it, or hostilely abolished by it! This if the Club-
spirit is universal; if the time is plastic. Plastic enough is the time,
universal the Club-spirit: such an all absorbing, paramount One Club
cannot be wanting.
What a progress, since the first salient-point of the Breton Committee! It
worked long in secret, not languidly; it has come with the National
Assembly to Paris; calls itself Club; calls itself in imitation, as is
thought, of those generous Price-Stanhope English, French Revolution Club;
but soon, with more originality, Club of Friends of the Constitution.
Moreover it has leased, for itself, at a fair rent, the Hall of the
Jacobin's Convent, one of our 'superfluous edifices;' and does therefrom
now, in these spring months, begin shining out on an admiring Paris. And
so, by degrees, under the shorter popular title of Jacobins' Club, it shall
become memorable to all times and lands. Glance into the interior:
strongly yet modestly benched and seated; as many as Thirteen Hundred
chosen Patriots; Assembly Members not a few. Barnave, the two Lameths are
seen there; occasionally Mirabeau, perpetually Robespierre; also the
ferret-visage of Fouquier-Tinville with other attorneys; Anacharsis of
Prussian Scythia, and miscellaneous Patriots,--though all is yet in the
most perfectly clean-washed state; decent, nay dignified. President on
platform, President's bell are not wanting; oratorical Tribune high-raised;
nor strangers' galleries, wherein also sit women. Has any French
Antiquarian Society preserved that written Lease of the Jacobins Convent
Hall? Or was it, unluckier even than Magna Charta, clipt by sacrilegious
Tailors? Universal History is not indifferent to it.
These Friends of the Constitution have met mainly, as their name may
foreshadow, to look after Elections when an Election comes, and procure fit
men; but likewise to consult generally that the Commonweal take no damage;
one as yet sees not how. For indeed let two or three gather together any
where, if it be not in Church, where all are bound to the passive state; no
mortal can say accurately, themselves as little as any, for what they are
gathered. How often has the broached barrel proved not to be for joy and
heart effusion, but for duel and head-breakage; and the promised feast
become a Feast of the Lapithae! This Jacobins Club, which at first shone
resplendent, and was thought to be a new celestial Sun for enlightening the
Nations, had, as things all have, to work through its appointed phases: it
burned unfortunately more and more lurid, more sulphurous, distracted;--and
swam at last, through the astonished Heaven, like a Tartarean Portent, and
lurid-burning Prison of Spirits in Pain.
Its style of eloquence? Rejoice, Reader, that thou knowest it not, that
thou canst never perfectly know. The Jacobins published a Journal of
Debates, where they that have the heart may examine: Impassioned, full-
droning Patriotic-eloquence; implacable, unfertile--save for Destruction,
which was indeed its work: most wearisome, though most deadly. Be thankful
that Oblivion covers so much; that all carrion is by and by buried in the
green Earth's bosom, and even makes her grow the greener. The Jacobins are
buried; but their work is not; it continues 'making the tour of the world,'
as it can. It might be seen lately, for instance, with bared bosom and
death-defiant eye, as far on as Greek Missolonghi; and, strange enough, old
slumbering Hellas was resuscitated, into somnambulism which will become
clear wakefulness, by a voice from the Rue St. Honore! All dies, as we
often say; except the spirit of man, of what man does. Thus has not the
very House of the Jacobins vanished; scarcely lingering in a few old men's
memories? The St. Honore Market has brushed it away, and now where dull-
droning eloquence, like a Trump of Doom, once shook the world, there is
pacific chaffering for poultry and greens. The sacred National Assembly
Hall itself has become common ground; President's platform permeable to
wain and dustcart; for the Rue de Rivoli runs there. Verily, at Cockcrow
(of this Cock or the other), all Apparitions do melt and dissolve in space.
The Paris Jacobins became 'the Mother-Society, Societe-Mere;' and had as
many as 'three hundred' shrill-tongued daughters in 'direct correspondence'
with her. Of indirectly corresponding, what we may call grand-daughters
and minute progeny, she counted 'forty-four thousand!'--But for the present
we note only two things: the first of them a mere anecdote. One night, a
couple of brother Jacobins are doorkeepers; for the members take this post
of duty and honour in rotation, and admit none that have not tickets: one
doorkeeper was the worthy Sieur Lais, a patriotic Opera-singer, stricken in
years, whose windpipe is long since closed without result; the other,
young, and named Louis Philippe, d'Orleans's firstborn, has in this latter
time, after unheard-of destinies, become Citizen-King, and struggles to
rule for a season. All-flesh is grass; higher reedgrass or creeping herb.
The second thing we have to note is historical: that the Mother-Society,
even in this its effulgent period, cannot content all Patriots. Already it
must throw off, so to speak, two dissatisfied swarms; a swarm to the right,
a swarm to the left. One party, which thinks the Jacobins lukewarm,
constitutes itself into Club of the Cordeliers; a hotter Club: it is
Danton's element: with whom goes Desmoulins. The other party, again,
which thinks the Jacobins scalding-hot, flies off to the right, and becomes
'Club of 1789, Friends of the Monarchic Constitution.' They are afterwards
named 'Feuillans Club;' their place of meeting being the Feuillans Convent.
Lafayette is, or becomes, their chief-man; supported by the respectable
Patriot everywhere, by the mass of Property and Intelligence,--with the
most flourishing prospects. They, in these June days of 1790, do, in the
Palais Royal, dine solemnly with open windows; to the cheers of the people;
with toasts, with inspiriting songs,--with one song at least, among the
feeblest ever sung. (Hist. Parl. vi. 334.) They shall, in due time be
hooted forth, over the borders, into Cimmerian Night.
Another expressly Monarchic or Royalist Club, 'Club des Monarchiens,'
though a Club of ample funds, and all sitting in damask sofas, cannot
realise the smallest momentary cheer; realises only scoffs and groans;--
till, ere long, certain Patriots in disorderly sufficient number, proceed
thither, for a night or for nights, and groan it out of pain. Vivacious
alone shall the Mother-Society and her family be. The very Cordeliers may,
as it were, return into her bosom, which will have grown warm enough.
Fatal-looking! Are not such Societies an incipient New Order of Society
itself? The Aggregative Principle anew at work in a Society grown
obsolete, cracked asunder, dissolving into rubbish and primary atoms?
Chapter 2.1.VI.
Je le jure.
With these signs of the times, is it not surprising that the dominant
feeling all over France was still continually Hope? O blessed Hope, sole
boon of man; whereby, on his strait prison walls, are painted beautiful
far-stretching landscapes; and into the night of very Death is shed holiest
dawn! Thou art to all an indefeasible possession in this God's-world: to
the wise a sacred Constantine's-banner, written on the eternal skies; under
which they shall conquer, for the battle itself is victory: to the foolish
some secular mirage, or shadow of still waters, painted on the parched
Earth; whereby at least their dusty pilgrimage, if devious, becomes
cheerfuller, becomes possible.
In the death-tumults of a sinking Society, French Hope sees only the birth-
struggles of a new unspeakably better Society; and sings, with full
assurance of faith, her brisk Melody, which some inspired fiddler has in
these very days composed for her,--the world-famous ca-ira. Yes; 'that
will go:' and then there will come--? All men hope: even Marat hopes--
that Patriotism will take muff and dirk. King Louis is not without hope:
in the chapter of chances; in a flight to some Bouille; in getting
popularized at Paris. But what a hoping People he had, judge by the fact,
and series of facts, now to be noted.
Poor Louis, meaning the best, with little insight and even less
determination of his own, has to follow, in that dim wayfaring of his, such
signal as may be given him; by backstairs Royalism, by official or
backstairs Constitutionalism, whichever for the month may have convinced
the royal mind. If flight to Bouille, and (horrible to think!) a drawing
of the civil sword do hang as theory, portentous in the background, much
nearer is this fact of these Twelve Hundred Kings, who sit in the Salle de
Manege. Kings uncontrollable by him, not yet irreverent to him. Could
kind management of these but prosper, how much better were it than armed
Emigrants, Turin-intrigues, and the help of Austria! Nay, are the two
hopes inconsistent? Rides in the suburbs, we have found, cost little; yet
they always brought vivats. (See Bertrand-Moleville, i. 241, &c.;) Still
cheaper is a soft word; such as has many times turned away wrath. In these
rapid days, while France is all getting divided into Departments, Clergy
about to be remodelled, Popular Societies rising, and Feudalism and so much
ever is ready to be hurled into the melting-pot,--might one not try?
On the 4th of February, accordingly, M. le President reads to his National
Assembly a short autograph, announcing that his Majesty will step over,
quite in an unceremonious way, probably about noon. Think, therefore,
Messieurs, what it may mean; especially, how ye will get the Hall decorated
a little. The Secretaries' Bureau can be shifted down from the platform;
on the President's chair be slipped this cover of velvet, 'of a violet
colour sprigged with gold fleur-de-lys;'--for indeed M. le President has
had previous notice underhand, and taken counsel with Doctor Guillotin.
Then some fraction of 'velvet carpet,' of like texture and colour, cannot
that be spread in front of the chair, where the Secretaries usually sit?
So has judicious Guillotin advised: and the effect is found satisfactory.
Moreover, as it is probable that his Majesty, in spite of the fleur-de-lys-
velvet, will stand and not sit at all, the President himself, in the
interim, presides standing. And so, while some honourable Member is
discussing, say, the division of a Department, Ushers announce: "His
Majesty!" In person, with small suite, enter Majesty: the honourable
Member stops short; the Assembly starts to its feet; the Twelve Hundred
Kings 'almost all,' and the Galleries no less, do welcome the Restorer of
French Liberty with loyal shouts. His Majesty's Speech, in diluted
conventional phraseology, expresses this mainly: That he, most of all
Frenchmen, rejoices to see France getting regenerated; is sure, at the same
time, that they will deal gently with her in the process, and not
regenerate her roughly. Such was his Majesty's Speech: the feat he
performed was coming to speak it, and going back again.
Surely, except to a very hoping People, there was not much here to build
upon. Yet what did they not build! The fact that the King has spoken,
that he has voluntarily come to speak, how inexpressibly encouraging! Did
not the glance of his royal countenance, like concentrated sunbeams, kindle
all hearts in an august Assembly; nay thereby in an inflammable
enthusiastic France? To move 'Deputation of thanks' can be the happy lot
of but one man; to go in such Deputation the lot of not many. The Deputed
have gone, and returned with what highest-flown compliment they could; whom
also the Queen met, Dauphin in hand. And still do not our hearts burn with
insatiable gratitude; and to one other man a still higher blessedness
suggests itself: To move that we all renew the National Oath.
Happiest honourable Member, with his word so in season as word seldom was;
magic Fugleman of a whole National Assembly, which sat there bursting to do
somewhat; Fugleman of a whole onlooking France! The President swears;
declares that every one shall swear, in distinct je le jure. Nay the very
Gallery sends him down a written slip signed, with their Oath on it; and as
the Assembly now casts an eye that way, the Gallery all stands up and
swears again. And then out of doors, consider at the Hotel-de-Ville how
Bailly, the great Tennis-Court swearer, again swears, towards nightful,
with all the Municipals, and Heads of Districts assembled there. And 'M.
Danton suggests that the public would like to partake:' whereupon Bailly,
with escort of Twelve, steps forth to the great outer staircase; sways the
ebullient multitude with stretched hand: takes their oath, with a thunder
of 'rolling drums,' with shouts that rend the welkin. And on all streets
the glad people, with moisture and fire in their eyes, 'spontaneously
formed groups, and swore one another,' (Newspapers (in Hist. Parl. iv.
445.)--and the whole City was illuminated. This was the Fourth of February
1790: a day to be marked white in Constitutional annals.
Nor is the illumination for a night only, but partially or totally it lasts
a series of nights. For each District, the Electors of each District, will
swear specially; and always as the District swears; it illuminates itself.
Behold them, District after District, in some open square, where the Non-
Electing People can all see and join: with their uplifted right hands, and
je le jure: with rolling drums, with embracings, and that infinite hurrah
of the enfranchised,--which any tyrant that there may be can consider!
Faithful to the King, to the Law, to the Constitution which the National
Assembly shall make.
Fancy, for example, the Professors of Universities parading the streets
with their young France, and swearing, in an enthusiastic manner, not
without tumult. By a larger exercise of fancy, expand duly this little
word: The like was repeated in every Town and District of France! Nay one
Patriot Mother, in Lagnon of Brittany, assembles her ten children; and,
with her own aged hand, swears them all herself, the highsouled venerable
woman. Of all which, moreover, a National Assembly must be eloquently
apprised. Such three weeks of swearing! Saw the sun ever such a swearing
people? Have they been bit by a swearing tarantula? No: but they are men
and Frenchmen; they have Hope; and, singular to say, they have Faith, were
it only in the Gospel according to Jean Jacques. O my Brothers! would to
Heaven it were even as ye think and have sworn! But there are Lovers'
Oaths, which, had they been true as love itself, cannot be kept; not to
speak of Dicers' Oaths, also a known sort.
Chapter 2.1.VII.
Prodigies.
To such length had the Contrat Social brought it, in believing hearts.
Man, as is well said, lives by faith; each generation has its own faith,
more or less; and laughs at the faith of its predecessor,--most unwisely.
Grant indeed that this faith in the Social Contract belongs to the stranger
sorts; that an unborn generation may very wisely, if not laugh, yet stare
at it, and piously consider. For, alas, what is Contrat? If all men were
such that a mere spoken or sworn Contract would bind them, all men were
then true men, and Government a superfluity. Not what thou and I have
promised to each other, but what the balance of our forces can make us
perform to each other: that, in so sinful a world as ours, is the thing to
be counted on. But above all, a People and a Sovereign promising to one
another; as if a whole People, changing from generation to generation, nay
from hour to hour, could ever by any method be made to speak or promise;
and to speak mere solecisms: "We, be the Heavens witness, which Heavens
however do no miracles now; we, ever-changing Millions, will allow thee,
changeful Unit, to force us or govern us!" The world has perhaps seen few
faiths comparable to that.
So nevertheless had the world then construed the matter. Had they not so
construed it, how different had their hopes been, their attempts, their
results! But so and not otherwise did the Upper Powers will it to be.
Freedom by Social Contract: such was verily the Gospel of that Era. And
all men had believed in it, as in a Heaven's Glad-tidings men should; and
with overflowing heart and uplifted voice clave to it, and stood fronting
Time and Eternity on it. Nay smile not; or only with a smile sadder than
tears! This too was a better faith than the one it had replaced : than
faith merely in the Everlasting Nothing and man's Digestive Power; lower
than which no faith can go.
Not that such universally prevalent, universally jurant, feeling of Hope,
could be a unanimous one. Far from that! The time was ominous: social
dissolution near and certain; social renovation still a problem, difficult
and distant even though sure. But if ominous to some clearest onlooker,
whose faith stood not with one side or with the other, nor in the ever-
vexed jarring of Greek with Greek at all,--how unspeakably ominous to dim
Royalist participators; for whom Royalism was Mankind's palladium; for
whom, with the abolition of Most-Christian Kingship and Most-Talleyrand
Bishopship, all loyal obedience, all religious faith was to expire, and
final Night envelope the Destinies of Man! On serious hearts, of that
persuasion, the matter sinks down deep; prompting, as we have seen, to
backstairs Plots, to Emigration with pledge of war, to Monarchic Clubs; nay
to still madder things.
The Spirit of Prophecy, for instance, had been considered extinct for some
centuries: nevertheless these last-times, as indeed is the tendency of
last-times, do revive it; that so, of French mad things, we might have
sample also of the maddest. In remote rural districts, whither
Philosophism has not yet radiated, where a heterodox Constitution of the
Clergy is bringing strife round the altar itself, and the very Church-bells
are getting melted into small money-coin, it appears probable that the End
of the World cannot be far off. Deep-musing atrabiliar old men, especially
old women, hint in an obscure way that they know what they know. The Holy
Virgin, silent so long, has not gone dumb;--and truly now, if ever more in
this world, were the time for her to speak. One Prophetess, though
careless Historians have omitted her name, condition, and whereabout,
becomes audible to the general ear; credible to not a few: credible to
Friar Gerle, poor Patriot Chartreux, in the National Assembly itself! She,
in Pythoness' recitative, with wildstaring eye, sings that there shall be a
Sign; that the heavenly Sun himself will hang out a Sign, or Mock-Sun,--
which, many say, shall be stamped with the Head of hanged Favras. List,
Dom Gerle, with that poor addled poll of thine; list, O list;--and hear
nothing. (Deux Amis, v. c. 7.)
Notable however was that 'magnetic vellum, velin magnetique,' of the Sieurs
d'Hozier and Petit-Jean, Parlementeers of Rouen. Sweet young d'Hozier,
'bred in the faith of his Missal, and of parchment genealogies,' and of
parchment generally: adust, melancholic, middle-aged Petit-Jean: why came
these two to Saint-Cloud, where his Majesty was hunting, on the festival of
St. Peter and St. Paul; and waited there, in antechambers, a wonder to
whispering Swiss, the livelong day; and even waited without the Grates,
when turned out; and had dismissed their valets to Paris, as with purpose
of endless waiting? They have a magnetic vellum, these two; whereon the
Virgin, wonderfully clothing herself in Mesmerean Cagliostric Occult-
Philosophy, has inspired them to jot down instructions and predictions for
a much-straitened King. To whom, by Higher Order, they will this day
present it; and save the Monarchy and World. Unaccountable pair of visual-
objects! Ye should be men, and of the Eighteenth Century; but your
magnetic vellum forbids us so to interpret. Say, are ye aught? Thus ask
the Guardhouse Captains, the Mayor of St. Cloud; nay, at great length, thus
asks the Committee of Researches, and not the Municipal, but the National
Assembly one. No distinct answer, for weeks. At last it becomes plain
that the right answer is negative. Go, ye Chimeras, with your magnetic
vellum; sweet young Chimera, adust middle-aged one! The Prison-doors are
open. Hardly again shall ye preside the Rouen Chamber of Accounts; but
vanish obscurely into Limbo. (See Deux Amis, v. 199.)
Chapter 2.1.VIII.
Solemn League and Covenant.
Such dim masses, and specks of even deepest black, work in that white-hot
glow of the French mind, now wholly in fusion, and confusion. Old women
here swearing their ten children on the new Evangel of Jean Jacques; old
women there looking up for Favras' Heads in the celestial Luminary: these
are preternatural signs, prefiguring somewhat.
In fact, to the Patriot children of Hope themselves, it is undeniable that
difficulties exist: emigrating Seigneurs; Parlements in sneaking but most
malicious mutiny (though the rope is round their neck); above all, the most
decided 'deficiency of grains.' Sorrowful: but, to a Nation that hopes,
not irremediable. To a Nation which is in fusion and ardent communion of
thought; which, for example, on signal of one Fugleman, will lift its right
hand like a drilled regiment, and swear and illuminate, till every village
from Ardennes to the Pyrenees has rolled its village-drum, and sent up its
little oath, and glimmer of tallow-illumination some fathoms into the reign
of Night!
If grains are defective, the fault is not of Nature or National Assembly,
but of Art and Antinational Intriguers. Such malign individuals, of the
scoundrel species, have power to vex us, while the Constitution is a-
making. Endure it, ye heroic Patriots: nay rather, why not cure it?
Grains do grow, they lie extant there in sheaf or sack; only that regraters
and Royalist plotters, to provoke the people into illegality, obstruct the
transport of grains. Quick, ye organised Patriot Authorities, armed
National Guards, meet together; unite your goodwill; in union is tenfold
strength: let the concentred flash of your Patriotism strike stealthy
Scoundrelism blind, paralytic, as with a coup de soleil.
Under which hat or nightcap of the Twenty-five millions, this pregnant Idea
first rose, for in some one head it did rise, no man can now say. A most
small idea, near at hand for the whole world: but a living one, fit; and
which waxed, whether into greatness or not, into immeasurable size. When a
Nation is in this state that the Fugleman can operate on it, what will the
word in season, the act in season, not do! It will grow verily, like the
Boy's Bean in the Fairy-Tale, heaven-high, with habitations and adventures
on it, in one night. It is nevertheless unfortunately still a Bean (for
your long-lived Oak grows not so); and, the next night, it may lie felled,
horizontal, trodden into common mud.--But remark, at least, how natural to
any agitated Nation, which has Faith, this business of Covenanting is. The
Scotch, believing in a righteous Heaven above them, and also in a Gospel,
far other than the Jean-Jacques one, swore, in their extreme need, a Solemn
League and Covenant,--as Brothers on the forlorn-hope, and imminence of
battle, who embrace looking Godward; and got the whole Isle to swear it;
and even, in their tough Old-Saxon Hebrew-Presbyterian way, to keep it more
or less;--for the thing, as such things are, was heard in Heaven, and
partially ratified there; neither is it yet dead, if thou wilt look, nor
like to die. The French too, with their Gallic-Ethnic excitability and
effervescence, have, as we have seen, real Faith, of a sort; they are hard
bestead, though in the middle of Hope: a National Solemn League and
Covenant there may be in France too; under how different conditions; with
how different developement and issue!
Note, accordingly, the small commencement; first spark of a mighty
firework: for if the particular hat cannot be fixed upon, the particular
District can. On the 29th day of last November, were National Guards by
the thousand seen filing, from far and near, with military music, with
Municipal officers in tricolor sashes, towards and along the Rhone-stream,
to the little town of Etoile. There with ceremonial evolution and
manoeuvre, with fanfaronading, musketry-salvoes, and what else the Patriot
genius could devise, they made oath and obtestation to stand faithfully by
one another, under Law and King; in particular, to have all manner of
grains, while grains there were, freely circulated, in spite both of robber
and regrater. This was the meeting of Etoile, in the mild end of November
1789.
But now, if a mere empty Review, followed by Review-dinner, ball, and such
gesticulation and flirtation as there may be, interests the happy County-
town, and makes it the envy of surrounding County-towns, how much more
might this! In a fortnight, larger Montelimart, half ashamed of itself,
will do as good, and better. On the Plain of Montelimart, or what is
equally sonorous, 'under the Walls of Montelimart,' the thirteenth of
December sees new gathering and obtestation; six thousand strong; and now
indeed, with these three remarkable improvements, as unanimously resolved
on there. First that the men of Montelimart do federate with the already
federated men of Etoile. Second, that, implying not expressing the
circulation of grain, they 'swear in the face of God and their Country'
with much more emphasis and comprehensiveness, 'to obey all decrees of the
National Assembly, and see them obeyed, till death, jusqu'a la mort.'
Third, and most important, that official record of all this be solemnly
delivered in to the National Assembly, to M. de Lafayette, and 'to the
Restorer of French Liberty;' who shall all take what comfort from it they
can. Thus does larger Montelimart vindicate its Patriot importance, and
maintain its rank in the municipal scale. (Hist. Parl. vii. 4.)
And so, with the New-year, the signal is hoisted; for is not a National
Assembly, and solemn deliverance there, at lowest a National Telegraph?
Not only grain shall circulate, while there is grain, on highways or the
Rhone-waters, over all that South-Eastern region,--where also if
Monseigneur d'Artois saw good to break in from Turin, hot welcome might
wait him; but whatsoever Province of France is straitened for grain, or
vexed with a mutinous Parlement, unconstitutional plotters, Monarchic
Clubs, or any other Patriot ailment,--can go and do likewise, or even do
better. And now, especially, when the February swearing has set them all
agog! From Brittany to Burgundy, on most plains of France, under most
City-walls, it is a blaring of trumpets, waving of banners, a
constitutional manoeuvring: under the vernal skies, while Nature too is
putting forth her green Hopes, under bright sunshine defaced by the
stormful East; like Patriotism victorious, though with difficulty, over
Aristocracy and defect of grain! There march and constitutionally wheel,
to the ca-ira-ing mood of fife and drum, under their tricolor Municipals,
our clear-gleaming Phalanxes; or halt, with uplifted right-hand, and
artillery-salvoes that imitate Jove's thunder; and all the Country, and
metaphorically all 'the Universe,' is looking on. Wholly, in their best
apparel, brave men, and beautifully dizened women, most of whom have lovers
there; swearing, by the eternal Heavens and this green-growing all-
nutritive Earth, that France is free!
Sweetest days, when (astonishing to say) mortals have actually met together
in communion and fellowship; and man, were it only once through long
despicable centuries, is for moments verily the brother of man!--And then
the Deputations to the National Assembly, with highflown descriptive
harangue; to M. de Lafayette, and the Restorer; very frequently moreover to
the Mother of Patriotism sitting on her stout benches in that Hall of the
Jacobins! The general ear is filled with Federation. New names of
Patriots emerge, which shall one day become familiar: Boyer-Fonfrede
eloquent denunciator of a rebellious Bourdeaux Parlement; Max Isnard
eloquent reporter of the Federation of Draguignan; eloquent pair, separated
by the whole breadth of France, who are nevertheless to meet. Ever wider
burns the flame of Federation; ever wider and also brighter. Thus the
Brittany and Anjou brethren mention a Fraternity of all true Frenchmen; and
go the length of invoking 'perdition and death' on any renegade: moreover,
if in their National-Assembly harangue, they glance plaintively at the marc
d'argent which makes so many citizens passive, they, over in the Mother-
Society, ask, being henceforth themselves 'neither Bretons nor Angevins but
French,' Why all France has not one Federation, and universal Oath of
Brotherhood, once for all? (Reports, &c.; (in Hist. Parl. ix. 122-147).) A
most pertinent suggestion; dating from the end of March. Which pertinent
suggestion the whole Patriot world cannot but catch, and reverberate and
agitate till it become loud;--which, in that case, the Townhall Municipals
had better take up, and meditate.
Some universal Federation seems inevitable: the Where is given; clearly
Paris: only the When, the How? These also productive Time will give; is
already giving. For always as the Federative work goes on, it perfects
itself, and Patriot genius adds contribution after contribution. Thus, at
Lyons, in the end of the May month, we behold as many as fifty, or some say
sixty thousand, met to federate; and a multitude looking on, which it would
be difficult to number. From dawn to dusk! For our Lyons Guardsmen took
rank, at five in the bright dewy morning; came pouring in, bright-gleaming,
to the Quai de Rhone, to march thence to the Federation-field; amid wavings
of hats and lady-handkerchiefs; glad shoutings of some two hundred thousand
Patriot voices and hearts; the beautiful and brave! Among whom, courting
no notice, and yet the notablest of all, what queenlike Figure is this;
with her escort of house-friends and Champagneux the Patriot Editor; come
abroad with the earliest? Radiant with enthusiasm are those dark eyes, is
that strong Minerva-face, looking dignity and earnest joy; joyfullest she
where all are joyful. It is Roland de la Platriere's Wife! (Madame
Roland, Memoires, i. (Discours Preliminaire, p. 23).) Strict elderly
Roland, King's Inspector of Manufactures here; and now likewise, by popular
choice, the strictest of our new Lyons Municipals: a man who has gained
much, if worth and faculty be gain; but above all things, has gained to
wife Phlipon the Paris Engraver's daughter. Reader, mark that queenlike
burgher-woman: beautiful, Amazonian-graceful to the eye; more so to the
mind. Unconscious of her worth (as all worth is), of her greatness, of her
crystal clearness; genuine, the creature of Sincerity and Nature, in an age
of Artificiality, Pollution and Cant; there, in her still completeness, in
her still invincibility, she, if thou knew it, is the noblest of all living
Frenchwomen,--and will be seen, one day. O blessed rather while unseen,
even of herself! For the present she gazes, nothing doubting, into this
grand theatricality; and thinks her young dreams are to be fulfilled.
From dawn to dusk, as we said, it lasts; and truly a sight like few.
Flourishes of drums and trumpets are something: but think of an
'artificial Rock fifty feet high,' all cut into crag-steps, not without the
similitude of 'shrubs!' The interior cavity, for in sooth it is made of
deal,--stands solemn, a 'Temple of Concord:' on the outer summit rises 'a
Statue of Liberty,' colossal, seen for miles, with her Pike and Phrygian
Cap, and civic column; at her feet a Country's Altar, 'Autel de la
Patrie:'--on all which neither deal-timber nor lath and plaster, with paint
of various colours, have been spared. But fancy then the banners all
placed on the steps of the Rock; high-mass chaunted; and the civic oath of
fifty thousand: with what volcanic outburst of sound from iron and other
throats, enough to frighten back the very Saone and Rhone; and how the
brightest fireworks, and balls, and even repasts closed in that night of
the gods! (Hist. Parl. xii. 274.) And so the Lyons Federation vanishes
too, swallowed of darkness;--and yet not wholly, for our brave fair Roland
was there; also she, though in the deepest privacy, writes her Narrative of
it in Champagneux's Courier de Lyons; a piece which 'circulates to the
extent of sixty thousand;' which one would like now to read.
But on the whole, Paris, we may see, will have little to devise; will only
have to borrow and apply. And then as to the day, what day of all the
calendar is fit, if the Bastille Anniversary be not? The particular spot
too, it is easy to see, must be the Champ-de-Mars; where many a Julian the
Apostate has been lifted on bucklers, to France's or the world's
sovereignty; and iron Franks, loud-clanging, have responded to the voice of
a Charlemagne; and from of old mere sublimities have been familiar.
Chapter 2.1.IX.
Symbolic.
