History of the Girondists Part 22

At these words the a.s.sembly rose as if by common consent. Every hand was raised in the att.i.tude of men ready to take a solemn oath; the tribunes and the chamber confounded their applause, and the decree was pa.s.sed.

M. de Lessart, whom the gesture and the allusion of Guadet seemed to have already designated as the victim to the suspicions of the people, could not remain silent under the weight of these terrible allusions.

"Mention has been made," said he, "of the political agents of the executive power: I declare that I know nothing which can authorise us to suspect their fidelity. For my own part, I will repeat the declaration of my colleagues in the ministry, and adopt it for my own--the const.i.tution or death."

Whilst Gensonne and Guadet aroused the a.s.sembly by this preconcerted scene, Vergniaud aroused the crowd by the copy of an address to the French people, which had been spread abroad for the last few days amongst the ma.s.ses. The Girondists remembered the effect produced two years previously by the proposed address to the king to dismiss the troops.

"Frenchmen," said Vergniaud, "war threatens your frontiers; conspiracies against liberty are rife. Your armies are a.s.sembling: mighty movements agitate the empire. Seditious priests prepare in the confessional, and even in the pulpit, a rising against the const.i.tution; martial law becomes essential. Thus it appeared to us just. But we only succeeded in brandishing the thunderbolts for a moment before the eyes of the rebels--the king has refused to sanction our decrees; the German princes make their territories a stronghold for the conspirators against us.

They favour the plots of the emigres, and furnish them with an asylum, arms, horses, and provisions. Can patience endure this without becoming guilty of suicide? Doubtless you have renounced the desire of conquest; but you have not promised to suffer insolent provocation. You have shaken off the yoke of tyrants; surely, then, you will not bow the knee to foreign despots? Beware! you are surrounded by snares; traitors seek to reduce you through disgust or fatigue to a state of languor that enervates your courage; and soon perhaps they will strive to lead it astray. They seek to separate you from us; they pursue a system of calumny against the National a.s.sembly to criminate the Revolution in your eyes. Oh, beware of these excessive terrors! Repulse indignantly these impostors, who, whilst they affect an hypocritical zeal for the const.i.tution, yet unceasingly speak of the _monarchy_. The _monarchy_ is to them the counter-revolution. The _monarchy_ is the _n.o.bility_; the counter-revolution--that is taxation, the feudal system, the Bastille, chains, and executions, to punish the sublime impulses of liberty.

Foreign satellites in the interior of the state--bankruptcy, engulphing with your _a.s.signats_ your private fortunes and the national wealth--the fury of fanaticism, of vengeance, murder, rapine, conflagration, despotism, and slaughter, contending, in rivers of blood and over the heaps of dead, for the mastery of your unhappy country. n.o.bility; that is, two cla.s.ses of men, one for greatness, the other for poverty; one for tyranny, the other for slavery. n.o.bility; ah! the very word is an insult to the human race.

"And yet it is to ensure the success of this conspiracy against you that all Europe is in arms.--You must annihilate these guilty hopes by a solemn declaration. Yes, the representatives of France, free, and deeply attached to the const.i.tution, will be buried beneath her ruins, rather than suffer a capitulation unworthy of them to be wrung from them. Rally yourselves, take courage! In vain do they strive to excite the nations against you, they will only excite the princes, for the hearts of the people are with you, and you embrace their cause by defending your own.

Hate war: it is the greatest crime of mankind, and the most fearful scourge of humanity; but since it is forced on you, follow the course of your destiny. Who can foresee how far will extend the punishment of those tyrants who have forced you to take arms?" Thus, these three statesmen joined their voices to impel the nation to war.

IV.

