History of the Girondists Part 30

"You are accused, Robespierre, of having been present at a secret conference, held some time since at the Princesse de Lamballe's, at which the queen Marie Antoinette was present. No mention is made of the terms of the bargain between you and these two women, who would corrupt you. Since then some changes have been seen in your domestic arrangements, and you have had the money requisite to start a newspaper.

Could there have been such injurious suspicions against you in July, 1791? We believe nothing of these infamies: we do not think you the accomplice of Marat, who offers you the dictatorship. We do not accuse you of imitating Caesar when Anthony presented to him the diadem. No: but be on your guard! Speak of yourself with less egotism. We have in our time warned both La Fayette and Mirabeau, and pointed out the Tarpeian rock for citizens who think themselves greater than their country."

III.

"The wretches," replied Marat, who was then sheltered beneath the patronage of Robespierre, "they cast a shade upon the purest virtues!

His genius is offensive to them. They punish him for his sacrifices. His inclinations lead him to retirement. He only remained in the tumult of the Jacobins from devotion to his country; but men of mediocre understanding are not accustomed to the eulogiums of another, and the mob likes to change its hero.

"The faction of the La Fayettes, Guadets, Brissots circ.u.mvent him. They call him the leader of a party! Robespierre chief of a party! They show his hand in the disgraceful columns of the Civil List. They make the people's confidence in him a crime, as if a simple citizen without fortune and power had any other means of acquiring the love of his fellow-countrymen but from his deserts! as if a man who has only his isolated voice in the midst of a society of _intrigants_, hypocrites, and knaves, could ever be feared! But this incorruptible censor annoys them. They say he has an understanding with me to offer him the dictatorship. This is my affair, and I declare that Robespierre is so far from controlling my pen, that I never had the slightest connection with him. I have seen him but once, and the sole conversation has convinced me that he was not the man whom I sought for the supreme and energetic power demanded by the Revolution.

"The first word he addressed to me was a reproach for having dipped my pen in the blood of the enemies of liberty,--for always speaking of the cord, the axe, and the poignard; cruel words, which unquestionably my heart would disavow, and my principles discredit. I undeceived him.

'Learn,' I replied to him, 'that my credit with the people does not depend on my ideas, but on my audacity, the daring impetuosity of my mind, my cries of rage, despair, and fury against the wretches who impede the action of the Revolution. I know the anger, the just anger, of the people, and that is why it listens to, and believes in, me. Those cries of alarm and fury, that you take for words in the air, are the most simple and sincere expression of the pa.s.sions which devour my mind.

Yes, if I had had in my hand the arms of the people after the decree against the garrison of Nancy, I would have decimated the deputies who confirmed it. After the information of the events of the 5th and 6th October, I would have immolated every judge on the pile; after the ma.s.sacre of the Champ-de-Mars, had I but had 2000 men, animated with the same resentment as myself, I would have gone at their head to stab La Fayette in the midst of his battalion of brigands, burnt the king in his palace, and cut the throats of our atrocious representatives on their very seats!' Robespierre listened to me with affright, turned pale, and was for a long time silent. I left him. I had seen an honest man, but not a man of the state."

Thus the wretch had excited horror in the fanatic: Robespierre had obtained Marat's pity.

IV.

The first struggle between the Jacobins and the Girondists gave the skilful Dumouriez a double _point d'appui_ for his policy. The enmity of Roland, Claviere, and Servan no longer disturbed him in council. He balanced their influence by his alliance with their enemies. But the Jacobins demanded wages; he proffered them in war. Danton, as violent but more politic than Marat, did not cease to repeat that the revolutionists and the despots were irreconcileable, and that France had no safety to expect except from its audacity and despair. War, according to Danton, was the baptism or the martyrdom which liberty was to undergo, like a new religion. It was necessary to replunge France into the fire, in order to purify it from the stains and shame of its past.

Dumouriez, agreeing with La Fayette and the Feuillants, was also anxious for war; but it was as a soldier, to acquire glory, and thus crush faction. From the first day of his ministry he negotiated so as to obtain from Austria a decisive answer. He had removed nearly all the members of the diplomatic body; he had replaced them by energetic men.

His despatches had a martial accent, which sounded like the voice of an armed people. He summoned the princes of the Rhine, the emperor, the king of Russia, the king of Sardinia, and Spain, to recognise or oppose the const.i.tutional king of France. But whilst these official envoys demanded from the various courts prompt and categorical replies, the secret agents of Dumouriez insinuated themselves into the cabinets of princes, and compelled some states to detach themselves from the coalition that was forming. They pointed out to them the advantages of neutrality for their aggrandis.e.m.e.nt: they promised them the patronage of France after victory. Not daring to hope for allies, the minister at least contrived for France secret understanding: he corrupted by ambition the states that he could not move by terror: he benumbed the coalition, which he trusted subsequently to crush.

