History of the Girondists Part 32

"You are going to the army?" said the king. "Yes, sire," replied Dumouriez, "and I should leave with joy this fearful city, if I had not a feeling of the dangers impending over your majesty. Deign to listen to me, sire; I am never destined to see you again. I am fifty-three years of age, and have much experience. They abuse your conscience with respect to the decree against the priests, and are pushing you on to civil war. You are without strength, defenceless, and you will sink under it, whilst History, though full of commiseration for you, will accuse you of the misfortunes of your people."

The king was seated near a table where he had just signed the general's accounts. Dumouriez was standing beside him with clasped hands. The king took his hands in his own, and said to him, in a voice sorrowful but resigned, "G.o.d is my witness, that I only think of the happiness of France." "I never doubted it, sire," responded Dumouriez, deeply affected. "You owe an account to G.o.d, not only for the purity, but also for the enlightened use, of your intentions. You think to save religion: you destroy it. The priests will be ma.s.sacred: your crown will be taken from you; perhaps even your queen and children--." He did not finish, but pressed his lips to the king's hand, who shed tears.

"I await--expect death," replied the king, sorrowfully; "and I pardon my enemies already. I am grateful to you for your sensibility. You have served me well, and I esteem you. Adieu--be more happy than I am!" And on saying these words Louis XVI. went to a recess in a window at the end of the chamber, in order to conceal the trouble he felt. Dumouriez never saw him again. He shut himself up for several days in retirement, in a lonely quarter of Paris. Looking upon the army as the only refuge for a citizen still capable of serving his country, he set out for Douai, the head quarters of Luckner.

V.

The Girondists remained a moment overwhelmed by the humiliation of their fall and the joy of their coming vengeance. "Here I am dismissed," was Roland's exclamation to his wife, on his return home. "I have but one regret, and that is, that our delays have prevented us from taking the initiative." Madame Roland retired to a humble apartment, without losing any of her influence and without regretting power, since she carried with her into her retreat, her genius, her patriotism, and her friends.

With her the conspiracy only changed place; from the ministry of the interior she pa.s.sed at once into the small council which she gathered about her, and inspired with her own earnest enthusiasm.

This circle daily increased. The admiration for the woman mingled in the hearts of her friends with the attraction of liberty. They adored in her the future Republic. The love which these young men did not avow for her made, unknown to her, a portion of their politics. Ideas only become active and powerful when vivified by sentiment. She was the sentiment of her party.

This party was joined about this time by a man unconnected with the Gironde; but his youth, his remarkable beauty, and his energy naturally threw him into this faction of illusion and love, controlled by a woman.

This young man was Barbaroux.

At this time he was only twenty-six years of age. Born at Ma.r.s.eilles, of a sea-faring family, who preserved in their manners and features something of the boldness of their life and the agitation of their element. The elegance of his stature, the poetic grace of his countenance, recalled the accomplished forms which antiquity adored in the statues of Antinous. The blood of that Asiatic Greece of which Ma.r.s.eilles is a colony revealed itself in the purity of the young Phocian's profile.[21] As richly endowed with the gifts of the mind as those of the body, Barbaroux early used himself to public oratory, that gift of the men of the south. He became a barrister, and pleaded several causes with success; but the power and honesty of his mind revolted from that exercise of eloquence, so often mercenary, which simulates earnestness. He required a national cause, to which a man should give with language his soul and blood. The Revolution with which he was born offered this to him. He awaited with impatience the occasion and the hour to make use of it.

His youth still kept him away from the scene into which he ardently longed to cast himself. He pa.s.sed his time near the village of Ollioules, on a small family estate, concealed beneath tall cork-trees, which threw their slight shade over the calcined declivities of this valley. He there attended to the cultivated patches which the aridity of the soil and the burning sun dispute with the rocks. In his leisure he studied natural sciences, and kept up a correspondence with two Swiss, whose systems of physics then occupied the learned world--M. de Saussure and Marat. But science was not sufficient for his mind, which overflowed with sensitiveness, and which Barbaroux poured forth in elegiac poetry as burning as the noonday, and vague as the horizon of the sea beneath his view. There is felt that southern melancholy whose languor, is closer allied to pleasure than weakness, and which resembles the songs of man seated in the broad sunshine, before or after labour. Mirabeau had thus begun his life. The most energetic lives frequently open in gloom, as if they had in their very germ presentiments of their contrary destiny. It would seem as though we read in the verses of this young man that through his tears he contemplated his faults, his expiation, and his scaffold.