How natural, in all decisive circumstances, is Symbolic Representation to
all kinds of men! Nay, what is man's whole terrestrial Life but a Symbolic
Representation, and making visible, of the Celestial invisible Force that
is in him? By act and world he strives to do it; with sincerity, if
possible; failing that, with theatricality, which latter also may have its
meaning. An Almack's Masquerade is not nothing; in more genial ages, your
Christmas Guisings, Feasts of the Ass, Abbots of Unreason, were a
considerable something: since sport they were; as Almacks may still be
sincere wish for sport. But what, on the other hand, must not sincere
earnest have been: say, a Hebrew Feast of Tabernacles have been! A whole
Nation gathered, in the name of the Highest, under the eye of the Highest;
imagination herself flagging under the reality; and all noblest Ceremony as
yet not grown ceremonial, but solemn, significant to the outmost fringe!
Neither, in modern private life, are theatrical scenes, of tearful women
wetting whole ells of cambric in concert, of impassioned bushy-whiskered
youth threatening suicide, and such like, to be so entirely detested: drop
thou a tear over them thyself rather.
At any rate, one can remark that no Nation will throw-by its work, and
deliberately go out to make a scene, without meaning something thereby.
For indeed no scenic individual, with knavish hypocritical views, will take
the trouble to soliloquise a scene: and now consider, is not a scenic
Nation placed precisely in that predicament of soliloquising; for its own
behoof alone; to solace its own sensibilities, maudlin or other?--Yet in
this respect, of readiness for scenes, the difference of Nations, as of
men, is very great. If our Saxon-Puritanic friends, for example, swore and
signed their National Covenant, without discharge of gunpowder, or the
beating of any drum, in a dingy Covenant-Close of the Edinburgh High-
street, in a mean room, where men now drink mean liquor, it was consistent
with their ways so to swear it. Our Gallic-Encyclopedic friends, again,
must have a Champ-de-Mars, seen of all the world, or universe; and such a
Scenic Exhibition, to which the Coliseum Amphitheatre was but a stroller's
barn, as this old Globe of ours had never or hardly ever beheld. Which
method also we reckon natural, then and there. Nor perhaps was the
respective keeping of these two Oaths far out of due proportion to such
respective display in taking them: inverse proportion, namely. For the
theatricality of a People goes in a compound-ratio: ratio indeed of their
trustfulness, sociability, fervency; but then also of their excitability,
of their porosity, not continent; or say, of their explosiveness, hot-
flashing, but which does not last.
How true also, once more, is it that no man or Nation of men, conscious of
doing a great thing, was ever, in that thing, doing other than a small one!
O Champ-de-Mars Federation, with three hundred drummers, twelve hundred
wind-musicians, and artillery planted on height after height to boom the
tidings of it all over France, in few minutes! Could no Atheist-Naigeon
contrive to discern, eighteen centuries off, those Thirteen most poor mean-
dressed men, at frugal Supper, in a mean Jewish dwelling, with no symbol
but hearts god-initiated into the 'Divine depth of Sorrow,' and a Do this
in remembrance of me;--and so cease that small difficult crowing of his, if
he were not doomed to it?
Chapter 2.1.X.
Mankind.
Pardonable are human theatricalities; nay perhaps touching, like the
passionate utterance of a tongue which with sincerity stammers; of a head
which with insincerity babbles,--having gone distracted. Yet, in
comparison with unpremeditated outbursts of Nature, such as an Insurrection
of Women, how foisonless, unedifying, undelightful; like small ale palled,
like an effervescence that has effervesced! Such scenes, coming of
forethought, were they world-great, and never so cunningly devised, are at
bottom mainly pasteboard and paint. But the others are original; emitted
from the great everliving heart of Nature herself: what figure they will
assume is unspeakably significant. To us, therefore, let the French
National Solemn League, and Federation, be the highest recorded triumph of
the Thespian Art; triumphant surely, since the whole Pit, which was of
Twenty-five Millions, not only claps hands, but does itself spring on the
boards and passionately set to playing there. And being such, be it
treated as such: with sincere cursory admiration; with wonder from afar.
A whole Nation gone mumming deserves so much; but deserves not that loving
minuteness a Menadic Insurrection did. Much more let prior, and as it
were, rehearsal scenes of Federation come and go, henceforward, as they
list; and, on Plains and under City-walls, innumerable regimental bands
blare off into the Inane, without note from us.
One scene, however, the hastiest reader will momentarily pause on: that of
Anacharsis Clootz and the Collective sinful Posterity of Adam.--For a
Patriot Municipality has now, on the 4th of June, got its plan concocted,
and got it sanctioned by National Assembly; a Patriot King assenting; to
whom, were he even free to dissent, Federative harangues, overflowing with
loyalty, have doubtless a transient sweetness. There shall come Deputed
National Guards, so many in the hundred, from each of the Eighty-three
Departments of France. Likewise from all Naval and Military King's Forces,
shall Deputed quotas come; such Federation of National with Royal Soldier
has, taking place spontaneously, been already seen and sanctioned. For the
rest, it is hoped, as many as forty thousand may arrive: expenses to be
borne by the Deputing District; of all which let District and Department
take thought, and elect fit men,--whom the Paris brethren will fly to meet
and welcome.
Now, therefore, judge if our Patriot Artists are busy; taking deep counsel
how to make the Scene worthy of a look from the Universe! As many as
fifteen thousand men, spade-men, barrow-men, stone-builders, rammers, with
their engineers, are at work on the Champ-de-Mars; hollowing it out into a
natural Amphitheatre, fit for such solemnity. For one may hope it will be
annual and perennial; a 'Feast of Pikes, Fete des Piques,' notablest among
the high-tides of the year: in any case ought not a Scenic free Nation to
have some permanent National Amphitheatre? The Champ-de-Mars is getting
hollowed out; and the daily talk and the nightly dream in most Parisian
heads is of Federation, and that only. Federate Deputies are already under
way. National Assembly, what with its natural work, what with hearing and
answering harangues of Federates, of this Federation, will have enough to
do! Harangue of 'American Committee,' among whom is that faint figure of
Paul Jones 'as with the stars dim-twinkling through it,'--come to
congratulate us on the prospect of such auspicious day. Harangue of
Bastille Conquerors, come to 'renounce' any special recompense, any
peculiar place at the solemnity;--since the Centre Grenadiers rather
grumble. Harangue of 'Tennis-Court Club,' who enter with far-gleaming
Brass-plate, aloft on a pole, and the Tennis-Court Oath engraved thereon;
which far gleaming Brass-plate they purpose to affix solemnly in the
Versailles original locality, on the 20th of this month, which is the
anniversary, as a deathless memorial, for some years: they will then dine,
as they come back, in the Bois de Boulogne; (See Deux Amis, v. 122; Hist.
Parl. &c.;)--cannot, however, do it without apprising the world. To such
things does the august National Assembly ever and anon cheerfully listen,
suspending its regenerative labours; and with some touch of impromptu
eloquence, make friendly reply;--as indeed the wont has long been; for it
is a gesticulating, sympathetic People, and has a heart, and wears it on
its sleeve.
In which circumstances, it occurred to the mind of Anacharsis Clootz that
while so much was embodying itself into Club or Committee, and perorating
applauded, there yet remained a greater and greatest; of which, if it also
took body and perorated, what might not the effect be: Humankind namely,
le Genre Humain itself! In what rapt creative moment the Thought rose in
Anacharsis's soul; all his throes, while he went about giving shape and
birth to it; how he was sneered at by cold worldlings; but did sneer again,
being a man of polished sarcasm; and moved to and fro persuasive in
coffeehouse and soiree, and dived down assiduous-obscure in the great deep
of Paris, making his Thought a Fact: of all this the spiritual biographies
of that period say nothing. Enough that on the 19th evening of June 1790,
the Sun's slant rays lighted a spectacle such as our foolish little Planet
has not often had to show: Anacharsis Clootz entering the august Salle de
Manege, with the Human Species at his heels. Swedes, Spaniards, Polacks;
Turks, Chaldeans, Greeks, dwellers in Mesopotamia: behold them all; they
have come to claim place in the grand Federation, having an undoubted
interest in it.
"Our ambassador titles," said the fervid Clootz, "are not written on
parchment, but on the living hearts of all men." These whiskered Polacks,
long-flowing turbaned Ishmaelites, astrological Chaldeans, who stand so
mute here, let them plead with you, august Senators, more eloquently than
eloquence could. They are the mute representatives of their tongue-tied,
befettered, heavy-laden Nations; who from out of that dark bewilderment
gaze wistful, amazed, with half-incredulous hope, towards you, and this
your bright light of a French Federation: bright particular day-star, the
herald of universal day. We claim to stand there, as mute monuments,
pathetically adumbrative of much.--From bench and gallery comes 'repeated
applause;' for what august Senator but is flattered even by the very shadow
of Human Species depending on him? From President Sieyes, who presides
this remarkable fortnight, in spite of his small voice, there comes
eloquent though shrill reply. Anacharsis and the 'Foreigners Committee'
shall have place at the Federation; on condition of telling their
respective Peoples what they see there. In the mean time, we invite them
to the 'honours of the sitting, honneur de la seance.' A long-flowing
Turk, for rejoinder, bows with Eastern solemnity, and utters articulate
sounds: but owing to his imperfect knowledge of the French dialect,
(Moniteur, &c.; (in Hist. Parl. xii. 283).) his words are like spilt water;
the thought he had in him remains conjectural to this day.
Anacharsis and Mankind accept the honours of the sitting; and have
forthwith, as the old Newspapers still testify, the satisfaction to see
several things. First and chief, on the motion of Lameth, Lafayette,
Saint-Fargeau and other Patriot Nobles, let the others repugn as they will:
all Titles of Nobility, from Duke to Esquire, or lower, are henceforth
abolished. Then, in like manner, Livery Servants, or rather the Livery of
Servants. Neither, for the future, shall any man or woman, self-styled
noble, be 'incensed,'--foolishly fumigated with incense, in Church; as the
wont has been. In a word, Feudalism being dead these ten months, why
should her empty trappings and scutcheons survive? The very Coats-of-arms
will require to be obliterated;--and yet Cassandra Marat on this and the
other coach-panel notices that they 'are but painted-over,' and threaten to
peer through again.
So that henceforth de Lafayette is but the Sieur Motier, and Saint-Fargeau
is plain Michel Lepelletier; and Mirabeau soon after has to say huffingly,
"With your Riquetti you have set Europe at cross-purposes for three days."
For his Counthood is not indifferent to this man; which indeed the admiring
People treat him with to the last. But let extreme Patriotism rejoice, and
chiefly Anacharsis and Mankind; for now it seems to be taken for granted
that one Adam is Father of us all!--
Such was, in historical accuracy, the famed feat of Anacharsis. Thus did
the most extensive of Public Bodies find a sort of spokesman. Whereby at
least we may judge of one thing: what a humour the once sniffing mocking
City of Paris and Baron Clootz had got into; when such exhibition could
appear a propriety, next door to a sublimity. It is true, Envy did in
after times, pervert this success of Anacharsis; making him, from
incidental 'Speaker of the Foreign-Nations Committee,' claim to be official
permanent 'Speaker, Orateur, of the Human Species,' which he only deserved
to be; and alleging, calumniously, that his astrological Chaldeans, and the
rest, were a mere French tag-rag-and-bobtail disguised for the nonce; and,
in short, sneering and fleering at him in her cold barren way; all which,
however, he, the man he was, could receive on thick enough panoply, or even
rebound therefrom, and also go his way.
Most extensive of Public Bodies, we may call it; and also the most
unexpected: for who could have thought to see All Nations in the Tuileries
Riding-Hall? But so it is; and truly as strange things may happen when a
whole People goes mumming and miming. Hast not thou thyself perchance seen
diademed Cleopatra, daughter of the Ptolemies, pleading, almost with bended
knee, in unheroic tea-parlour, or dimlit retail-shop, to inflexible gross
Burghal Dignitary, for leave to reign and die; being dressed for it, and
moneyless, with small children;--while suddenly Constables have shut the
Thespian barn, and her Antony pleaded in vain? Such visual spectra flit
across this Earth, if the Thespian Stage be rudely interfered with: but
much more, when, as was said, Pit jumps on Stage, then is it verily, as in
Herr Tieck's Drama, a Verkehrte Welt, of World Topsyturvied!
Having seen the Human Species itself, to have seen the 'Dean of the Human
Species,' ceased now to be a miracle. Such 'Doyen du Genre Humain, Eldest
of Men,' had shewn himself there, in these weeks: Jean Claude Jacob, a
born Serf, deputed from his native Jura Mountains to thank the National
Assembly for enfranchising them. On his bleached worn face are ploughed
the furrowings of one hundred and twenty years. He has heard dim patois-
talk, of immortal Grand-Monarch victories; of a burnt Palatinate, as he
toiled and moiled to make a little speck of this Earth greener; of Cevennes
Dragoonings; of Marlborough going to the war. Four generations have
bloomed out, and loved and hated, and rustled off: he was forty-six when
Louis Fourteenth died. The Assembly, as one man, spontaneously rose, and
did reverence to the Eldest of the World; old Jean is to take seance among
them, honourably, with covered head. He gazes feebly there, with his old
eyes, on that new wonder-scene; dreamlike to him, and uncertain, wavering
amid fragments of old memories and dreams. For Time is all growing
unsubstantial, dreamlike; Jean's eyes and mind are weary, and about to
close,--and open on a far other wonder-scene, which shall be real. Patriot
Subscription, Royal Pension was got for him, and he returned home glad; but
in two months more he left it all, and went on his unknown way. (Deux
Amis, iv. iii.)
Chapter 2.1.XI.
As in the Age of Gold.
Meanwhile to Paris, ever going and returning, day after day, and all day
long, towards that Field of Mars, it becomes painfully apparent that the
spadework there cannot be got done in time. There is such an area of it;
three hundred thousand square feet: for from the Ecole militaire (which
will need to be done up in wood with balconies and galleries) westward to
the Gate by the river (where also shall be wood, in triumphal arches), we
count same thousand yards of length; and for breadth, from this umbrageous
Avenue of eight rows, on the South side, to that corresponding one on the
North, some thousand feet, more or less. All this to be scooped out, and
wheeled up in slope along the sides; high enough; for it must be rammed
down there, and shaped stair-wise into as many as 'thirty ranges of
convenient seats,' firm-trimmed with turf, covered with enduring timber;--
and then our huge pyramidal Fatherland's-Altar, Autel de la Patrie, in the
centre, also to be raised and stair-stepped! Force-work with a vengeance;
it is a World's Amphitheatre! There are but fifteen days good; and at this
languid rate, it might take half as many weeks. What is singular too, the
spademen seem to work lazily; they will not work double-tides, even for
offer of more wages, though their tide is but seven hours; they declare
angrily that the human tabernacle requires occasional rest!
Is it Aristocrats secretly bribing? Aristocrats were capable of that.
Only six months since, did not evidence get afloat that subterranean Paris,
for we stand over quarries and catacombs, dangerously, as it were midway
between Heaven and the Abyss, and are hollow underground,--was charged with
gunpowder, which should make us 'leap?' Till a Cordelier's Deputation
actually went to examine, and found it--carried off again! (23rd December,
1789 (Newspapers in Hist. Parl. iv. 44).) An accursed, incurable brood;
all asking for 'passports,' in these sacred days. Trouble, of rioting,
chateau-burning, is in the Limousin and elsewhere; for they are busy!
Between the best of Peoples and the best of Restorer-Kings, they would sow
grudges; with what a fiend's-grin would they see this Federation, looked
for by the Universe, fail!
Fail for want of spadework, however, it shall not. He that has four limbs,
and a French heart, can do spadework; and will! On the first July Monday,
scarcely has the signal-cannon boomed; scarcely have the languescent
mercenary Fifteen Thousand laid down their tools, and the eyes of onlookers
turned sorrowfully of the still high Sun; when this and the other Patriot,
fire in his eye, snatches barrow and mattock, and himself begins
indignantly wheeling. Whom scores and then hundreds follow; and soon a
volunteer Fifteen Thousand are shovelling and trundling; with the heart of
giants; and all in right order, with that extemporaneous adroitness of
theirs: whereby such a lift has been given, worth three mercenary ones;--
which may end when the late twilight thickens, in triumph shouts, heard or
heard of beyond Montmartre!
A sympathetic population will wait, next day, with eagerness, till the
tools are free. Or why wait? Spades elsewhere exist! And so now bursts
forth that effulgence of Parisian enthusiasm, good-heartedness and
brotherly love; such, if Chroniclers are trustworthy, as was not witnessed
since the Age of Gold. Paris, male and female, precipitates itself towards
its South-west extremity, spade on shoulder. Streams of men, without
order; or in order, as ranked fellow-craftsmen, as natural or accidental
reunions, march towards the Field of Mars. Three-deep these march; to the
sound of stringed music; preceded by young girls with green boughs, and
tricolor streamers: they have shouldered, soldier-wise, their shovels and
picks; and with one throat are singing ca-ira. Yes, pardieu ca-ira, cry
the passengers on the streets. All corporate Guilds, and public and
private Bodies of Citizens, from the highest to the lowest, march; the very
Hawkers, one finds, have ceased bawling for one day. The neighbouring
Villages turn out: their able men come marching, to village fiddle or
tambourine and triangle, under their Mayor, or Mayor and Curate, who also
walk bespaded, and in tricolor sash. As many as one hundred and fifty
thousand workers: nay at certain seasons, as some count, two hundred and
fifty thousand; for, in the afternoon especially, what mortal but,
finishing his hasty day's work, would run! A stirring city: from the time
you reach the Place Louis Quinze, southward over the River, by all Avenues,
it is one living throng. So many workers; and no mercenary mock-workers,
but real ones that lie freely to it: each Patriot stretches himself
against the stubborn glebe; hews and wheels with the whole weight that is
in him.
Amiable infants, aimables enfans! They do the 'police des l'atelier' too,
the guidance and governance, themselves; with that ready will of theirs,
with that extemporaneous adroitness. It is a true brethren's work; all
distinctions confounded, abolished; as it was in the beginning, when Adam
himself delved. Longfrocked tonsured Monks, with short-skirted Water-
carriers, with swallow-tailed well-frizzled Incroyables of a Patriot turn;
dark Charcoalmen, meal-white Peruke-makers; or Peruke-wearers, for Advocate
and Judge are there, and all Heads of Districts: sober Nuns sisterlike
with flaunting Nymphs of the Opera, and females in common circumstances
named unfortunate: the patriot Rag-picker, and perfumed dweller in
palaces; for Patriotism like New-birth, and also like Death, levels all.
The Printers have come marching, Prudhomme's all in Paper-caps with
Revolutions de Paris printed on them; as Camille notes; wishing that in
these great days there should be a Pacte des Ecrivains too, or Federation
of Able Editors. (See Newspapers, &c.; (in Hist. Parl. vi. 381-406).)
Beautiful to see! The snowy linen and delicate pantaloon alternates with
the soiled check-shirt and bushel-breeches; for both have cast their coats,
and under both are four limbs and a set of Patriot muscles. There do they
pick and shovel; or bend forward, yoked in long strings to box-barrow or
overloaded tumbril; joyous, with one mind. Abbe Sieyes is seen pulling,
wiry, vehement, if too light for draught; by the side of Beauharnais, who
shall get Kings though he be none. Abbe Maury did not pull; but the
Charcoalmen brought a mummer guised like him, so he had to pull in effigy.
Let no august Senator disdain the work: Mayor Bailly, Generalissimo
Lafayette are there;--and, alas, shall be there again another day! The
King himself comes to see: sky-rending Vive-le-Roi; 'and suddenly with
shouldered spades they form a guard of honour round him.' Whosoever can
come comes, to work, or to look, and bless the work.
Whole families have come. One whole family we see clearly, of three
generations: the father picking, the mother shovelling, the young ones
wheeling assiduous; old grandfather, hoary with ninety-three years, holds
in his arms the youngest of all: (Mercier. ii. 76, &c.;) frisky, not helpful
this one; who nevertheless may tell it to his grandchildren; and how the
Future and the Past alike looked on, and with failing or with half-formed
voice, faltered their ca-ira. A vintner has wheeled in, on Patriot truck,
beverage of wine: "Drink not, my brothers, if ye are not dry; that your
cask may last the longer;" neither did any drink, but men 'evidently
exhausted.' A dapper Abbe looks on, sneering. "To the barrow!" cry
several; whom he, lest a worse thing befal him, obeys: nevertheless one
wiser Patriot barrowman, arriving now, interposes his "arretez;" setting
down his own barrow, he snatches the Abbe's; trundles it fast, like an
infected thing; forth of the Champ-de-Mars circuit, and discharges it
there. Thus too a certain person (of some quality, or private capital, to
appearance), entering hastily, flings down his coat, waistcoat and two
watches, and is rushing to the thick of the work: "But your watches?"
cries the general voice.--"Does one distrust his brothers?" answers he; nor
were the watches stolen. How beautiful is noble-sentiment: like gossamer
gauze, beautiful and cheap; which will stand no tear and wear! Beautiful
cheap gossamer gauze, thou film-shadow of a raw-material of Virtue, which
art not woven, nor likely to be, into Duty; thou art better than nothing,
and also worse!
Young Boarding-school Boys, College Students, shout Vive la Nation, and
regret that they have yet 'only their sweat to give.' What say we of Boys?
Beautifullest Hebes; the loveliest of Paris, in their light air-robes, with
riband-girdle of tricolor, are there; shovelling and wheeling with the
rest; their Hebe eyes brighter with enthusiasm, and long hair in beautiful
dishevelment: hard-pressed are their small fingers; but they make the
patriot barrow go, and even force it to the summit of the slope (with a
little tracing, which what man's arm were not too happy to lend?)--then
bound down with it again, and go for more; with their long locks and
tricolors blown back: graceful as the rosy Hours. O, as that evening Sun
fell over the Champ-de-Mars, and tinted with fire the thick umbrageous
boscage that shelters it on this hand and on that, and struck direct on
those Domes and two-and-forty Windows of the Ecole Militaire, and made them
all of burnished gold,--saw he on his wide zodiac road other such sight? A
living garden spotted and dotted with such flowerage; all colours of the
prism; the beautifullest blent friendly with the usefullest; all growing
and working brotherlike there, under one warm feeling, were it but for
days; once and no second time! But Night is sinking; these Nights too,
into Eternity. The hastiest Traveller Versailles-ward has drawn bridle on
the heights of Chaillot: and looked for moments over the River; reporting
at Versailles what he saw, not without tears. (Mercier, ii. 81.)
Meanwhile, from all points of the compass, Federates are arriving: fervid
children of the South, 'who glory in their Mirabeau;' considerate North-
blooded Mountaineers of Jura; sharp Bretons, with their Gaelic suddenness;
Normans not to be overreached in bargain: all now animated with one
noblest fire of Patriotism. Whom the Paris brethren march forth to
receive; with military solemnities, with fraternal embracing, and a
hospitality worthy of the heroic ages. They assist at the Assembly's
Debates, these Federates: the Galleries are reserved for them. They
assist in the toils of the Champ-de-Mars; each new troop will put its hand
to the spade; lift a hod of earth on the Altar of the Fatherland. But the
flourishes of rhetoric, for it is a gesticulating People; the moral-sublime
of those Addresses to an august Assembly, to a Patriot Restorer! Our
Breton Captain of Federates kneels even, in a fit of enthusiasm, and gives
up his sword; he wet-eyed to a King wet-eyed. Poor Louis! These, as he
said afterwards, were among the bright days of his life.
Reviews also there must be; royal Federate-reviews, with King, Queen and
tricolor Court looking on: at lowest, if, as is too common, it rains, our
Federate Volunteers will file through the inner gateways, Royalty standing
dry. Nay there, should some stop occur, the beautifullest fingers in
France may take you softly by the lapelle, and, in mild flute-voice, ask:
"Monsieur, of what Province are you?" Happy he who can reply, chivalrously
lowering his sword's point, "Madame, from the Province your ancestors
reigned over." He that happy 'Provincial Advocate,' now Provincial
Federate, shall be rewarded by a sun-smile, and such melodious glad words
addressed to a King: "Sire, these are your faithful Lorrainers." Cheerier
verily, in these holidays, is this 'skyblue faced with red' of a National
Guardsman, than the dull black and gray of a Provincial Advocate, which in
workdays one was used to. For the same thrice-blessed Lorrainer shall,
this evening, stand sentry at a Queen's door; and feel that he could die a
thousand deaths for her: then again, at the outer gate, and even a third
time, she shall see him; nay he will make her do it; presenting arms with
emphasis, 'making his musket jingle again': and in her salute there shall
again be a sun-smile, and that little blonde-locked too hasty Dauphin shall
be admonished, "Salute then, Monsieur, don't be unpolite;" and therewith
she, like a bright Sky-wanderer or Planet with her little Moon, issues
forth peculiar. (Narrative by a Lorraine Federate (given in Hist. Parl.
vi. 389-91).)
But at night, when Patriot spadework is over, figure the sacred rights of
hospitality! Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau, a mere private senator, but with
great possessions, has daily his 'hundred dinner-guests;' the table of
Generalissimo Lafayette may double that number. In lowly parlour, as in
lofty saloon, the wine-cup passes round; crowned by the smiles of Beauty;
be it of lightly-tripping Grisette, or of high-sailing Dame, for both
equally have beauty, and smiles precious to the brave.
Chapter 2.1.XII.
Sound and Smoke.
And so now, in spite of plotting Aristocrats, lazy hired spademen, and
almost of Destiny itself (for there has been much rain), the Champ-de-Mars,
on the 13th of the month is fairly ready; trimmed, rammed, buttressed with
firm masonry; and Patriotism can stroll over it admiring; and as it were
rehearsing, for in every head is some unutterable image of the morrow.
Pray Heaven there be not clouds. Nay what far worse cloud is this, of a
misguided Municipality that talks of admitting Patriotism, to the
solemnity, by tickets! Was it by tickets we were admitted to the work; and
to what brought the work? Did we take the Bastille by tickets? A
misguided Municipality sees the error; at late midnight, rolling drums
announce to Patriotism starting half out of its bed-clothes, that it is to
be ticketless. Pull down thy night-cap therefore; and, with demi-
articulate grumble, significant of several things, go pacified to sleep
again. Tomorrow is Wednesday morning; unforgetable among the fasti of the
world.
The morning comes, cold for a July one; but such a festivity would make
Greenland smile. Through every inlet of that National Amphitheatre (for it
is a league in circuit, cut with openings at due intervals), floods-in the
living throng; covers without tumult space after space. The Ecole
Militaire has galleries and overvaulting canopies, where Carpentry and
Painting have vied, for the upper Authorities; triumphal arches, at the
Gate by the River, bear inscriptions, if weak, yet well-meant, and
orthodox. Far aloft, over the Altar of the Fatherland, on their tall crane
standards of iron, swing pensile our antique Cassolettes or pans of
incense; dispensing sweet incense-fumes,--unless for the Heathen Mythology,
one sees not for whom. Two hundred thousand Patriotic Men; and, twice as
good, one hundred thousand Patriotic Women, all decked and glorified as one
can fancy, sit waiting in this Champ-de-Mars.
What a picture: that circle of bright-eyed Life, spread up there, on its
thirty-seated Slope; leaning, one would say, on the thick umbrage of those
Avenue-Trees, for the stems of them are hidden by the height; and all
beyond it mere greenness of Summer Earth, with the gleams of waters, or
white sparklings of stone-edifices: little circular enamel-picture in the
centre of such a vase--of emerald! A vase not empty: the Invalides
Cupolas want not their population, nor the distant Windmills of Montmartre;
on remotest steeple and invisible village belfry, stand men with spy-
glasses. On the heights of Chaillot are many-coloured undulating groups;
round and far on, over all the circling heights that embosom Paris, it is
as one more or less peopled Amphitheatre; which the eye grows dim with
measuring. Nay heights, as was before hinted, have cannon; and a floating-
battery of cannon is on the Seine. When eye fails, ear shall serve; and
all France properly is but one Amphitheatre: for in paved town and unpaved
hamlet, men walk listening; till the muffled thunder sound audible on their
horizon, that they too may begin swearing and firing! (Deux Amis, v. 168.)
But now, to streams of music, come Federates enough,--for they have
assembled on the Boulevard Saint-Antoine or thereby, and come marching
through the City, with their Eighty-three Department Banners, and blessings
not loud but deep; comes National Assembly, and takes seat under its
Canopy; comes Royalty, and takes seat on a throne beside it. And
Lafayette, on white charger, is here, and all the civic Functionaries; and
the Federates form dances, till their strictly military evolutions and
manoeuvres can begin.
Evolutions and manoeuvres? Task not the pen of mortal to describe them:
truant imagination droops;--declares that it is not worth while. There is
wheeling and sweeping, to slow, to quick, and double quick-time: Sieur
Motier, or Generalissimo Lafayette, for they are one and the same, and he
is General of France, in the King's stead, for four-and-twenty hours; Sieur
Motier must step forth, with that sublime chivalrous gait of his; solemnly
ascend the steps of the Fatherland's Altar, in sight of Heaven and of the
scarcely breathing Earth; and, under the creak of those swinging
Cassolettes, 'pressing his sword's point firmly there,' pronounce the Oath,
To King, to Law, and Nation (not to mention 'grains' with their
circulating), in his own name and that of armed France. Whereat there is
waving of banners and acclaim sufficient. The National Assembly must
swear, standing in its place; the King himself audibly. The King swears;
and now be the welkin split with vivats; let citizens enfranchised embrace,
each smiting heartily his palm into his fellow's; and armed Federates clang
their arms; above all, that floating battery speak! It has spoken,--to the
four corners of France. From eminence to eminence, bursts the thunder;
faint-heard, loud-repeated. What a stone, cast into what a lake; in
circles that do not grow fainter. From Arras to Avignon; from Metz to
Bayonne! Over Orleans and Blois it rolls, in cannon-recitative; Puy
bellows of it amid his granite mountains; Pau where is the shell-cradle of
Great Henri. At far Marseilles, one can think, the ruddy evening witnesses
it; over the deep-blue Mediterranean waters, the Castle of If ruddy-tinted
darts forth, from every cannon's mouth, its tongue of fire; and all the
people shout: Yes, France is free. O glorious France that has burst out
so; into universal sound and smoke; and attained--the Phrygian Cap of
Liberty! In all Towns, Trees of Liberty also may be planted; with or
without advantage. Said we not, it is the highest stretch attained by the
Thespian Art on this Planet, or perhaps attainable?