V.

The prince on whose mind he operated most powerfully was the Duke of Brunswick, whom the emperor and the king of Prussia alike destined for the command of the combined armies against the French. This prince was in their hopes the Agamemnon of Germany.

Charles-Frederic-Ferdinand of Brunswick-Wolfenb.u.t.tel, bred in combats and in pleasures, had inspired in the camps of the great Frederic the genius of war, the spirit of French philosophy, and the Machiavellianism of his master. He had accompanied this philosopher and soldier-king in all the campaigns of the seven years' war. At the peace he travelled in France and Italy. Received everywhere as the hero of Germany, and as the heir to the genius of Frederic, he had married a sister of George III., king of England. His capital, where his mistresses shone or philosophers harangued, united the epicureism of the court to the austerity of the camp. He reigned according to the precepts of sages; he lived after the example of the Sybarites. But his soldier's mind, which was but too easily given up to beauty, was not quenched in love; he only gave his heart to women, he reserved his head for glory, war, and the government of his states. Mirabeau, then a young man, had stayed at his court, on his way to Berlin, to catch the last glimpses of the shining genius of the great Frederic. The Duke of Brunswick had favourably received and appreciated Mirabeau. These two men, placed in such different ranks, resembled each other by their qualities and defects. They were two revolutionary spirits; but from their difference of situations and countries, the one was destined to create, and the other to oppose, a revolution.

Be this as it may, Mirabeau was seduced by the sovereign, whom he was sent to seduce.

"This prince's countenance," he writes in his secret correspondence, "betokens depth and finesse. He speaks with eloquence and precision: he is prodigiously well-informed, industrious, and clear-sighted: he has a vast correspondence, which he owes to his merit alone: he is even economical of his amours. His mistress, Madame de Hartfeld, is the most sensible woman of his court. A real Alcibiades, he loves pleasure, but never allows it to intrude on business. When acting as the Prussian general, no one so early, so active, so precisely exact as he. Under a calm aspect, which arises from the absolute control he has over his mind, his brilliant imagination and ambitious aspirations often carry him away; but the circ.u.mspection which he imposes on himself, and the satisfactory reflection of his fame, restrain him and lead him to doubts, which, perhaps, const.i.tute his sole defect."

Mirabeau predicted to the Duke of Brunswick, from this moment, leading influence in the affairs of Germany after the death of the king of Prussia, whom Germany called the Great King.

The duke was then fifty years of age. He defended himself, in his conversations with Mirabeau, from the charge of loving war. "Battles are games of chance," said he to the French traveller: "up to this time I have been fortunate. Who knows if to-day, although more lucky, I should be as well used by fortune?" A year after this remark he made the triumphant invasion of Holland, at the head of the troops of England.

Some years later Germany nominated him generalissimo.

But war with France, however it might be grateful to his ambition as a soldier, was repugnant to his mind as a philosopher. He felt he should but ill carry out the ideas in which he had been educated. Mirabeau had made that profound remark, which prophesied the weaknesses and defects of a coalition guided by that prince: "This man is of a rare stamp, but he is too much of a sage to be feared by sages."

This phrase explains the offer of the crown of France made to the Duke of Brunswick by Custine, in the name of the monarchical portion of the a.s.sembly. Freemasonry, that underground religion, into which nearly all the reigning princes of Germany had entered, concealed beneath its mysteries secret understandings between French philosophy and the sovereigns on the banks of the Rhine. Brothers in a religious conspiracy, they could not be very bitter enemies in politics. The Duke of Brunswick was in the depth of his heart more the citizen than the prince--more the Frenchman than the German. The offer of a throne at Paris had pleased his fancy. He fights not against a people, whose king he hopes to be, and against a cause, which he desires to conquer, but not to destroy. Such was the state of the Duke of Brunswick's mind;--consulted by the king of Prussia, he advised this monarch to turn his forces to the Polish frontier and conquer provinces there, instead of principles in France.

VI.