VI.

After Mirabeau's election, and the agitations which followed, Barbaroux was named secretary of the munic.i.p.ality of Ma.r.s.eilles. At the troubles of Aries he took arms, and marched at the head of the young Ma.r.s.eillais against the rulers of the Comtal. His martial figure, his gestures, his ardour, his voice, made him conspicuous everywhere: he fascinated all.

Being deputed to Paris in order to give an account of the events of the south to the National a.s.sembly, the Girondists, Vergniaud and Guadet, who were desirous of obtaining an amnesty for the crimes of Avignon, did all in their power to attach this young man to their party. Barbaroux, impetuous as he was, did not justify the butchers of Avignon; but detested the victims. He was a man requisite to the Girondists. Struck by his eloquence and his enthusiasm, they presented him to Madame Roland: no woman was more formed to seduce, no man more formed to be seduced. Madame Roland--in all the freshness of her youth, in all the brilliancy of her beauty, and also in all the fulness of sensibility, which all the purity of her life could not stifle in her unoccupied heart--speaks thus tenderly of Barbaroux: "I had read," she says, "in the cabinet of my husband, the letters of Barbaroux, full of sense and premature wisdom. When I saw him I was astonished at his youth. He attached himself to my husband. We saw more of him after we left the ministry; and it was then, that reasoning on the miserable state of things, and the fear of a triumph of despotism in the north of France, we formed the plan of a republic in the south. This will be our _pis aller_, said Barbaroux, with a smile; but the Ma.r.s.eillais army here will dispense with our attempting it."

VII.

Roland then lived in a gloomy house of the Rue St. Jaques, almost in the garrets: it was a philosopher's retreat, and his wife illumined it.

Present at all the conversations of Roland, she witnessed the conferences between her husband and the young Ma.r.s.eillais. Barbaroux thus relates the interview in which the first idea of a republic was mooted: "That astonishing woman was there," said he. "Roland asked me what I thought the best means of saving France. I opened my heart to him: my confidence called for his. 'Liberty is gone,' he replied, 'if we do not speedily disconcert the plots of the court. La Fayette is meditating treason in the north: the army of the centre is systematically disorganised: in six weeks the Austrians will be at Paris. Have we then laboured at the most glorious of revolutions for so many years to see it overthrown in a single day? If Liberty dies in France, it is lost for ever to the rest of the world!--all the hopes of philosophy are deceived--prejudices and tyranny will again grasp the world. Let us prevent this misfortune, and if the north is subjected, let us take Liberty with us into the south, and there form a colony of free men.' His wife wept as she listened to him, and I myself wept as I looked at her. Oh! how much the outpourings of confidence console and fortify minds that are in desolation. I drew a rapid sketch of the resources and hopes of Liberty in the south. A serene expression of joy spread over Roland's brow: he squeezed my hand, and we traced on a map of France the limits of this empire of Liberty, which extended from the Doubs, the Ain, and the Rhone to La Dordogne, and from the inaccessible mountains of Auvergne to Durance and the sea. I wrote, by dictation of Roland, to request from Ma.r.s.eilles a battalion and two pieces of cannon.

These preliminaries agreed upon, I left Roland with feelings of deep respect for himself and his wife. I have seen them subsequently, during their second ministry, as simple minded as in their humble retreat. Of all the men of modern times, Roland seems to me most to resemble Cato; but it must be owned that it is to his wife that his courage and talents are due."

