Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty Part 5

How he repented his enthusiasm now! What ill-will he bore the artist who placed his art, that sacred gift, at the service of anarchical pa.s.sions! With what irony the same pen pa.s.sed from dithyramb to satire!

Arts worthy of our eyes, pomp and magnificence Worthy of our liberty, Worthy of the vile tyrants who are devouring France, Worthy of the atrocious dementia Of that stupid David whom in other days I sang!

On the very day of the fete the young poet had the courage to publish in the _Journal de Paris_ an avenging satire, which branded the shoulders of the ex-galley slaves as with a new hot iron. The sweet {120} and pathetic elegiast, the Catullus, the Tibullus of France, added a bronze chord to his lyre:--

Hail, divine triumph! Enter within our walls!

Bring us these warriors so famed For Desilles' blood, and for the obsequies Of many Frenchmen ma.s.sacred...

One day alone could win so much renown, And this fair day will shine upon us soon!

When thou shalt lead Jourdan to our army, And Lafayette to the scaffold!

Jourdan was the slaughterer, the headsman, the torturer of the Glacier of Avignon, who, coming under the provisions of the amnesty, had arrived to take part in the triumph of the Swiss of Chateauvieux. The acclamations were lugubrious. The lanterns and torches shed a funereal glare. Nothing is more doleful than enthusiasm for ignominy. The applause accorded to disgrace and crime sounds like sinister derision.

Outraged public conscience extinguishes the fires of apotheoses such as these. Madame Elisabeth, in a letter of April 18, speaks with a sort of pity of this odious but ridiculous fete: "The people have been to see Dame Liberty waggling about on her triumphal car, but they shrugged their shoulders. Three or four hundred _sans-culottes_ followed, crying 'Long live the nation! Long live liberty! Long live the _sans-culottes_! to the devil with Lafayette!' All this was noisy but sad. The National Guards took no part in it; on the contrary, they were indignant, and Petion, they say, is ashamed of his conduct. {121} The next day a pike surmounted by a red bonnet was carried noiselessly through the garden, and did not remain there long." The Princess de Lamballe, who was living at the Tuileries in the Pavilion of Flora, could see the pike thus carried by a pa.s.ser. It may, perhaps, have been that belonging to one of the Septembrists,--that on which her own head was to be placed.

The _Moniteur_, however, grew ecstatic over the fete. "There are plenty of others," it said, "who will describe the march of the triumphal cortege, the groups composing it, the car of Liberty, conducted by Fame, drawn by twenty superb horses, preceded by ravishing music which was sometimes listened to in religious silence and sometimes interrupted by wild, irregular dances whose very disorder was rendered more piquant by the fraternal union reigning in all hearts....

The people were there in all their might, and did not abuse it. There was not a weapon to repress excesses, and not an excess to be repressed." It concluded thus: "We say to the administration: Give such festivals as these often. Repeat this one every year on April 15; let the feast of Liberty be our spring festival; and let other civic solemnities signalize the return of the other seasons. In former days the people had none but those of their masters, and all that was accomplished by them was their depravity and abas.e.m.e.nt. Give them some that shall be their own, and that will elevate their souls, develop their sensibilities, and fortify their courage. They {122} will create, or, better, they have already created, a new people. Popular festivals are the best education for the people."

Optimists, how will your illusions terminate? You who see nothing but an idyl in all this, can not you perceive that such ceremonies are the prelude to ma.s.sacres, and that an odor of blood mingles with their perfumes? All who took part on either side of the heated controversy which preceded the ovation to the Swiss of Chateauvieux, will be pursued by fate. Gouvion, who had sworn never again to set foot within the precincts of the a.s.sembly where the murderers of his brother triumphed, kept his word. On the very day of that shameful session he asked to be sent to the Army of the North, and three months later was to be carried off by a cannon-ball. Still more melancholy was to be the fate of Petion, who showed such complaisance toward the Swiss on this occasion. He, once so popular that in 1791 he was asked to allow the ninth child, which a citizeness had just presented to her country, "to be baptized in his name, revered almost as much as that of the Divinity"; he of whom some one said at that time, "For the same reason which would have made Jesus a suitable mayor of Jerusalem, Petion is a suitable mayor of Paris; there is too striking a resemblance between them to be overlooked," was sadly to exclaim some months later: "I am one of the most notable examples of popular inconsistency.... For a long time I have said to myself and to my {123} friends: The people will hate me still more than they have loved me. I can no longer either enter or depart from the place where we hold our sessions without being exposed to the grossest insults and the most seditious threats. How often have I not heard them say as I was pa.s.sing: 'Scoundrel! we will have your head!'"