The Thespian Art, unfortunately, one must still call it; for behold there,
on this Field of Mars, the National Banners, before there could be any
swearing, were to be all blessed. A most proper operation; since surely
without Heaven's blessing bestowed, say even, audibly or inaudibly sought,
no Earthly banner or contrivance can prove victorious: but now the means
of doing it? By what thrice-divine Franklin thunder-rod shall miraculous
fire be drawn out of Heaven; and descend gently, life-giving, with health
to the souls of men? Alas, by the simplest: by Two Hundred shaven-crowned
Individuals, 'in snow-white albs, with tricolor girdles,' arranged on the
steps of Fatherland's Altar; and, at their head for spokesman, Soul's
Overseer Talleyrand-Perigord! These shall act as miraculous thunder-rod,--
to such length as they can. O ye deep azure Heavens, and thou green all-
nursing Earth; ye Streams ever-flowing; deciduous Forests that die and are
born again, continually, like the sons of men; stone Mountains that die
daily with every rain-shower, yet are not dead and levelled for ages of
ages, nor born again (it seems) but with new world-explosions, and such
tumultuous seething and tumbling, steam half way to the Moon; O thou
unfathomable mystic All, garment and dwellingplace of the UNNAMED; O
spirit, lastly, of Man, who mouldest and modellest that Unfathomable
Unnameable even as we see,--is not there a miracle: That some French
mortal should, we say not have believed, but pretended to imagine that he
believed that Talleyrand and Two Hundred pieces of white Calico could do
it!
Here, however, we are to remark with the sorrowing Historians of that day,
that suddenly, while Episcopus Talleyrand, long-stoled, with mitre and
tricolor belt, was yet but hitching up the Altar-steps, to do his miracle,
the material Heaven grew black; a north-wind, moaning cold moisture, began
to sing; and there descended a very deluge of rain. Sad to see! The
thirty-staired Seats, all round our Amphitheatre, get instantaneously
slated with mere umbrellas, fallacious when so thick set: our antique
Cassolettes become Water-pots; their incense-smoke gone hissing, in a whiff
of muddy vapour. Alas, instead of vivats, there is nothing now but the
furious peppering and rattling. From three to four hundred thousand human
individuals feel that they have a skin; happily impervious. The General's
sash runs water: how all military banners droop; and will not wave, but
lazily flap, as if metamorphosed into painted tin-banners! Worse, far
worse, these hundred thousand, such is the Historian's testimony, of the
fairest of France! Their snowy muslins all splashed and draggled; the
ostrich feather shrunk shamefully to the backbone of a feather: all caps
are ruined; innermost pasteboard molten into its original pap: Beauty no
longer swims decorated in her garniture, like Love-goddess hidden-revealed
in her Paphian clouds, but struggles in disastrous imprisonment in it, for
'the shape was noticeable;' and now only sympathetic interjections,
titterings, teeheeings, and resolute good-humour will avail. A deluge; an
incessant sheet or fluid-column of rain;--such that our Overseer's very
mitre must be filled; not a mitre, but a filled and leaky fire-bucket on
his reverend head!--Regardless of which, Overseer Talleyrand performs his
miracle: the Blessing of Talleyrand, another than that of Jacob, is on all
the Eighty-three departmental flags of France; which wave or flap, with
such thankfulness as needs. Towards three o'clock, the sun beams out
again: the remaining evolutions can be transacted under bright heavens,
though with decorations much damaged. (Deux Amis, v. 143-179.)
On Wednesday our Federation is consummated: but the festivities last out
the week, and over into the next. Festivities such as no Bagdad Caliph, or
Aladdin with the Lamp, could have equalled. There is a Jousting on the
River; with its water-somersets, splashing and haha-ing: Abbe Fauchet, Te-
Deum Fauchet, preaches, for his part, in 'the rotunda of the Corn-market,'
a Harangue on Franklin; for whom the National Assembly has lately gone
three days in black. The Motier and Lepelletier tables still groan with
viands; roofs ringing with patriotic toasts. On the fifth evening, which
is the Christian Sabbath, there is a universal Ball. Paris, out of doors
and in, man, woman and child, is jigging it, to the sound of harp and four-
stringed fiddle. The hoariest-headed man will tread one other measure,
under this nether Moon; speechless nurselings, infants as we call them,
(Greek), crow in arms; and sprawl out numb-plump little limbs,--impatient
for muscularity, they know not why. The stiffest balk bends more or less;
all joists creak.
Or out, on the Earth's breast itself, behold the Ruins of the Bastille.
All lamplit, allegorically decorated: a Tree of Liberty sixty feet high;
and Phrygian Cap on it, of size enormous, under which King Arthur and his
round-table might have dined! In the depths of the background, is a single
lugubrious lamp, rendering dim-visible one of your iron cages, half-buried,
and some Prison stones,--Tyranny vanishing downwards, all gone but the
skirt: the rest wholly lamp-festoons, trees real or of pasteboard; in the
similitude of a fairy grove; with this inscription, readable to runner:
'Ici l'on danse, Dancing Here.' As indeed had been obscurely foreshadowed
by Cagliostro (See his Lettre au Peuple Francais (London, 1786.) prophetic
Quack of Quacks, when he, four years ago, quitted the grim durance;--to
fall into a grimmer, of the Roman Inquisition, and not quit it.
But, after all, what is this Bastille business to that of the Champs
Elysees! Thither, to these Fields well named Elysian, all feet tend. It
is radiant as day with festooned lamps; little oil-cups, like variegated
fire-flies, daintily illumine the highest leaves: trees there are all
sheeted with variegated fire, shedding far a glimmer into the dubious wood.
There, under the free sky, do tight-limbed Federates, with fairest newfound
sweethearts, elastic as Diana, and not of that coyness and tart humour of
Diana, thread their jocund mazes, all through the ambrosial night; and
hearts were touched and fired; and seldom surely had our old Planet, in
that huge conic Shadow of hers 'which goes beyond the Moon, and is named
Night,' curtained such a Ball-room. O if, according to Seneca, the very
gods look down on a good man struggling with adversity, and smile; what
must they think of Five-and-twenty million indifferent ones victorious over
it,--for eight days and more?
In this way, and in such ways, however, has the Feast of Pikes danced
itself off; gallant Federates wending homewards, towards every point of the
compass, with feverish nerves, heart and head much heated; some of them,
indeed, as Dampmartin's elderly respectable friend, from Strasbourg, quite
'burnt out with liquors,' and flickering towards extinction. (Dampmartin,
Evenemens, i. 144-184.) The Feast of Pikes has danced itself off, and
become defunct, and the ghost of a Feast;--nothing of it now remaining but
this vision in men's memory; and the place that knew it (for the slope of
that Champ-de-Mars is crumbled to half the original height (Dulaure,
Histoire de Paris, viii. 25).) now knowing it no more. Undoubtedly one of
the memorablest National Hightides. Never or hardly ever, as we said, was
Oath sworn with such heart-effusion, emphasis and expenditure of joyance;
and then it was broken irremediably within year and day. Ah, why? When
the swearing of it was so heavenly-joyful, bosom clasped to bosom, and
Five-and-twenty million hearts all burning together: O ye inexorable
Destinies, why?--Partly because it was sworn with such over-joyance; but
chiefly, indeed, for an older reason: that Sin had come into the world and
Misery by Sin! These Five-and-twenty millions, if we will consider it,
have now henceforth, with that Phrygian Cap of theirs, no force over them,
to bind and guide; neither in them, more than heretofore, is guiding force,
or rule of just living: how then, while they all go rushing at such a
pace, on unknown ways, with no bridle, towards no aim, can hurlyburly
unutterable fail? For verily not Federation-rosepink is the colour of this
Earth and her work: not by outbursts of noble-sentiment, but with far
other ammunition, shall a man front the world.
But how wise, in all cases, to 'husband your fire;' to keep it deep down,
rather, as genial radical-heat! Explosions, the forciblest, and never so
well directed, are questionable; far oftenest futile, always frightfully
wasteful: but think of a man, of a Nation of men, spending its whole stock
of fire in one artificial Firework! So have we seen fond weddings (for
individuals, like Nations, have their Hightides) celebrated with an
outburst of triumph and deray, at which the elderly shook their heads.
Better had a serious cheerfulness been; for the enterprise was great. Fond
pair! the more triumphant ye feel, and victorious over terrestrial evil,
which seems all abolished, the wider-eyed will your disappointment be to
find terrestrial evil still extant. "And why extant?" will each of you
cry: "Because my false mate has played the traitor: evil was abolished; I
meant faithfully, and did, or would have done." Whereby the oversweet moon
of honey changes itself into long years of vinegar; perhaps divulsive
vinegar, like Hannibal's.
Shall we say then, the French Nation has led Royalty, or wooed and teased
poor Royalty to lead her, to the hymeneal Fatherland's Altar, in such
oversweet manner; and has, most thoughtlessly, to celebrate the nuptials
with due shine and demonstration,--burnt her bed?
BOOK 2.II.
NANCI
Chapter 2.2.I.
Bouille.
Dimly visible, at Metz on the North-Eastern frontier, a certain brave
Bouille, last refuge of Royalty in all straits and meditations of flight,
has for many months hovered occasionally in our eye; some name or shadow of
a brave Bouille: let us now, for a little, look fixedly at him, till he
become a substance and person for us. The man himself is worth a glance;
his position and procedure there, in these days, will throw light on many
things.
For it is with Bouille as with all French Commanding Officers; only in a
more emphatic degree. The grand National Federation, we already guess, was
but empty sound, or worse: a last loudest universal Hep-hep-hurrah, with
full bumpers, in that National Lapithae-feast of Constitution-making; as in
loud denial of the palpably existing; as if, with hurrahings, you would
shut out notice of the inevitable already knocking at the gates! Which new
National bumper, one may say, can but deepen the drunkenness; and so, the
louder it swears Brotherhood, will the sooner and the more surely lead to
Cannibalism. Ah, under that fraternal shine and clangour, what a deep
world of irreconcileable discords lie momentarily assuaged, damped down for
one moment! Respectable military Federates have barely got home to their
quarters; and the inflammablest, 'dying, burnt up with liquors, and
kindness,' has not yet got extinct; the shine is hardly out of men's eyes,
and still blazes filling all men's memories,--when your discords burst
forth again very considerably darker than ever. Let us look at Bouille,
and see how.
Bouille for the present commands in the Garrison of Metz, and far and wide
over the East and North; being indeed, by a late act of Government with
sanction of National Assembly, appointed one of our Four supreme Generals.
Rochambeau and Mailly, men and Marshals of note in these days, though to us
of small moment, are two of his colleagues; tough old babbling Luckner,
also of small moment for us, will probably be the third. Marquis de
Bouille is a determined Loyalist; not indeed disinclined to moderate
reform, but resolute against immoderate. A man long suspect to Patriotism;
who has more than once given the august Assembly trouble; who would not,
for example, take the National Oath, as he was bound to do, but always put
it off on this or the other pretext, till an autograph of Majesty requested
him to do it as a favour. There, in this post if not of honour, yet of
eminence and danger, he waits, in a silent concentered manner; very dubious
of the future. 'Alone,' as he says, or almost alone, of all the old
military Notabilities, he has not emigrated; but thinks always, in
atrabiliar moments, that there will be nothing for him too but to cross the
marches. He might cross, say, to Treves or Coblentz where Exiled Princes
will be one day ranking; or say, over into Luxemburg where old Broglie
loiters and languishes. Or is there not the great dim Deep of European
Diplomacy; where your Calonnes, your Breteuils are beginning to hover,
dimly discernible?
With immeasurable confused outlooks and purposes, with no clear purpose but
this of still trying to do His Majesty a service, Bouille waits; struggling
what he can to keep his district loyal, his troops faithful, his garrisons
furnished. He maintains, as yet, with his Cousin Lafayette, some thin
diplomatic correspondence, by letter and messenger; chivalrous
constitutional professions on the one side, military gravity and brevity on
the other; which thin correspondence one can see growing ever the thinner
and hollower, towards the verge of entire vacuity. (Bouille, Memoires
(London, 1797), i. c. 8.) A quick, choleric, sharply discerning,
stubbornly endeavouring man; with suppressed-explosive resolution, with
valour, nay headlong audacity: a man who was more in his place, lionlike
defending those Windward Isles, or, as with military tiger-spring,
clutching Nevis and Montserrat from the English,--than here in this
suppressed condition, muzzled and fettered by diplomatic packthreads;
looking out for a civil war, which may never arrive. Few years ago Bouille
was to have led a French East-Indian Expedition, and reconquered or
conquered Pondicherri and the Kingdoms of the Sun: but the whole world is
suddenly changed, and he with it; Destiny willed it not in that way but in
this.
Chapter 2.2.II.
Arrears and Aristocrats.
Indeed, as to the general outlook of things, Bouille himself augurs not
well of it. The French Army, ever since those old Bastille days, and
earlier, has been universally in the questionablest state, and growing
daily worse. Discipline, which is at all times a kind of miracle, and
works by faith, broke down then; one sees not with that near prospect of
recovering itself. The Gardes Francaises played a deadly game; but how
they won it, and wear the prizes of it, all men know. In that general
overturn, we saw the Hired Fighters refuse to fight. The very Swiss of
Chateau-Vieux, which indeed is a kind of French Swiss, from Geneva and the
Pays de Vaud, are understood to have declined. Deserters glided over;
Royal-Allemand itself looked disconsolate, though stanch of purpose. In a
word, we there saw Military Rule, in the shape of poor Besenval with that
convulsive unmanageable Camp of his, pass two martyr days on the Champ-de-
Mars; and then, veiling itself, so to speak, 'under the cloud of night,'
depart 'down the left bank of the Seine,' to seek refuge elsewhere; this
ground having clearly become too hot for it.
But what new ground to seek, what remedy to try? Quarters that were
'uninfected:' this doubtless, with judicious strictness of drilling, were
the plan. Alas, in all quarters and places, from Paris onward to the
remotest hamlet, is infection, is seditious contagion: inhaled, propagated
by contact and converse, till the dullest soldier catch it! There is
speech of men in uniform with men not in uniform; men in uniform read
journals, and even write in them. (See Newspapers of July, 1789 (in Hist.
Parl. ii. 35), &c.;) There are public petitions or remonstrances, private
emissaries and associations; there is discontent, jealousy, uncertainty,
sullen suspicious humour. The whole French Army, fermenting in dark heat,
glooms ominous, boding good to no one.
So that, in the general social dissolution and revolt, we are to have this
deepest and dismallest kind of it, a revolting soldiery? Barren, desolate
to look upon is this same business of revolt under all its aspects; but how
infinitely more so, when it takes the aspect of military mutiny! The very
implement of rule and restraint, whereby all the rest was managed and held
in order, has become precisely the frightfullest immeasurable implement of
misrule; like the element of Fire, our indispensable all-ministering
servant, when it gets the mastery, and becomes conflagration. Discipline
we called a kind of miracle: in fact, is it not miraculous how one man
moves hundreds of thousands; each unit of whom it may be loves him not, and
singly fears him not, yet has to obey him, to go hither or go thither, to
march and halt, to give death, and even to receive it, as if a Fate had
spoken; and the word-of-command becomes, almost in the literal sense, a
magic-word?
Which magic-word, again, if it be once forgotten; the spell of it once
broken! The legions of assiduous ministering spirits rise on you now as
menacing fiends; your free orderly arena becomes a tumult-place of the
Nether Pit, and the hapless magician is rent limb from limb. Military mobs
are mobs with muskets in their hands; and also with death hanging over
their heads, for death is the penalty of disobedience and they have
disobeyed. And now if all mobs are properly frenzies, and work
frenetically with mad fits of hot and of cold, fierce rage alternating so
incoherently with panic terror, consider what your military mob will be,
with such a conflict of duties and penalties, whirled between remorse and
fury, and, for the hot fit, loaded fire-arms in its hand! To the soldier
himself, revolt is frightful, and oftenest perhaps pitiable; and yet so
dangerous, it can only be hated, cannot be pitied. An anomalous class of
mortals these poor Hired Killers! With a frankness, which to the Moralist
in these times seems surprising, they have sworn to become machines; and
nevertheless they are still partly men. Let no prudent person in authority
remind them of this latter fact; but always let force, let injustice above
all, stop short clearly on this side of the rebounding-point! Soldiers, as
we often say, do revolt: were it not so, several things which are
transient in this world might be perennial.
Over and above the general quarrel which all sons of Adam maintain with
their lot here below, the grievances of the French soldiery reduce
themselves to two, First that their Officers are Aristocrats; secondly that
they cheat them of their Pay. Two grievances; or rather we might say one,
capable of becoming a hundred; for in that single first proposition, that
the Officers are Aristocrats, what a multitude of corollaries lie ready!
It is a bottomless ever-flowing fountain of grievances this; what you may
call a general raw-material of grievance, wherefrom individual grievance
after grievance will daily body itself forth. Nay there will even be a
kind of comfort in getting it, from time to time, so embodied. Peculation
of one's Pay! It is embodied; made tangible, made denounceable; exhalable,
if only in angry words.
For unluckily that grand fountain of grievances does exist: Aristocrats
almost all our Officers necessarily are; they have it in the blood and
bone. By the law of the case, no man can pretend to be the pitifullest
lieutenant of militia, till he have first verified, to the satisfaction of
the Lion-King, a Nobility of four generations. Not Nobility only, but four
generations of it: this latter is the improvement hit upon, in
comparatively late years, by a certain War-minister much pressed for
commissions. (Dampmartin, Evenemens, i. 89.) An improvement which did
relieve the over-pressed War-minister, but which split France still further
into yawning contrasts of Commonalty and Nobility, nay of new Nobility and
old; as if already with your new and old, and then with your old, older and
oldest, there were not contrasts and discrepancies enough;--the general
clash whereof men now see and hear, and in the singular whirlpool, all
contrasts gone together to the bottom! Gone to the bottom or going; with
uproar, without return; going every where save in the Military section of
things; and there, it may be asked, can they hope to continue always at the
top? Apparently, not.
It is true, in a time of external Peace, when there is no fighting but only
drilling, this question, How you rise from the ranks, may seem theoretical
rather. But in reference to the Rights of Man it is continually practical.
The soldier has sworn to be faithful not to the King only, but to the Law
and the Nation. Do our commanders love the Revolution? ask all soldiers.
Unhappily no, they hate it, and love the Counter-Revolution. Young
epauletted men, with quality-blood in them, poisoned with quality-pride, do
sniff openly, with indignation struggling to become contempt, at our Rights
of Man, as at some newfangled cobweb, which shall be brushed down again.
Old officers, more cautious, keep silent, with closed uncurled lips; but
one guesses what is passing within. Nay who knows, how, under the
plausiblest word of command, might lie Counter-Revolution itself, sale to
Exiled Princes and the Austrian Kaiser: treacherous Aristocrats
hoodwinking the small insight of us common men?--In such manner works that
general raw-material of grievance; disastrous; instead of trust and
reverence, breeding hate, endless suspicion, the impossibility of
commanding and obeying. And now when this second more tangible grievance
has articulated itself universally in the mind of the common man:
Peculation of his Pay! Peculation of the despicablest sort does exist, and
has long existed; but, unless the new-declared Rights of Man, and all
rights whatsoever, be a cobweb, it shall no longer exist.
The French Military System seems dying a sorrowful suicidal death. Nay
more, citizen, as is natural, ranks himself against citizen in this cause.
The soldier finds audience, of numbers and sympathy unlimited, among the
Patriot lower-classes. Nor are the higher wanting to the officer. The
officer still dresses and perfumes himself for such sad unemigrated soiree
as there may still be; and speaks his woes,--which woes, are they not
Majesty's and Nature's? Speaks, at the same time, his gay defiance, his
firm-set resolution. Citizens, still more Citizenesses, see the right and
the wrong; not the Military System alone will die by suicide, but much
along with it. As was said, there is yet possible a deepest overturn than
any yet witnessed: that deepest upturn of the black-burning sulphurous
stratum whereon all rests and grows!
But how these things may act on the rude soldier-mind, with its military
pedantries, its inexperience of all that lies off the parade-ground;
inexperience as of a child, yet fierceness of a man and vehemence of a
Frenchman! It is long that secret communings in mess-room and guard-room,
sour looks, thousandfold petty vexations between commander and commanded,
measure every where the weary military day. Ask Captain Dampmartin; an
authentic, ingenious literary officer of horse; who loves the Reign of
Liberty, after a sort; yet has had his heart grieved to the quick many
times, in the hot South-Western region and elsewhere; and has seen riot,
civil battle by daylight and by torchlight, and anarchy hatefuller than
death. How insubordinate Troopers, with drink in their heads, meet Captain
Dampmartin and another on the ramparts, where there is no escape or side-
path; and make military salute punctually, for we look calm on them; yet
make it in a snappish, almost insulting manner: how one morning they
'leave all their chamois shirts' and superfluous buffs, which they are
tired of, laid in piles at the Captain's doors; whereat 'we laugh,' as the
ass does, eating thistles: nay how they 'knot two forage-cords together,'
with universal noisy cursing, with evident intent to hang the Quarter-
master:--all this the worthy Captain, looking on it through the ruddy-and-
sable of fond regretful memory, has flowingly written down. (Dampmartin,
Evenemens, i. 122-146.) Men growl in vague discontent; officers fling up
their commissions, and emigrate in disgust.
Or let us ask another literary Officer; not yet Captain; Sublieutenant
only, in the Artillery Regiment La Fere: a young man of twenty-one; not
unentitled to speak; the name of him is Napoleon Buonaparte. To such
height of Sublieutenancy has he now got promoted, from Brienne School, five
years ago; 'being found qualified in mathematics by La Place.' He is lying
at Auxonne, in the West, in these months; not sumptuously lodged--'in the
house of a Barber, to whose wife he did not pay the customary degree of
respect;' or even over at the Pavilion, in a chamber with bare walls; the
only furniture an indifferent 'bed without curtains, two chairs, and in the
recess of a window a table covered with books and papers: his Brother
Louis sleeps on a coarse mattrass in an adjoining room.' However, he is
doing something great: writing his first Book or Pamphlet,--eloquent
vehement Letter to M. Matteo Buttafuoco, our Corsican Deputy, who is not a
Patriot but an Aristocrat, unworthy of Deputyship. Joly of Dole is
Publisher. The literary Sublieutenant corrects the proofs; 'sets out on
foot from Auxonne, every morning at four o'clock, for Dole: after looking
over the proofs, he partakes of an extremely frugal breakfast with Joly,
and immediately prepares for returning to his Garrison; where he arrives
before noon, having thus walked above twenty miles in the course of the
morning.'
This Sublieutenant can remark that, in drawing-rooms, on streets, on
highways, at inns, every where men's minds are ready to kindle into a
flame. That a Patriot, if he appear in the drawing-room, or amid a group
of officers, is liable enough to be discouraged, so great is the majority
against him: but no sooner does he get into the street, or among the
soldiers, than he feels again as if the whole Nation were with him. That
after the famous Oath, To the King, to the Nation and Law, there was a
great change; that before this, if ordered to fire on the people, he for
one would have done it in the King's name; but that after this, in the
Nation's name, he would not have done it. Likewise that the Patriot
officers, more numerous too in the Artillery and Engineers than elsewhere,
were few in number; yet that having the soldiers on their side, they ruled
the regiment; and did often deliver the Aristocrat brother officer out of
peril and strait. One day, for example, 'a member of our own mess roused
the mob, by singing, from the windows of our dining-room, O Richard, O my
King; and I had to snatch him from their fury.' (Norvins, Histoire de
Napoleon, i. 47; Las Cases, Memoires (translated into Hazlitt's Life of
Napoleon, i. 23-31.)
All which let the reader multiply by ten thousand; and spread it with
slight variations over all the camps and garrisons of France. The French
Army seems on the verge of universal mutiny.
Universal mutiny! There is in that what may well make Patriot
Constitutionalism and an august Assembly shudder. Something behoves to be
done; yet what to do no man can tell. Mirabeau proposes even that the
Soldiery, having come to such a pass, be forthwith disbanded, the whole Two
Hundred and Eighty Thousands of them; and organised anew. (Moniteur, 1790.
No. 233.) Impossible this, in so sudden a manner! cry all men. And yet
literally, answer we, it is inevitable, in one manner or another. Such an
Army, with its four-generation Nobles, its Peculated Pay, and men knotting
forage cords to hang their quartermaster, cannot subsist beside such a
Revolution. Your alternative is a slow-pining chronic dissolution and new
organization; or a swift decisive one; the agonies spread over years, or
concentrated into an hour. With a Mirabeau for Minister or Governor the
latter had been the choice; with no Mirabeau for Governor it will naturally
be the former.
Chapter 2.2.III.
Bouille at Metz.
To Bouille, in his North-Eastern circle, none of these things are
altogether hid. Many times flight over the marches gleams out on him as a
last guidance in such bewilderment: nevertheless he continues here:
struggling always to hope the best, not from new organisation but from
happy Counter-Revolution and return to the old. For the rest it is clear
to him that this same National Federation, and universal swearing and
fraternising of People and Soldiers, has done 'incalculable mischief.' So
much that fermented secretly has hereby got vent and become open: National
Guards and Soldiers of the line, solemnly embracing one another on all
parade-fields, drinking, swearing patriotic oaths, fall into disorderly
street-processions, constitutional unmilitary exclamations and hurrahings.
On which account the Regiment Picardie, for one, has to be drawn out in the
square of the barracks, here at Metz, and sharply harangued by the General
himself; but expresses penitence. (Bouille, Memoires, i. 113.)
Far and near, as accounts testify, insubordination has begun grumbling
louder and louder. Officers have been seen shut up in their mess-rooms;
assaulted with clamorous demands, not without menaces. The insubordinate
ringleader is dismissed with 'yellow furlough,' yellow infamous thing they
call cartouche jaune: but ten new ringleaders rise in his stead, and the
yellow cartouche ceases to be thought disgraceful. 'Within a fortnight,'
or at furthest a month, of that sublime Feast of Pikes, the whole French
Army, demanding Arrears, forming Reading Clubs, frequenting Popular
Societies, is in a state which Bouille can call by no name but that of
mutiny. Bouille knows it as few do; and speaks by dire experience. Take
one instance instead of many.
It is still an early day of August, the precise date now undiscoverable,
when Bouille, about to set out for the waters of Aix la Chapelle, is once
more suddenly summoned to the barracks of Metz. The soldiers stand ranked
in fighting order, muskets loaded, the officers all there on compulsion;
and require, with many-voiced emphasis, to have their arrears paid.
Picardie was penitent; but we see it has relapsed: the wide space bristles
and lours with mere mutinous armed men. Brave Bouille advances to the
nearest Regiment, opens his commanding lips to harangue; obtains nothing
but querulous-indignant discordance, and the sound of so many thousand
livres legally due. The moment is trying; there are some ten thousand
soldiers now in Metz, and one spirit seems to have spread among them.
Bouille is firm as the adamant; but what shall he do? A German Regiment,
named of Salm, is thought to be of better temper: nevertheless Salm too
may have heard of the precept, Thou shalt not steal; Salm too may know that
money is money. Bouille walks trustfully towards the Regiment de Salm,
speaks trustful words; but here again is answered by the cry of forty-four
thousand livres odd sous. A cry waxing more and more vociferous, as Salm's
humour mounts; which cry, as it will produce no cash or promise of cash,
ends in the wide simultaneous whirr of shouldered muskets, and a determined
quick-time march on the part of Salm--towards its Colonel's house, in the
next street, there to seize the colours and military chest. Thus does
Salm, for its part; strong in the faith that meum is not tuum, that fair
speeches are not forty-four thousand livres odd sous.
Unrestrainable! Salm tramps to military time, quick consuming the way.
Bouille and the officers, drawing sword, have to dash into double quick
pas-de-charge, or unmilitary running; to get the start; to station
themselves on the outer staircase, and stand there with what of death-
defiance and sharp steel they have; Salm truculently coiling itself up,
rank after rank, opposite them, in such humour as we can fancy, which
happily has not yet mounted to the murder-pitch. There will Bouille stand,
certain at least of one man's purpose; in grim calmness, awaiting the
issue. What the intrepidest of men and generals can do is done. Bouille,
though there is a barricading picket at each end of the street, and death
under his eyes, contrives to send for a Dragoon Regiment with orders to
charge: the dragoon officers mount; the dragoon men will not: hope is
none there for him. The street, as we say, barricaded; the Earth all shut
out, only the indifferent heavenly Vault overhead: perhaps here or there a
timorous householder peering out of window, with prayer for Bouille;
copious Rascality, on the pavement, with prayer for Salm: there do the two
parties stand;--like chariots locked in a narrow thoroughfare; like locked
wrestlers at a dead-grip! For two hours they stand; Bouille's sword
glittering in his hand, adamantine resolution clouding his brows: for two
hours by the clocks of Metz. Moody-silent stands Salm, with occasional
clangour; but does not fire. Rascality from time to time urges some
grenadier to level his musket at the General; who looks on it as a bronze
General would; and always some corporal or other strikes it up.