The last words of Vergniaud gave the people a tolerably clear prospect of an universal republic. Nor were the const.i.tutionalists less eager in directing the ideas of the nation towards war. M. de Narbonne, on his return from his hasty journey, presented a most encouraging report to the a.s.sembly, of the state of the fortified towns.--He praised every one. He presented to the country the young Mathieu de Montmorency, one of the most ill.u.s.trious names of France, and whose character was even more n.o.ble than his name, as the representative of the aristocracy devoting itself to liberty. He declared that the army, in its attachment to its country did not separate the King from the a.s.sembly. He praised the commanders of the troops, nominated Rochambeau general-in-chief of the army of the north, Berthier at Metz, Biron at Lisle, Luckner and La Fayette on the Rhine. He spoke of plans for the campaign, concerted between the king and these officers; he enumerated the national guards, ready to serve as a second line to the active army, and solicited that they should be promptly armed; he described these volunteers, as giving the army the most imposing of all characters--that of national feeling; he vouched for the officers, who had sworn fidelity to the const.i.tution, and exonerated from the charge of treason those who had not done so; he encouraged the a.s.sembly to mistrust those that hesitated. "Mistrust,"

said he, "is, in these stormy times, the most natural, but the most dangerous feeling; confidence wins men's hearts, and it is important that the people should show they have friends only." He ended by announcing that the active force of the army was 110,000 foot, and 20,000 cavalry, ready to take the field.

This report, praised by Brissot in his journal, and by the Girondists in the a.s.sembly, afforded no longer any pretext for delaying the war.

France felt that her strength was equal to her indignation, and she could be restrained no longer. The increasing unpopularity of the king augmented the popular excitement. Twice had he already arrested, by his royal _veto_, the energetic measures of the a.s.sembly--the decree against the emigres, and the decree against the priests who had not taken the oath. These two _vetos_, the one dictated by his honour, the other by his conscience, were two terrible weapons, placed in his hand by the const.i.tution, yet which he could not wield without wounding himself. The Girondists revenged themselves for this resistance by compelling him to make war on the princes, who were his brothers, and the emperor, whom they believed to be his accomplice.

The pamphleteers and the Jacobin journalists constantly spoke of these two _vetos_ as acts of treason. The disturbances in Vendee were attributed to a secret understanding between the king and the rebellious clergy. In vain did the department of Paris, composed of men who respected the conscience of others, such as M. de Talleyrand, M. de la Rochefoucauld, and M. de Beaumetz, present to the king a pet.i.tion in which the true principles of liberty protested against the revolutionary inquisition: counter-pet.i.tions poured in from the departments.

V.

Camille Desmoulins, the Voltaire of the clubs, lent to the pet.i.tion of the citizens of Paris that insolent raillery, which made the success of his talent.

"Worthy representatives," ran the pet.i.tion[13], "applauses are the civil list of the people, therefore do not reject ours. To collect the homages of good citizens, and the insults of the bad, is, to a National a.s.sembly, to have combined all suffrages. The king has put his _veto_ to your decree against the emigrants, a decree equally worthy of the majesty of the Roman people and the clemency of the French people. We do not complain of this act of the king, because we remember the maxim of the great politician Machiavel, which we beg of you to meditate upon profoundly--_It is against nature to fall voluntarily from such a height_. Penetrated with this truth, we do not then require from the king an impossible love for the const.i.tution, nor do we find fault that he is opposed to your best decisions. But let public functionaries foresee the royal veto, and declare their rebellion against your decree, against the priests; let them carry off public opinion; let these men be precisely the same who caused to be shot in the Champ-de-Mars the citizens who were signing a pet.i.tion against a decree which was not yet decided upon; let them inundate the empire with copies of this pet.i.tion, which is nothing more than the first leaf of a great counter-revolutionary register and a subscription for civil war sent for signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all permanent slaves.

Fathers of the country! there is here such complicated ingrat.i.tude and abuse of confidence, of contradiction and chicanery, of prevarication and treason, that profoundly indignant at so much wickedness concealed beneath the cloak of philosophy and hypocritical civism, we say to you--Your decree has saved the country, and if they are obstinate in refusing you permission to save the country, well, the nation will save itself, for, after all, the power of a _veto_ has a termination--a veto does not prevent the taking of the Bastille.