Proscribed with the Girondins, May 31, 1793, he fled at first to Normandy, and afterwards into the Gironde, wandering from town to town, from field to field, and hiding for several months thirty feet under ground, in a sort of well; the poor people who showed him hospitality paid for it with their heads. Ah! how disenchanted he must have been with that revolutionary policy of which he had been the enthusiastic promoter! How sad was the farewell to life signed by him and Buzot: "Now that it has been demonstrated that liberty is hopelessly lost; that the principles of morality and justice are trodden under foot; that there is nothing to choose between two despotisms,--that of the brigands who are tearing the vitals of France and that of foreign powers; that the nation has lost all its energy; that it lies at the feet of the tyrants by whom it is oppressed; that we can render no further service to our country; that, far from being able to give happiness to the beings we hold most dear, we shall bring down hatred, vengeance, and misfortune upon them, so long as we live,--we have resolved to quit life and be no longer witnesses of the slavery which is about to desolate our unhappy country."

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After ending with this cry of grief and indignation: "We devote the vile scoundrels who have destroyed liberty and plunged France into an abyss of evils to the scorn and indignation of all time," the two proscripts were found dead in a wheat-field about a league from Saint-Emilion. Their bodies were half devoured by wolves.

And how will Andre Chenier end? On the day of the Swiss fete, the city where such a scandal took place seemed to him insupportable. For several days he sought refuge in the country where he could breathe a purer air beneath the blossoming trees. But contemplation of nature did not soothe him. Running to meet danger, he returned and threw himself into the furnace, more ardent and indignant than before. With manly enthusiasm he exclaimed: "It is above all when the sacrifices which must be made to truth, liberty, and country are dangerous and difficult, that they are accompanied by inexpressible delights. It is in the midst of spying accusations, outrages, and proscriptions, it is in dungeons and on scaffolds, that virtue, probity, and constancy taste the pleasures of a proud and pure conscience." Andre had a presentiment of his fate.

He was to die on the same day and the same scaffold as his friend Roucher, a few hours earlier than the moment when Robespierre's condemnation would have saved them. It is thus that he was to pay with his life for his opposition to the fete of the Swiss of Chateauvieux, and Collot d'Herbois was avenged. {125} But after the turn of the victims came that of the headsmen. The unlucky comedian who, pursuing even his comrades with his hatred, asked that "the head of the _Comedie Francaise_ should be guillotined and the rest transported," the impresario of the fete of the Swiss galley slaves, the organizer of the Lyons ma.s.sacres, Collot d'Herbois, cursed by friends and enemies, was transported to Guiana and died there in 1796, just as he had lived, in an access of burning fever.

[1] The oath taken by the deputies of the third estate in the tennis-court of Versailles, in 1789.

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XII.

THE DECLARATION OF WAR.

The wave of anarchy constantly rose higher, but the optimists, sheltering themselves, like Petion, in a beatific calm, obstinately closed their eyes and would not see it. Abroad and at home there was such a series of shocks and agitations, of struggles and emotions, perils and troubles; things hurried on so fast, and the scenes of the drama were so varied and so violent, that what happened to-day was forgotten by the morrow. The noise of the fete of the Swiss of Chateauvieux had hardly ceased when the shouts of the mult.i.tude were heard saluting Louis XVI., who had just declared war on Austria.

In reality, the King did not desire war, but the bellicose current had become irresistible. The court of Vienna had shown itself intractable.

It forbade the princes who owned possessions in Lorraine and Alsace to receive the indemnities offered by France in exchange for their feudal rights, and threatened to have the Diet of Ratisbonne annul any private treaties they might conclude concerning them. The electors of Treves, Cologne, and Mayence undisguisedly favored the levying of troops by the emigrant {127} princes, and even paid subsidies toward their support.