Thus did the original idea of a federative republic arise in the first interview between Barbaroux and Madame Roland. What they dreamed of as a desperate measure of Liberty, was afterwards made a reproach to them for having conspired as a plot. This first sigh of patriotism of two young minds who met and understood each other, was their attraction and their crime.

VIII.

From this day the Girondists, disengaged from every obligation with the king and ministers, conspired secretly with Madame Roland, and publicly in the tribune, for the suppression of the monarchy. They appeared to envy the Jacobins the honour of giving the throne the most deadly blows.

Robespierre as yet spoke only of the const.i.tution, limiting himself within the law, and not going a-head of the people. The Girondists already spoke in the name of the republic, and motioned with gesture and eye the republican _coup d'etat_, which every day drew nearer. The meetings at Roland's multiplied and enlarged: new men joined their ranks. Roland, Brissot, Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonne, Condorcet, Petion, Lanthenas, who in the hour of danger betrayed them; Valaze, Pache, who persecuted and decimated his friends; Grangeneuve, Louvet, who beneath levity of manners and gaiety of mind veiled undaunted courage; Chamfort, the intimate of the great, a vivid intellect, heart full of venom, discouraged by the people before he had served it; Carra, the popular journalist, enthusiastic for a republic, mad with desire for liberty; Chenier[22], the poet of the revolution, destined to survive it, and preserving his worship of it until death, even under the tyranny of the empire; Dusaulx, who had beneath his gray hairs the enthusiasm of youth for philosophy--the Nestor of all the young men, whom he moderated by his sage exhortations; Mercier, who took all as a jest, even in the dungeon and death.

IX.

But of the men whom enthusiasm for the Revolution brought around her, he whom Madame Roland preferred to all was Buzot. More attached to this young female than to his party, Buzot was to her a friend, whilst the others were but tools or accomplices. She had quickly pa.s.sed her judgment on Barbaroux, and this judgment, impressed with a certain bitterness, was like a repentance for the secret impression which the favourable exterior of this young man had at first inspired. She accuses herself with finding him so handsome, and seems to fortify her heart against the fascination of his looks. "Barbaroux is volatile," she said; "the adoration he receives from worthless women destroys the seriousness of his feelings. When I see such fine young men too conceited at the impression they make, like Barbaroux and Herault de Sech.e.l.les, I cannot help thinking that they adore themselves too much to have a great deal of adoration left for their country."

If we may lift the veil from the heart of this virtuous woman, who does not raise it herself for fear of developing a sentiment contrary to her duties, we must be convinced that her instinctive inclination had been one moment for Barbaroux, but her reflecting tenderness was for Buzot.

It is neither given to duty nor liberty to fill completely the soul of a woman as lovely and impa.s.sioned as she: duty chills, politics deceive, virtue retains, love fills the heart. Madame Roland loved Buzot. He adored in her his inspiration and his idol. Perchance they never disclosed to each other in words a sentiment which would have been the less sacred to them from the hour in which it had become guilty. But what they concealed from one another they have involuntarily revealed at their death. There are in the last days and last hours of this man and this woman, sighs, gestures, and words, which allow the secret preserved during life to escape in the presence of death; but the secret thus disclosed keeps its mystery. Posterity may have the right to detect, but none to accuse, this sentiment.

Roland, an estimable but morose old man, had the exactions of weakness without having its grat.i.tude or indulgence towards his partner. She remained faithful to him, more from respect to herself than from affection to him. They loved the same cause--Liberty; but Roland's fanaticism was as cold as pride, whilst his wife's was as glowing as love. She sacrificed herself daily at the shrine of her husband's reputation, and scarcely perceived her own self-devotion. He read in her heart that she bore the yoke with pride, and yet the yoke galled her.