Dumouriez's plan was to separate, as much as possible, Prussia from Austria, in order to have but one enemy at a time to cope with; and the union of these two powers, natural and jealous rivals of each other, appeared to him so totally unnatural, that he flattered himself he could prevent or sever it. The instinctive hatred of despotism for liberty, however, overthrew all his schemes. Russia, through the ascendency of Catherine, forced Prussia and Austria to make common cause against the Revolution. At Vienna, the young Emperor Francis I. made far greater preparations for war than for negotiation. The Prince de Kaunitz, his princ.i.p.al minister, replied to the notes of Dumouriez in language that seemed a defiance of the a.s.sembly. Dumouriez laid these doc.u.ments before the a.s.sembly, and forestalled the expressions of their just indignation, by bursting himself into patriotic anger. The _contre coup_ of these scenes was felt even in the cabinet of the emperor at Vienna, where Francis I., pale and trembling with rage, censured the tardiness of his minister. He was present every day at the conferences held at the bedside of the veteran Prince de Kaunitz and the Prussian and Russian envoys charged by their sovereigns to foment the war. The king of Prussia demanded to have the whole direction of the war in his hands, and he proposed the sudden invasion of the French territory as the most efficacious means of preventing the effusion of blood, by striking terror into the Revolution, and causing a counter-revolution, with the hope of which the _emigres_ flattered him, to break out in France. An interview to concert the measures of Austria and Prussia, was fixed between the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince de Hohenlohe, general of the emperor's army. For form's sake, however, conferences were still carried on at Vienna between M. de Noailles, the French amba.s.sador, and Count Philippe de Cobentzel, vice-chancellor of the court. These conferences, in which the liberty of the people and the absolute sovereignty of monarchs continually strove to conciliate two irreconcileable principles, ended invariably in mutual reproaches. A speech of M. de Cobentzel broke off all negotiations, and this speech, made public at Paris, caused the final declaration of war. Dumouriez proposed it at the council, and induced the king, as if by the hand of fatality, himself to propose the war to his people. "The people," said he, "will credit your attachment when they behold you embrace their cause, and combat kings in its defence."

The king, surrounded by his ministers, appeared unexpectedly at the a.s.sembly on the 20th of April, at the conclusion of the council. A solemn silence reigned in the a.s.sembly, for every one felt that the decisive word was now about to be p.r.o.nounced--and they were not deceived. After a full report of the negotiations with the house of Austria had been read by Dumouriez, the king added in a low but firm voice, "You have just heard the report which has been made to my council; these conclusions have been unanimously adopted, and I myself have taken the same resolution. I have exhausted every means of maintaining peace, and I now come, in conformity with the terms of the const.i.tution, to propose to you, formally, war with the king of Hungary and Bohemia."

The king, after this speech, quitted the a.s.sembly amidst cries and gestures of enthusiasm, which burst forth in the salle and the tribunes: the people followed their example. France felt certain of herself when she was the first to attack all Europe armed against her. It seemed to all good citizens that domestic troubles would cease before this mighty external excitement of a people who defend their frontiers. That the cause of liberty would be judged in a few hours on the field of battle, and that the const.i.tution needed only a victory, in order to render the nation free at home, and triumphant abroad. The king himself re-entered his palace relieved from the cruel weight of irresolution which had so long oppressed him. War against his allies and his brothers had cost him many a pang. This sacrifice of his feelings to the const.i.tution seemed to him to merit the grat.i.tude of the a.s.sembly, and by thus identifying himself with the cause of his country, he flattered himself that he should at least recover the good opinion and the love of his people. The a.s.sembly separated without deliberating, and gave a few hours up to enthusiasm rather than to reflection.

VII.

At the sitting in the evening, Pastoret, one of the princ.i.p.al Feuillants, was the first to support the war. "We are reproached with having voted the effusion of human blood in a moment of enthusiasm; but is it to-day only that we are provoked? During four hundred years the house of Austria has violated every treaty with France. Such are our motives; let us no longer hesitate. Victory will adhere faithfully to the cause of liberty."

Becquet, a const.i.tutional royalist, a profound and courageous orator, alone ventured to speak against the declaration of war. "In a free country," said he, "war is alone made to defend the const.i.tution or the nation. Our const.i.tution is but of yesterday, and it requires calm to take root. A state of crisis, such as war, opposes all regular movements of political bodies. If your armies combat abroad, who will repress faction at home? You are flattered with the belief that you have only Austria to cope against. You are promised that the other northern powers will not interfere; do not rely on this. Even England cannot remain neuter: if the exigencies of the war lead you to revolutionise Belgium, or to invade Holland, she will join Prussia to support the stadtholder against you. Doubtless England loves the liberty which is now taking root amongst you; but her life is commercial, she cannot abandon her trade in the Low Countries. Wait until you are attacked, and then the spirit of the people will fight in your cause. The justice of a cause is worth armies. But if you can be represented to other nations as a restless and conquering people, who can only exist in a vortex of turmoil and war, the nations will shun and dread you. Besides, is not war the hope of the enemies of the Revolution? Why give them cause to rejoice by offering it to them. The _emigres_, now only despicable, will become dangerous on that day when foreign armies lend them their a.s.sistance."