They refused to recognize the official amba.s.sadors of Louis XVI., while recognizing the plenipotentiaries of these princes. There was talk of holding a Congress at Aix-la-Chapelle for the purpose of intimidating the National a.s.sembly. The successor of the Emperor Leopold, Francis II., who, before his election to the Empire, had a.s.sumed the t.i.tle of King of Hungary and Bohemia, displayed extremely martial sentiments.

Austria, which had sent forty thousand men to the Low Countries and twenty thousand to the Rhine, had just signed a treaty of alliance with Prussia, "to put an end to the troubles in France." Dumouriez urgently demanded the court of Vienna to explain itself. It finally sent the French Amba.s.sador, Marquis de Noailles, a dry, curt, and formal note, naming the only conditions on which peace could be preserved. These were: the re-establishment of the French monarchy on the bases of the royal declaration of June 23, 1789, and, consequently, the restoration of the n.o.bility and clergy as orders; the rest.i.tution of Church property; the return of Alsace to the German princes, with all their sovereign and feudal rights; and, finally, the surrender of Avignon and the county of Venaisson to the Holy See.

"In truth," says Dumouriez in his Memoirs, "if the Viennese minister had slept through the entire thirty-three months that had elapsed since the royal seance, and had dictated this note on awaking {128} without knowledge of what had happened, he could not have proposed conditions more incongruous with the progress of the Revolution.... The new social compact was founded on the abolition of the orders and the equality of all citizens. The financial system, which alone could prevent bankruptcy, was founded on the creation of a.s.signats. The a.s.signats were hypothecated on the property of the clergy, now become the property of the nation, and the greater part of which had been already sold. The nation, therefore, could not accept these conditions except by violating its Const.i.tution, destroying property, ruining its purchasers, annulling its a.s.signats, and declaring bankruptcy. Could so humiliating an obedience be expected from a great nation, proud of having conquered its liberty? and that for the sake of placing itself once more under the yoke of n.o.bles who, having abandoned their King himself, now threatened to re-enter their country with sword and flame and every scourge of vengeance?"

The entire National a.s.sembly reasoned in the same way as Dumouriez. A cry for war arose on all sides. The Girondins saw in it the indispensable consecration of the Revolution. The Feuillants hoped that besides proving creditable to the government, it would accomplish the additional end of drawing away from Paris and other great cities a mult.i.tude of turbulent men who, for lack of anything else to do, were disturbing public order. Certain reactionists, stifling the sentiment of patriotism in their hearts, {129} were equally anxious for war, in the secret hope that it would prove disastrous for the French army, and result in the re-establishment of the old regime. On the other hand, there were good citizens, inclined to optimism and judging others by themselves, who thought that when confronted with an enemy, all intestine dissensions would vanish as by enchantment, and that the new Const.i.tution, hallowed by victory and glory, would ensure the country a most brilliant destiny. Ministers were unanimous, and enthusiasm universal. Even if he had so desired, Louis XVI. could no longer resist it. On April 20, 1792, he went to the a.s.sembly. The hall was filled with a crowd which comprehended the importance and solemnity of the act about to be accomplished.

According to Dumouriez, the King was very majestic: "I come," he said, "in accordance with the terms of the Const.i.tution, formally to propose war against the King of Hungary and Bohemia." He afterwards paid the greatest attention to the report of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and seemed, by the motions of his head and hands, to approve it in every respect. He returned to the Tuileries amidst general acclamations. War was unanimously decided on, and Dumouriez went to the diplomatic committee in order to draw up the declaration. At ten in the evening the decree was brought in and carried to the King, who sanctioned it at once.

Thus commenced that gigantic war which France was to wage against all Europe, and which ended, {130} twenty-three years later, in the disaster of Waterloo. How many battles, what suffering, and what a prodigious shedding of blood! And to attain what end? Simply the point of departure; that is to say, in the political order, to const.i.tutional monarchy, and in territory, to the boundaries of 1792.