"You are told that the salary of the priests was a national debt. But when you only request the priests to declare that they will not be seditious--are not they who refuse this declaration already seditious in their hearts? And these seditious priests, who have never lent anything to the state--who are only creditors of the state in the name of benevolence--have they not a thousand times forfeited the donation through their ingrat.i.tude? Away, then, with these miserable sophisms, fathers of the country, and have no more doubt of the omnipotence of a free people. If liberty slumbers, how can the arm act? Do not raise this arm again, do not again lift the national club to crush insects. Did Cato and Cicero proceed against Cethegus or Catiline? It is the chiefs we should a.s.sail: strike at the head."

A scornful laugh echoed from the tribunes of the a.s.sembly to the populace. The _proces-verbal_ of this sitting was ordered to be sent to the eighty-three departments. Next day the a.s.sembly reconsidered this, and negatived its vote of the previous evening; but publicity was still given to it, and it echoed through the provinces, carrying with it the disquietude, derision, and hatred attached to the _Royal Veto_. The const.i.tution, handed over to ridicule and hooted in full a.s.sembly, had now become the plaything of the populace.

For many months the state of the kingdom resembled the state of Paris.

All was uproar, confusion, denunciation, disturbance in the departments.

Each courier brought his riots, seditions, pet.i.tions, outbreaks, and a.s.sa.s.sinations. The clubs established as many points of resistance to the const.i.tution as there were communes in the empire. The civil war hatching in La Vendee burst out by ma.s.sacres at Avignon.

VI.

This city and comtal, united to France by the recent decree of the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, had remained from this period in an intermediary state between two dominations, so favourable to anarchy. The partisans of the papal government, and the partisans of the reunion with France, struggled there in alternations of hope and fear, which prolonged and envenomed their hate. The king, from a religious scruple, had for too long suspended the execution of the decree of reunion. Trembling to infringe upon the domain of the church, he deferred his decision, and his impolitic delays gave time for crimes.

France was represented in Avignon by mediators. The provisional authority of these mediators was supported by a detachment of troops of the line. The power, entirely munic.i.p.al, was confided to the dictatorship of the munic.i.p.ality. The populace, excited and agitated, was divided into the French or revolutionary party, and the party opposed to the reunion by France and the Revolution. The fanaticism of religion with one, the fanaticism of liberty with the other, impelled the two parties even to crimes. The warmth of blood, the thirst of private vengeance, the heat of the climate, all added to civil pa.s.sions.

The violences of Italian republics were all to be seen in the manners of this Italian colony, of this branch establishment of Rome on the banks of the Rhone. The smaller states are, the more atrocious are their civil wars. There opposite opinions become personal hatreds; contests are but a.s.sa.s.sinations. Avignon commenced these wholesale a.s.sa.s.sinations by private murders.

On the 16th of October a gloomy agitation betrayed itself by the mobs of people collecting on various points, particularly consisting of persons enemies of the Revolution. The walls of the church were covered with placards, calling on the people to revolt against the provisional authority of the munic.i.p.ality. There were bruited about rumours of absurd miracles, which demanded in the name of Heaven vengeance for the a.s.saults made against religion. A statue of the Virgin worshipped by the people in the church of the Cordeliers had blushed at the profanations of her temple. She had been seen to shed tears of indignation and grief.

The people, educated under the papal government in such superst.i.tious credulities, had gone in a body to the Cordeliers to avenge the cause of their protectress. Animated by fanatical exhortations, confiding in the divine interposition, the mob, on quitting the Cordeliers, and increasing as it went, hurried to the ramparts, closed the doors, turned the cannon on the city, and then spread themselves through the streets, demanding with loud clamours the overthrow of the government. The unfortunate Lescuyer, notary of Avignon, secretary (_greffier_) of the munic.i.p.ality, more particularly pointed out to the fury of the mob, was dragged violently from his residence, and along the pavement to the altar of the Cordeliers, where he was murdered by sabre-strokes and blows from bludgeons, trampled under foot, his dead body outraged and cast as an expiatory victim at the feet of the offended statue. The national guard, having despatched a detachment with two pieces of cannon from the fort, drove back the infuriated populace, and picked from the pavement the naked and lifeless carcase of Lescuyer. The prisons of the city had been broken open, and the miscreants they contained came to offer their a.s.sistance for other murders. Horrible reprisals were feared, and yet the mediators, absent from the city, were asleep, or closed their eyes upon the actual danger. The understanding between the leaders of the Paris clubs and the rioters of Avignon became more fearfully intimate.