This sensible and profound speech, interrupted repeatedly by the ironical laughter and the insults of the a.s.sembly, was concluded amidst the outcries of the tribunes. It required no small degree of heroism to combat the proposed war in the French chambers. Bazire alone, the friend of Robespierre, ventured, like Becquet, the king's friend, to demand a few days' reflection, before giving a vote that would shed so much human gore. "If you decide upon war, do so in such a manner that treason cannot envelope it," said he. Feeble applause showed that the republican allusion of Bazire had been comprehended, and that above all, it was necessary to remove a king and generals whose fidelity was suspected.

"No, no," returned Mailhe, "do not lose an hour in decreeing the liberty of the whole world." "Extinguish the torches of your disagreements in the blaze of your cannon, and the glitter of your bayonets," added Dubayet. "Let the report be made instantly," demanded Brissot. "Declare war against kings, and peace to all nations," cried Merlin. The war was voted.

Condorcet, who had been informed already of this by the Girondists of the council, read in the tribune a proposed manifesto to the nations.

The following was its substance: "Every nation has the right of giving itself laws, and of altering them at pleasure. The French nation had every reason to believe that these simple truths would obtain the a.s.sent of all princes. This hope has not been fulfilled. A league has been formed against its independence; and never did the pride of thrones more audaciously insult the majesty of nations. The motives alleged by despots against France are but an outrage to her liberty. This insulting pride, far from intimidating her, serves only to excite her courage. It requires time to discipline the slaves of despotism; every man is a soldier when he combats against tyranny."

VIII.

But the princ.i.p.al orator of the Gironde mounted the tribune the last.

"You owe it to the nation," said Vergniaud, "to employ every means to a.s.sure the success of the great and terrible determination by which you have signalised this memorable day. Remember the hour of that general federation when all Frenchmen devoted their life to the defence of liberty and the const.i.tution. Remember the oath which you have taken on the 14th of January, to bury yourselves beneath the ruins of the temple rather than consent to a capitulation, or to the least modification in the const.i.tution. Where is the icy heart that does not palpitate in these important moments--the grovelling soul that does not elevate itself (I venture to utter the words) to heaven amidst these acclamations of universal joy; the apathetic man who does not feel his whole being penetrated and his forces raised by a n.o.ble enthusiasm far above the common force of the human race? Give to France, to Europe, the imposing spectacle of these national fetes. Reanimate that energy before which the Bastille fell. Let every part of the empire resound with these sublime words: '_To live free or die! The entire const.i.tution without any modification, or death!_' Let these cries reach even the thrones that have leagued against you; let them learn that it is useless to reckon upon our internal dissensions; that when our country is in danger, we are animated by one pa.s.sion alone--that of saving her, or of perishing for her; in a word, should fortune prove false to so just a cause as ours, our enemies might insult our lifeless corpses, but never shall one Frenchman wear their fetters."

IX.

These lyrical words of Vergniaud re-echoed at Berlin and at Vienna. "War has been declared against us," said the Prince de Kaunitz to the Russian amba.s.sador, the Prince de Galitzin, "it is the same thing as if it had been declared against you." The command of the Prussian and Austrian forces was given to the Duke of Brunswick. The two princes by this act only ratified the choice of all Germany, for opinion had already nominated him. Germany moves but slowly: federations are but ill fitted for sudden wars. The campaign was opened by the French before Prussia and Austria had prepared their armaments.

Dumouriez had reckoned upon this sluggishness and inactivity of the two German monarchies. His skilful plan was to sever the coalition, and suddenly invade Belgium before Prussia could take the field. Had Dumouriez alone framed and carried out his own plan, the fate of Belgium and Holland was sealed; but La Fayette, who was charged to invade them at the head of 40,000 men, had neither the temerity nor the rapidity of this veteran soldier. A general of opinion rather than the general of an army, he was more accustomed to command citizens in the public square, than soldiers in a campaign. Personally brave, beloved by his troops, but more of a citizen than a soldier, he had, during the American war, headed small bodies of free men, but not undisciplined ma.s.ses. Not to peril his soldiers; defend the frontiers with intrepidity; die bravely at a Thermopylae; harangue the national guard; and excite his troops for or against opinions; such was the nature of La Fayette. The daring schemes of great wars, that risk much to save every thing, and which expose the frontiers for a moment to strike at the heart of an empire, accorded but ill with his habits, much less with his situation.