What! to have filled Europe with noise and renown; to have carried the standards of France from east to west, from north to south; to have camped victoriously in Brussels, Milan, Venice, Rome, Naples, Cairo, Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow; to have enlarged the borders of valor, heroism, and self-sacrifice in order to arrive, after so many efforts, just at the spot where the strife began? Ah! how short-sighted is human wisdom, how deceitful the previsions of mortal man, how sterile the agitations of republics and monarchs! "a.s.suredly!" says Dumouriez, "if the Emperor and the King of Prussia could have foreseen that France was able to withstand all Europe, they would not have meddled with her domestic quarrels; they would have treated the _emigres_ not with confidence, but compa.s.sion; they would have responded frankly and without trickery to the minister's negotiation; the Revolution would have been accomplished without cruelties; Europe would have remained at peace, and France would be happy." What sadness underlies all history, and what disproportion there is between man's sacrifices and their results! The Revolution was achieved. All necessary liberties had been conquered. Privileges {131} existed no longer. Animated by excellent intentions, Louis XVI. would have been the best of const.i.tutional sovereigns, had his subjects possessed wisdom. Why this long misunderstanding between him and his people? Why, on one side, the insensate att.i.tude of the _emigres_, whose task seemed to be to justify the revolutionists; and why, on the other, those savage pa.s.sions which seemed trying to justify the wrathful recriminations of Coblentz? Why that untimely intervention of Austria which irritated French national sentiment and gave a political pretext to inexcusable violence, cruelty, and crime? Inextricable confusion of false situations! Mult.i.tudes asked themselves in what direction right and duty lay. A large contingent of the French n.o.bility heartily desired the success of foreign armies. At Coblentz a gathering of twenty-two thousand gentlemen hastened to the side of the seven Bourbon princes: the Comte de Provence, the Comte d'Artois, the Duc de Berry, the Duc d'Angouleme, the Prince de Conde, the Duc de Bourbon, and the Duc d'Enghien.

As M. de Lamartine has said: "Infidelity to the country called itself fidelity to the King. Desertion called itself honor. Fealty to the throne was the religion of the French n.o.bility. To them the sovereignty of the people seemed an insolent dogma against which it was necessary to draw the sword under penalty of sharing the crime. There was real devotion in the act by which these men, young and {132} old, abandoned their rank in the army, and the ties of country and family, and rushed into a foreign land to defend the white flag as common soldiers.... Their country symbolized duty for the patriots; to the _emigres_, duty meant the throne. One of these parties deceived itself concerning its duty, but both of them believed they were performing it."

As to the unfortunate Louis XVI., he suffered cruelly. It was like death to him to declare war against his nephew, and at certain moments he felt that this Austrian army against which his troops contended might yet be his last resource. He could not even flatter himself that the sacrifice he had made of his sympathies and family feelings would be repaid by the love and confidence of his people.

"We have no difficulty nowadays in comprehending," says M. Geffroy very justly, "what pure patriotism there was in that young army of 1792, which represented new France. But this army, formed in independence of the old regiments, was none the less, in the eyes of the Queen, a veritable army of sedition. She thought of it as composed of the victors of the Bastille, those whom Mirabeau styled the greatest scoundrels of Paris; the very rabble who came to Versailles on the 6th of October. She believed they could be crushed by the first attack at the frontier, and that France and Paris would be rid of them." The following reflection by M. Geffroy is very judicious: "Marie Antoinette committed a double error, but honest men who had not the same {133} overpowering motives as she, have committed it likewise. I do not allude merely to those Frenchmen who, after April 20, remained in the ranks of the Emigration, and who, apparently, did not suppose themselves to be betraying the true interests of their country. But look at M. de Bouille. He even accepted a command in the foreign army under Gustavus III. And yet M. de Bouille is an honest man who knows France and loves her ardently. Observe, in his Memoirs, his involuntary pride in our success, and how he shrugs his shoulders at the bl.u.s.ter of the Prussian officers."

It is not yet well understood what vigor, enthusiasm, and martial ardor animated that brave national army, which, according to the foreigners, was but a band of rioters, but which was suddenly to appear on the battle-field as a people of heroes. Honor took refuge in the camps.

