Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty Part 18

Buzot, Madame Roland's idol, has written: "A wretched mob, unintelligent and unenlightened, vomited forth insults against royalty; the rest neither desired nor willed anything but the Const.i.tution of 1791, and spoke of the republicans just as one speaks of extremely honest fools. This people is republican only through force of the guillotine." And yet, September 21, 1792, the Convention, holding its first sitting in the Hall of the Manege, began by proclaiming the Republic.

Buzot, in his Memoirs, has thus described the deputations that were sent to the bar, and the public that occupied the galleries: "It seemed as if the outlet of every sewer in Paris and other great cities had been searched for whatever was most filthy, hideous, and infected.

Villainously dirty faces, surmounted by shocks of greasy hair, and with eyes half sunk into their heads, they spat out, with their nauseating breath, the grossest insults mingled with the sharp snarls of carnivorous beasts. The galleries were worthy of such legislators: men whose frightful aspect betokened crime and poverty, and women whose shameless faces expressed the filthiest debauchery. When all these with hands and feet and voice made their horrible racket, one seemed to be in an a.s.sembly of devils."

When the session opened, Collot d'Herbois was {387} the first speaker.

He said: "There is a matter which you cannot put off until to-morrow, which you cannot put off until this evening, which you cannot defer for a single instant without being unfaithful to the wishes of the nation; it is the abolition of royalty." Quinet having objected that it would be better to present this question when the Const.i.tution was to be discussed, Gregoire, const.i.tutional Bishop of Blois, exclaimed: "Certainly, no one will ever propose to us to preserve the deadly race of kings in France. All the dynasties have been breeds of ravenous beasts, living on nothing but human flesh; still it is necessary to rea.s.sure plainly the friends of liberty; this magic talisman, which still has power to stupefy so many men, must be destroyed." Bazire remarked that it would be a frightful example to the people to see an a.s.sembly which they had entrusted with their dearest interests, resolve upon anything in a moment of enthusiasm and without thorough discussion. Gregoire replied with vehemence: "Eh! what need is there of discussion when everybody is of the same mind? Kings, in the moral order, are what monsters are in the physical order. Courts are the workshop of crime and the lair of tyrants. The history of kings is the martyrology of nations; we are all equally penetrated by this truth.

What is the use of discussing it?" Then the question, put to vote in these terms: "The National Convention declares that royalty is abolished in France," was adopted amidst applause.

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At four in the afternoon of the same day, a munic.i.p.al officer named Lubin, surrounded by mounted gendarmes and a large crowd of people, came to read a proclamation before the Temple tower. The trumpets were sounded. A great silence ensued, and Lubin, who had a stentorian voice, read loud enough to be heard by the royal family confined in the dungeon, this proclamation, the death knell of monarchy: "Royalty is abolished in France. All public acts will be dated from the first year of the Republic. The seal of State will be inscribed with this motto: _Republique francaise_. The National Seal will represent a woman seated on a sheaf of arms, holding in one hand a pike surmounted by a liberty-cap." Hebert (the famous Pere d.u.c.h.esne) was at this moment on guard near the royal family. Sitting on the threshold of their chamber, he sought to discover a movement of vexation or anger, or any other emotion on their faces. He was unsuccessful. While listening to the revolutionary decree which s.n.a.t.c.hed away his throne, the descendant of Saint Louis, Henry IV., and Louis XIV. experienced not the slightest trouble. He had a book in his hand, and he quietly went on reading it.

As impa.s.sive as her spouse, the Queen neither made a movement nor uttered a word. When the proclamation was finished, the trumpets sounded again. Clery then went to the window, and the eyes of the crowd turned instantly towards him. As they mistook him for Louis XVI., they overwhelmed him with insults. The gendarmes made threatening {389} gestures, and he was obliged to withdraw so as to quiet the tumult. While the populace was unchained around the Temple prison, one man alone was calm, one man alone seemed a stranger to all anxiety: it was the prisoner.

A new era begins. The death-struggle of royalty is over. Royalty is dead, and the King is soon to die. Gregoire, who had stolen the vote (there were but 371 conventionists present; 374 were absent; that is to say, more than half), is both surprised and enthusiastic about what he has done. He confesses that for several days his excessive joy deprived him of appet.i.te and sleep. Such joy will not last very long.

M. Taine compares revolutionary France to a badly nourished workman, poor, and overdriven with toil, and yet who drinks strong liquors. At first, in his intoxication, he thinks he is a millionnaire, loved and admired; he thinks himself a king. "But soon the radiant visions give place to black and monstrous phantoms.... At present, France has pa.s.sed through the period of joyous delirium, and is about to enter on another that is sombre; behold it, capable of daring, suffering, and doing all things, whenever its guides, as widely astray as itself, shall point out an enemy or an obstacle to its fury."

How quickly the disenchantments come! Already Lafayette, the man of generous illusions, has had to imitate the conduct of those _emigres_ on whom he has been so severe. He has fled to a foreign land, and found there not a refuge, but a prison. He will {390} remain more than five years in the gloomy fortress of Olmutz. The victor of Valmy, Dumouriez, will hardly be more fortunate. He will go over to the enemy, and live in exile on a pension from foreign powers. How close together deceptions and recantations come! Marat, who had already said to the inhabitants of the capital: "Eternal c.o.c.kneys, with what epithets would I not a.s.sail you in the transports of my despair, if I knew any more humiliating than that of Parisians?"[1] Marat, who had said to all Frenchmen: "No, no; liberty is not made for an ignorant, light, and frivolous nation, for cits brought up in fear, dissimulation, knavery, and lying, nourished in cunning, intrigue, sycophancy, avarice, and swindling, subsisting only by theft and rapine, aspiring after nothing but pleasures, t.i.tles, and decorations, and always ready to sell themselves for gold!"[2] Marat will write, May 7th, 1793, that is to say, at the apogee of his favorite political system: "All measures taken up to the present day by the a.s.semblies, const.i.tuent, legislative, and conventional, to establish and consolidate liberty, have been thoughtless, vain, and illusory, even supposing them to have been taken in good faith. The greater part seem to have had for their object to perpetuate oppression, bring on anarchy, death, poverty, and famine; to make the people weary of their independence, to make liberty a burden, to cause them to {391} detest the Revolution, through its excessive disorders, to exhaust them by watching, fatigue, want, and inanition, to reduce them to despair by hunger, and to bring them back to despotism by civil war."[3]