In such remarkable attitude, standing on that staircase for two hours, does
brave Bouille, long a shadow, dawn on us visibly out of the dimness, and
become a person. For the rest, since Salm has not shot him at the first
instant, and since in himself there is no variableness, the danger will
diminish. The Mayor, 'a man infinitely respectable,' with his Municipals
and tricolor sashes, finally gains entrance; remonstrates, perorates,
promises; gets Salm persuaded home to its barracks. Next day, our
respectable Mayor lending the money, the officers pay down the half of the
demand in ready cash. With which liquidation Salm pacifies itself, and for
the present all is hushed up, as much as may be. (Bouille, i. 140-5.)
Such scenes as this of Metz, or preparations and demonstrations towards
such, are universal over France: Dampmartin, with his knotted forage-cords
and piled chamois jackets, is at Strasburg in the South-East; in these same
days or rather nights, Royal Champagne is 'shouting Vive la Nation, au
diable les Aristocrates, with some thirty lit candles,' at Hesdin, on the
far North-West. "The garrison of Bitche," Deputy Rewbell is sorry to
state, "went out of the town, with drums beating; deposed its officers; and
then returned into the town, sabre in hand." (Moniteur (in Hist. Parl.
vii. 29).) Ought not a National Assembly to occupy itself with these
objects? Military France is everywhere full of sour inflammatory humour,
which exhales itself fuliginously, this way or that: a whole continent of
smoking flax; which, blown on here or there by any angry wind, might so
easily start into a blaze, into a continent of fire!
Constitutional Patriotism is in deep natural alarm at these things. The
august Assembly sits diligently deliberating; dare nowise resolve, with
Mirabeau, on an instantaneous disbandment and extinction; finds that a
course of palliatives is easier. But at least and lowest, this grievance
of the Arrears shall be rectified. A plan, much noised of in those days,
under the name 'Decree of the Sixth of August,' has been devised for that.
Inspectors shall visit all armies; and, with certain elected corporals and
'soldiers able to write,' verify what arrears and peculations do lie due,
and make them good. Well, if in this way the smoky heat be cooled down; if
it be not, as we say, ventilated over-much, or, by sparks and collision
somewhere, sent up!
Chapter 2.2.IV.
Arrears at Nanci.
We are to remark, however, that of all districts, this of Bouille's seems
the inflammablest. It was always to Bouille and Metz that Royalty would
fly: Austria lies near; here more than elsewhere must the disunited People
look over the borders, into a dim sea of Foreign Politics and Diplomacies,
with hope or apprehension, with mutual exasperation.
It was but in these days that certain Austrian troops, marching peaceably
across an angle of this region, seemed an Invasion realised; and there
rushed towards Stenai, with musket on shoulder, from all the winds, some
thirty thousand National Guards, to inquire what the matter was.
(Moniteur, Seance du 9 Aout 1790.) A matter of mere diplomacy it proved;
the Austrian Kaiser, in haste to get to Belgium, had bargained for this
short cut. The infinite dim movement of European Politics waved a skirt
over these spaces, passing on its way; like the passing shadow of a condor;
and such a winged flight of thirty thousand, with mixed cackling and
crowing, rose in consequence! For, in addition to all, this people, as we
said, is much divided: Aristocrats abound; Patriotism has both Aristocrats
and Austrians to watch. It is Lorraine, this region; not so illuminated as
old France: it remembers ancient Feudalisms; nay, within man's memory, it
had a Court and King of its own, or indeed the splendour of a Court and
King, without the burden. Then, contrariwise, the Mother Society, which
sits in the Jacobins Church at Paris, has Daughters in the Towns here;
shrill-tongued, driven acrid: consider how the memory of good King
Stanislaus, and ages of Imperial Feudalism, may comport with this New acrid
Evangel, and what a virulence of discord there may be! In all which, the
Soldiery, officers on one side, private men on the other, takes part, and
now indeed principal part; a Soldiery, moreover, all the hotter here as it
lies the denser, the frontier Province requiring more of it.
So stands Lorraine: but the capital City, more especially so. The
pleasant City of Nanci, which faded Feudalism loves, where King Stanislaus
personally dwelt and shone, has an Aristocrat Municipality, and then also a
Daughter Society: it has some forty thousand divided souls of population;
and three large Regiments, one of which is Swiss Chateau-Vieux, dear to
Patriotism ever since it refused fighting, or was thought to refuse, in the
Bastille days. Here unhappily all evil influences seem to meet
concentered; here, of all places, may jealousy and heat evolve itself.
These many months, accordingly, man has been set against man, Washed
against Unwashed; Patriot Soldier against Aristocrat Captain, ever the more
bitterly; and a long score of grudges has been running up.
Nameable grudges, and likewise unnameable: for there is a punctual nature
in Wrath; and daily, were there but glances of the eye, tones of the voice,
and minutest commissions or omissions, it will jot down somewhat, to
account, under the head of sundries, which always swells the sum-total.
For example, in April last, in those times of preliminary Federation, when
National Guards and Soldiers were every where swearing brotherhood, and all
France was locally federating, preparing for the grand National Feast of
Pikes, it was observed that these Nanci Officers threw cold water on the
whole brotherly business; that they first hung back from appearing at the
Nanci Federation; then did appear, but in mere redingote and undress, with
scarcely a clean shirt on; nay that one of them, as the National Colours
flaunted by in that solemn moment, did, without visible necessity, take
occasion to spit. (Deux Amis, v. 217.)
Small 'sundries as per journal,' but then incessant ones! The Aristocrat
Municipality, pretending to be Constitutional, keeps mostly quiet; not so
the Daughter Society, the five thousand adult male Patriots of the place,
still less the five thousand female: not so the young, whiskered or
whiskerless, four-generation Noblesse in epaulettes; the grim Patriot Swiss
of Chateau-Vieux, effervescent infantry of Regiment du Roi, hot troopers of
Mestre-de-Camp! Walled Nanci, which stands so bright and trim, with its
straight streets, spacious squares, and Stanislaus' Architecture, on the
fruitful alluvium of the Meurthe; so bright, amid the yellow cornfields in
these Reaper-Months,--is inwardly but a den of discord, anxiety,
inflammability, not far from exploding. Let Bouille look to it. If that
universal military heat, which we liken to a vast continent of smoking
flax, do any where take fire, his beard, here in Lorraine and Nanci, may
the most readily of all get singed by it.
Bouille, for his part, is busy enough, but only with the general
superintendence; getting his pacified Salm, and all other still tolerable
Regiments, marched out of Metz, to southward towns and villages; to rural
Cantonments as at Vic, Marsal and thereabout, by the still waters; where is
plenty of horse-forage, sequestered parade-ground, and the soldier's
speculative faculty can be stilled by drilling. Salm, as we said, received
only half payment of arrears; naturally not without grumbling.
Nevertheless that scene of the drawn sword may, after all, have raised
Bouille in the mind of Salm; for men and soldiers love intrepidity and
swift inflexible decision, even when they suffer by it. As indeed is not
this fundamentally the quality of qualities for a man? A quality which by
itself is next to nothing, since inferior animals, asses, dogs, even mules
have it; yet, in due combination, it is the indispensable basis of all.
Of Nanci and its heats, Bouille, commander of the whole, knows nothing
special; understands generally that the troops in that City are perhaps the
worst. (Bouille, i. c. 9.) The Officers there have it all, as they have
long had it, to themselves; and unhappily seem to manage it ill. 'Fifty
yellow furloughs,' given out in one batch, do surely betoken difficulties.
But what was Patriotism to think of certain light-fencing Fusileers 'set
on,' or supposed to be set on, 'to insult the Grenadier-club,' considerate
speculative Grenadiers, and that reading-room of theirs? With shoutings,
with hootings; till the speculative Grenadier drew his side-arms too; and
there ensued battery and duels! Nay more, are not swashbucklers of the
same stamp 'sent out' visibly, or sent out presumably, now in the dress of
Soldiers to pick quarrels with the Citizens; now, disguised as Citizens, to
pick quarrels with the Soldiers? For a certain Roussiere, expert in fence,
was taken in the very fact; four Officers (presumably of tender years)
hounding him on, who thereupon fled precipitately! Fence-master Roussiere,
haled to the guardhouse, had sentence of three months' imprisonment: but
his comrades demanded 'yellow furlough' for him of all persons; nay,
thereafter they produced him on parade; capped him in paper-helmet
inscribed, Iscariot; marched him to the gate of City; and there sternly
commanded him to vanish for evermore.
On all which suspicions, accusations and noisy procedure, and on enough of
the like continually accumulating, the Officer could not but look with
disdainful indignation; perhaps disdainfully express the same in words, and
'soon after fly over to the Austrians.'
So that when it here as elsewhere comes to the question of Arrears, the
humour and procedure is of the bitterest: Regiment Mestre-de-Camp getting,
amid loud clamour, some three gold louis a-man,--which have, as usual, to
be borrowed from the Municipality; Swiss Chateau-Vieux applying for the
like, but getting instead instantaneous courrois, or cat-o'-nine-tails,
with subsequent unsufferable hisses from the women and children; Regiment
du Roi, sick of hope deferred, at length seizing its military chest, and
marching it to quarters, but next day marching it back again, through
streets all struck silent:--unordered paradings and clamours, not without
strong liquor; objurgation, insubordination; your military ranked
Arrangement going all (as the Typographers say of set types, in a similar
case) rapidly to pie! (Deux Amis, v. c. 8.) Such is Nanci in these early
days of August; the sublime Feast of Pikes not yet a month old.
Constitutional Patriotism, at Paris and elsewhere, may well quake at the
news. War-Minister Latour du Pin runs breathless to the National Assembly,
with a written message that 'all is burning, tout brule, tout presse.' The
National Assembly, on spur of the instant, renders such Decret, and 'order
to submit and repent,' as he requires; if it will avail any thing. On the
other hand, Journalism, through all its throats, gives hoarse outcry,
condemnatory, elegiac-applausive. The Forty-eight Sections, lift up
voices; sonorous Brewer, or call him now Colonel Santerre, is not silent,
in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. For, meanwhile, the Nanci Soldiers have
sent a Deputation of Ten, furnished with documents and proofs; who will
tell another story than the 'all-is-burning' one. Which deputed Ten,
before ever they reach the Assembly Hall, assiduous Latour du Pin picks up,
and on warrant of Mayor Bailly, claps in prison! Most unconstitutionally;
for they had officers' furloughs. Whereupon Saint-Antoine, in indignant
uncertainty of the future, closes its shops. Is Bouille a traitor then,
sold to Austria? In that case, these poor private sentinels have revolted
mainly out of Patriotism?
New Deputation, Deputation of National Guardsmen now, sets forth from Nanci
to enlighten the Assembly. It meets the old deputed Ten returning, quite
unexpectedly unhanged; and proceeds thereupon with better prospects; but
effects nothing. Deputations, Government Messengers, Orderlies at hand-
gallops, Alarms, thousand-voiced Rumours, go vibrating continually;
backwards and forwards,--scattering distraction. Not till the last week of
August does M. de Malseigne, selected as Inspector, get down to the scene
of mutiny; with Authority, with cash, and 'Decree of the Sixth of August.'
He now shall see these Arrears liquidated, justice done, or at least tumult
quashed.
Chapter 2.2.V.
Inspector Malseigne.
Of Inspector Malseigne we discern, by direct light, that he is 'of
Herculean stature;' and infer, with probability, that he is of truculent
moustachioed aspect,--for Royalist Officers now leave the upper lip
unshaven; that he is of indomitable bull-heart; and also, unfortunately, of
thick bull-head.
On Tuesday the 24th of August, 1790, he opens session as Inspecting
Commissioner; meets those 'elected corporals, and soldiers that can write.'
He finds the accounts of Chateau-Vieux to be complex; to require delay and
reference: he takes to haranguing, to reprimanding; ends amid audible
grumbling. Next morning, he resumes session, not at the Townhall as
prudent Municipals counselled, but once more at the barracks.
Unfortunately Chateau-Vieux, grumbling all night, will now hear of no delay
or reference; from reprimanding on his part, it goes to bullying,--answered
with continual cries of "Jugez tout de suite, Judge it at once;" whereupon
M. de Malseigne will off in a huff. But lo, Chateau Vieux, swarming all
about the barrack-court, has sentries at every gate; M. de Malseigne,
demanding egress, cannot get it, though Commandant Denoue backs him; can
get only "Jugez tout de suite." Here is a nodus!
Bull-hearted M. de Malseigne draws his sword; and will force egress.
Confused splutter. M. de Malseigne's sword breaks; he snatches Commandant
Denoue's: the sentry is wounded. M. de Malseigne, whom one is loath to
kill, does force egress,--followed by Chateau-Vieux all in disarray; a
spectacle to Nanci. M. de Malseigne walks at a sharp pace, yet never runs;
wheeling from time to time, with menaces and movements of fence; and so
reaches Denoue's house, unhurt; which house Chateau-Vieux, in an agitated
manner, invests,--hindered as yet from entering, by a crowd of officers
formed on the staircase. M. de Malseigne retreats by back ways to the
Townhall, flustered though undaunted; amid an escort of National Guards.
From the Townhall he, on the morrow, emits fresh orders, fresh plans of
settlement with Chateau-Vieux; to none of which will Chateau-Vieux listen:
whereupon finally he, amid noise enough, emits order that Chateau-Vieux
shall march on the morrow morning, and quarter at Sarre Louis. Chateau-
Vieux flatly refuses marching; M. de Malseigne 'takes act,' due notarial
protest, of such refusal,--if happily that may avail him.
This is end of Thursday; and, indeed, of M. de Malseigne's Inspectorship,
which has lasted some fifty hours. To such length, in fifty hours, has he
unfortunately brought it. Mestre-de-Camp and Regiment du Roi hang, as it
were, fluttering: Chateau-Vieux is clean gone, in what way we see. Over
night, an Aide-de-Camp of Lafayette's, stationed here for such emergency,
sends swift emissaries far and wide, to summon National Guards. The
slumber of the country is broken by clattering hoofs, by loud fraternal
knockings; every where the Constitutional Patriot must clutch his fighting-
gear, and take the road for Nanci.
And thus the Herculean Inspector has sat all Thursday, among terror-struck
Municipals, a centre of confused noise: all Thursday, Friday, and till
Saturday towards noon. Chateau-Vieux, in spite of the notarial protest,
will not march a step. As many as four thousand National Guards are
dropping or pouring in; uncertain what is expected of them, still more
uncertain what will be obtained of them. For all is uncertainty,
commotion, and suspicion: there goes a word that Bouille, beginning to
bestir himself in the rural Cantonments eastward, is but a Royalist
traitor; that Chateau-Vieux and Patriotism are sold to Austria, of which
latter M. de Malseigne is probably some agent. Mestre-de-Camp and Roi
flutter still more questionably: Chateau-Vieux, far from marching, 'waves
red flags out of two carriages,' in a passionate manner, along the streets;
and next morning answers its Officers: "Pay us, then; and we will march
with you to the world's end!"
Under which circumstances, towards noon on Saturday, M. de Malseigne thinks
it were good perhaps to inspect the ramparts,--on horseback. He mounts,
accordingly, with escort of three troopers. At the gate of the city, he
bids two of them wait for his return; and with the third, a trooper to be
depended upon, he--gallops off for Luneville; where lies a certain
Carabineer Regiment not yet in a mutinous state! The two left troopers
soon get uneasy; discover how it is, and give the alarm. Mestre-de-Camp,
to the number of a hundred, saddles in frantic haste, as if sold to
Austria; gallops out pellmell in chase of its Inspector. And so they spur,
and the Inspector spurs; careering, with noise and jingle, up the valley of
the River Meurthe, towards Luneville and the midday sun: through an
astonished country; indeed almost their own astonishment.
What a hunt, Actaeon-like;--which Actaeon de Malseigne happily gains! To
arms, ye Carabineers of Luneville: to chastise mutinous men, insulting
your General Officer, insulting your own quarters;--above all things, fire
soon, lest there be parleying and ye refuse to fire! The Carabineers fire
soon, exploding upon the first stragglers of Mestre-de-Camp; who shrink at
the very flash, and fall back hastily on Nanci, in a state not far from
distraction. Panic and fury: sold to Austria without an if; so much per
regiment, the very sums can be specified; and traitorous Malseigne is fled!
Help, O Heaven; help, thou Earth,--ye unwashed Patriots; ye too are sold
like us!
Effervescent Regiment du Roi primes its firelocks, Mestre-de-Camp saddles
wholly: Commandant Denoue is seized, is flung in prison with a 'canvass
shirt' (sarreau de toile) about him; Chateau-Vieux bursts up the magazines;
distributes 'three thousand fusils' to a Patriot people: Austria shall
have a hot bargain. Alas, the unhappy hunting-dogs, as we said, have
hunted away their huntsman; and do now run howling and baying, on what
trail they know not; nigh rabid!
And so there is tumultuous march of men, through the night; with halt on
the heights of Flinval, whence Luneville can be seen all illuminated. Then
there is parley, at four in the morning; and reparley; finally there is
agreement: the Carabineers give in; Malseigne is surrendered, with
apologies on all sides. After weary confused hours, he is even got under
way; the Lunevillers all turning out, in the idle Sunday, to see such
departure: home-going of mutinous Mestre-de-Camp with its Inspector
captive. Mestre-de-Camp accordingly marches; the Lunevillers look. See!
at the corner of the first street, our Inspector bounds off again, bull-
hearted as he is; amid the slash of sabres, the crackle of musketry; and
escapes, full gallop, with only a ball lodged in his buff-jerkin. The
Herculean man! And yet it is an escape to no purpose. For the
Carabineers, to whom after the hardest Sunday's ride on record, he has come
circling back, 'stand deliberating by their nocturnal watch-fires;'
deliberating of Austria, of traitors, and the rage of Mestre-de-Camp. So
that, on the whole, the next sight we have is that of M. de Malseigne, on
the Monday afternoon, faring bull-hearted through the streets of Nanci; in
open carriage, a soldier standing over him with drawn sword; amid the
'furies of the women,' hedges of National Guards, and confusion of Babel:
to the Prison beside Commandant Denoue! That finally is the lodging of
Inspector Malseigne. (Deux Amis, v. 206-251; Newspapers and Documents (in
Hist. Parl. vii. 59-162.)
Surely it is time Bouille were drawing near. The Country all round,
alarmed with watchfires, illuminated towns, and marching and rout, has been
sleepless these several nights. Nanci, with its uncertain National Guards,
with its distributed fusils, mutinous soldiers, black panic and redhot ire,
is not a City but a Bedlam.
Chapter 2.2.VI.
Bouille at Nanci.
Haste with help, thou brave Bouille: if swift help come not, all is now
verily 'burning;' and may burn,--to what lengths and breadths! Much, in
these hours, depends on Bouille; as it shall now fare with him, the whole
Future may be this way or be that. If, for example, he were to loiter
dubitating, and not come: if he were to come, and fail: the whole
Soldiery of France to blaze into mutiny, National Guards going some this
way, some that; and Royalism to draw its rapier, and Sansculottism to
snatch its pike; and the Spirit if Jacobinism, as yet young, girt with sun-
rays, to grow instantaneously mature, girt with hell-fire,--as mortals, in
one night of deadly crisis, have had their heads turned gray!
Brave Bouille is advancing fast, with the old inflexibility; gathering
himself, unhappily 'in small affluences,' from East, from West and North;
and now on Tuesday morning, the last day of the month, he stands all
concentred, unhappily still in small force, at the village of Frouarde,
within some few miles. Son of Adam with a more dubious task before him is
not in the world this Tuesday morning. A weltering inflammable sea of
doubt and peril, and Bouille sure of simply one thing, his own
determination. Which one thing, indeed, may be worth many. He puts a most
firm face on the matter: 'Submission, or unsparing battle and destruction;
twenty-four hours to make your choice:' this was the tenor of his
Proclamation; thirty copies of which he sent yesterday to Nanci:--all
which, we find, were intercepted and not posted. (Compare Bouille,
Memoires, i. 153-176; Deux Amis, v. 251-271; Hist. Parl. ubi supra.)
Nevertheless, at half-past eleven, this morning, seemingly by way of
answer, there does wait on him at Frouarde, some Deputation from the
mutinous Regiments, from the Nanci Municipals, to see what can be done.
Bouille receives this Deputation, 'in a large open court adjoining his
lodging:' pacified Salm, and the rest, attend also, being invited to do
it,--all happily still in the right humour. The Mutineers pronounce
themselves with a decisiveness, which to Bouille seems insolence; and
happily to Salm also. Salm, forgetful of the Metz staircase and sabre,
demands that the scoundrels 'be hanged' there and then. Bouille represses
the hanging; but answers that mutinous Soldiers have one course, and not
more than one: To liberate, with heartfelt contrition, Messieurs Denoue
and de Malseigne; to get ready forthwith for marching off, whither he shall
order; and 'submit and repent,' as the National Assembly has decreed, as he
yesterday did in thirty printed Placards proclaim. These are his terms,
unalterable as the decrees of Destiny. Which terms as they, the Mutineer
deputies, seemingly do not accept, it were good for them to vanish from
this spot, and even promptly; with him too, in few instants, the word will
be, Forward! The Mutineer deputies vanish, not unpromptly; the Municipal
ones, anxious beyond right for their own individualities, prefer abiding
with Bouille.
Brave Bouille, though he puts a most firm face on the matter, knows his
position full well: how at Nanci, what with rebellious soldiers, with
uncertain National Guards, and so many distributed fusils, there rage and
roar some ten thousand fighting men; while with himself is scarcely the
third part of that number, in National Guards also uncertain, in mere
pacified Regiments,--for the present full of rage, and clamour to march;
but whose rage and clamour may next moment take such a fatal new figure.
On the top of one uncertain billow, therewith to calm billows! Bouille
must 'abandon himself to Fortune;' who is said sometimes to favour the
brave. At half-past twelve, the Mutineer deputies having vanished, our
drums beat; we march: for Nanci! Let Nanci bethink itself, then; for
Bouille has thought and determined.
And yet how shall Nanci think: not a City but a Bedlam! Grim Chateau-
Vieux is for defence to the death; forces the Municipality to order, by tap
of drum, all citizens acquainted with artillery to turn out, and assist in
managing the cannon. On the other hand, effervescent Regiment du Roi, is
drawn up in its barracks; quite disconsolate, hearing the humour Salm is
in; and ejaculates dolefully from its thousand throats: "La loi, la loi,
Law, law!" Mestre-de-Camp blusters, with profane swearing, in mixed terror
and furor; National Guards look this way and that, not knowing what to do.
What a Bedlam-City: as many plans as heads; all ordering, none obeying:
quiet none,--except the Dead, who sleep underground, having done their
fighting!
And, behold, Bouille proves as good as his word: 'at half-past two' scouts
report that he is within half a league of the gates; rattling along, with
cannon, and array; breathing nothing but destruction. A new Deputation,
Municipals, Mutineers, Officers, goes out to meet him; with passionate
entreaty for yet one other hour. Bouille grants an hour. Then, at the end
thereof, no Denoue or Malseigne appearing as promised, he rolls his drums,
and again takes the road. Towards four o'clock, the terror-struck Townsmen
may see him face to face. His cannons rattle there, in their carriages;
his vanguard is within thirty paces of the Gate Stanislaus. Onward like a
Planet, by appointed times, by law of Nature! What next? Lo, flag of
truce and chamade; conjuration to halt: Malseigne and Denoue are on the
street, coming hither; the soldiers all repentant, ready to submit and
march! Adamantine Bouille's look alters not; yet the word Halt is given:
gladder moment he never saw. Joy of joys! Malseigne and Denoue do verily
issue; escorted by National Guards; from streets all frantic, with sale to
Austria and so forth: they salute Bouille, unscathed. Bouille steps aside
to speak with them, and with other heads of the Town there; having already
ordered by what Gates and Routes the mutineer Regiments shall file out.
Such colloquy with these two General Officers and other principal Townsmen,
was natural enough; nevertheless one wishes Bouille had postponed it, and
not stepped aside. Such tumultuous inflammable masses, tumbling along,
making way for each other; this of keen nitrous oxide, that of sulphurous
fire-damp,--were it not well to stand between them, keeping them well
separate, till the space be cleared? Numerous stragglers of Chateau-Vieux
and the rest have not marched with their main columns, which are filing out
by the appointed Gates, taking station in the open meadows. National
Guards are in a state of nearly distracted uncertainty; the populace, armed
and unharmed, roll openly delirious,--betrayed, sold to the Austrians, sold
to the Aristocrats. There are loaded cannon with lit matches among them,
and Bouille's vanguard is halted within thirty paces of the Gate. Command
dwells not in that mad inflammable mass; which smoulders and tumbles there,
in blind smoky rage; which will not open the Gate when summoned; says it
will open the cannon's throat sooner!--Cannonade not, O Friends, or be it
through my body! cries heroic young Desilles, young Captain of Roi,
clasping the murderous engine in his arms, and holding it. Chateau-Vieux
Swiss, by main force, with oaths and menaces, wrench off the heroic youth;
who undaunted, amid still louder oaths seats himself on the touch-hole.
Amid still louder oaths; with ever louder clangour,--and, alas, with the
loud crackle of first one, and then three other muskets; which explode into
his body; which roll it in the dust,--and do also, in the loud madness of
such moment, bring lit cannon-match to ready priming; and so, with one
thunderous belch of grapeshot, blast some fifty of Bouille's vanguard into
air!
Fatal! That sputter of the first musket-shot has kindled such a cannon-
shot, such a death-blaze; and all is now redhot madness, conflagration as
of Tophet. With demoniac rage, the Bouille vanguard storms through that
Gate Stanislaus; with fiery sweep, sweeps Mutiny clear away, to death, or
into shelters and cellars; from which latter, again, Mutiny continues
firing. The ranked Regiments hear it in their meadow; they rush back again
through the nearest Gates; Bouille gallops in, distracted, inaudible;--and
now has begun, in Nanci, as in that doomed Hall of the Nibelungen, 'a
murder grim and great.'
Miserable: such scene of dismal aimless madness as the anger of Heaven but
rarely permits among men! From cellar or from garret, from open street in
front, from successive corners of cross-streets on each hand, Chateau-Vieux
and Patriotism keep up the murderous rolling-fire, on murderous not
Unpatriotic fires. Your blue National Captain, riddled with balls, one
hardly knows on whose side fighting, requests to be laid on the colours to
die: the patriotic Woman (name not given, deed surviving) screams to
Chateau-Vieux that it must not fire the other cannon; and even flings a
pail of water on it, since screaming avails not. (Deux Amis, v. 268.)
Thou shalt fight; thou shalt not fight; and with whom shalt thou fight!
Could tumult awaken the old Dead, Burgundian Charles the Bold might stir
from under that Rotunda of his: never since he, raging, sank in the
ditches, and lost Life and Diamond, was such a noise heard here.
Three thousand, as some count, lie mangled, gory; the half of Chateau-Vieux
has been shot, without need of Court Martial. Cavalry, of Mestre-de-Camp
or their foes, can do little. Regiment du Roi was persuaded to its
barracks; stands there palpitating. Bouille, armed with the terrors of the
Law, and favoured of Fortune, finally triumphs. In two murderous hours he
has penetrated to the grand Squares, dauntless, though with loss of forty
officers and five hundred men: the shattered remnants of Chateau-Vieux are
seeking covert. Regiment du Roi, not effervescent now, alas no, but having
effervesced, will offer to ground its arms; will 'march in a quarter of an
hour.' Nay these poor effervesced require 'escort' to march with, and get
it; though they are thousands strong, and have thirty ball-cartridges a
man! The Sun is not yet down, when Peace, which might have come bloodless,
has come bloody: the mutinous Regiments are on march, doleful, on their
three Routes; and from Nanci rises wail of women and men, the voice of
weeping and desolation; the City weeping for its slain who awaken not.
These streets are empty but for victorious patrols.
Thus has Fortune, favouring the brave, dragged Bouille, as himself says,
out of such a frightful peril, 'by the hair of the head.' An intrepid
adamantine man this Bouille:--had he stood in old Broglie's place, in those
Bastille days, it might have been all different! He has extinguished
mutiny, and immeasurable civil war. Not for nothing, as we see; yet at a
rate which he and Constitutional Patriotism considers cheap. Nay, as for
Bouille, he, urged by subsequent contradiction which arose, declares
coldly, it was rather against his own private mind, and more by public
military rule of duty, that he did extinguish it, (Bouille, i. 175.)--
immeasurable civil war being now the only chance. Urged, we say, by
subsequent contradiction! Civil war, indeed, is Chaos; and in all vital
Chaos, there is new Order shaping itself free: but what a faith this, that
of all new Orders out of Chaos and Possibility of Man and his Universe,
Louis Sixteenth and Two-Chamber Monarchy were precisely the one that would
shape itself! It is like undertaking to throw deuce-ace, say only five
hundred successive times, and any other throw to be fatal--for Bouille.
Rather thank Fortune, and Heaven, always, thou intrepid Bouille; and let
contradiction of its way! Civil war, conflagrating universally over France
at this moment, might have led to one thing or to another thing:
meanwhile, to quench conflagration, wheresoever one finds it, wheresoever
one can; this, in all times, is the rule for man and General Officer.
But at Paris, so agitated and divided, fancy how it went, when the
continually vibrating Orderlies vibrated thither at hand gallop, with such
questionable news! High is the gratulation; and also deep the indignation.
An august Assembly, by overwhelming majorities, passionately thanks
Bouille; a King's autograph, the voices of all Loyal, all Constitutional
men run to the same tenor. A solemn National funeral-service, for the Law-
defenders slain at Nanci; is said and sung in the Champ de Mars; Bailly,
Lafayette and National Guards, all except the few that protested, assist.