By becoming a general, La Fayette had become the chief of a party; and whilst he was opposing foreign powers, his eyes were constantly turned towards the interior. Doubtless he needed glory to nourish his influence, and to regain the _role_ of arbitrator of the Revolution, which now began to escape his grasp; but before every thing, it was necessary that he should not compromise himself; one defeat would have ruined all, and he knew it. He who never risks a loss, will never gain a victory. La Fayette was the general of temporisation; and to waste the time of the Revolution, was to destroy its force. The strength of undisciplined forces is their impetuosity, and every thing that slackens that ruins them.

Dumouriez, impetuous as the volcano, instinctively felt this, and strove, in the conferences that preceded the nomination of the generals, to infuse some portion of his own fire into La Fayette. He placed him at the head of the princ.i.p.al _corps d'armee_, destined to penetrate into Belgium, as the general most fitted to foment popular insurrection, and convert the war on the Belgian provinces into revolution; for to rouse Belgium in favour of French liberty, and to render its independence dependent on ours, was to wrest it from the power of Austria, and turn it against our foes. The Belgians, according to Dumouriez's plan, were to conquer Belgium for us; for the germs of revolt had been but imperfectly stifled in these provinces, and were destined to bud again at the step of the first French soldier.

X.

Belgium, which had been long dominated over by Spain, had contracted its jealous and superst.i.tious Catholicism. The nation pertains to the priests, and the privileges of the priests appear to it the privileges of the people. Joseph II., a premature but an armed philosopher, sought to emanc.i.p.ate the people from sacerdotal despotism. Belgium had risen in arms against the liberty offered to her, and had sided with her oppressors. The fanaticism of the priests, and of the munic.i.p.al privileges, united in a feeling of resistance to Joseph II., had set all Belgium in a flame. The rebels had captured GHENT and BRUSSELS, and proclaimed the downfall of the house of Austria, and the sovereignty of the Pays Bas. Scarcely had they triumphed, than the Belgians became divided amongst themselves. The sacerdotal and aristocratic party demanded an oligarchical const.i.tution, whilst the popular party demanded a democracy, modelled on the French revolution.

VAN-DER-NOOT, an eloquent and cruel tribune, was the leader of the first party; VAN-DER-MERSH, a brave soldier, of the people. Civil war broke out amidst a struggle for independence. VAN-DER-MERSH, made prisoner by the aristocratic party, was immured in a gloomy dungeon until Leopold, the successor of Joseph II., profited by these domestic feuds, again to subjugate Belgium. Weary of liberty, after having tasted it, she submitted without resistance. Van-der-noot took refuge in Holland. Van-der-mersh, freed by the Austrians, was generously pardoned, and again became an obscure citizen.

All attempts at independence were repressed by strong Austrian garrisons, and could not fail to be awakened at the approach of the French armies. La Fayette appeared to comprehend and approve of this plan. It was agreed that the Marechal de Rochambeau should be appointed commander-in-chief of the army that threatened Belgium, that La Fayette should have under his orders a considerable _corps_ that would invade the country, and then La Fayette would command alone in the Netherlands.

Rochambeau, old and worn out by inactivity, would thus only receive the honour due to his rank. La Fayette would in reality direct the whole of the campaign and of the armed propaganda of the revolution. "This _role_ suits him," said the old marechal. "I do not understand this war of cities." To cause La Fayette to march on Namur, which was but ill defended, capture it, march from thence on Brussels and Liege, the two capitals of the Pays Bas, and the focus of Belgian independence--send General Biron forward at the head of ten thousand men on Mons, to oppose the Austrian General Beaulieu, whose force was only two or three thousand men--detach from the garrison at Lille another corps of three thousand men, who would occupy Tournay, and who, after having left a garrison in this town, would swell the corps of Biron--send twelve hundred men from Dunkirk to surprise Furnes, and then advance by converging into the heart of the Belgian provinces with these forty thousand men under the command of La Fayette--attack, on every side, in ten days an enemy ill prepared to resist--to rouse the populations to revolt, and then increase the attacking army to eighty thousand troops, and join to it the Belgian battalions raised in the name of freedom, to combat the emperor's army as it arrived from Germany:--such was Dumouriez's bold idea of the campaign. Nothing was wanting to ensure its success but a man capable of executing it. Dumouriez disposed of the troops and the generals in conformity with this plan.

XI.

The impulse of France responded to the impulse of her genius.