There were six ministers appointed on August 10. Two of them, Claviere and Roland, will kill themselves; two others, Lebrun-Tondu and Danton, will be guillotined; the remaining two, Servan and Monge, are destined to become, one a general of division under Napoleon, and the other a senator of the Empire and Count of Peluse; and when, at the beginning of his reign, the Emperor complains to the latter because there are still partisans of the Republic to be found: "Sire," the former minister of August 10 will answer, "we had so much trouble to make them republicans! may it please Your Majesty kindly to allow them at least a few days to become imperialists!" Of the two men who had so enthusiastically brought about the proclamation of the Republic, one, Collot d'Herbois, will be transported to Guiana by the republicans, and die there in a paroxysm of burning fever; the other, Gregoire, will be a senator of the Empire, which will not, however, prevent him from promoting the deposition of Napoleon as he had promoted that of Louis XVI. There are men who will exchange the jacket of the _sans-culotte_ for the gilded livery of an imperial functionary. The conventionists and regicides are {392} transformed into dukes and counts and barons.

David, the official painter of the Empire, Napoleon's favorite, will paint with joy the picture of a pope, and be very proud of his great picture of the new Charlemagne's coronation. But listen to Edgar Quinet: "When I see the orators of deputations taking things with such a high hand at the bar, and lording it so proudly over mute and complaisant a.s.semblies, I should like to know what became of them a few years later." And thereupon he sets out to discover their traces. But after considerable investigation he stops. "If I searched any further," he exclaims, "I should be afraid of encountering them among the petty employes of the Empire. It was quite enough to see Huguenin, the indomitable president of the insurrectionary Commune, so quickly tamed, soliciting and obtaining a post as clerk of town gates as soon as absolute power made its reappearance after the 18th Brumaire. The terrible Santerre becomes the gentlest of men as soon as he is pensioned by the First Consul. Hardly had Bourdon de l'Oise and Albitte, those men of iron, felt the rod than you see them the supplest functionaries of the Empire. The great king-taker, Drouet, thrones it in the sub-prefecture of Sainte-Menehould. Napoleon has related that, on August 10, he was in a shop in the Carrousel, whence he witnessed the taking of the palace. If he had a presentiment then, he must have smiled at the chaos which he was to reduce so easily to its former limits. How many furies, and all to terminate so soon in the accustomed obedience!"

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Is not history, with its perpetual alternatives of license and despotism, like a vicious circle? And do not the nations pa.s.s their time in producing webs of Penelope, whose b.l.o.o.d.y threads they weave and unweave again with tears? All governments, royalties, empires, republics, ought to be more modest. But all, profoundly forgetful of the lessons of the past, believe themselves immortal. All declare haughtily that they have closed forever the era of revolutions.

With the advent of the Republic a new calendar had been put in force.

The equality of days and nights at the autumnal equinox opened the era of civil equality on September 22. "Who would have believed that this human geometry, so profoundly calculated, was written in the sand, and that in a few years no traces of it would remain? ... The heavens have continued to gravitate, and have brought back the equality of days and nights; but they have allowed the promised liberty and equality to perish, like meteors that vanish in empty s.p.a.ce.... The _sans-culottes_ have not been able to make themselves popular among the starry peoples.... An ancient belief which the men of the Revolution had neglected through fear or through contempt was again met with; a spectre had appeared; a chilly breath, like that of Samuel, had made itself felt; and lo, the edifice so sagely constructed, and leaning on the worlds, has vanished away."[4]

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There lies at the foundation of history a supreme sadness and melancholy. This never-ending series of illusions and deceptions, errors and afflictions, faults and crimes; this rage, and pa.s.sion, and folly; so many efforts and fatigues, so many dangers, tortures, and tears, so much blood, such revolutions, catastrophies, cataclysms of every sort,--and all for what? Wretched humanity, rolling its stone of Sisyphus from age to age, inspires far more compa.s.sion than contempt.

The painful reflections caused by the annals of all peoples are perhaps more sombre for the French Revolution than for any other period. Edgar Quinet justly laments over the inequality between the sacrifices of the victims and the results obtained by posterity. He affirms that in other histories one thing reconciles us to the fury of men, and that is the speedy fecundity of the blood they shed; for example, when one sees that of the martyrs flow, one also sees Christianity spread over the earth from the depth of the catacombs; while amongst us, the blood which streamed most abundantly and from such lofty sources, did not find soil equally well prepared. And the ill.u.s.trious historian exclaims sadly: "The supreme consolation has been refused to our greatest dead; their blood has not been a seed of virtue and independence for their posterity. If they should reappear once more, they would feel themselves tortured again, and on a worse scaffold, by the denial of their descendants; they would hurl at us again the same adieu: 'O Liberty! how they have betrayed thee!'"

[1] _Ami du Peuple_, No. 429.

[2] _Ami du Peuple_, No. 539.

[3] _La Publiciste de la Republique_, No. 211.

[4] Edgar Quinet, _La Revolution_, t. 11.