She paints Buzot with complacency, and as the ideal of domestic happiness. "Sensible, ardent, melancholy," she writes, "a pa.s.sionate admirer of nature, he seems born to give and share happiness. This man would forget the universe in the sweetness of private virtues. Capable of sublime impulses and unvarying affections, the vulgar, who like to depreciate what it cannot equal, accuse him of being a dreamer. Of sweet countenance, elegant figure, there is always in his attire that care, neatness, and propriety, which announce respect of self as well as of others. Whilst the dregs of the nation elevate the flatterers and corrupters of the people to station--whilst cut-throats swear, drink, and clothe themselves in rags, in order to fraternise with the populace, Buzot possesses the morality of Socrates, and maintains the decorum of Scipio: so they pull down his house and banish him, as they did Aristides. I am astonished they have not issued a decree that his name should be forgotten." The man of whom she speaks in such terms from the depths of her dungeon, on the evening before her death, exiled, wandering, concealed in the caves of St. Emilion, fell as though struck by lightning, and remained several days in a state of phrenzy, on learning the death of Madame Roland.

Danton, whose name began to rise above the crowd, when his fame was but slight until now, sought at this period Madame Roland's acquaintance.

All inquired what was the secret of the growing ascendency of this man?

Where he came from? Who he was? Whither he was advancing? They sought his origin; his first appearance on the stage of the people; his first connection with the celebrated personages of his time. They sought in mysteries the cause of his prodigious popularity. It was pre-eminently in his nature.

X.

Danton was not merely one of those adventurers of demagogism who rise, like _Masaniello_, or like Hebert,[23] from the boiling sc.u.m of the ma.s.ses. He was one of the middle cla.s.ses, the heart of the nation. His family, pure, honest, of property, and industrious, ancient in name, honourable in manners, was established at Arcis-sur-Aube, and possessed a rural domain in the environs of that small town. It was of the number of those modest but well-esteemed families, who have the soil for their basis, and agriculture as their main occupation, but who give their sons the most complete moral and literary education, and who thus prepare them for the liberal professions of society. Danton's father died young.

His mother had married again to a manufacturer of Arcis-sur-Aube, who had (and himself managed), a small cotton mill. There is still to be seen near the river, without the city, in a pleasant spot, the house, half rustic half town built, and the garden on the banks of the Aube, where Danton's infancy was pa.s.sed.

His step-father, M. Ricordin, attended to his education as he would have done that of his own child. He was of an open communicative disposition, and was beloved in spite of his ugliness and turbulence; for his ugliness was radiant with intellect, and his turbulence was calmed and repented of at the least caress of his mother. He pursued his studies at Troyes, the capital of Champagne. Rebellious against discipline, idle at study, beloved by his masters and fellow pupils, his rapid comprehension kept him on an equality with the most a.s.siduous. His instinct sufficed without reflection. He learned nothing; he acquired all. His companions called him Catiline--he accepted the name, and sometimes played with them at getting up rebellions and riots, which he excited or calmed by his harangues--as if he were repeating at school the characters of his after life.

XI.

M. and Madame Ricordin, already advanced in years, gave him, after his education was finished, the small fortune of his father. He came to finish his studies in law at Paris, and bought a place in parliament as a barrister, where he practised little and without any notoriety. He despised chicanery; his mind and language had the proportions of the great causes of the people and the throne. The Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly began to stir them. Danton, watchful and impa.s.sioned, was anxious to mingle with them: he sought the leading men, whose eloquence resounded throughout France. He attached himself to Mirabeau; became connected with Camille Desmoulins, Marat, Robespierre, Petion, Brune (afterwards the marshal), Fabre d'Eglantine, the Duc d'Orleans, Laclos, Lacroix, and all the ill.u.s.trious and second cla.s.s orators who then "fulmined over"

Paris. He pa.s.sed his whole time in the tribunes of the a.s.sembly, in the walks, and the coffee-houses, and his nights in the clubs. A few well-seasoned words, some brief harangues, some bursts of mysterious lightning: and above all, his hair like a horse's mane, his gigantic stature, and his powerful voice, made him universally remarked. Yet beneath the purely physical qualities of the orator men of intelligence remarked great good sense and an instinctive knowledge of the human heart. Beneath the agitator they discerned the statesman. Danton in truth read history, studied the ancient orators, practised himself in real eloquence, that which enlightens in its pa.s.sion, and beneath his actual part was preparing another much superior. He only asked the movement to raise him so high that he might subsequently control it.