VII.

One of those sinister persons who seem to smell blood and presage crime, reached Avignon from Versailles: his name was Jourdan. He is not to be confounded with another revolutionist of the same name, born at Avignon.

Sprung from the arid and calcined mountains of the south, where the very brutes are more ferocious; by turns butcher, farrier, and smuggler, in the gorges which separate Savoy from France; a soldier, deserter, horse-jobber, and then a keeper of a low wine shop in the suburbs of Paris; he had wallowed in all the lowest vices of the dregs of a metropolis. The first murders committed by the people in the streets of Paris had disclosed his real character. It was not that of contest but of murder. He appeared after the carnage to mangle the victims, and render the a.s.sa.s.sination fouler. He was a butcher of men, and he boasted of it. It was he who had thrust his hands into the open b.r.e.a.s.t.s and plucked forth the hearts of Foulon and Berthier.[14] It was he who had cut off the head of the two _gardes-du-corps_, de Varicourt and des Huttes, at Versailles, on the 6th of October. It was he who, entering Paris, bearing the two heads at the end of a pike, reproached the people with being content with so little, and having made him go so far to cut off only two heads! He hoped for better things at Avignon, and went thither.

There was at Avignon a body of volunteers called the army of Vaucluse, formed of the dregs of that country, and commanded by one Patrix. This Patrix having been a.s.sa.s.sinated by his troop, whose excesses he desired to moderate, Jourdan was elevated to the command by the claims of sedition and wickedness. The soldiers, when reproached with their robberies and murders, similar to those of the _Gueux_ of Belgium, and the _sans-culottes_ of Paris, received the reproach as an honour, and called themselves the _brave brigands_ of Avignon. Jourdan at the head of this band, ravaged and fired le Comtal, laid siege to Carpentras, was repulsed, lost five hundred men, and fell back upon Avignon, still shuddering at the murder of Lescuyer. He resolved on lending his arm and his troop to the vengeance of the French party. On the 30th of August Jourdan and his myrmidons closed the city-gates, dispersed through the streets, going to the houses noted as containing enemies to the Revolution, dragging out the inhabitants--men, women, aged persons, and children,--all, without distinction of age, s.e.x or innocence, and shut them up in the palace. When night came, the a.s.sa.s.sins broke down the doors and murdered with iron crow-bars these disarmed and supplicating victims. In vain did they shriek to the national guard for aid: the city hears the ma.s.sacre without daring to give any signs of animation. The daring of the crime chilled and paralysed every citizen. The murderers preluded the death of the females by derision and insults which added shame to terror, and the agonies of modesty to the pangs of murder. When there were no more to be slain they mutilated the carcases, and swept the blood into the sewer of the palace. They dragged the mutilated corpses to La Glaciere, walled them up, and the vengeance of the people was stamped upon them. Jourdan and his satellites offered the homage of this night to the French mediators and the National a.s.sembly. The scoundrels of Paris admired--the a.s.sembly shook with indignation, and considered this crime as an outrage; whilst the president fainted on reading the recital of this night at Avignon. The arrest of Jourdan and his accomplices was commanded. Jourdan fled from Avignon, pursued by the French; he dashed his horse in to the river of the Sargue: caught in the middle of the river, by a soldier, he fired at him and missed. He was seized and bound, and punishment awarded him, but the Jacobins compelled the Girondists to agree to an amnesty for the crimes of Avignon. Jourdan making sure of impunity, and proud of his iniquities, went thither to be revenged on his denouncers.

The a.s.sembly shuddered for a moment at the sight of this blood, and then hastily turned its eyes away. In its impatience to reign alone, it had not the time to display pity. There was, besides, between the Girondists and the Jacobins a contest for leadership, and a rivalry in going a-head of the Revolution, which made each of the two factions afraid that the other should be in advance. Dead bodies did not make them pause, and tears shed for too long a time might have been taken for weakness.

VIII.