With pomp and circumstance, with episcopal Calicoes in tricolor girdles,
Altar of Fatherland smoking with cassolettes, or incense-kettles; the vast
Champ-de-Mars wholly hung round with black mortcloth,--which mortcloth and
expenditure Marat thinks had better have been laid out in bread, in these
dear days, and given to the hungry living Patriot. (Ami du Peuple (in
Hist. Parl., ubi supra.) On the other hand, living Patriotism, and Saint-
Antoine, which we have seen noisily closing its shops and such like,
assembles now 'to the number of forty thousand;' and, with loud cries,
under the very windows of the thanking National Assembly, demands revenge
for murdered Brothers, judgment on Bouille, and instant dismissal of War-
Minister Latour du Pin.
At sound and sight of which things, if not War-Minister Latour, yet 'Adored
Minister' Necker, sees good on the 3d of September 1790, to withdraw softly
almost privily,--with an eye to the 'recovery of his health.' Home to
native Switzerland; not as he last came; lucky to reach it alive! Fifteen
months ago, we saw him coming, with escort of horse, with sound of clarion
and trumpet: and now at Arcis-sur-Aube, while he departs unescorted
soundless, the Populace and Municipals stop him as a fugitive, are not
unlike massacring him as a traitor; the National Assembly, consulted on the
matter, gives him free egress as a nullity. Such an unstable 'drift-mould
of Accident' is the substance of this lower world, for them that dwell in
houses of clay; so, especially in hot regions and times, do the proudest
palaces we build of it take wings, and become Sahara sand-palaces, spinning
many pillared in the whirlwind, and bury us under their sand!--
In spite of the forty thousand, the National Assembly persists in its
thanks; and Royalist Latour du Pin continues Minister. The forty thousand
assemble next day, as loud as ever; roll towards Latour's Hotel; find
cannon on the porch-steps with flambeau lit; and have to retire
elsewhither, and digest their spleen, or re-absorb it into the blood.
Over in Lorraine, meanwhile, they of the distributed fusils, ringleaders of
Mestre-de-Camp, of Roi, have got marked out for judgment;--yet shall never
get judged. Briefer is the doom of Chateau-Vieux. Chateau-Vieux is, by
Swiss law, given up for instant trial in Court-Martial of its own officers.
Which Court-Martial, with all brevity (in not many hours), has hanged some
Twenty-three, on conspicuous gibbets; marched some Three-score in chains to
the Galleys; and so, to appearance, finished the matter off. Hanged men do
cease for ever from this Earth; but out of chains and the Galleys there may
be resuscitation in triumph. Resuscitation for the chained Hero; and even
for the chained Scoundrel, or Semi-scoundrel! Scottish John Knox, such
World-Hero, as we know, sat once nevertheless pulling grim-taciturn at the
oar of French Galley, 'in the Water of Lore;' and even flung their Virgin-
Mary over, instead of kissing her,--as 'a pented bredd,' or timber Virgin,
who could naturally swim. (Knox's History of the Reformation, b. i.) So,
ye of Chateau-Vieux, tug patiently, not without hope!
But indeed at Nanci generally, Aristocracy rides triumphant, rough.
Bouille is gone again, the second day; an Aristocrat Municipality, with
free course, is as cruel as it had before been cowardly. The Daughter
Society, as the mother of the whole mischief, lies ignominiously
suppressed; the Prisons can hold no more; bereaved down-beaten Patriotism
murmurs, not loud but deep. Here and in the neighbouring Towns, 'flattened
balls' picked from the streets of Nanci are worn at buttonholes: balls
flattened in carrying death to Patriotism; men wear them there, in
perpetual memento of revenge. Mutineer Deserters roam the woods; have to
demand charity at the musket's end. All is dissolution, mutual rancour,
gloom and despair:--till National-Assembly Commissioners arrive, with a
steady gentle flame of Constitutionalism in their hearts; who gently lift
up the down-trodden, gently pull down the too uplifted; reinstate the
Daughter Society, recall the Mutineer Deserter; gradually levelling, strive
in all wise ways to smooth and soothe. With such gradual mild levelling on
the one side; as with solemn funeral-service, Cassolettes, Courts-Martial,
National thanks,--all that Officiality can do is done. The buttonhole will
drop its flat ball; the black ashes, so far as may be, get green again.
This is the 'Affair of Nanci;' by some called the 'Massacre of Nanci;'--
properly speaking, the unsightly wrong-side of that thrice glorious Feast
of Pikes, the right-side of which formed a spectacle for the very gods.
Right-side and wrong lie always so near: the one was in July, in August
the other! Theatres, the theatres over in London, are bright with their
pasteboard simulacrum of that 'Federation of the French People,' brought
out as Drama: this of Nanci, we may say, though not played in any
pasteboard Theatre, did for many months enact itself, and even walk
spectrally--in all French heads. For the news of it fly pealing through
all France; awakening, in town and village, in clubroom, messroom, to the
utmost borders, some mimic reflex or imaginative repetition of the
business; always with the angry questionable assertion: It was right; It
was wrong. Whereby come controversies, duels, embitterment, vain jargon;
the hastening forward, the augmenting and intensifying of whatever new
explosions lie in store for us.
Meanwhile, at this cost or at that, the mutiny, as we say, is stilled. The
French Army has neither burst up in universal simultaneous delirium; nor
been at once disbanded, put an end to, and made new again. It must die in
the chronic manner, through years, by inches; with partial revolts, as of
Brest Sailors or the like, which dare not spread; with men unhappy,
insubordinate; officers unhappier, in Royalist moustachioes, taking horse,
singly or in bodies, across the Rhine: (See Dampmartin, i. 249, &c.; &c.;)
sick dissatisfaction, sick disgust on both sides; the Army moribund, fit
for no duty:--till it do, in that unexpected manner, Phoenix-like, with
long throes, get both dead and newborn; then start forth strong, nay
stronger and even strongest.
Thus much was the brave Bouille hitherto fated to do. Wherewith let him
again fade into dimness; and at Metz or the rural Cantonments, assiduously
drilling, mysteriously diplomatising, in scheme within scheme, hover as
formerly a faint shadow, the hope of Royalty.
BOOK 2.III.
THE TUILERIES
Chapter 2.3.I.
Epimenides.
How true that there is nothing dead in this Universe; that what we call
dead is only changed, its forces working in inverse order! 'The leaf that
lies rotting in moist winds,' says one, 'has still force; else how could it
rot?' Our whole Universe is but an infinite Complex of Forces;
thousandfold, from Gravitation up to Thought and Will; man's Freedom
environed with Necessity of Nature: in all which nothing at any moment
slumbers, but all is for ever awake and busy. The thing that lies isolated
inactive thou shalt nowhere discover; seek every where from the granite
mountain, slow-mouldering since Creation, to the passing cloud-vapour, to
the living man; to the action, to the spoken word of man. The word that is
spoken, as we know, flies-irrevocable: not less, but more, the action that
is done. 'The gods themselves,' sings Pindar, 'cannot annihilate the
action that is done.' No: this, once done, is done always; cast forth
into endless Time; and, long conspicuous or soon hidden, must verily work
and grow for ever there, an indestructible new element in the Infinite of
Things. Or, indeed, what is this Infinite of Things itself, which men name
Universe, but an action, a sum-total of Actions and Activities? The living
ready-made sum-total of these three,--which Calculation cannot add, cannot
bring on its tablets; yet the sum, we say, is written visible: All that
has been done, All that is doing, All that will be done! Understand it
well, the Thing thou beholdest, that Thing is an Action, the product and
expression of exerted Force: the All of Things is an infinite conjugation
of the verb To do. Shoreless Fountain-Ocean of Force, of power to do;
wherein Force rolls and circles, billowing, many-streamed, harmonious; wide
as Immensity, deep as Eternity; beautiful and terrible, not to be
comprehended: this is what man names Existence and Universe; this
thousand-tinted Flame-image, at once veil and revelation, reflex such as
he, in his poor brain and heart, can paint, of One Unnameable dwelling in
inaccessible light! From beyond the Star-galaxies, from before the
Beginning of Days, it billows and rolls,--round thee, nay thyself art of
it, in this point of Space where thou now standest, in this moment which
thy clock measures.
Or apart from all Transcendentalism, is it not a plain truth of sense,
which the duller mind can even consider as a truism, that human things
wholly are in continual movement, and action and reaction; working
continually forward, phasis after phasis, by unalterable laws, towards
prescribed issues? How often must we say, and yet not rightly lay to
heart: The seed that is sown, it will spring! Given the summer's
blossoming, then there is also given the autumnal withering: so is it
ordered not with seedfields only, but with transactions, arrangements,
philosophies, societies, French Revolutions, whatsoever man works with in
this lower world. The Beginning holds in it the End, and all that leads
thereto; as the acorn does the oak and its fortunes. Solemn enough, did we
think of it,--which unhappily and also happily we do not very much! Thou
there canst begin; the Beginning is for thee, and there: but where, and of
what sort, and for whom will the End be? All grows, and seeks and endures
its destinies: consider likewise how much grows, as the trees do, whether
we think of it or not. So that when your Epimenides, your somnolent Peter
Klaus, since named Rip van Winkle, awakens again, he finds it a changed
world. In that seven-years' sleep of his, so much has changed! All that
is without us will change while we think not of it; much even that is
within us. The truth that was yesterday a restless Problem, has to-day
grown a Belief burning to be uttered: on the morrow, contradiction has
exasperated it into mad Fanaticism; obstruction has dulled it into sick
Inertness; it is sinking towards silence, of satisfaction or of
resignation. To-day is not Yesterday, for man or for thing. Yesterday
there was the oath of Love; today has come the curse of Hate. Not
willingly: ah, no; but it could not help coming. The golden radiance of
youth, would it willingly have tarnished itself into the dimness of old
age?--Fearful: how we stand enveloped, deep-sunk, in that Mystery of TIME;
and are Sons of Time; fashioned and woven out of Time; and on us, and on
all that we have, or see, or do, is written: Rest not, Continue not,
Forward to thy doom!
But in seasons of Revolution, which indeed distinguish themselves from
common seasons by their velocity mainly, your miraculous Seven-sleeper
might, with miracle enough, wake sooner: not by the century, or seven
years, need he sleep; often not by the seven months. Fancy, for example,
some new Peter Klaus, sated with the jubilee of that Federation day, had
lain down, say directly after the Blessing of Talleyrand; and, reckoning it
all safe now, had fallen composedly asleep under the timber-work of the
Fatherland's Altar; to sleep there, not twenty-one years, but as it were
year and day. The cannonading of Nanci, so far off, does not disturb him;
nor does the black mortcloth, close at hand, nor the requiems chanted, and
minute guns, incense-pans and concourse right over his head: none of
these; but Peter sleeps through them all. Through one circling year, as we
say; from July 14th of 1790, till July the 17th of 1791: but on that
latter day, no Klaus, nor most leaden Epimenides, only the Dead could
continue sleeping; and so our miraculous Peter Klaus awakens. With what
eyes, O Peter! Earth and sky have still their joyous July look, and the
Champ-de-Mars is multitudinous with men: but the jubilee-huzzahing has
become Bedlam-shrieking, of terror and revenge; not blessing of Talleyrand,
or any blessing, but cursing, imprecation and shrill wail; our cannon-
salvoes are turned to sharp shot; for swinging of incense-pans and Eighty-
three Departmental Banners, we have waving of the one sanguinous Drapeau-
Rouge.--Thou foolish Klaus! The one lay in the other, the one was the
other minus Time; even as Hannibal's rock-rending vinegar lay in the sweet
new wine. That sweet Federation was of last year; this sour Divulsion is
the self-same substance, only older by the appointed days.
No miraculous Klaus or Epimenides sleeps in these times: and yet, may not
many a man, if of due opacity and levity, act the same miracle in a natural
way; we mean, with his eyes open? Eyes has he, but he sees not, except
what is under his nose. With a sparkling briskness of glance, as if he not
only saw but saw through, such a one goes whisking, assiduous, in his
circle of officialities; not dreaming but that it is the whole world: as,
indeed, where your vision terminates, does not inanity begin there, and the
world's end clearly declares itself--to you? Whereby our brisk sparkling
assiduous official person (call him, for instance, Lafayette), suddenly
startled, after year and day, by huge grape-shot tumult, stares not less
astonished at it than Peter Klaus would have done. Such natural-miracle
Lafayette can perform; and indeed not he only but most other officials,
non-officials, and generally the whole French People can perform it; and do
bounce up, ever and anon, like amazed Seven-sleepers awakening; awakening
amazed at the noise they themselves make. So strangely is Freedom, as we
say, environed in Necessity; such a singular Somnambulism, of Conscious and
Unconscious, of Voluntary and Involuntary, is this life of man. If any
where in the world there was astonishment that the Federation Oath went
into grape-shot, surely of all persons the French, first swearers and then
shooters, felt astonished the most.
Alas, offences must come. The sublime Feast of Pikes, with its effulgence
of brotherly love, unknown since the Age of Gold, has changed nothing.
That prurient heat in Twenty-five millions of hearts is not cooled thereby;
but is still hot, nay hotter. Lift off the pressure of command from so
many millions; all pressure or binding rule, except such melodramatic
Federation Oath as they have bound themselves with! For 'Thou shalt' was
from of old the condition of man's being, and his weal and blessedness was
in obeying that. Wo for him when, were it on hest of the clearest
necessity, rebellion, disloyal isolation, and mere 'I will', becomes his
rule! But the Gospel of Jean-Jacques has come, and the first Sacrament of
it has been celebrated: all things, as we say, are got into hot and hotter
prurience; and must go on pruriently fermenting, in continual change noted
or unnoted.
'Worn out with disgusts,' Captain after Captain, in Royalist moustachioes,
mounts his warhorse, or his Rozinante war-garron, and rides minatory across
the Rhine; till all have ridden. Neither does civic Emigration cease:
Seigneur after Seigneur must, in like manner, ride or roll; impelled to it,
and even compelled. For the very Peasants despise him in that he dare not
join his order and fight. (Dampmartin, passim.) Can he bear to have a
Distaff, a Quenouille sent to him; say in copper-plate shadow, by post; or
fixed up in wooden reality over his gate-lintel: as if he were no Hercules
but an Omphale? Such scutcheon they forward to him diligently from behind
the Rhine; till he too bestir himself and march, and in sour humour,
another Lord of Land is gone, not taking the Land with him. Nay, what of
Captains and emigrating Seigneurs? There is not an angry word on any of
those Twenty-five million French tongues, and indeed not an angry thought
in their hearts, but is some fraction of the great Battle. Add many
successions of angry words together, you have the manual brawl; add brawls
together, with the festering sorrows they leave, and they rise to riots and
revolts. One reverend thing after another ceases to meet reverence: in
visible material combustion, chateau after chateau mounts up; in spiritual
invisible combustion, one authority after another. With noise and glare,
or noisily and unnoted, a whole Old System of things is vanishing
piecemeal: on the morrow thou shalt look and it is not.
Chapter 2.3.II.
The Wakeful.
Sleep who will, cradled in hope and short vision, like Lafayette, 'who
always in the danger done sees the last danger that will threaten him,'--
Time is not sleeping, nor Time's seedfield.
That sacred Herald's-College of a new Dynasty; we mean the Sixty and odd
Billstickers with their leaden badges, are not sleeping. Daily they, with
pastepot and cross-staff, new clothe the walls of Paris in colours of the
rainbow: authoritative heraldic, as we say, or indeed almost magical
thaumaturgic; for no Placard-Journal that they paste but will convince some
soul or souls of man. The Hawkers bawl; and the Balladsingers: great
Journalism blows and blusters, through all its throats, forth from Paris
towards all corners of France, like an Aeolus' Cave; keeping alive all
manner of fires.
Throats or Journals there are, as men count, (Mercier, iii. 163.) to the
number of some hundred and thirty-three. Of various calibre; from your
Cheniers, Gorsases, Camilles, down to your Marat, down now to your
incipient Hebert of the Pere Duchesne; these blow, with fierce weight of
argument or quick light banter, for the Rights of man: Durosoys, Royous,
Peltiers, Sulleaus, equally with mixed tactics, inclusive, singular to say,
of much profane Parody, (See Hist. Parl. vii. 51.) are blowing for Altar
and Throne. As for Marat the People's-Friend, his voice is as that of the
bullfrog, or bittern by the solitary pools; he, unseen of men, croaks harsh
thunder, and that alone continually,--of indignation, suspicion, incurable
sorrow. The People are sinking towards ruin, near starvation itself: 'My
dear friends,' cries he, 'your indigence is not the fruit of vices nor of
idleness, you have a right to life, as good as Louis XVI., or the happiest
of the century. What man can say he has a right to dine, when you have no
bread?' (Ami du Peuple, No. 306. See other Excerpts in Hist. Parl. viii.
139-149, 428-433; ix. 85-93, &c.;) The People sinking on the one hand: on
the other hand, nothing but wretched Sieur Motiers, treasonous Riquetti
Mirabeaus; traitors, or else shadows, and simulacra of Quacks, to be seen
in high places, look where you will! Men that go mincing, grimacing, with
plausible speech and brushed raiment; hollow within: Quacks Political;
Quacks scientific, Academical; all with a fellow-feeling for each other,
and kind of Quack public-spirit! Not great Lavoisier himself, or any of
the Forty can escape this rough tongue; which wants not fanatic sincerity,
nor, strangest of all, a certain rough caustic sense. And then the 'three
thousand gaming-houses' that are in Paris; cesspools for the scoundrelism
of the world; sinks of iniquity and debauchery,--whereas without good
morals Liberty is impossible! There, in these Dens of Satan, which one
knows, and perseveringly denounces, do Sieur Motier's mouchards consort and
colleague; battening vampyre-like on a People next-door to starvation. 'O
Peuple!' cries he oftimes, with heart-rending accent. Treason, delusion,
vampyrism, scoundrelism, from Dan to Beersheba! The soul of Marat is sick
with the sight: but what remedy? To erect 'Eight Hundred gibbets,' in
convenient rows, and proceed to hoisting; 'Riquetti on the first of them!'
Such is the brief recipe of Marat, Friend of the People.
So blow and bluster the Hundred and thirty-three: nor, as would seem, are
these sufficient; for there are benighted nooks in France, to which
Newspapers do not reach; and every where is 'such an appetite for news as
was never seen in any country.' Let an expeditious Dampmartin, on
furlough, set out to return home from Paris, (Dampmartin, i. 184.) he
cannot get along for 'peasants stopping him on the highway; overwhelming
him with questions:' the Maitre de Poste will not send out the horses till
you have well nigh quarrelled with him, but asks always, What news? At
Autun, 'in spite of the rigorous frost' for it is now January, 1791,
nothing will serve but you must gather your wayworn limbs, and thoughts,
and 'speak to the multitudes from a window opening into the market-place.'
It is the shortest method: This, good Christian people, is verily what an
August Assembly seemed to me to be doing; this and no other is the news;
'Now my weary lips I close;
Leave me, leave me to repose.'
The good Dampmartin!--But, on the whole, are not Nations astonishingly true
to their National character; which indeed runs in the blood? Nineteen
hundred years ago, Julius Caesar, with his quick sure eye, took note how
the Gauls waylaid men. 'It is a habit of theirs,' says he, 'to stop
travellers, were it even by constraint, and inquire whatsoever each of them
may have heard or known about any sort of matter: in their towns, the
common people beset the passing trader; demanding to hear from what regions
he came, what things he got acquainted with there. Excited by which
rumours and hearsays they will decide about the weightiest matters; and
necessarily repent next moment that they did it, on such guidance of
uncertain reports, and many a traveller answering with mere fictions to
please them, and get off.' (De Bello Gallico, iv. 5.) Nineteen hundred
years; and good Dampmartin, wayworn, in winter frost, probably with scant
light of stars and fish-oil, still perorates from the Inn-window! This
People is no longer called Gaulish; and it has wholly become braccatus, has
got breeches, and suffered change enough: certain fierce German Franken
came storming over; and, so to speak, vaulted on the back of it; and always
after, in their grim tenacious way, have ridden it bridled; for German is,
by his very name, Guerre-man, or man that wars and gars. And so the
People, as we say, is now called French or Frankish: nevertheless, does
not the old Gaulish and Gaelic Celthood, with its vehemence, effervescent
promptitude, and what good and ill it had, still vindicate itself little
adulterated?--
For the rest, that in such prurient confusion, Clubbism thrives and
spreads, need not be said. Already the Mother of Patriotism, sitting in
the Jacobins, shines supreme over all; and has paled the poor lunar light
of that Monarchic Club near to final extinction. She, we say, shines
supreme, girt with sun-light, not yet with infernal lightning; reverenced,
not without fear, by Municipal Authorities; counting her Barnaves, Lameths,
Petions, of a National Assembly; most gladly of all, her Robespierre.
Cordeliers, again, your Hebert, Vincent, Bibliopolist Momoro, groan audibly
that a tyrannous Mayor and Sieur Motier harrow them with the sharp tribula
of Law, intent apparently to suppress them by tribulation. How the Jacobin
Mother-Society, as hinted formerly, sheds forth Cordeliers on this hand,
and then Feuillans on that; the Cordeliers on this hand, and then Feuillans
on that; the Cordeliers 'an elixir or double-distillation of Jacobin
Patriotism;' the other a wide-spread weak dilution thereof; how she will
re-absorb the former into her Mother-bosom, and stormfully dissipate the
latter into Nonentity: how she breeds and brings forth Three Hundred
Daughter-Societies; her rearing of them, her correspondence, her
endeavourings and continual travail: how, under an old figure, Jacobinism
shoots forth organic filaments to the utmost corners of confused dissolved
France; organising it anew:--this properly is the grand fact of the Time.
To passionate Constitutionalism, still more to Royalism, which see all
their own Clubs fail and die, Clubbism will naturally grow to seem the root
of all evil. Nevertheless Clubbism is not death, but rather new
organisation, and life out of death: destructive, indeed, of the remnants
of the Old; but to the New important, indispensable. That man can co-
operate and hold communion with man, herein lies his miraculous strength.
In hut or hamlet, Patriotism mourns not now like voice in the desert: it
can walk to the nearest Town; and there, in the Daughter-Society, make its
ejaculation into an articulate oration, into an action, guided forward by
the Mother of Patriotism herself. All Clubs of Constitutionalists, and
such like, fail, one after another, as shallow fountains: Jacobinism alone
has gone down to the deep subterranean lake of waters; and may, unless
filled in, flow there, copious, continual, like an Artesian well. Till the
Great Deep have drained itself up: and all be flooded and submerged, and
Noah's Deluge out-deluged!
On the other hand, Claude Fauchet, preparing mankind for a Golden Age now
apparently just at hand, has opened his Cercle Social, with clerks,
corresponding boards, and so forth; in the precincts of the Palais Royal.
It is Te-Deum Fauchet; the same who preached on Franklin's Death, in that
huge Medicean rotunda of the Halle aux bleds. He here, this winter, by
Printing-press and melodious Colloquy, spreads bruit of himself to the
utmost City-barriers. 'Ten thousand persons' of respectability attend
there; and listen to this 'Procureur-General de la Verite, Attorney-General
of Truth,' so has he dubbed himself; to his sage Condorcet, or other
eloquent coadjutor. Eloquent Attorney-General! He blows out from him,
better or worse, what crude or ripe thing he holds: not without result to
himself; for it leads to a Bishoprick, though only a Constitutional one.
Fauchet approves himself a glib-tongued, strong-lunged, whole-hearted human
individual: much flowing matter there is, and really of the better sort,
about Right, Nature, Benevolence, Progress; which flowing matter, whether
'it is pantheistic,' or is pot-theistic, only the greener mind, in these
days, need read. Busy Brissot was long ago of purpose to establish
precisely some such regenerative Social Circle: nay he had tried it, in
'Newman-street Oxford-street,' of the Fog Babylon; and failed,--as some
say, surreptitiously pocketing the cash. Fauchet, not Brissot, was fated
to be the happy man; whereat, however, generous Brissot will with sincere
heart sing a timber-toned Nunc Domine. (See Brissot, Patriote-Francais
Newspaper; Fauchet, Bouche-de-Fer, &c.; (excerpted in Hist. Parl. viii.,
ix., et seqq.).) But 'ten thousand persons of respectability:' what a
bulk have many things in proportion to their magnitude! This Cercle
Social, for which Brissot chants in sincere timber-tones such Nunc Domine,
what is it? Unfortunately wind and shadow. The main reality one finds in
it now, is perhaps this: that an 'Attorney-General of Truth' did once take
shape of a body, as Son of Adam, on our Earth, though but for months or
moments; and ten thousand persons of respectability attended, ere yet Chaos
and Nox had reabsorbed him.
Hundred and thirty-three Paris Journals; regenerative Social Circle;
oratory, in Mother and Daughter Societies, from the balconies of Inns, by
chimney-nook, at dinner-table,--polemical, ending many times in duel! Add
ever, like a constant growling accompaniment of bass Discord: scarcity of
work, scarcity of food. The winter is hard and cold; ragged Bakers'-
queues, like a black tattered flag-of-distress, wave out ever and anon. It
is the third of our Hunger-years this new year of a glorious Revolution.
The rich man when invited to dinner, in such distress-seasons, feels bound
in politeness to carry his own bread in his pocket: how the poor dine?
And your glorious Revolution has done it, cries one. And our glorious
Revolution is subtilety, by black traitors worthy of the Lamp-iron,
perverted to do it, cries another! Who will paint the huge whirlpool
wherein France, all shivered into wild incoherence, whirls? The jarring
that went on under every French roof, in every French heart; the diseased
things that were spoken, done, the sum-total whereof is the French
Revolution, tongue of man cannot tell. Nor the laws of action that work
unseen in the depths of that huge blind Incoherence! With amazement, not
with measurement, men look on the Immeasurable; not knowing its laws;
seeing, with all different degrees of knowledge, what new phases, and
results of event, its laws bring forth. France is as a monstrous Galvanic
Mass, wherein all sorts of far stranger than chemical galvanic or electric
forces and substances are at work; electrifying one another, positive and
negative; filling with electricity your Leyden-jars,--Twenty-five millions
in number! As the jars get full, there will, from time to time, be, on
slight hint, an explosion.
Chapter 2.3.III.
Sword in Hand.
On such wonderful basis, however, has Law, Royalty, Authority, and whatever
yet exists of visible Order, to maintain itself, while it can. Here, as in
that Commixture of the Four Elements did the Anarch Old, has an august
Assembly spread its pavilion; curtained by the dark infinite of discords;
founded on the wavering bottomless of the Abyss; and keeps continual
hubbub. Time is around it, and Eternity, and the Inane; and it does what
it can, what is given it to do.
Glancing reluctantly in, once more, we discern little that is edifying: a
Constitutional Theory of Defective Verbs struggling forward, with
perseverance, amid endless interruptions: Mirabeau, from his tribune, with
the weight of his name and genius, awing down much Jacobin violence; which
in return vents itself the louder over in its Jacobins Hall, and even reads
him sharp lectures there. (Camille's Journal (in Hist. Parl. ix. 366-85).)
This man's path is mysterious, questionable; difficult, and he walks
without companion in it. Pure Patriotism does not now count him among her
chosen; pure Royalism abhors him: yet his weight with the world is
overwhelming. Let him travel on, companionless, unwavering, whither he is
bound,--while it is yet day with him, and the night has not come.
But the chosen band of pure Patriot brothers is small; counting only some
Thirty, seated now on the extreme tip of the Left, separate from the world.
A virtuous Petion; an incorruptible Robespierre, most consistent,
incorruptible of thin acrid men; Triumvirs Barnave, Duport, Lameth, great
in speech, thought, action, each according to his kind; a lean old Goupil
de Prefeln: on these and what will follow them has pure Patriotism to
depend.
There too, conspicuous among the Thirty, if seldom audible, Philippe
d'Orleans may be seen sitting: in dim fuliginous bewilderment; having, one
might say, arrived at Chaos! Gleams there are, at once of a Lieutenancy
and Regency; debates in the Assembly itself, of succession to the Throne
'in case the present Branch should fail;' and Philippe, they say, walked
anxiously, in silence, through the corridors, till such high argument were
done: but it came all to nothing; Mirabeau, glaring into the man, and
through him, had to ejaculate in strong untranslatable language: Ce j--f--
ne vaut pas la peine qu'on se donne pour lui. It came all to nothing; and
in the meanwhile Philippe's money, they say, is gone! Could he refuse a
little cash to the gifted Patriot, in want only of that; he himself in want
of all but that? Not a pamphlet can be printed without cash; or indeed
written, without food purchasable by cash. Without cash your hopefullest
Projector cannot stir from the spot: individual patriotic or other
Projects require cash: how much more do wide-spread Intrigues, which live
and exist by cash; lying widespread, with dragon-appetite for cash; fit to
swallow Princedoms! And so Prince Philippe, amid his Sillerys, Lacloses,
and confused Sons of Night, has rolled along: the centre of the strangest
cloudy coil; out of which has visibly come, as we often say, an Epic
Preternatural Machinery of SUSPICION; and within which there has dwelt and
worked,--what specialties of treason, stratagem, aimed or aimless endeavour
towards mischief, no party living (if it be not the Presiding Genius of it,
Prince of the Power of the Air) has now any chance to know. Camille's
conjecture is the likeliest: that poor Philippe did mount up, a little
way, in treasonable speculation, as he mounted formerly in one of the
earliest Balloons; but, frightened at the new position he was getting into,
had soon turned the cock again, and come down. More fool than he rose! To
create Preternatural Suspicion, this was his function in the Revolutionary
Epos. But now if he have lost his cornucopia of ready-money, what else had
he to lose? In thick darkness, inward and outward, he must welter and
flounder on, in that piteous death-element, the hapless man. Once, or even
twice, we shall still behold him emerged; struggling out of the thick
death-element: in vain. For one moment, it is the last moment, he starts
aloft, or is flung aloft, even into clearness and a kind of memorability,--
to sink then for evermore!