It was there that men whom the Jacobin Club enraged, and who had no consolation for their patriotic grief but the virile emotions of combat, went to fight and die. Why did not Louis XVI. call to mind that he was the commander-in-chief of the army? Ah! had he been a soldier, had he been accustomed to wear a uniform, to command, and, above all, to speak to his troops, how quickly he would have come to the end of his difficulties! Count de Vaublanc had good reason to say: "Anything can be done with Frenchmen if one knows how to animate and impress them with vehement ardor; otherwise, nothing need be expected.... Never did {134} a prince merit better the eternal rewards promised by religion to the true Christian; and yet his example should forever teach kings that their conduct must be totally different from his. Lacking the courage which acts, the most virtuous king cannot achieve his own safety." Why did not Louis XVI. go amongst his soldiers? Victory would have given him a sceptre and a crown. While he still retained his sword, why did he leave it in the scabbard? Why did he not remember that it might launch thunderbolts?

On the contrary, Louis XVI. hesitates, fumbles, temporizes. Count de Vaublanc says again: "This wretched time proves thoroughly that finesse is the most detestable means of conducting great affairs. Nothing but finesse was opposed to the impetuous attacks of the Jacobins. All was dissimulation; conversations, writings, measures; authority acted only by crooked ways. With a thousand means of safety, people were lost because they pushed prudence to excess, and extreme prudence always degenerates into despicable means. I was in every great crisis of the Revolution, and I have always seen the same faults produce the same misfortunes. It is the same thing in revolution as in war; no matter how prudent a general may be, he must take some risk. Otherwise it would be impossible to gain a single battle."

Ah! how true and how striking is that great saying of Bossuet: "When G.o.d wills to overthrow empires, all is feeble and irregular in their designs." {135} Undecided and fickle, Louis XVI. does not even know whether to desire the success or the failure of the Austrian army. He has no plan, no steadiness of purpose. The secret mission he gives to Mallet du Pan is a fresh proof of the irresolution of his character and his policy. What is it he asks? To have the Powers declare that they are making war against an anti-social faction, and not the French nation; that they are undertaking the defence of legitimate governments and of peoples against anarchy; that they will treat only with the King; that they shall demand perfect liberty for him; that they convoke a congress to which the _emigres_ may be admitted as complainants, and where the general scheme of claims and reclamations shall be negotiated under the auspices and the guarantee of the great courts of Europe.

Hesitating between Austria and his own kingdom, the unhappy monarch attempts to continue that equivocal system, that see-saw policy in which he has succeeded so ill, and which constrains him to dissimulation, that last resource of the feeble. Sent to Germany with instructions written by Louis XVI., with his own hand, Mallet du Pan recommends the sovereigns to be cautious in advancing into France, to observe the greatest prudence in dealing with the inhabitants of the invaded provinces, and to precede their arrival by a manifesto in which they declare conciliatory and pacific intentions. It follows that official ministers of the King did not possess his confidence and were not the interpreters of his mind. A {136} sort of occult and mysterious government existed, with a diplomacy, secret funds, and agents abroad and at home. Such a system, lacking all grandeur and sincerity, could accomplish nothing but catastrophes.

Meanwhile, the war had begun under the most painful conditions. The invasion of Belgium, arranged for the end of April, failed miserably.

Near Mons, Biron's troops took to flight, threatening to fire on their officers, and crying: "We are betrayed!" At Lille, General Theobald Dillon was ma.s.sacred by his own soldiers. Such news caused indescribable emotion in Paris. Popular mistrust and irritation reached their height. The different parties hurled reproaches and accusations in each other's face. The Girondins, finding the National Guard too conservative, demanded pikes for the men of the faubourgs who had no guns. The _sans-culottes_ enlisted. The army of a.s.sa.s.sins was organized. The only thing left to do before giving the signal for a riot was to obtain from the King a last concession,--the disbanding of his guard.

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XIII.

THE DISBANDING OF THE CONSt.i.tUTIONAL GUARD.

Louis XVI. had still some defenders, some heroes resolved to shed the last drop of their blood for their King. Hence it was necessary to remove them from his person. What means of doing so could be found?