However, victims multiplied daily, and disasters followed disasters. The whole empire seemed ready to fall and crush its founders. San Domingo, the richest of the French colonies, was swimming in blood. France was punished for its egotism. The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly had proclaimed, in principle, the liberty of the blacks, but, in fact, slavery still existed. Two hundred thousand slaves served as human cattle to some thousands of colonists. They were bought and sold, and cut and maimed, as if they were inanimate objects. They were kept by speculation out of the civil law, and out of the religious law. Property, family, marriage, all was forbidden to them. Care was taken to degrade them below men, to preserve the right of treating them as brutes. If some unions furtive, or favoured by cupidity, were formed amongst them, the wife and children belonged to the master. They were sold separately, without any regard to the ties of nature, all the attachments with which G.o.d has formed the chain of human sympathies were rent asunder without commiseration.

This crime _en ma.s.se_, this systematic brutality, had its theorists and apologists; human faculties were denied to the blacks. They were cla.s.sed as a race between the flesh and the spirit. Thus the infamous abuse of power, which was exercised over this inert and servile race, was called necessary guardianship. Tyrants have never wanted sophists: on the other hand, men of right feeling towards their fellows, who had, like Gregoire, Raynal, Barnave, Brissot, Condorcet, La Fayette, embraced the cause of humanity, and formed the "_Society of the Friends of the Blacks_" had circulated their principles in the colonies, like a vengeance rather than as justice. These principles had burst forth without preparation, and unantic.i.p.ated in colonial society, where truth had no organ but insurrection. Philosophy proclaims principles; politics administer them; the friends of the blacks were contented with proclaiming them. France had not had courage to dispossess and indemnify her colonists: she had acquired liberty for herself alone: she adjourned, as she still adjourns at the moment I write these lines, the reparation for the crime of slavery in her colonies: could she be astonished that slavery should seek to avenge herself, and that liberty, warmly proclaimed in Paris, should not become an insurrection at San Domingo? Every iniquity that a free society allows to subsist for the profit of the oppressor, is a sword with which she herself arms the oppressed. Right is the most dangerous of weapons; woe to him who leaves it to his enemies!

IX.

San Domingo proved this. Fifty thousand black slaves rose in one night at the instigation, and under the command, of the mulattoes, or men of colour. The men of colour, the intermediary race, springing from white colonists and black slaves, were not slaves, neither were they citizens.

They were a kind of freedmen, with the defects and virtues of the two races; the pride of the whites, the degradation of the blacks: a fluctuating race who, by turning sometimes to the side of the slaves, sometimes to that of the masters, inevitably produced those terrible oscillations which inevitably superinduce the overthrow of society.

The mulattoes, who themselves possessed slaves, had begun by making common cause with the colonists, and by opposing the emanc.i.p.ation of the blacks more obstinately than even the whites themselves. The nearer they were to slavery, the more doggedly did they defend their share in tyranny. Man is thus made: none is more ready to abuse his right than he who, with difficulty, has acquired it; there are no tyrants worse than slaves, and no men prouder than _parvenus_.

The men of colour had all the vices of _parvenus_ of liberty. But when they perceived that the whites despised them as a mingled race, that the Revolution had not effaced the tinge of their skin, and the injurious prejudices which were attached to their colour; when they in vain claimed for themselves the exercise of civil rights, which the colonists opposed, they pa.s.sed with the impetuosity and levity of their conduct from one pa.s.sion to another, from one party to the other, and made common cause with the oppressed race. Their habits of command, fortune, intelligence, energy, boldness, naturally pointed them out as the leaders of the blacks. They fraternised with them, they became popular amongst the blacks, from the very tinge of skin for which they had recently blushed, when in company with the whites. They secretly fomented the germs of insurrection at the nightly meetings of the slaves. They kept up a clandestine correspondence with the friends of the blacks in Paris. They spread widely in the huts, speeches and papers from Paris, which instructed the colonists in their duties and informed the slaves of their indefeasible rights. The rights of man, commented upon by vengeance, became the catechism of all dwellings.

The whites trembled; terror urged them to violence. The blood of the mulatto Oge and his accomplices, shed by M. de Blanchelande, governor of San Domingo and the colonial council, sowed every where despair and conspiracy.