The Cote Droit persists no less; nay with more animation than ever, though
hope has now well nigh fled. Tough Abbe Maury, when the obscure country
Royalist grasps his hand with transport of thanks, answers, rolling his
indomitable brazen head: "Helas, Monsieur, all that I do here is as good
as simply nothing." Gallant Faussigny, visible this one time in History,
advances frantic, into the middle of the Hall, exclaiming: "There is but
one way of dealing with it, and that is to fall sword in hand on those
gentry there, sabre a la main sur ces gaillards la," (Moniteur, Seance du
21 Aout, 1790.) franticly indicating our chosen Thirty on the extreme tip
of the Left! Whereupon is clangour and clamour, debate, repentance,--
evaporation. Things ripen towards downright incompatibility, and what is
called 'scission:' that fierce theoretic onslaught of Faussigny's was in
August, 1790; next August will not have come, till a famed Two Hundred and
Ninety-two, the chosen of Royalism, make solemn final 'scission' from an
Assembly given up to faction; and depart, shaking the dust off their feet.
Connected with this matter of sword in hand, there is yet another thing to
be noted. Of duels we have sometimes spoken: how, in all parts of France,
innumerable duels were fought; and argumentative men and messmates,
flinging down the wine-cup and weapons of reason and repartee, met in the
measured field; to part bleeding; or perhaps not to part, but to fall
mutually skewered through with iron, their wrath and life alike ending,--
and die as fools die. Long has this lasted, and still lasts. But now it
would seem as if in an august Assembly itself, traitorous Royalism, in its
despair, had taken to a new course: that of cutting off Patriotism by
systematic duel! Bully-swordsmen, 'Spadassins' of that party, go
swaggering; or indeed they can be had for a trifle of money. 'Twelve
Spadassins' were seen, by the yellow eye of Journalism, 'arriving recently
out of Switzerland;' also 'a considerable number of Assassins, nombre
considerable d'assassins, exercising in fencing-schools and at pistol-
targets.' Any Patriot Deputy of mark can be called out; let him escape one
time, or ten times, a time there necessarily is when he must fall, and
France mourn. How many cartels has Mirabeau had; especially while he was
the People's champion! Cartels by the hundred: which he, since the
Constitution must be made first, and his time is precious, answers now
always with a kind of stereotype formula: "Monsieur, you are put upon my
List; but I warn you that it is long, and I grant no preferences."
Then, in Autumn, had we not the Duel of Cazales and Barnave; the two chief
masters of tongue-shot meeting now to exchange pistol-shot? For Cazales,
chief of the Royalists, whom we call 'Blacks or Noirs,' said, in a moment
of passion, "the Patriots were sheer Brigands," nay in so speaking, he
darted or seemed to dart, a fire-glance specially at Barnave; who thereupon
could not but reply by fire-glances,--by adjournment to the Bois-de-
Boulogne. Barnave's second shot took effect: on Cazales's hat. The
'front nook' of a triangular Felt, such as mortals then wore, deadened the
ball; and saved that fine brow from more than temporary injury. But how
easily might the lot have fallen the other way, and Barnave's hat not been
so good! Patriotism raises its loud denunciation of Duelling in general;
petitions an august Assembly to stop such Feudal barbarism by law.
Barbarism and solecism: for will it convince or convict any man to blow
half an ounce of lead through the head of him? Surely not.--Barnave was
received at the Jacobins with embraces, yet with rebukes.
Mindful of which, and also that his repetition in America was that of
headlong foolhardiness rather, and want of brain not of heart, Charles
Lameth does, on the eleventh day of November, with little emotion, decline
attending some hot young Gentleman from Artois, come expressly to challenge
him: nay indeed he first coldly engages to attend; then coldly permits two
Friends to attend instead of him, and shame the young Gentleman out of it,
which they successfully do. A cold procedure; satisfactory to the two
Friends, to Lameth and the hot young Gentleman; whereby, one might have
fancied, the whole matter was cooled down.
Not so, however: Lameth, proceeding to his senatorial duties, in the
decline of the day, is met in those Assembly corridors by nothing but
Royalist brocards; sniffs, huffs, and open insults. Human patience has its
limits: "Monsieur," said Lameth, breaking silence to one Lautrec, a man
with hunchback, or natural deformity, but sharp of tongue, and a Black of
the deepest tint, "Monsieur, if you were a man to be fought with!"--"I am
one," cries the young Duke de Castries. Fast as fire-flash Lameth replies,
"Tout a l'heure, On the instant, then!" And so, as the shades of dusk
thicken in that Bois-de-Boulogne, we behold two men with lion-look, with
alert attitude, side foremost, right foot advanced; flourishing and
thrusting, stoccado and passado, in tierce and quart; intent to skewer one
another. See, with most skewering purpose, headlong Lameth, with his whole
weight, makes a furious lunge; but deft Castries whisks aside: Lameth
skewers only the air,--and slits deep and far, on Castries' sword's-point,
his own extended left arm! Whereupon with bleeding, pallor, surgeon's-
lint, and formalities, the Duel is considered satisfactorily done.
But will there be no end, then? Beloved Lameth lies deep-slit, not out of
danger. Black traitorous Aristocrats kill the People's defenders, cut up
not with arguments, but with rapier-slits. And the Twelve Spadassins out
of Switzerland, and the considerable number of Assassins exercising at the
pistol-target? So meditates and ejaculates hurt Patriotism, with ever-
deepening ever-widening fervour, for the space of six and thirty hours.
The thirty-six hours past, on Saturday the 13th, one beholds a new
spectacle: The Rue de Varennes, and neighbouring Boulevard des Invalides,
covered with a mixed flowing multitude: the Castries Hotel gone
distracted, devil-ridden, belching from every window, 'beds with clothes
and curtains,' plate of silver and gold with filigree, mirrors, pictures,
images, commodes, chiffoniers, and endless crockery and jingle: amid
steady popular cheers, absolutely without theft; for there goes a cry, "He
shall be hanged that steals a nail!" It is a Plebiscitum, or informal
iconoclastic Decree of the Common People, in the course of being executed!-
-The Municipality sit tremulous; deliberating whether they will hang out
the Drapeau Rouge and Martial Law: National Assembly, part in loud wail,
part in hardly suppressed applause: Abbe Maury unable to decide whether
the iconoclastic Plebs amount to forty thousand or to two hundred thousand.
Deputations, swift messengers, for it is at a distance over the River, come
and go. Lafayette and National Guardes, though without Drapeau Rouge, get
under way; apparently in no hot haste. Nay, arrived on the scene,
Lafayette salutes with doffed hat, before ordering to fix bayonets. What
avails it? The Plebeian "Court of Cassation,' as Camille might punningly
name it, has done its work; steps forth, with unbuttoned vest, with pockets
turned inside out: sack, and just ravage, not plunder! With inexhaustible
patience, the Hero of two Worlds remonstrates; persuasively, with a kind of
sweet constraint, though also with fixed bayonets, dissipates, hushes down:
on the morrow it is once more all as usual.
Considering which things, however, Duke Castries may justly 'write to the
President,' justly transport himself across the Marches; to raise a corps,
or do what else is in him. Royalism totally abandons that Bobadilian
method of contest, and the Twelve Spadassins return to Switzerland,--or
even to Dreamland through the Horn-gate, whichsoever their home is. Nay
Editor Prudhomme is authorised to publish a curious thing: 'We are
authorised to publish,' says he, dull-blustering Publisher, that M. Boyer,
champion of good Patriots, is at the head of Fifty Spadassinicides or
Bully-killers. His address is: Passage du Bois-de-Boulonge, Faubourg St.
Denis.' (Revolutions de Paris (in Hist. Parl. viii. 440).) One of the
strangest Institutes, this of Champion Boyer and the Bully-killers! Whose
services, however, are not wanted; Royalism having abandoned the rapier-
method as plainly impracticable.
Chapter 2.3.IV.
To fly or not to fly.
The truth is Royalism sees itself verging towards sad extremities; nearer
and nearer daily. From over the Rhine it comes asserted that the King in
his Tuileries is not free: this the poor King may contradict, with the
official mouth, but in his heart feels often to be undeniable. Civil
Constitution of the Clergy; Decree of ejectment against Dissidents from it:
not even to this latter, though almost his conscience rebels, can he say
'Nay; but, after two months' hesitating, signs this also. It was on
January 21st,' of this 1790, that he signed it; to the sorrow of his poor
heart yet, on another Twenty-first of January! Whereby come Dissident
ejected Priests; unconquerable Martyrs according to some, incurable
chicaning Traitors according to others. And so there has arrived what we
once foreshadowed: with Religion, or with the Cant and Echo of Religion,
all France is rent asunder in a new rupture of continuity; complicating,
embittering all the older;--to be cured only, by stern surgery, in La
Vendee!
Unhappy Royalty, unhappy Majesty, Hereditary (Representative), Representant
Hereditaire, or however they can name him; of whom much is expected, to
whom little is given! Blue National Guards encircle that Tuileries; a
Lafayette, thin constitutional Pedant; clear, thin, inflexible, as water,
turned to thin ice; whom no Queen's heart can love. National Assembly, its
pavilion spread where we know, sits near by, keeping continual hubbub.
From without nothing but Nanci Revolts, sack of Castries Hotels, riots and
seditions; riots, North and South, at Aix, at Douai, at Befort, Usez,
Perpignan, at Nismes, and that incurable Avignon of the Pope's: a
continual crackling and sputtering of riots from the whole face of France;-
-testifying how electric it grows. Add only the hard winter, the famished
strikes of operatives; that continual running-bass of Scarcity, ground-tone
and basis of all other Discords!
The plan of Royalty, so far as it can be said to have any fixed plan, is
still, as ever, that of flying towards the frontiers. In very truth, the
only plan of the smallest promise for it! Fly to Bouille; bristle yourself
round with cannon, served by your 'forty-thousand undebauched Germans:'
summon the National Assembly to follow you, summon what of it is Royalist,
Constitutional, gainable by money; dissolve the rest, by grapeshot if need
be. Let Jacobinism and Revolt, with one wild wail, fly into Infinite
Space; driven by grapeshot. Thunder over France with the cannon's mouth;
commanding, not entreating, that this riot cease. And then to rule
afterwards with utmost possible Constitutionality; doing justice, loving
mercy; being Shepherd of this indigent People, not Shearer merely, and
Shepherd's-similitude! All this, if ye dare. If ye dare not, then in
Heaven's name go to sleep: other handsome alternative seems none.
Nay, it were perhaps possible; with a man to do it. For if such
inexpressible whirlpool of Babylonish confusions (which our Era is) cannot
be stilled by man, but only by Time and men, a man may moderate its
paroxysms, may balance and sway, and keep himself unswallowed on the top of
it,--as several men and Kings in these days do. Much is possible for a
man; men will obey a man that kens and cans, and name him reverently their
Ken-ning or King. Did not Charlemagne rule? Consider too whether he had
smooth times of it; hanging 'thirty-thousand Saxons over the Weser-Bridge,'
at one dread swoop! So likewise, who knows but, in this same distracted
fanatic France, the right man may verily exist? An olive-complexioned
taciturn man; for the present, Lieutenant in the Artillery-service, who
once sat studying Mathematics at Brienne? The same who walked in the
morning to correct proof-sheets at Dole, and enjoyed a frugal breakfast
with M. Joly? Such a one is gone, whither also famed General Paoli his
friend is gone, in these very days, to see old scenes in native Corsica,
and what Democratic good can be done there.
Royalty never executes the evasion-plan, yet never abandons it; living in
variable hope; undecisive, till fortune shall decide. In utmost secresy, a
brisk Correspondence goes on with Bouille; there is also a plot, which
emerges more than once, for carrying the King to Rouen: (See Hist. Parl.
vii. 316; Bertrand-Moleville, &c.;) plot after plot, emerging and
submerging, like 'ignes fatui in foul weather, which lead no whither.
About 'ten o'clock at night,' the Hereditary Representative, in partie
quarree, with the Queen, with Brother Monsieur, and Madame, sits playing
'wisk,' or whist. Usher Campan enters mysteriously, with a message he only
half comprehends: How a certain Compte d'Inisdal waits anxious in the
outer antechamber; National Colonel, Captain of the watch for this night,
is gained over; post-horses ready all the way; party of Noblesse sitting
armed, determined; will His Majesty, before midnight, consent to go?
Profound silence; Campan waiting with upturned ear. "Did your Majesty hear
what Campan said?" asks the Queen. "Yes, I heard," answers Majesty, and
plays on. "'Twas a pretty couplet, that of Campan's," hints Monsieur, who
at times showed a pleasant wit: Majesty, still unresponsive, plays wisk.
"After all, one must say something to Campan," remarks the Queen. "Tell M.
d'Inisdal," said the King, and the Queen puts an emphasis on it, "that the
King cannot consent to be forced away."--"I see!" said d'Inisdal, whisking
round, peaking himself into flame of irritancy: "we have the risk; we are
to have all the blame if it fail," (Campan, ii. 105.)--and vanishes, he and
his plot, as will-o'-wisps do. The Queen sat till far in the night,
packing jewels: but it came to nothing; in that peaked frame of irritancy
the Will-o'-wisp had gone out.
Little hope there is in all this. Alas, with whom to fly? Our loyal
Gardes-du-Corps, ever since the Insurrection of Women, are disbanded; gone
to their homes; gone, many of them, across the Rhine towards Coblentz and
Exiled Princes: brave Miomandre and brave Tardivet, these faithful Two,
have received, in nocturnal interview with both Majesties, their viaticum
of gold louis, of heartfelt thanks from a Queen's lips, though unluckily
'his Majesty stood, back to fire, not speaking;' (Campan, ii. 109-11.) and
do now dine through the Provinces; recounting hairsbreadth escapes,
insurrectionary horrors. Great horrors; to be swallowed yet of greater.
But on the whole what a falling off from the old splendour of Versailles!
Here in this poor Tuileries, a National Brewer-Colonel, sonorous Santerre,
parades officially behind her Majesty's chair. Our high dignitaries, all
fled over the Rhine: nothing now to be gained at Court; but hopes, for
which life itself must be risked! Obscure busy men frequent the back
stairs; with hearsays, wind projects, un fruitful fanfaronades. Young
Royalists, at the Theatre de Vaudeville, 'sing couplets;' if that could do
any thing. Royalists enough, Captains on furlough, burnt-out Seigneurs,
may likewise be met with, 'in the Cafe de Valois, and at Meot the
Restaurateur's.' There they fan one another into high loyal glow; drink,
in such wine as can be procured, confusion to Sansculottism; shew purchased
dirks, of an improved structure, made to order; and, greatly daring, dine.
(Dampmartin, ii. 129.) It is in these places, in these months, that the
epithet Sansculotte first gets applied to indigent Patriotism; in the last
age we had Gilbert Sansculotte, the indigent Poet. (Mercier, Nouveau
Paris, iii. 204.) Destitute-of-Breeches: a mournful Destitution; which
however, if Twenty millions share it, may become more effective than most
Possessions!
Meanwhile, amid this vague dim whirl of fanfaronades, wind-projects,
poniards made to order, there does disclose itself one punctum-saliens of
life and feasibility: the finger of Mirabeau! Mirabeau and the Queen of
France have met; have parted with mutual trust! It is strange; secret as
the Mysteries; but it is indubitable. Mirabeau took horse, one evening;
and rode westward, unattended,--to see Friend Claviere in that country
house of his? Before getting to Claviere's, the much-musing horseman
struck aside to a back gate of the Garden of Saint-Cloud: some Duke
d'Aremberg, or the like, was there to introduce him; the Queen was not far:
on a 'round knoll, rond point, the highest of the Garden of Saint-Cloud,'
he beheld the Queen's face; spake with her, alone, under the void canopy of
Night. What an interview; fateful secret for us, after all searching; like
the colloquies of the gods! (Campan, ii. c. 17.) She called him 'a
Mirabeau:' elsewhere we read that she 'was charmed with him,' the wild
submitted Titan; as indeed it is among the honourable tokens of this high
ill-fated heart that no mind of any endowment, no Mirabeau, nay no Barnave,
no Dumouriez, ever came face to face with her but, in spite of all
prepossessions, she was forced to recognise it, to draw nigh to it, with
trust. High imperial heart; with the instinctive attraction towards all
that had any height! "You know not the Queen," said Mirabeau once in
confidence; "her force of mind is prodigious; she is a man for courage."
(Dumont, p. 211.)--And so, under the void Night, on the crown of that
knoll, she has spoken with a Mirabeau: he has kissed loyally the queenly
hand, and said with enthusiasm: "Madame, the Monarchy is saved!"--
Possible? The Foreign Powers, mysteriously sounded, gave favourable
guarded response; (Correspondence Secrete (in Hist. Parl. viii. 169-73).)
Bouille is at Metz, and could find forty-thousand sure Germans. With a
Mirabeau for head, and a Bouille for hand, something verily is possible,--
if Fate intervene not.
But figure under what thousandfold wrappages, and cloaks of darkness,
Royalty, meditating these things, must involve itself. There are men with
'Tickets of Entrance;' there are chivalrous consultings, mysterious
plottings. Consider also whether, involve as it like, plotting Royalty can
escape the glance of Patriotism; lynx-eyes, by the ten thousand fixed on
it, which see in the dark! Patriotism knows much: know the dirks made to
order, and can specify the shops; knows Sieur Motier's legions of
mouchards; the Tickets of Entree, and men in black; and how plan of evasion
succeeds plan,--or may be supposed to succeed it. Then conceive the
couplets chanted at the Theatre de Vaudeville; or worse, the whispers,
significant nods of traitors in moustaches. Conceive, on the other hand,
the loud cry of alarm that came through the Hundred-and-Thirty Journals;
the Dionysius'-Ear of each of the Forty-eight Sections, wakeful night and
day.
Patriotism is patient of much; not patient of all. The Cafe de Procope has
sent, visibly along the streets, a Deputation of Patriots, 'to expostulate
with bad Editors,' by trustful word of mouth: singular to see and hear.
The bad Editors promise to amend, but do not. Deputations for change of
Ministry were many; Mayor Bailly joining even with Cordelier Danton in
such: and they have prevailed. With what profit? Of Quacks, willing or
constrained to be Quacks, the race is everlasting: Ministers Duportail and
Dutertre will have to manage much as Ministers Latour-du-Pin and Cice did.
So welters the confused world.
But now, beaten on for ever by such inextricable contradictory influences
and evidences, what is the indigent French Patriot, in these unhappy days,
to believe, and walk by? Uncertainty all; except that he is wretched,
indigent; that a glorious Revolution, the wonder of the Universe, has
hitherto brought neither Bread nor Peace; being marred by traitors,
difficult to discover. Traitors that dwell in the dark, invisible there;--
or seen for moments, in pallid dubious twilight, stealthily vanishing
thither! Preternatural Suspicion once more rules the minds of men.
'Nobody here,' writes Carra of the Annales Patriotiques, so early as the
first of February, 'can entertain a doubt of the constant obstinate project
these people have on foot to get the King away; or of the perpetual
succession of manoeuvres they employ for that.' Nobody: the watchful
Mother of Patriotism deputed two Members to her Daughter at Versailles, to
examine how the matter looked there. Well, and there? Patriotic Carra
continues: 'The Report of these two deputies we all heard with our own
ears last Saturday. They went with others of Versailles, to inspect the
King's Stables, also the stables of the whilom Gardes du Corps; they found
there from seven to eight hundred horses standing always saddled and
bridled, ready for the road at a moment's notice. The same deputies,
moreover, saw with their own two eyes several Royal Carriages, which men
were even then busy loading with large well-stuffed luggage-bags,' leather
cows, as we call them, 'vaches de cuir; the Royal Arms on the panels almost
entirely effaced.' Momentous enough! Also, 'on the same day the whole
Marechaussee, or Cavalry Police, did assemble with arms, horses and
baggage,'--and disperse again. They want the King over the marches, that
so Emperor Leopold and the German Princes, whose troops are ready, may have
a pretext for beginning: 'this,' adds Carra, 'is the word of the riddle:
this is the reason why our fugitive Aristocrats are now making levies of
men on the frontiers; expecting that, one of these mornings, the Executive
Chief Magistrate will be brought over to them, and the civil war commence.'
(Carra's Newspaper, 1st Feb. 1791 (in Hist. Parl. ix. 39).)
If indeed the Executive Chief Magistrate, bagged, say in one of these
leather cows, were once brought safe over to them! But the strangest thing
of all is that Patriotism, whether barking at a venture, or guided by some
instinct of preternatural sagacity, is actually barking aright this time;
at something, not at nothing. Bouille's Secret Correspondence, since made
public, testifies as much.
Nay, it is undeniable, visible to all, that Mesdames the King's Aunts are
taking steps for departure: asking passports of the Ministry, safe-
conducts of the Municipality; which Marat warns all men to beware of. They
will carry gold with them, 'these old Beguines;' nay they will carry the
little Dauphin, 'having nursed a changeling, for some time, to leave in his
stead!' Besides, they are as some light substance flung up, to shew how
the wind sits; a kind of proof-kite you fly off to ascertain whether the
grand paper-kite, Evasion of the King, may mount!
In these alarming circumstances, Patriotism is not wanting to itself.
Municipality deputes to the King; Sections depute to the Municipality; a
National Assembly will soon stir. Meanwhile, behold, on the 19th of
February 1791, Mesdames, quitting Bellevue and Versailles with all privacy,
are off! Towards Rome, seemingly; or one knows not whither. They are not
without King's passports, countersigned; and what is more to the purpose, a
serviceable Escort. The Patriotic Mayor or Mayorlet of the Village of
Moret tried to detain them; but brisk Louis de Narbonne, of the Escort,
dashed off at hand-gallop; returned soon with thirty dragoons, and
victoriously cut them out. And so the poor ancient women go their way; to
the terror of France and Paris, whose nervous excitability is become
extreme. Who else would hinder poor Loque and Graille, now grown so old,
and fallen into such unexpected circumstances, when gossip itself turning
only on terrors and horrors is no longer pleasant to the mind, and you
cannot get so much as an orthodox confessor in peace,--from going what way
soever the hope of any solacement might lead them?
They go, poor ancient dames,--whom the heart were hard that does not pity:
they go; with palpitations, with unmelodious suppressed screechings; all
France, screeching and cackling, in loud unsuppressed terror, behind and on
both hands of them: such mutual suspicion is among men. At Arnay le Duc,
above halfway to the frontiers, a Patriotic Municipality and Populace again
takes courage to stop them: Louis Narbonne must now back to Paris, must
consult the National Assembly. National Assembly answers, not without an
effort, that Mesdames may go. Whereupon Paris rises worse than ever,
screeching half-distracted. Tuileries and precincts are filled with women
and men, while the National Assembly debates this question of questions;
Lafayette is needed at night for dispersing them, and the streets are to be
illuminated. Commandant Berthier, a Berthier before whom are great things
unknown, lies for the present under blockade at Bellevue in Versailles. By
no tactics could he get Mesdames' Luggage stirred from the Courts there;
frantic Versaillese women came screaming about him; his very troops cut the
waggon-traces; he retired to the interior, waiting better times. (Campan,
ii. 132.)
Nay, in these same hours, while Mesdames hardly cut out from Moret by the
sabre's edge, are driving rapidly, to foreign parts, and not yet stopped at
Arnay, their august nephew poor Monsieur, at Paris has dived deep into his
cellars of the Luxembourg for shelter; and according to Montgaillard can
hardly be persuaded up again. Screeching multitudes environ that
Luxembourg of his: drawn thither by report of his departure: but, at
sight and sound of Monsieur, they become crowing multitudes; and escort
Madame and him to the Tuileries with vivats. (Montgaillard, ii. 282; Deux
Amis, vi. c. 1.) It is a state of nervous excitability such as few Nations
know.
Chapter 2.3.V.
The Day of Poniards.
Or, again, what means this visible reparation of the Castle of Vincennes?
Other Jails being all crowded with prisoners, new space is wanted here:
that is the Municipal account. For in such changing of Judicatures,
Parlements being abolished, and New Courts but just set up, prisoners have
accumulated. Not to say that in these times of discord and club-law,
offences and committals are, at any rate, more numerous. Which Municipal
account, does it not sufficiently explain the phenomenon? Surely, to
repair the Castle of Vincennes was of all enterprises that an enlightened
Municipality could undertake, the most innocent.
Not so however does neighbouring Saint-Antoine look on it: Saint-Antoine
to whom these peaked turrets and grim donjons, all-too near her own dark
dwelling, are of themselves an offence. Was not Vincennes a kind of minor
Bastille? Great Diderot and Philosophes have lain in durance here; great
Mirabeau, in disastrous eclipse, for forty-two months. And now when the
old Bastille has become a dancing-ground (had any one the mirth to dance),
and its stones are getting built into the Pont Louis-Seize, does this
minor, comparative insignificance of a Bastille flank itself with fresh-
hewn mullions, spread out tyrannous wings; menacing Patriotism? New space
for prisoners: and what prisoners? A d'Orleans, with the chief Patriots on
the tip of the Left? It is said, there runs 'a subterranean passage' all
the way from the Tuileries hither. Who knows? Paris, mined with quarries
and catacombs, does hang wondrous over the abyss; Paris was once to be
blown up,--though the powder, when we went to look, had got withdrawn. A
Tuileries, sold to Austria and Coblentz, should have no subterranean
passage. Out of which might not Coblentz or Austria issue, some morning;
and, with cannon of long range, 'foudroyer,' bethunder a patriotic Saint-
Antoine into smoulder and ruin!
So meditates the benighted soul of Saint-Antoine, as it sees the aproned
workmen, in early spring, busy on these towers. An official-speaking
Municipality, a Sieur Motier with his legions of mouchards, deserve no
trust at all. Were Patriot Santerre, indeed, Commander! But the sonorous
Brewer commands only our own Battalion: of such secrets he can explain
nothing, knows nothing, perhaps suspects much. And so the work goes on;
and afflicted benighted Saint-Antoine hears rattle of hammers, sees stones
suspended in air. (Montgaillard, ii. 285.)
Saint-Antoine prostrated the first great Bastille: will it falter over
this comparative insignificance of a Bastille? Friends, what if we took
pikes, firelocks, sledgehammers; and helped ourselves!--Speedier is no
remedy; nor so certain. On the 28th day of February, Saint-Antoine turns
out, as it has now often done; and, apparently with little superfluous
tumult, moves eastward to that eye-sorrow of Vincennes. With grave voice
of authority, no need of bullying and shouting, Saint-Antoine signifies to
parties concerned there that its purpose is, To have this suspicious
Stronghold razed level with the general soil of the country. Remonstrance
may be proffered, with zeal: but it avails not. The outer gate goes up,
drawbridges tumble; iron window-stanchions, smitten out with sledgehammers,
become iron-crowbars: it rains furniture, stone-masses, slates: with
chaotic clatter and rattle, Demolition clatters down. And now hasty
expresses rush through the agitated streets, to warn Lafayette, and the
Municipal and Departmental Authorities; Rumour warns a National Assembly, a
Royal Tuileries, and all men who care to hear it: That Saint-Antoine is
up; that Vincennes, and probably the last remaining Institution of the
Country, is coming down. (Deux Amis, vi. 11-15; Newspapers (in Hist. Parl.
ix. 111-17).)
Quick, then! Let Lafayette roll his drums and fly eastward; for to all
Constitutional Patriots this is again bad news. And you, ye Friends of
Royalty, snatch your poniards of improved structure, made to order; your
sword-canes, secret arms, and tickets of entry; quick, by backstairs
passages, rally round the Son of Sixty Kings. An effervescence probably
got up by d'Orleans and Company, for the overthrow of Throne and Altar: it
is said her Majesty shall be put in prison, put out of the way; what then
will his Majesty be? Clay for the Sansculottic Potter! Or were it
impossible to fly this day; a brave Noblesse suddenly all rallying? Peril
threatens, hope invites: Dukes de Villequier, de Duras, Gentlemen of the
Chamber give tickets and admittance; a brave Noblesse is suddenly all
rallying. Now were the time to 'fall sword in hand on those gentry there,'
could it be done with effect.
The Hero of two Worlds is on his white charger; blue Nationals, horse and
foot, hurrying eastward: Santerre, with the Saint-Antoine Battalion, is
already there,--apparently indisposed to act. Heavy-laden Hero of two
Worlds, what tasks are these! The jeerings, provocative gambollings of
that Patriot Suburb, which is all out on the streets now, are hard to
endure; unwashed Patriots jeering in sulky sport; one unwashed Patriot
'seizing the General by the boot' to unhorse him. Santerre, ordered to
fire, makes answer obliquely, "These are the men that took the Bastille;"
and not a trigger stirs! Neither dare the Vincennes Magistracy give
warrant of arrestment, or the smallest countenance: wherefore the General
'will take it on himself' to arrest. By promptitude, by cheerful
adroitness, patience and brisk valour without limits, the riot may be again
bloodlessly appeased.
