The French Revolution: A History

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?