X.

Oge, deputed to Paris by the men of colour to a.s.sert their rights in the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly, had become known to Brissot, Raynal, Gregoire, and was affiliated with them to the Society of the Friends of the Blacks.

Pa.s.sing thence into England, he became known to the admirable philanthropist, Clarkson. Clarkson and his friend at this time were pleading the cause of the emanc.i.p.ation of the negroes: they were the first apostles of that religion of humanity who believed that they could not raise their hands purely towards G.o.d, so long as those hands retained a link of that chain which holds a race of human beings in degradation and in slavery. The a.s.sociation with these men of worth expanded Oge's mind. He had come to Europe only to defend the interest of the mulattoes; he now took up with warmth the more liberal and holy cause of all the blacks; he devoted himself to the liberty of all his brethren. He returned to France, and became very intimate with Barnave; he entreated the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly to apply the principles of liberty to the colonies, and not to make any exception to Divine law, by leaving the slaves to their masters; excited and irritated by the hesitation of the committee, who withdrew with one hand what it gave with the other, he declared that if justice could not suffice for their cause, he would appeal to force. Barnave had said, "_Perish the colonies rather than a principle!_" The men of the 14th of July had no right to condemn, in the heart of Oge, that revolt which was their own t.i.tle to independence. We may believe that the secret wishes of the friends of the blacks followed Oge, who returned to San Domingo. He found there the rights of men of colour and the principles of liberty of the blacks more denied and more profaned than ever. He raised the standard of insurrection, but with the forms and rights of legality. At the head of a body of two hundred men of colour, he demanded the promulgation in the colonies of the decrees of the National a.s.sembly, despotically delayed until that time. He wrote to the military commandant at the Cape, "We require the proclamation of the law which makes us free citizens. If you oppose this, we will repair to Leogane, we will nominate electors, and repel force by force. The pride of the colonists revolts at sitting beside us: was the pride of the n.o.bility and clergy consulted when the equality of citizens was proclaimed in France?"

The government replied to this eloquent demand for liberty by sending a body of troops to disperse the persons a.s.sembled, and Oge drove them back.

XI.

A larger body of troops being despatched, they contrived, after a desperate resistance, to disperse the mulattoes. Oge escaped, and found refuge in the Spanish part of the island. A price was set upon his head.

M. de Blanchelande in his proclamations imputed it as a crime to him that he had claimed the rights of nature in the name of the a.s.sembly, which had so loudly proclaimed the rights of the citizen. They applied to the Spanish authorities to surrender this Spartacus, equally dangerous to the safety of the whites in both countries. Oge was delivered up to the French by the Spaniards, and sent for trial to the Cape. His trial was protracted for two months, in order to afford time to cut asunder all the threads of the plot of independence, and intimidate his accomplices. The whites, in great excitement, complained of these delays, and demanded his head with loud vociferations. The judges condemned him to death for a crime which in the mother-country had const.i.tuted the glory of La Fayette and Mirabeau.

He underwent torture in his dungeon. The rights of his race, centred and persecuted in him, raised his soul above the torments of his executioners. "Give up all hope," he exclaimed, with unflinching daring; "give up all hope of extracting from me the name of even one of my accomplices. My accomplices are everywhere where the heart of a man is raised against the oppressors of men." From that moment he p.r.o.nounced but two words, which sounded like a remorse in the ears of his persecutors--_Liberty! Equality_! He walked composedly to his death; listened with indignation to the sentence which condemned him to the lingering and infamous death of the vilest criminals. "What!" he exclaimed; "do you confound me with criminals because I have desired to restore to my fellow-creatures the rights and t.i.tles of men which I feel in myself! Well! you have my blood, but an avenger will arise from it!"

He died on the wheel, and his mutilated carcase was left on the highway.

This heroic death reached even to the National a.s.sembly, and gave rise to various opinions. "He deserved it," said Malouet; "Oge was a criminal and an a.s.sa.s.sin." "If Oge be guilty," replied Gregoire, "so are we all; if he who claimed liberty for his brothers perished justly on the scaffold, then all Frenchmen who resemble us should mount there also."