Calumny. Fable on fable was spread among an always credulous public, imaginary conspiracies invented, and the wretched monarch constrained to deprive himself of his last resource, in order to deliver him, weak and disarmed, into the hands of his enemies.

The Const.i.tution provided a guard for Louis XVI. One third of it was composed of soldiers of the line, and the remainder of National Guards, chosen by the Departments themselves from among their best-formed, richest, and best-bred citizens. It was commanded by one of the greatest lords of the old regime, the Duke de Cosse-Brissac. Born in 1734, the son of a marshal of France, the Duke had been governor of Paris, grand steward of France, and colonel of the Hundred-Switzers.

He had never been willing to leave the King since the beginning of the Revolution. When his regiment was {138} disbanded he might have fled, and Louis XVI. begged him to do so; but the heart of a subject so faithful had been deaf to the entreaties of the unfortunate sovereign.

"Sire," he had answered, "if I fly, they will say that I am guilty, and you will be considered my accomplice: my flight would be your accusation; I would rather die." And, in fact, he did die. He had a real devotion to the former mistress of Louis XV., the Countess du Barry, and this latest conquest is not the least important of the favorite's adventures. Probably Count d'Allonville exaggerates when, in his Memoirs, he extols in Madame du Barry "that decency of tone, that n.o.bility of manners, that bearing equally removed from pride and humility, from license and from prudery, that countenance which was enough to refute all the pamphlets." Nevertheless, it is certain that the society of the Duke de Brissac inspired the former favorite with generous sentiments. After the October Days, she took the wounded body-guards into her own house, and when the Queen sent to thank her for it, she replied: "These wounded young men regret nothing except not having died for a princess so worthy of all homage as Your Majesty....

Luciennes[1] is yours, Madame; did not your benevolence give it back to me? ... The late King, by a sort of presentiment, forced me to accept a thousand precious objects {139} before sending me away from his person.

I already had the honor of offering you this treasure in the time of the Notables; I offer it again, Madame, with eagerness. You have so many expenses to provide for, and so many favors to confer. Permit me, I entreat you, to render to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar."

An enthusiastic royalist, a gentleman of the old n.o.bility, chivalrous and full of courtesy, bred in notions of romantic susceptibility like those of _Clelie_ and _Astree_, the Duke de Brissac, like a knight-errant of former times, represented at the court of Louis XVI. a whole past which was crumbling to decay. If the unhappy monarch had been a man of action, he would have turned to good advantage a guard commanded by such a champion. He could have made it the nucleus of resistance by grouping the Swiss regiments and the well-inclined battalions of the National Guard around it. Unfortunately, there was nothing warlike in Louis XVI. "Among the deplorable causes which ruined him," says the Count de Vaublanc in his Memoirs, "must be counted the wretched education which kept him apart from every sort of military action. I remember that in the early days of the Consulate, after a review held on the Place of the Tuileries by Bonaparte, when talking about this to M. Suard, of the French Academy, I said that Bonaparte walked as if he were always ready to defend himself sword in hand. 'Ah, well!' responded M. Suard, navely, {140} 'we used to think differently; we wanted the King to have nothing military about him, and never to wear a uniform.'"

To this anecdote, M. de Vaublanc adds another. "We had in 1792," he says, "a forcible proof of the despondency under which a royal soul, spoiled by a detestable education, can labor. M. de Narbonne, the Minister of War, with great difficulty induced the King to review three excellent battalions of the Paris National Guard. He was on foot, in silk breeches and white silk stockings, and wearing his hair in a black bag. After the review a notary, named Chandon, I think, left the ranks and said to the King: 'Sire, the National Guard would be greatly honored to see Your Majesty in its uniform.' 'Sire,' said M. de Narbonne, at once, 'have the goodness to promise to do so. At the head of these three battalions of heroes you could destroy the Jacobins'

den.' After a minute's reflection, the King replied: 'I will inquire of my Council whether the Const.i.tution permits me to wear the uniform of the National Guard.'" Louis XVI. allowed the last resources accorded by fortune to slip away, and elements which in other hands would have produced notable results, remained sterile in his.