He married Mademoiselle Charpentier, daughter of a lemonade-seller on the Quai de l'Ecole. This young lady controlled him by her affection, and insensibly reformed him from the disorders of his youth to more regular domestic habits. She extinguished the violence of his pa.s.sions, but without being able to quench that which survived all others--ambition of a great destiny.

Danton lived in a small apartment in the Cour de Commerce, near his father-in-law, in rigid economy, receiving but a very few friends, who admired his talent and attached themselves to his fortunes. The most constant were Camille Desmoulins, Petion, and Brune. From these meetings went forth signals of extensive sedition. The secret subsidies of the court came there to tempt the cupidity of the head of the young revolutionists. He did not reject them, but used them sometimes to excite and sometimes to control the agitations of opinion.

He had by this marriage two sons, whom his death left orphans in their cradle, and who succeeded to his small inheritance at Arcis-sur-Aube.

These two sons of Danton, alarmed at the effects of their name, retired to their family domain, and cultivated it with their own hands, and in an honest and industrious obscurity limited to themselves all their father's notoriety. Like the son of Cromwell, they preferred the shade and silence the more, as their name had a too sinister reputation, and too wide an extension in the world. They remained unmarried, that the name might die with them.

At this moment Danton, whose ambitious instincts revealed the close return to fortune of the Girondists, sought to attach himself to this rising party, and give them the weight of his worth and importance.

Madame Roland flattered him, but with fear and repugnance, as a woman would pat a lion.

XII.

Whilst the Girondists were exciting the anger of the people against the king, hostilities were beginning in Belgium, in consequence of reverses, which were attributed to treasons of the court: these were produced by three causes; the hesitation of the generals, who did not understand how to impart to their troops that ardour which impels the ma.s.ses, and bears down resistance; the disorganisation of the armies, which emigration had deprived of their ancient officers, and who had no confidence in the new; and finally, the want of discipline, that element of revolutions, which clubs and Jacobinism had spread amongst the troops. An army that discusses is like a hand which would think.

La Fayette, instead of advancing at once on Namur according to Dumouriez's plan, lost a good deal of precious time in a.s.sembling and organising at Givet, and the camp of Ransenne. Instead of giving the other generals in line with him, the example and the signal of invasion and victory, by at once occupying Namur, he moved about the country with 10,000 men, leaving the remainder of his forces encamped in France, and fell back at the first news of the checks sustained by the detachments of Biron and Theobald Dillon. These checks, though partial and slight, were disgraceful for our troops. It was the astonishment of an army unaccustomed to war, and fearful of entering the lists, but which, like a soldier at his first campaign, would soon grow used to battles.

The Duc de Lauzun commanded under La Fayette, and was called general Biron. He was a man of the court, who had gone over in all sincerity to the side of the people. Young, handsome, chivalrous, with that intrepid gaiety which plays with death, he carried aristocratic honour into republican ranks. Loved by the soldiers, adored by the women, at his ease in camps, a roue in courts, he was of that school of sparkling vices of which the Marshal de Richelieu had been the type in France. It was said that the queen herself had been enamoured of him, without being able to fix his inconstancy. Friend of the Duc d'Orleans, companion of his debaucheries, still he had never conspired with him. All treachery was abhorrent to him, all baseness of heart roused his utmost indignation. He adopted the Revolution as a n.o.ble idea, of which he was always ready to be the soldier, but never the accomplice. He did not betray the king, and always preserved a deep feeling of pity and sympathy for the queen; with an intense love for philosophy and liberty, instead of fomenting them by sedition, he defended them by war. He changed devotion to kings into devotion to his country. This n.o.ble cause, and the sorrows of the Revolution gave to his character a more manly stamp, and made him fight and die with the conscience of a hero.