Meanwhile, the rest of Paris, with more or less unconcern, may mind the
rest of its business: for what is this but an effervescence, of which
there are now so many? The National Assembly, in one of its stormiest
moods, is debating a Law against Emigration; Mirabeau declaring aloud, "I
swear beforehand that I will not obey it." Mirabeau is often at the
Tribune this day; with endless impediments from without; with the old
unabated energy from within. What can murmurs and clamours, from Left or
from Right, do to this man; like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved? With clear
thought; with strong bass-voice, though at first low, uncertain, he claims
audience, sways the storm of men: anon the sound of him waxes, softens; he
rises into far-sounding melody of strength, triumphant, which subdues all
hearts; his rude-seamed face, desolate fire-scathed, becomes fire-lit, and
radiates: once again men feel, in these beggarly ages, what is the potency
and omnipotency of man's word on the souls of men. "I will triumph or be
torn in fragments," he was once heard to say. "Silence," he cries now, in
strong word of command, in imperial consciousness of strength, "Silence,
the thirty voices, Silence aux trente voix!"--and Robespierre and the
Thirty Voices die into mutterings; and the Law is once more as Mirabeau
would have it.
How different, at the same instant, is General Lafayette's street
eloquence; wrangling with sonorous Brewers, with an ungrammatical Saint-
Antoine! Most different, again, from both is the Cafe-de-Valois eloquence,
and suppressed fanfaronade, of this multitude of men with Tickets of Entry;
who are now inundating the Corridors of the Tuileries. Such things can go
on simultaneously in one City. How much more in one Country; in one Planet
with its discrepancies, every Day a mere crackling infinitude of
discrepancies--which nevertheless do yield some coherent net-product,
though an infinitesimally small one!
Be this as it may. Lafayette has saved Vincennes; and is marching
homewards with some dozen of arrested demolitionists. Royalty is not yet
saved;--nor indeed specially endangered. But to the King's Constitutional
Guard, to these old Gardes Francaises, or Centre Grenadiers, as it chanced
to be, this affluence of men with Tickets of Entry is becoming more and
more unintelligible. Is his Majesty verily for Metz, then; to be carried
off by these men, on the spur of the instant? That revolt of Saint-Antoine
got up by traitor Royalists for a stalking-horse? Keep a sharp outlook, ye
Centre Grenadiers on duty here: good never came from the 'men in black.'
Nay they have cloaks, redingotes; some of them leather-breeches, boots,--as
if for instant riding! Or what is this that sticks visible from the
lapelle of Chevalier de Court? (Weber, ii. 286.) Too like the handle of
some cutting or stabbing instrument! He glides and goes; and still the
dudgeon sticks from his left lapelle. "Hold, Monsieur!"--a Centre
Grenadier clutches him; clutches the protrusive dudgeon, whisks it out in
the face of the world: by Heaven, a very dagger; hunting-knife, or
whatsoever you call it; fit to drink the life of Patriotism!
So fared it with Chevalier de Court, early in the day; not without noise;
not without commentaries. And now this continually increasing multitude at
nightfall? Have they daggers too? Alas, with them too, after angry
parleyings, there has begun a groping and a rummaging; all men in black,
spite of their Tickets of Entry, are clutched by the collar, and groped.
Scandalous to think of; for always, as the dirk, sword-cane, pistol, or
were it but tailor's bodkin, is found on him, and with loud scorn drawn
forth from him, he, the hapless man in black, is flung all too rapidly down
stairs. Flung; and ignominiously descends, head foremost; accelerated by
ignominious shovings from sentry after sentry; nay, as is written, by
smitings, twitchings,--spurnings, a posteriori, not to be named. In this
accelerated way, emerges, uncertain which end uppermost, man after man in
black, through all issues, into the Tuileries Garden. Emerges, alas, into
the arms of an indignant multitude, now gathered and gathering there, in
the hour of dusk, to see what is toward, and whether the Hereditary
Representative is carried off or not. Hapless men in black; at last
convicted of poniards made to order; convicted 'Chevaliers of the Poniard!'
Within is as the burning ship; without is as the deep sea. Within is no
help; his Majesty, looking forth, one moment, from his interior
sanctuaries, coldly bids all visitors 'give up their weapons;' and shuts
the door again. The weapons given up form a heap: the convicted
Chevaliers of the poniard keep descending pellmell, with impetuous
velocity; and at the bottom of all staircases, the mixed multitude receives
them, hustles, buffets, chases and disperses them. (Hist. Parl. ix. 139-
48.)
Such sight meets Lafayette, in the dusk of the evening, as he returns,
successful with difficulty at Vincennes: Sansculotte Scylla hardly
weathered, here is Aristocrat Charybdis gurgling under his lee! The
patient Hero of two Worlds almost loses temper. He accelerates, does not
retard, the flying Chevaliers; delivers, indeed, this or the other hunted
Loyalist of quality, but rates him in bitter words, such as the hour
suggested; such as no saloon could pardon. Hero ill-bested; hanging, so to
speak, in mid-air; hateful to Rich divinities above; hateful to Indigent
mortals below! Duke de Villequier, Gentleman of the Chamber, gets such
contumelious rating, in presence of all people there, that he may see good
first to exculpate himself in the Newspapers; then, that not prospering, to
retire over the Frontiers, and begin plotting at Brussels. (Montgaillard,
ii. 286.) His Apartment will stand vacant; usefuller, as we may find, than
when it stood occupied.
So fly the Chevaliers of the Poniard; hunted of Patriotic men, shamefully
in the thickening dusk. A dim miserable business; born of darkness; dying
away there in the thickening dusk and dimness! In the midst of which,
however, let the reader discern clearly one figure running for its life:
Crispin-Cataline d'Espremenil,--for the last time, or the last but one. It
is not yet three years since these same Centre Grenadiers, Gardes
Francaises then, marched him towards the Calypso Isles, in the gray of the
May morning; and he and they have got thus far. Buffeted, beaten down,
delivered by popular Petion, he might well answer bitterly: "And I too,
Monsieur, have been carried on the People's shoulders." (See Mercier, ii.
40, 202.) A fact which popular Petion, if he like, can meditate.
But happily, one way and another, the speedy night covers up this
ignominious Day of Poniards; and the Chevaliers escape, though maltreated,
with torn coat-skirts and heavy hearts, to their respective dwelling-
houses. Riot twofold is quelled; and little blood shed, if it be not
insignificant blood from the nose: Vincennes stands undemolished,
reparable; and the Hereditary Representative has not been stolen, nor the
Queen smuggled into Prison. A Day long remembered: commented on with loud
hahas and deep grumblings; with bitter scornfulness of triumph, bitter
rancour of defeat. Royalism, as usual, imputes it to d'Orleans and the
Anarchists intent on insulting Majesty: Patriotism, as usual, to
Royalists, and even Constitutionalists, intent on stealing Majesty to Metz:
we, also as usual, to Preternatural Suspicion, and Phoebus Apollo having
made himself like the Night.
Thus however has the reader seen, in an unexpected arena, on this last day
of February 1791, the Three long-contending elements of French Society,
dashed forth into singular comico-tragical collision; acting and reacting
openly to the eye. Constitutionalism, at once quelling Sansculottic riot
at Vincennes, and Royalist treachery from the Tuileries, is great, this
day, and prevails. As for poor Royalism, tossed to and fro in that manner,
its daggers all left in a heap, what can one think of it? Every dog, the
Adage says, has its day: has it; has had it; or will have it. For the
present, the day is Lafayette's and the Constitution's. Nevertheless
Hunger and Jacobinism, fast growing fanatical, still work; their-day, were
they once fanatical, will come. Hitherto, in all tempests, Lafayette, like
some divine Sea-ruler, raises his serene head: the upper Aeolus's blasts
fly back to their caves, like foolish unbidden winds: the under sea-
billows they had vexed into froth allay themselves. But if, as we often
write, the submarine Titanic Fire-powers came into play, the Ocean bed from
beneath being burst? If they hurled Poseidon Lafayette and his
Constitution out of Space; and, in the Titanic melee, sea were mixed with
sky?
Chapter 2.3.VI.
Mirabeau.
The spirit of France waxes ever more acrid, fever-sick: towards the final
outburst of dissolution and delirium. Suspicion rules all minds:
contending parties cannot now commingle; stand separated sheer asunder,
eying one another, in most aguish mood, of cold terror or hot rage.
Counter-Revolution, Days of Poniards, Castries Duels; Flight of Mesdames,
of Monsieur and Royalty! Journalism shrills ever louder its cry of alarm.
The sleepless Dionysius's Ear of the Forty-eight Sections, how feverishly
quick has it grown; convulsing with strange pangs the whole sick Body, as
in such sleeplessness and sickness, the ear will do!
Since Royalists get Poniards made to order, and a Sieur Motier is no better
than he should be, shall not Patriotism too, even of the indigent sort,
have Pikes, secondhand Firelocks, in readiness for the worst? The anvils
ring, during this March month, with hammering of Pikes. A Constitutional
Municipality promulgated its Placard, that no citizen except the 'active or
cash-citizen' was entitled to have arms; but there rose, instantly
responsive, such a tempest of astonishment from Club and Section, that the
Constitutional Placard, almost next morning, had to cover itself up, and
die away into inanity, in a second improved edition. (Ordonnance du 17
Mars 1791 (Hist. Parl. ix. 257).) So the hammering continues; as all that
it betokens does.
Mark, again, how the extreme tip of the Left is mounting in favour, if not
in its own National Hall, yet with the Nation, especially with Paris. For
in such universal panic of doubt, the opinion that is sure of itself, as
the meagrest opinion may the soonest be, is the one to which all men will
rally. Great is Belief, were it never so meagre; and leads captive the
doubting heart! Incorruptible Robespierre has been elected Public Accuser
in our new Courts of Judicature; virtuous Petion, it is thought, may rise
to be Mayor. Cordelier Danton, called also by triumphant majorities, sits
at the Departmental Council-table; colleague there of Mirabeau. Of
incorruptible Robespierre it was long ago predicted that he might go far,
mean meagre mortal though he was; for Doubt dwelt not in him.
Under which circumstances ought not Royalty likewise to cease doubting, and
begin deciding and acting? Royalty has always that sure trump-card in its
hand: Flight out of Paris. Which sure trump-card, Royalty, as we see,
keeps ever and anon clutching at, grasping; and swashes it forth
tentatively; yet never tables it, still puts it back again. Play it, O
Royalty! If there be a chance left, this seems it, and verily the last
chance; and now every hour is rendering this a doubtfuller. Alas, one
would so fain both fly and not fly; play one's card and have it to play.
Royalty, in all human likelihood, will not play its trump-card till the
honours, one after one, be mainly lost; and such trumping of it prove to be
the sudden finish of the game!
Here accordingly a question always arises; of the prophetic sort; which
cannot now be answered. Suppose Mirabeau, with whom Royalty takes deep
counsel, as with a Prime Minister that cannot yet legally avow himself as
such, had got his arrangements completed? Arrangements he has; far-
stretching plans that dawn fitfully on us, by fragments, in the confused
darkness. Thirty Departments ready to sign loyal Addresses, of prescribed
tenor: King carried out of Paris, but only to Compiegne and Rouen, hardly
to Metz, since, once for all, no Emigrant rabble shall take the lead in it:
National Assembly consenting, by dint of loyal Addresses, by management, by
force of Bouille, to hear reason, and follow thither! (See Fils Adoptif,
vii. 1. 6; Dumont, c. 11, 12, 14.) Was it so, on these terms, that
Jacobinism and Mirabeau were then to grapple, in their Hercules-and-Typhon
duel; death inevitable for the one or the other? The duel itself is
determined on, and sure: but on what terms; much more, with what issue, we
in vain guess. It is vague darkness all: unknown what is to be; unknown
even what has already been. The giant Mirabeau walks in darkness, as we
said; companionless, on wild ways: what his thoughts during these months
were, no record of Biographer, not vague Fils Adoptif, will now ever
disclose.
To us, endeavouring to cast his horoscope, it of course remains doubly
vague. There is one Herculean man, in internecine duel with him, there is
Monster after Monster. Emigrant Noblesse return, sword on thigh, vaunting
of their Loyalty never sullied; descending from the air, like Harpy-swarms
with ferocity, with obscene greed. Earthward there is the Typhon of
Anarchy, Political, Religious; sprawling hundred-headed, say with Twenty-
five million heads; wide as the area of France; fierce as Frenzy; strong in
very Hunger. With these shall the Serpent-queller do battle continually,
and expect no rest.
As for the King, he as usual will go wavering chameleonlike; changing
colour and purpose with the colour of his environment;--good for no Kingly
use. On one royal person, on the Queen only, can Mirabeau perhaps place
dependance. It is possible, the greatness of this man, not unskilled too
in blandishments, courtiership, and graceful adroitness, might, with most
legitimate sorcery, fascinate the volatile Queen, and fix her to him. She
has courage for all noble daring; an eye and a heart: the soul of
Theresa's Daughter. 'Faut il-donc, Is it fated then,' she passionately
writes to her Brother, 'that I with the blood I am come of, with the
sentiments I have, must live and die among such mortals?' (Fils Adoptif,
ubi supra.) Alas, poor Princess, Yes. 'She is the only man,' as Mirabeau
observes, 'whom his Majesty has about him.' Of one other man Mirabeau is
still surer: of himself. There lies his resources; sufficient or
insufficient.
Dim and great to the eye of Prophecy looks the future! A perpetual life-
and-death battle; confusion from above and from below;--mere confused
darkness for us; with here and there some streak of faint lurid light. We
see King perhaps laid aside; not tonsured, tonsuring is out of fashion now;
but say, sent away any whither, with handsome annual allowance, and stock
of smith-tools. We see a Queen and Dauphin, Regent and Minor; a Queen
'mounted on horseback,' in the din of battles, with Moriamur pro rege
nostro! 'Such a day,' Mirabeau writes, 'may come.'
Din of battles, wars more than civil, confusion from above and from below:
in such environment the eye of Prophecy sees Comte de Mirabeau, like some
Cardinal de Retz, stormfully maintain himself; with head all-devising,
heart all-daring, if not victorious, yet unvanquished, while life is left
him. The specialties and issues of it, no eye of Prophecy can guess at:
it is clouds, we repeat, and tempestuous night; and in the middle of it,
now visible, far darting, now labouring in eclipse, is Mirabeau indomitably
struggling to be Cloud-Compeller!--One can say that, had Mirabeau lived,
the History of France and of the World had been different. Further, that
the man would have needed, as few men ever did, the whole compass of that
same 'Art of Daring, Art d'Oser,' which he so prized; and likewise that he,
above all men then living, would have practised and manifested it.
Finally, that some substantiality, and no empty simulacrum of a formula,
would have been the result realised by him: a result you could have loved,
a result you could have hated; by no likelihood, a result you could only
have rejected with closed lips, and swept into quick forgetfulness for
ever. Had Mirabeau lived one other year!
Chapter 2.3.VII.
Death of Mirabeau.
But Mirabeau could not live another year, any more than he could live
another thousand years. Men's years are numbered, and the tale of
Mirabeau's was now complete. Important, or unimportant; to be mentioned in
World-History for some centuries, or not to be mentioned there beyond a day
or two,--it matters not to peremptory Fate. From amid the press of ruddy
busy Life, the Pale Messenger beckons silently: wide-spreading interests,
projects, salvation of French Monarchies, what thing soever man has on
hand, he must suddenly quit it all, and go. Wert thou saving French
Monarchies; wert thou blacking shoes on the Pont Neuf! The most important
of men cannot stay; did the World's History depend on an hour, that hour is
not to be given. Whereby, indeed, it comes that these same would-have-
beens are mostly a vanity; and the World's History could never in the least
be what it would, or might, or should, by any manner of potentiality, but
simply and altogether what it is.
The fierce wear and tear of such an existence has wasted out the giant
oaken strength of Mirabeau. A fret and fever that keeps heart and brain on
fire: excess of effort, of excitement; excess of all kinds: labour
incessant, almost beyond credibility! 'If I had not lived with him,' says
Dumont, 'I should never have known what a man can make of one day; what
things may be placed within the interval of twelve hours. A day for this
man was more than a week or a month is for others: the mass of things he
guided on together was prodigious; from the scheming to the executing not a
moment lost.' "Monsieur le Comte," said his Secretary to him once, "what
you require is impossible."--"Impossible!" answered he starting from his
chair, Ne me dites jamais ce bete de mot, Never name to me that blockhead
of a word." (Dumont, p. 311.) And then the social repasts; the dinner
which he gives as Commandant of National Guards, which 'costs five hundred
pounds;' alas, and 'the Sirens of the Opera;' and all the ginger that is
hot in the mouth:--down what a course is this man hurled! Cannot Mirabeau
stop; cannot he fly, and save himself alive? No! There is a Nessus' Shirt
on this Hercules; he must storm and burn there, without rest, till he be
consumed. Human strength, never so Herculean, has its measure. Herald
shadows flit pale across the fire-brain of Mirabeau; heralds of the pale
repose. While he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of
ambition and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for
him the issue of it will be swift death.
In January last, you might see him as President of the Assembly; 'his neck
wrapt in linen cloths, at the evening session:' there was sick heat of the
blood, alternate darkening and flashing in the eye-sight; he had to apply
leeches, after the morning labour, and preside bandaged. 'At parting he
embraced me,' says Dumont, 'with an emotion I had never seen in him: "I am
dying, my friend; dying as by slow fire; we shall perhaps not meet again.
When I am gone, they will know what the value of me was. The miseries I
have held back will burst from all sides on France."' (Dumont, p. 267.)
Sickness gives louder warning; but cannot be listened to. On the 27th day
of March, proceeding towards the Assembly, he had to seek rest and help in
Friend de Lamarck's, by the road; and lay there, for an hour, half-fainted,
stretched on a sofa. To the Assembly nevertheless he went, as if in spite
of Destiny itself; spoke, loud and eager, five several times; then quitted
the Tribune--for ever. He steps out, utterly exhausted, into the Tuileries
Gardens; many people press round him, as usual, with applications,
memorials; he says to the Friend who was with him: Take me out of this!
And so, on the last day of March 1791, endless anxious multitudes beset the
Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin; incessantly inquiring: within doors there, in
that House numbered in our time '42,' the over wearied giant has fallen
down, to die. (Fils Adoptif, viii. 420-79.) Crowds, of all parties and
kinds; of all ranks from the King to the meanest man! The King sends
publicly twice a-day to inquire; privately besides: from the world at
large there is no end of inquiring. 'A written bulletin is handed out
every three hours,' is copied and circulated; in the end, it is printed.
The People spontaneously keep silence; no carriage shall enter with its
noise: there is crowding pressure; but the Sister of Mirabeau is
reverently recognised, and has free way made for her. The People stand
mute, heart-stricken; to all it seems as if a great calamity were nigh: as
if the last man of France, who could have swayed these coming troubles, lay
there at hand-grips with the unearthly Power.
The silence of a whole People, the wakeful toil of Cabanis, Friend and
Physician, skills not: on Saturday, the second day of April, Mirabeau
feels that the last of the Days has risen for him; that, on this day, he
has to depart and be no more. His death is Titanic, as his life has been.
Lit up, for the last time, in the glare of coming dissolution, the mind of
the man is all glowing and burning; utters itself in sayings, such as men
long remember. He longs to live, yet acquiesces in death, argues not with
the inexorable. His speech is wild and wondrous: unearthly Phantasms
dancing now their torch-dance round his soul; the soul itself looking out,
fire-radiant, motionless, girt together for that great hour! At times
comes a beam of light from him on the world he is quitting. "I carry in my
heart the death-dirge of the French Monarchy; the dead remains of it will
now be the spoil of the factious." Or again, when he heard the cannon
fire, what is characteristic too: "Have we the Achilles' Funeral already?"
So likewise, while some friend is supporting him: "Yes, support that head;
would I could bequeath it thee!" For the man dies as he has lived; self-
conscious, conscious of a world looking on. He gazes forth on the young
Spring, which for him will never be Summer. The Sun has risen; he says:
"Si ce n'est pas la Dieu, c'est du moins son cousin germain." (Fils
Adoptif, viii. 450; Journal de la maladie et de la mort de Mirabeau, par
P.J.G. Cabanis (Paris, 1803).)--Death has mastered the outworks; power of
speech is gone; the citadel of the heart still holding out: the moribund
giant, passionately, by sign, demands paper and pen; writes his passionate
demand for opium, to end these agonies. The sorrowful Doctor shakes his
head: Dormir 'To sleep,' writes the other, passionately pointing at it!
So dies a gigantic Heathen and Titan; stumbling blindly, undismayed, down
to his rest. At half-past eight in the morning, Dr. Petit, standing at the
foot of the bed, says "Il ne souffre plus." His suffering and his working
are now ended.
Even so, ye silent Patriot multitudes, all ye men of France; this man is
rapt away from you. He has fallen suddenly, without bending till he broke;
as a tower falls, smitten by sudden lightning. His word ye shall hear no
more, his guidance follow no more.--The multitudes depart, heartstruck;
spread the sad tidings. How touching is the loyalty of men to their
Sovereign Man! All theatres, public amusements close; no joyful meeting
can be held in these nights, joy is not for them: the People break in upon
private dancing-parties, and sullenly command that they cease. Of such
dancing-parties apparently but two came to light; and these also have gone
out. The gloom is universal: never in this City was such sorrow for one
death; never since that old night when Louis XII. departed, 'and the
Crieurs des Corps went sounding their bells, and crying along the streets:
Le bon roi Louis, pere du peuple, est mort, The good King Louis, Father of
the People, is dead!' (Henault, Abrege Chronologique, p. 429.) King
Mirabeau is now the lost King; and one may say with little exaggeration,
all the People mourns for him.
For three days there is low wide moan: weeping in the National Assembly
itself. The streets are all mournful; orators mounted on the bournes, with
large silent audience, preaching the funeral sermon of the dead. Let no
coachman whip fast, distractively with his rolling wheels, or almost at
all, through these groups! His traces may be cut; himself and his fare, as
incurable Aristocrats, hurled sulkily into the kennels. The bourne-stone
orators speak as it is given them; the Sansculottic People, with its rude
soul, listens eager,--as men will to any Sermon, or Sermo, when it is a
spoken Word meaning a Thing, and not a Babblement meaning No-thing. In the
Restaurateur's of the Palais Royal, the waiter remarks, "Fine weather,
Monsieur:"--"Yes, my friend," answers the ancient Man of Letters, "very
fine; but Mirabeau is dead." Hoarse rhythmic threnodies comes also from
the throats of balladsingers; are sold on gray-white paper at a sou each.
(Fils Adoptif, viii. l. 19; Newspapers and Excerpts (in Hist. Parl. ix.
366-402).) But of Portraits, engraved, painted, hewn, and written; of
Eulogies, Reminiscences, Biographies, nay Vaudevilles, Dramas and
Melodramas, in all Provinces of France, there will, through these coming
months, be the due immeasurable crop; thick as the leaves of Spring. Nor,
that a tincture of burlesque might be in it, is Gobel's Episcopal Mandement
wanting; goose Gobel, who has just been made Constitutional Bishop of
Paris. A Mandement wherein ca ira alternates very strangely with Nomine
Domini, and you are, with a grave countenance, invited to 'rejoice at
possessing in the midst of you a body of Prelates created by Mirabeau,
zealous followers of his doctrine, faithful imitators of his virtues.'
(Hist. Parl. ix. 405.) So speaks, and cackles manifold, the Sorrow of
France; wailing articulately, inarticulately, as it can, that a Sovereign
Man is snatched away. In the National Assembly, when difficult questions
are astir, all eyes will 'turn mechanically to the place where Mirabeau
sat,'--and Mirabeau is absent now.
On the third evening of the lamentation, the fourth of April, there is
solemn Public Funeral; such as deceased mortal seldom had. Procession of a
league in length; of mourners reckoned loosely at a hundred thousand! All
roofs are thronged with onlookers, all windows, lamp-irons, branches of
trees. 'Sadness is painted on every countenance; many persons weep.'
There is double hedge of National Guards; there is National Assembly in a
body; Jacobin Society, and Societies; King's Ministers, Municipals, and all
Notabilities, Patriot or Aristocrat. Bouille is noticeable there, 'with
his hat on;' say, hat drawn over his brow, hiding many thoughts! Slow-
wending, in religious silence, the Procession of a league in length, under
the level sun-rays, for it is five o'clock, moves and marches: with its
sable plumes; itself in a religious silence; but, by fits, with the muffled
roll of drums, by fits with some long-drawn wail of music, and strange new
clangour of trombones, and metallic dirge-voice; amid the infinite hum of
men. In the Church of Saint-Eustache, there is funeral oration by Cerutti;
and discharge of fire-arms, which 'brings down pieces of the plaster.'
Thence, forward again to the Church of Sainte-Genevieve; which has been
consecrated, by supreme decree, on the spur of this time, into a Pantheon
for the Great Men of the Fatherland, Aux Grands Hommes la Patrie
reconnaissante. Hardly at midnight is the business done; and Mirabeau left
in his dark dwelling: first tenant of that Fatherland's Pantheon.
Tenant, alas, with inhabits but at will, and shall be cast out! For, in
these days of convulsion and disjection, not even the dust of the dead is
permitted to rest. Voltaire's bones are, by and by, to be carried from
their stolen grave in the Abbey of Scellieres, to an eager stealing grave,
in Paris his birth-city: all mortals processioning and perorating there;
cars drawn by eight white horses, goadsters in classical costume, with
fillets and wheat-ears enough;--though the weather is of the wettest.
(Moniteur, du 13 Juillet 1791.) Evangelist Jean Jacques, too, as is most
proper, must be dug up from Ermenonville, and processioned, with pomp, with
sensibility, to the Pantheon of the Fatherland. (Ibid. du 18 Septembre,
1794. See also du 30 Aout, &c.; 1791.) He and others: while again
Mirabeau, we say, is cast forth from it, happily incapable of being
replaced; and rests now, irrecognisable, reburied hastily at dead of night,
in the central 'part of the Churchyard Sainte-Catherine, in the Suburb
Saint-Marceau,' to be disturbed no further.
So blazes out, farseen, a Man's Life, and becomes ashes and a caput
mortuum, in this World-Pyre, which we name French Revolution: not the
first that consumed itself there; nor, by thousands and many millions, the
last! A man who 'had swallowed all formulas;' who, in these strange times
and circumstances, felt called to live Titanically, and also to die so. As
he, for his part had swallowed all formulas, what Formula is there, never
so comprehensive, that will express truly the plus and the minus, give us
the accurate net-result of him? There is hitherto none such. Moralities
not a few must shriek condemnatory over this Mirabeau; the Morality by
which he could be judged has not yet got uttered in the speech of men. We
shall say this of him, again: That he is a Reality, and no Simulacrum: a
living son of Nature our general Mother; not a hollow Artfice, and
mechanism of Conventionalities, son of nothing, brother to nothing. In
which little word, let the earnest man, walking sorrowful in a world mostly
of 'Stuffed Clothes-suits,' that chatter and grin meaningless on him, quite
ghastly to the earnest soul,--think what significance there is!
Of men who, in such sense, are alive, and see with eyes, the number is now
not great: it may be well, if in this huge French Revolution itself, with
its all-developing fury, we find some Three. Mortals driven rabid we find;
sputtering the acridest logic; baring their breast to the battle-hail,
their neck to the guillotine; of whom it is so painful to say that they too
are still, in good part, manufactured Formalities, not Facts but Hearsays!
Honour to the strong man, in these ages, who has shaken himself loose of
shams, and is something. For in the way of being worthy, the first
condition surely is that one be. Let Cant cease, at all risks and at all
costs: till Cant cease, nothing else can begin. Of human Criminals, in
these centuries, writes the Moralist, I find but one unforgivable: the
Quack. 'Hateful to God,' as divine Dante sings, 'and to the Enemies of
God,
'A Dio spiacente ed a' nemici sui!'
But whoever will, with sympathy, which is the first essential towards
insight, look at this questionable Mirabeau, may find that there lay verily
in him, as the basis of all, a Sincerity, a great free Earnestness; nay
call it Honesty, for the man did before all things see, with that clear
flashing vision, into what was, into what existed as fact; and did, with
his wild heart, follow that and no other. Whereby on what ways soever he
travels and struggles, often enough falling, he is still a brother man.
Hate him not; thou canst not hate him! Shining through such soil and
tarnish, and now victorious effulgent, and oftenest struggling eclipsed,
the light of genius itself is in this man; which was never yet base and
hateful: but at worst was lamentable, loveable with pity. They say that
he was ambitious, that he wanted to be Minister. It is most true; and was
he not simply the one man in France who could have done any good as
Minister? Not vanity alone, not pride alone; far from that! Wild
burstings of affection were in this great heart; of fierce lightning, and
soft dew of pity. So sunk, bemired in wretchedest defacements, it may be
said of him, like the Magdalen of old, that he loved much: his Father the
harshest of old crabbed men he loved with warmth, with veneration.
Be it that his falls and follies are manifold,--as himself often lamented
even with tears. (Dumont, p. 287.) Alas, is not the Life of every such
man already a poetic Tragedy; made up 'of Fate and of one's own
Deservings,' of Schicksal und eigene Schuld; full of the elements of Pity
and Fear? This brother man, if not Epic for us, is Tragic; if not great,
is large; large in his qualities, world-large in his destinies. Whom other
men, recognising him as such, may, through long times, remember, and draw
nigh to examine and consider: these, in their several dialects, will say
of him and sing of him,--till the right thing be said; and so the Formula
that can judge him be no longer an undiscovered one.
Here then the wild Gabriel Honore drops from the tissue of our History; not
without a tragic farewell. He is gone: the flower of the wild Riquetti or
Arrighetti kindred; which seems as if in him, with one last effort, it had
done its best, and then expired, or sunk down to the undistinguished level.
Crabbed old Marquis Mirabeau, the Friend of Men, sleeps sound. The Bailli
Mirabeau, worthy uncle, will soon die forlorn, alone. Barrel-Mirabeau,
already gone across the Rhine, his Regiment of Emigrants will drive nigh
desperate. 'Barrel-Mirabeau,' says a biographer of his, 'went indignantly
across the Rhine, and drilled Emigrant Regiments. But as he sat one
morning in his tent, sour of stomach doubtless and of heart, meditating in
Tartarean humour on the turn things took, a certain Captain or Subaltern
demanded admittance on business. Such Captain is refused; he again
demands, with refusal; and then again, till Colonel Viscount Barrel-
Mirabeau, blazing up into a mere burning brandy barrel, clutches his sword,
and tumbles out on this canaille of an intruder,--alas, on the canaille of
an intruder's sword's point, who had drawn with swift dexterity; and dies,
and the Newspapers name it apoplexy and alarming accident.' So die the
Mirabeaus.
New Mirabeaus one hears not of: the wild kindred, as we said, is gone out
with this its greatest. As families and kindreds sometimes do; producing,
after long ages of unnoted notability, some living quintescence of all the
qualities they had, to flame forth as a man world-noted; after whom they
rest as if exhausted; the sceptre passing to others. The chosen Last of
the Mirabeaus is gone; the chosen man of France is gone. It was he who
shook old France from its basis; and, as if with his single hand, has held
it toppling there, still unfallen. What things depended on that one man!
He is as a ship suddenly shivered on sunk rocks: much swims on the waste
waters, far from help.
BOOK 2.IV.
VARENNES
Chapter 2.4.I.
Easter at Saint-Cloud.
The French Monarchy may now therefore be considered as, in all human
probability, lost; as struggling henceforth in blindness as well as
weakness, the last light of reasonable guidance having gone out. What
remains of resources their poor Majesties will waste still further, in
uncertain loitering and wavering. Mirabeau himself had to complain that
they only gave him half confidence, and always had some plan within his
plan. Had they fled frankly with him, to Rouen or anywhither, long ago!
They may fly now with chance immeasurably lessened; which will go on
lessening towards absolute zero. Decide, O Queen; poor Louis can decide
nothing: execute this Flight-project, or at least abandon it.
Correspondence with Bouille there has been enough; what profits consulting,
and hypothesis, while all around is in fierce activity of practice? The
Rustic sits waiting till the river run dry: alas with you it is not a
common river, but a Nile Inundation; snow melting in the unseen mountains;
till all, and you where you sit, be submerged.
Many things invite to flight. The voice Journals invites; Royalist
Journals proudly hinting it as a threat, Patriot Journals rabidly
denouncing it as a terror. Mother Society, waxing more and more emphatic,
invites;--so emphatic that, as was prophesied, Lafayette and your limited
Patriots have ere long to branch off from her, and form themselves into
Feuillans; with infinite public controversy; the victory in which, doubtful
though it look, will remain with the unlimited Mother. Moreover, ever
since the Day of Poniards, we have seen unlimited Patriotism openly
equipping itself with arms. Citizens denied 'activity,' which is
facetiously made to signify a certain weight of purse, cannot buy blue
uniforms, and be Guardsmen; but man is greater than blue cloth; man can
fight, if need be, in multiform cloth, or even almost without cloth--as
Sansculotte. So Pikes continued to be hammered, whether those Dirks of
improved structure with barbs be 'meant for the West-India market,' or not
meant. Men beat, the wrong way, their ploughshares into swords. Is there
not what we may call an 'Austrian Committee,' Comite Autrichein, sitting
daily and nightly in the Tuileries? Patriotism, by vision and suspicion,
knows it too well! If the King fly, will there not be Aristocrat-Austrian
Invasion; butchery, replacement of Feudalism; wars more than civil? The
hearts of men are saddened and maddened.
Dissident Priests likewise give trouble enough. Expelled from their Parish
Churches, where Constitutional Priests, elected by the Public, have
replaced them, these unhappy persons resort to Convents of Nuns, or other
such receptacles; and there, on Sabbath, collecting assemblages of Anti-
Constitutional individuals, who have grown devout all on a sudden,
(Toulongeon, i. 262.) they worship or pretend to worship in their strait-
laced contumacious manner; to the scandal of Patriotism. Dissident
Priests, passing along with their sacred wafer for the dying, seem wishful
to be massacred in the streets; wherein Patriotism will not gratify them.
Slighter palm of martyrdom, however, shall not be denied: martyrdom not of
massacre, yet of fustigation. At the refractory places of worship, Patriot
men appear; Patriot women with strong hazel wands, which they apply. Shut
thy eyes, O Reader; see not this misery, peculiar to these later times,--of
martyrdom without sincerity, with only cant and contumacy! A dead Catholic
Church is not allowed to lie dead; no, it is galvanised into the
detestablest death-life; whereat Humanity, we say, shuts its eyes. For the
Patriot women take their hazel wands, and fustigate, amid laughter of
bystanders, with alacrity: broad bottom of Priests; alas, Nuns too
reversed, and cotillons retrousses! The National Guard does what it can:
Municipality 'invokes the Principles of Toleration;' grants Dissident
worshippers the Church of the Theatins; promising protection. But it is to
no purpose: at the door of that Theatins Church, appears a Placard, and
suspended atop, like Plebeian Consular fasces,--a Bundle of Rods! The
Principles of Toleration must do the best they may: but no Dissident man
shall worship contumaciously; there is a Plebiscitum to that effect; which,
though unspoken, is like the laws of the Medes and Persians. Dissident
contumacious Priests ought not to be harboured, even in private, by any
man: the Club of the Cordeliers openly denounces Majesty himself as doing
it. (Newspapers of April and June, 1791 (in Hist. Parl. ix. 449; x, 217).)
Many things invite to flight: but probably this thing above all others,
that it has become impossible! On the 15th of April, notice is given that
his Majesty, who has suffered much from catarrh lately, will enjoy the
Spring weather, for a few days, at Saint-Cloud. Out at Saint-Cloud?
Wishing to celebrate his Easter, his Paques, or Pasch, there; with
refractory Anti-Constitutional Dissidents?--Wishing rather to make off for
Compiegne, and thence to the Frontiers? As were, in good sooth, perhaps
feasible, or would once have been; nothing but some two chasseurs attending
you; chasseurs easily corrupted! It is a pleasant possibility, execute it
or not. Men say there are thirty thousand Chevaliers of the Poniard
lurking in the woods there: lurking in the woods, and thirty thousand,--
for the human Imagination is not fettered. But now, how easily might
these, dashing out on Lafayette, snatch off the Hereditary Representative;
and roll away with him, after the manner of a whirlblast, whither they
listed!--Enough, it were well the King did not go. Lafayette is forewarned
and forearmed: but, indeed, is the risk his only; or his and all France's?
Monday the eighteenth of April is come; the Easter Journey to Saint-Cloud
shall take effect. National Guard has got its orders; a First Division, as
Advanced Guard, has even marched, and probably arrived. His Majesty's
Maison-bouche, they say, is all busy stewing and frying at Saint-Cloud; the
King's Dinner not far from ready there. About one o'clock, the Royal
Carriage, with its eight royal blacks, shoots stately into the Place du
Carrousel; draws up to receive its royal burden. But hark! From the
neighbouring Church of Saint-Roch, the tocsin begins ding-donging. Is the
King stolen then; he is going; gone? Multitudes of persons crowd the
Carrousel: the Royal Carriage still stands there;--and, by Heaven's
strength, shall stand!
Lafayette comes up, with aide-de-camps and oratory; pervading the groups:
"Taisez vous," answer the groups, "the King shall not go." Monsieur
appears, at an upper window: ten thousand voices bray and shriek, "Nous ne
voulons pas que le Roi parte." Their Majesties have mounted. Crack go the
whips; but twenty Patriot arms have seized each of the eight bridles:
there is rearing, rocking, vociferation; not the smallest headway. In vain
does Lafayette fret, indignant; and perorate and strive: Patriots in the
passion of terror, bellow round the Royal Carriage; it is one bellowing sea
of Patriot terror run frantic. Will Royalty fly off towards Austria; like
a lit rocket, towards endless Conflagration of Civil War? Stop it, ye
Patriots, in the name of Heaven! Rude voices passionately apostrophise
Royalty itself. Usher Campan, and other the like official persons,
pressing forward with help or advice, are clutched by the sashes, and
hurled and whirled, in a confused perilous manner; so that her Majesty has
to plead passionately from the carriage-window.
Order cannot be heard, cannot be followed; National Guards know not how to
act. Centre Grenadiers, of the Observatoire Battalion, are there; not on
duty; alas, in quasi-mutiny; speaking rude disobedient words; threatening
the mounted Guards with sharp shot if they hurt the people. Lafayette
mounts and dismounts; runs haranguing, panting; on the verge of despair.
For an hour and three-quarters; 'seven quarters of an hour,' by the
Tuileries Clock! Desperate Lafayette will open a passage, were it by the
cannon's mouth, if his Majesty will order. Their Majesties, counselled to
it by Royalist friends, by Patriot foes, dismount; and retire in, with
heavy indignant heart; giving up the enterprise. Maison-bouche may eat
that cooked dinner themselves; his Majesty shall not see Saint-Cloud this
day,--or any day. (Deux Amis, vi. c. 1; Hist. Parl. ix. 407-14.)
The pathetic fable of imprisonment in one's own Palace has become a sad
fact, then? Majesty complains to Assembly; Municipality deliberates,
proposes to petition or address; Sections respond with sullen brevity of
negation. Lafayette flings down his Commission; appears in civic pepper-
and-salt frock; and cannot be flattered back again;--not in less than three
days; and by unheard-of entreaty; National Guards kneeling to him, and
declaring that it is not sycophancy, that they are free men kneeling here
to the Statue of Liberty. For the rest, those Centre Grenadiers of the
Observatoire are disbanded,--yet indeed are reinlisted, all but fourteen,
under a new name, and with new quarters. The King must keep his Easter in
Paris: meditating much on this singular posture of things: but as good as
determined now to fly from it, desire being whetted by difficulty.
Chapter 2.4.II.
Easter at Paris.
For above a year, ever since March 1790, it would seem, there has hovered a
project of Flight before the royal mind; and ever and anon has been
condensing itself into something like a purpose; but this or the other
difficulty always vaporised it again. It seems so full of risks, perhaps
of civil war itself; above all, it cannot be done without effort.
Somnolent laziness will not serve: to fly, if not in a leather vache, one
must verily stir himself. Better to adopt that Constitution of theirs;
execute it so as to shew all men that it is inexecutable? Better or not so
good; surely it is easier. To all difficulties you need only say, There is
a lion in the path, behold your Constitution will not act! For a somnolent
person it requires no effort to counterfeit death,--as Dame de Stael and
Friends of Liberty can see the King's Government long doing, faisant le
mort.
Nay now, when desire whetted by difficulty has brought the matter to a
head, and the royal mind no longer halts between two, what can come of it?
Grant that poor Louis were safe with Bouille, what on the whole could he
look for there? Exasperated Tickets of Entry answer, Much, all. But cold
Reason answers, Little almost nothing. Is not loyalty a law of Nature? ask
the Tickets of Entry. Is not love of your King, and even death for him,
the glory of all Frenchmen,--except these few Democrats? Let Democrat
Constitution-builders see what they will do without their Keystone; and
France rend its hair, having lost the Hereditary Representative!
Thus will King Louis fly; one sees not reasonably towards what. As a
maltreated Boy, shall we say, who, having a Stepmother, rushes sulky into
the wide world; and will wring the paternal heart?--Poor Louis escapes from
known unsupportable evils, to an unknown mixture of good and evil, coloured
by Hope. He goes, as Rabelais did when dying, to seek a great May-be: je
vais chercher un grand Peut-etre! As not only the sulky Boy but the wise
grown Man is obliged to do, so often, in emergencies.
For the rest, there is still no lack of stimulants, and stepdame
maltreatments, to keep one's resolution at the due pitch. Factious
disturbance ceases not: as indeed how can they, unless authoritatively
conjured, in a Revolt which is by nature bottomless? If the ceasing of
faction be the price of the King's somnolence, he may awake when he will,
and take wing.
Remark, in any case, what somersets and contortions a dead Catholicism is
making,--skilfully galvanised: hideous, and even piteous, to behold!
Jurant and Dissident, with their shaved crowns, argue frothing everywhere;
or are ceasing to argue, and stripping for battle. In Paris was scourging
while need continued: contrariwise, in the Morbihan of Brittany, without
scourging, armed Peasants are up, roused by pulpit-drum, they know not why.
General Dumouriez, who has got missioned thitherward, finds all in sour
heat of darkness; finds also that explanation and conciliation will still
do much. (Deux Amis, v. 410-21; Dumouriez, ii. c. 5.)
But again, consider this: that his Holiness, Pius Sixth, has seen good to
excommunicate Bishop Talleyrand! Surely, we will say then, considering it,
there is no living or dead Church in the Earth that has not the
indubitablest right to excommunicate Talleyrand. Pope Pius has right and
might, in his way. But truly so likewise has Father Adam, ci-devant
Marquis Saint-Huruge, in his way. Behold, therefore, on the Fourth of May,
in the Palais-Royal, a mixed loud-sounding multitude; in the middle of
whom, Father Adam, bull-voiced Saint-Huruge, in white hat, towers visible
and audible. With him, it is said, walks Journalist Gorsas, walk many
others of the washed sort; for no authority will interfere. Pius Sixth,
with his plush and tiara, and power of the Keys, they bear aloft: of
natural size,--made of lath and combustible gum. Royou, the King's Friend,
is borne too in effigy; with a pile of Newspaper King's-Friends, condemned
numbers of the Ami-du-Roi; fit fuel of the sacrifice. Speeches are spoken;
a judgment is held, a doom proclaimed, audible in bull-voice, towards the
four winds. And thus, amid great shouting, the holocaust is consummated,
under the summer sky; and our lath-and-gum Holiness, with the attendant
victims, mounts up in flame, and sinks down in ashes; a decomposed Pope:
and right or might, among all the parties, has better or worse accomplished
itself, as it could. (Hist. Parl. x. 99-102.) But, on the whole,
reckoning from Martin Luther in the Marketplace of Wittenberg to Marquis
Saint-Huruge in this Palais-Royal of Paris, what a journey have we gone;
into what strange territories has it carried us! No Authority can now
interfere. Nay Religion herself, mourning for such things, may after all
ask, What have I to do with them?
In such extraordinary manner does dead Catholicism somerset and caper,
skilfully galvanised. For, does the reader inquire into the subject-matter
of controversy in this case; what the difference between Orthodoxy or My-
doxy and Heterodoxy or Thy-doxy might here be? My-doxy is that an august
National Assembly can equalize the extent of Bishopricks; that an equalized
Bishop, his Creed and Formularies being left quite as they were, can swear
Fidelity to King, Law and Nation, and so become a Constitutional Bishop.
Thy-doxy, if thou be Dissident, is that he cannot; but that he must become
an accursed thing. Human ill-nature needs but some Homoiousian iota, or
even the pretence of one; and will flow copiously through the eye of a
needle: thus always must mortals go jargoning and fuming,
And, like the ancient Stoics in their porches
With fierce dispute maintain their churches.
This Auto-da-fe of Saint-Huruge's was on the Fourth of May, 1791. Royalty
sees it; but says nothing.
Chapter 2.4.III.
Count Fersen.
Royalty, in fact, should, by this time, be far on with its preparations.
Unhappily much preparation is needful: could a Hereditary Representative
be carried in leather vache, how easy were it! But it is not so.
New clothes are needed, as usual, in all Epic transactions, were it in the
grimmest iron ages; consider 'Queen Chrimhilde, with her sixty
semstresses,' in that iron Nibelungen Song! No Queen can stir without new
clothes. Therefore, now, Dame Campan whisks assiduous to this mantua-maker
and to that: and there is clipping of frocks and gowns, upper clothes and
under, great and small; such a clipping and sewing, as might have been
dispensed with. Moreover, her Majesty cannot go a step anywhither without
her Necessaire; dear Necessaire, of inlaid ivory and rosewood; cunningly
devised; which holds perfumes, toilet-implements, infinite small queenlike
furnitures: Necessary to terrestrial life. Not without a cost of some
five hundred louis, of much precious time, and difficult hoodwinking which
does not blind, can this same Necessary of life be forwarded by the
Flanders Carriers,--never to get to hand. (Campan, ii. c. 18.) All which,
you would say, augurs ill for the prospering of the enterprise. But the
whims of women and queens must be humoured.
Bouille, on his side, is making a fortified Camp at Montmedi; gathering
Royal-Allemand, and all manner of other German and true French Troops
thither, 'to watch the Austrians.' His Majesty will not cross the
Frontiers, unless on compulsion. Neither shall the Emigrants be much
employed, hateful as they are to all people. (Bouille, Memoires, ii. c.
10.) Nor shall old war-god Broglie have any hand in the business; but
solely our brave Bouille; to whom, on the day of meeting, a Marshal's Baton
shall be delivered, by a rescued King, amid the shouting of all the troops.
In the meanwhile, Paris being so suspicious, were it not perhaps good to
write your Foreign Ambassadors an ostensible Constitutional Letter;
desiring all Kings and men to take heed that King Louis loves the
Constitution, that he has voluntarily sworn, and does again swear, to
maintain the same, and will reckon those his enemies who affect to say
otherwise? Such a Constitutional circular is despatched by Couriers, is
communicated confidentially to the Assembly, and printed in all Newspapers;
with the finest effect. (Moniteur, Seance du 23 Avril, 1791.) Simulation
and dissimulation mingle extensively in human affairs.
We observe, however, that Count Fersen is often using his Ticket of Entry;
which surely he has clear right to do. A gallant Soldier and Swede,
devoted to this fair Queen;--as indeed the Highest Swede now is. Has not
King Gustav, famed fiery Chevalier du Nord, sworn himself, by the old laws
of chivalry, her Knight? He will descend on fire-wings, of Swedish
musketry, and deliver her from these foul dragons,--if, alas, the
assassin's pistol intervene not!
But, in fact, Count Fersen does seem a likely young soldier, of alert
decisive ways: he circulates widely, seen, unseen; and has business on
hand. Also Colonel the Duke de Choiseul, nephew of Choiseul the great, of
Choiseul the now deceased; he and Engineer Goguelat are passing and
repassing between Metz and the Tuileries; and Letters go in cipher,--one of
them, a most important one, hard to decipher; Fersen having ciphered it in
haste. (Choiseul, Relation du Depart de Louis XVI. (Paris, 1822), p. 39.)
As for Duke de Villequier, he is gone ever since the Day of Poniards; but
his Apartment is useful for her Majesty.
On the other side, poor Commandment Gouvion, watching at the Tuileries,
second in National Command, sees several things hard to interpret. It is
the same Gouvion who sat, long months ago, at the Townhall, gazing helpless
into that Insurrection of Women; motionless, as the brave stabled steed
when conflagration rises, till Usher Maillard snatched his drum. Sincerer
Patriot there is not; but many a shiftier. He, if Dame Campan gossip
credibly, is paying some similitude of love-court to a certain false
Chambermaid of the Palace, who betrays much to him: the Necessaire, the
clothes, the packing of the jewels, (Campan, ii. 141.)--could he understand
it when betrayed. Helpless Gouvion gazes with sincere glassy eyes into it;
stirs up his sentries to vigilence; walks restless to and fro; and hopes
the best.
But, on the whole, one finds that, in the second week of June, Colonel de
Choiseul is privately in Paris; having come 'to see his children.' Also
that Fersen has got a stupendous new Coach built, of the kind named
Berline; done by the first artists; according to a model: they bring it
home to him, in Choiseul's presence; the two friends take a proof-drive in
it, along the streets; in meditative mood; then send it up to 'Madame
Sullivan's, in the Rue de Clichy,' far North, to wait there till wanted.
Apparently a certain Russian Baroness de Korff, with Waiting-woman, Valet,
and two Children, will travel homewards with some state: in whom these
young military gentlemen take interest? A Passport has been procured for
her; and much assistance shewn, with Coach-builders and such like;--so
helpful polite are young military men. Fersen has likewise purchased a
Chaise fit for two, at least for two waiting-maids; further, certain
necessary horses: one would say, he is himself quitting France, not without
outlay? We observe finally that their Majesties, Heaven willing, will
assist at Corpus-Christi Day, this blessed Summer Solstice, in Assumption
Church, here at Paris, to the joy of all the world. For which same day,
moreover, brave Bouille, at Metz, as we find, has invited a party of
friends to dinner; but indeed is gone from home, in the interim, over to
Montmedi.
These are of the Phenomena, or visual Appearances, of this wide-working
terrestrial world: which truly is all phenomenal, what they call spectral;
and never rests at any moment; one never at any moment can know why.
On Monday night, the Twentieth of June 1791, about eleven o'clock, there is
many a hackney-coach, and glass-coach (carrosse de remise), still rumbling,
or at rest, on the streets of Paris. But of all Glass-coaches, we
recommend this to thee, O Reader, which stands drawn up, in the Rue de
l'Echelle, hard by the Carrousel and outgate of the Tuileries; in the Rue
de l'Echelle that then was; 'opposite Ronsin the saddler's door,' as if
waiting for a fare there! Not long does it wait: a hooded Dame, with two
hooded Children has issued from Villequier's door, where no sentry walks,
into the Tuileries Court-of-Princes; into the Carrousel; into the Rue de
l'Echelle; where the Glass-coachman readily admits them; and again waits.
Not long; another Dame, likewise hooded or shrouded, leaning on a servant,
issues in the same manner, by the Glass-coachman, cheerfully admitted.
Whither go, so many Dames? 'Tis His Majesty's Couchee, Majesty just gone
to bed, and all the Palace-world is retiring home. But the Glass-coachman
still waits; his fare seemingly incomplete.
By and by, we note a thickset Individual, in round hat and peruke, arm-and-
arm with some servant, seemingly of the Runner or Courier sort; he also
issues through Villequier's door; starts a shoebuckle as he passes one of
the sentries, stoops down to clasp it again; is however, by the Glass-
coachman, still more cheerfully admitted. And now, is his fare complete?
Not yet; the Glass-coachman still waits.--Alas! and the false Chambermaid
has warned Gouvion that she thinks the Royal Family will fly this very
night; and Gouvion distrusting his own glazed eyes, has sent express for
Lafayette; and Lafayette's Carriage, flaring with lights, rolls this moment
through the inner Arch of the Carrousel,--where a Lady shaded in broad
gypsy-hat, and leaning on the arm of a servant, also of the Runner or
Courier sort, stands aside to let it pass, and has even the whim to touch a
spoke of it with her badine,--light little magic rod which she calls
badine, such as the Beautiful then wore. The flare of Lafayette's
Carriage, rolls past: all is found quiet in the Court-of-Princes; sentries
at their post; Majesties' Apartments closed in smooth rest. Your false
Chambermaid must have been mistaken? Watch thou, Gouvion, with Argus'
vigilance; for, of a truth, treachery is within these walls.
But where is the Lady that stood aside in gypsy hat, and touched the wheel-
spoke with her badine? O Reader, that Lady that touched the wheel-spoke
was the Queen of France! She has issued safe through that inner Arch, into
the Carrousel itself; but not into the Rue de l'Echelle. Flurried by the
rattle and rencounter, she took the right hand not the left; neither she
nor her Courier knows Paris; he indeed is no Courier, but a loyal stupid
ci-devant Bodyguard disguised as one. They are off, quite wrong, over the
Pont Royal and River; roaming disconsolate in the Rue du Bac; far from the
Glass-coachman, who still waits. Waits, with flutter of heart; with
thoughts--which he must button close up, under his jarvie surtout!
Midnight clangs from all the City-steeples; one precious hour has been
spent so; most mortals are asleep. The Glass-coachman waits; and what
mood! A brother jarvie drives up, enters into conversation; is answered
cheerfully in jarvie dialect: the brothers of the whip exchange a pinch of
snuff; (Weber, ii. 340-2; Choiseul, p. 44-56.) decline drinking together;
and part with good night. Be the Heavens blest! here at length is the
Queen-lady, in gypsy-hat; safe after perils; who has had to inquire her
way. She too is admitted; her Courier jumps aloft, as the other, who is
also a disguised Bodyguard, has done: and now, O Glass-coachman of a
thousand,--Count Fersen, for the Reader sees it is thou,--drive!
Dust shall not stick to the hoofs of Fersen: crack! crack! the Glass-coach
rattles, and every soul breathes lighter. But is Fersen on the right road?
Northeastward, to the Barrier of Saint-Martin and Metz Highway, thither
were we bound: and lo, he drives right Northward! The royal Individual,
in round hat and peruke, sits astonished; but right or wrong, there is no
remedy. Crack, crack, we go incessant, through the slumbering City.
Seldom, since Paris rose out of mud, or the Longhaired Kings went in
Bullock-carts, was there such a drive. Mortals on each hand of you, close
by, stretched out horizontal, dormant; and we alive and quaking! Crack,
crack, through the Rue de Grammont; across the Boulevard; up the Rue de la
Chaussee d'Antin,--these windows, all silent, of Number 42, were
Mirabeau's. Towards the Barrier not of Saint-Martin, but of Clichy on the
utmost North! Patience, ye royal Individuals; Fersen understands what he
is about. Passing up the Rue de Clichy, he alights for one moment at
Madame Sullivan's: "Did Count Fersen's Coachman get the Baroness de
Korff's new Berline?"--"Gone with it an hour-and-half ago," grumbles
responsive the drowsy Porter.--"C'est bien." Yes, it is well;--though had
not such hour-and half been lost, it were still better. Forth therefore, O
Fersen, fast, by the Barrier de Clichy; then Eastward along the Outward
Boulevard, what horses and whipcord can do!
Thus Fersen drives, through the ambrosial night. Sleeping Paris is now all
on the right hand of him; silent except for some snoring hum; and now he is
Eastward as far as the Barrier de Saint-Martin; looking earnestly for
Baroness de Korff's Berline. This Heaven's Berline he at length does
descry, drawn up with its six horses, his own German Coachman waiting on
the box. Right, thou good German: now haste, whither thou knowest!--And
as for us of the Glass-coach, haste too, O haste; much time is already
lost! The august Glass-coach fare, six Insides, hastily packs itself into
the new Berline; two Bodyguard Couriers behind. The Glass-coach itself is
turned adrift, its head towards the City; to wander whither it lists,--and
be found next morning tumbled in a ditch. But Fersen is on the new box,
with its brave new hammer-cloths; flourishing his whip; he bolts forward
towards Bondy. There a third and final Bodyguard Courier of ours ought
surely to be, with post-horses ready-ordered. There likewise ought that
purchased Chaise, with the two Waiting-maids and their bandboxes to be;
whom also her Majesty could not travel without. Swift, thou deft Fersen,
and may the Heavens turn it well!
Once more, by Heaven's blessing, it is all well. Here is the sleeping
Hamlet of Bondy; Chaise with Waiting-women; horses all ready, and
postillions with their churn-boots, impatient in the dewy dawn. Brief
harnessing done, the postillions with their churn-boots vault into the
saddles; brandish circularly their little noisy whips. Fersen, under his
jarvie-surtout, bends in lowly silent reverence of adieu; royal hands wave
speechless in expressible response; Baroness de Korff's Berline, with the
Royalty of France, bounds off: for ever, as it proved. Deft Fersen dashes
obliquely Northward, through the country, towards Bougret; gains Bougret,
finds his German Coachman and chariot waiting there; cracks off, and drives
undiscovered into unknown space. A deft active man, we say; what he
undertook to do is nimbly and successfully done.
A so the Royalty of France is actually fled? This precious night, the
shortest of the year, it flies and drives! Baroness de Korff is, at
bottom, Dame de Tourzel, Governess of the Royal Children: she who came
hooded with the two hooded little ones; little Dauphin; little Madame
Royale, known long afterwards as Duchess d'Angouleme. Baroness de Korff's
Waiting-maid is the Queen in gypsy-hat. The royal Individual in round hat
and peruke, he is Valet, for the time being. That other hooded Dame,
styled Travelling-companion, is kind Sister Elizabeth; she had sworn, long
since, when the Insurrection of Women was, that only death should part her
and them. And so they rush there, not too impetuously, through the Wood of
Bondy:--over a Rubicon in their own and France's History.
Great; though the future is all vague! If we reach Bouille? If we do not
reach him? O Louis! and this all round thee is the great slumbering Earth
(and overhead, the great watchful Heaven); the slumbering Wood of Bondy,--
where Longhaired Childeric Donothing was struck through with iron;
(Henault, Abrege Chronologique, p. 36.) not unreasonably. These peaked
stone-towers are Raincy; towers of wicked d'Orleans. All slumbers save the
multiplex rustle of our new Berline. Loose-skirted scarecrow of an Herb-
merchant, with his ass and early greens, toilsomely plodding, seems the
only creature we meet. But right ahead the great North-East sends up
evermore his gray brindled dawn: from dewy branch, birds here and there,
with short deep warble, salute the coming Sun. Stars fade out, and
Galaxies; Street-lamps of the City of God. The Universe, O my brothers, is
flinging wide its portals for the Levee of the GREAT HIGH KING. Thou, poor
King Louis, farest nevertheless, as mortals do, towards Orient lands of
Hope; and the Tuileries with its Levees, and France and the Earth itself,
is but a larger kind of doghutch,--occasionally going rabid.
Chapter 2.4.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!
Chapter 2.4.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.
Chapter 2.4.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!
Chapter 2.4.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!