He was encamped at Quievrain with 10,000 men, and advanced against the Austrian general Beaulieu, who occupied the heights of Mons, with a very weak army. Two regiments of dragoons, who formed Biron's advanced guard, were seized with a sudden panic on beholding Beaulieu's troops. The soldiers cried out treachery, and in vain did their officers attempt to rally them; they turned bridle and scattered disorder and fear throughout the ranks. The army gave way and mechanically followed the current of flight. Biron and his aides-de-camp threw themselves into the centre of the troops to stay and to rally them. They struck at them with their swords, and fired at them. The camp of Quievrain, the military chest, the carriage of Biron himself, were plundered by the fugitives.

Whilst this defeat, without a battle, humiliated the French army, in its first step, at Quievrain, b.l.o.o.d.y a.s.sa.s.sinations stained our flag at Lille. General Dillon had left that city, the enemy showed itself on the plain to the number of nine hundred men. At its appearance only, the French cavalry uttered treacherous cries, and pa.s.sing by the infantry, fled to Lille, without being followed, abandoning its artillery, carriages, and baggage. Dillon, hurried along by his squadrons to Lille, was there ma.s.sacred by his own soldiers. His colonel of engineers, Berthois, fell beside his general, beneath the bayonets of the cowards who abandoned him. The dead bodies of these two victims of fear were hung up in the _Place d'Armes_, and then delivered up by the malcontents to the insults of the populace of Lille, who dragged their mutilated carcases along the streets. Thus commenced in shame and crime those wars of the Revolution which were destined to produce, during twenty years, so much heroism, and so much military virtue. Anarchy had penetrated to the camps, honour was there no longer: order and honour are the two necessities of an army. In anarchy there is still a nation--without discipline there is no longer an army.

XIII.

Paris was in consternation at this news; the a.s.sembly greatly troubled, the Girondists trembled, the Jacobins were vociferous in their imprecations against the traitors. Foreign courts and the emigrants had no doubt of an easy triumph in a few marches over a revolution which was afraid of its very shadow. La Fayette, without having been attacked, fell back, very prudently, on Givet. Rochambeau sent in his resignation as commandant of the army of the north. Marshal Luckner was nominated in his place. La Fayette, much dissatisfied, kept the command of the central army.

Luckner was upwards of seventy years of age, but retained all the fire and activity of the warrior; he only required genius to have been a great general. He had a reputation for complaisance, which sufficed for every thing. It is a great advantage for a general to be a stranger in the country in which he is serving. He has no one jealous of him: his superiority is pardoned, and presumed if it do not exist, in order to crush his rivals: such was old Luckner's position. He was a German,--pupil of the great Frederic, with whom he had served with _eclat_ during the seven years' war as commandant of the vanguard, at the moment when Frederic changed the war, and commenced its tactics. The Duc de Choiseul was desirous of depriving Prussia of a general of this great school, to teach the modern art of battles to French generals. He had attracted Luckner from his country by force of temptations, fortune, and honours. The national a.s.sembly, from respect to the memory of the philosopher king, had preserved to Luckner the pension of 60,000 francs which had been paid to him during the Revolution. Luckner, indifferent to const.i.tutions, believed himself a revolutionist from grat.i.tude. He was almost the only one amongst the ancient general officers who had not emigrated. Surrounded by a brilliant staff of young officers of the party of La Fayette, Charles Lameth, du Jarri, Mathieu de Montmorency, he believed he had the opinions which they instilled into him. The king caressed, the a.s.sembly flattered, the army respected, him. The nation saw in him the mysterious genius of the old war coming to give lessons of victory to the untried patriotism of the Revolution, and concealing its infinite resources under the bluntness of his exterior, and the obscure Germanism of his language. They addressed to him, from all sides, homage as though he were an unknown G.o.d. He did not deserve either this adoration, or the outrages with which he was soon after overwhelmed. He was a brave and coa.r.s.e soldier, as misplaced in courts as in clubs. For some days he was an idol, then the plaything of the Jacobins, who, at last, threw him to the guillotine, without his being able to comprehend either his popularity or his crime.