VII. and simplicity of the Sabine farm. A steady republican, CHAP. he was well qualified for a quiescent, but ill for an incipient state of freedom. Uncompromising in his principles, 1792. unostentatious in his manners, unambitious in his inclination, he would probably never have emerged from the seclusion of private life, but for the splendid abilities and brilliant character of his wife. But he was opinionative and pedantic; ignorant alike of courts and the people ; a devout believer in popular virtue and human perfectibility, and wholly unequal to struggle with the audacious wickedness which was arising on all sides with the progress of the Revolution. The court ladies named the new ministry, "Le Ministère sans Culottes." The first time that Roland presented himself at the palace he was dressed with strings in his shoes, and a round hat. The master of the ceremonies refused to admit him in such an unwonted costume, not knowing who he was; but being afterwards informed, and in consequence obliged to do so, he turned to Dumourier, and said with a sigh, "Ah, sir, no buckles in his shoes !"-" All is lost!" replied the minister of foreign affairs with sarcastic irony. Yet was there more in this circumstance than superficial observers would be inclined to admit. The buckles were straws, but they were straws which showed how the wind, set. Dress is characteristic of manners, and manners are Mém. i. 32. the mirror of ideas. A very curious work might written upon the connection between changes in attire Mig. i, 165. and revolutions in empires.1 be 1 Roland, Lac. i. 225. Hist. de la Conv. i. 38. difficulties ment, and But the new ministers proved as unable as those 57. who preceded them had been, to arrest or even to alleviate Increasing the public calamities. These were owing to the overthrow of govern of the executive, and the suspension of all the powers of distress of government, and were consequently rather likely to be the country. increased than diminished by the accession of the liberal party to office. The Girondists, indeed, were propitiated, and Madame Roland gave cabinet dinners to their entire satisfaction; but that neither sustained the assignats nor March 27. VII. 1792. CHAP. filled the treasury; it neither stilled the Jacobins nor gave bread to the people. The King was firm in his determination to abide by the constitution, and gave, on several occasions, the most decisive and touching proofs of this determination. * But meanwhile the public distress was constantly increasing, and the people, inflamed by the speeches at the Jacobin clubs, ascribed them all to the resistance of the monarch to the severe laws against the clergy, which kept the nation, it was said, in continual turmoil, and alone prevented the completion of the glorious fabric of the Revolution. The difficulties of the exchequer were extreme, and all attempts to re-establish the finances, except by the continual issue of fresh assignats, had become nugatory, from the impossibility of collecting the revenue in the midst of the anarchy which prevailed in the country. Such was the penury of the royal treasury that it was entirely exhausted by the equipment of the constitutional guard, though it only amounted to eighteen 1 Bert. de hundred men; and the King was indebted to a loan of i. 394, 395. 500,000 francs (£20,000) from the Order of Malta, for Deux Amis, the means of defraying the necessary expenses of his Moll. Mém. vi. 390, 395. 58. ters of the war augment the King's danger. April 20. household.1 The Girondist ministers were no sooner in power than The disas they bent their whole force to impel the King into a foreign war; and they succeeded, by dint of clamour and popular pressure, in compelling the monarch, alike against his wishes and his interests, to take the fatal step. The details of the agitation by which this important step was brought about, and the negotiations which preceded it, will be fully given in a subsequent chapter, which treats * In a delicate matter brought before the royal council in January 1792, the King had to choose between two courses, the one of which would have given a considerable extension to the royal authority without exciting public jealousy, as it was generally called for, and the other was more conformable to the spirit and letter of the constitution. Louis, without a moment's hesitation, adopted the latter, assigning as his reason-" We must not think of extending the royal power, but of faithfully executing the constitution." On another occasion, when a proclamation was brought him to sign against the plundering and massacres which were going on in the country, he observed the phrase "Ces désordres troublent bien amèrement le bonheur dont nous jouissons." : But CHAP. VII. 1792. of the causes which led to the Revolutionary war. the reaction of hostilities, when they did commence, on the King's situation in the interior, was terrible. All the enterprises of France, in the outset, proved unfortunate: all her armies were defeated. These disasters, the natural effect of thirty years' unbroken Continental peace, and recent license and insubordination, produced the utmost consternation in Paris. The power of the Jacobins was rapidly increasing their affiliated societies were daily extending their ramifications throughout France, and the debates of the parent club shook the kingdom from one end to the other. They accused the Royalists of having occasioned the defeats, by raising treasonable cries of Sauve qui peut. The aristocrats could not dissemble their joy at events which promised shortly to bring the allied armies to Paris, and restore the ancient régime; the generals attributed their disasters to Dumourier, who had planned the campaign; he ascribed everything to the defective mode in which his orders had been executed. Distrust and recrimination universally prevailed. In this extremity, the Assembly took the most energetic measures for insuring, as they conceived, their own authority and the public safety. But the only measures which they thought of were such as weakened the royal authority; May 29. all their blows were directed against the King. They 121. Lac. declared their sittings permanent, disbanded the faithful: 234. Th. guard of the King, which had excited unbounded jeal- 297, 342. ousy among the democrats, and passed a decree condem- Bert. de ning the refractory clergy to exile. To secure their power ii. 7, 9. in the capital, and effectually overawe the Court, they "Effacez cela," said Louis: " ne me faites pas parler de mon bonheur. Comment voulez-vous que je sois heureux quand personne ne l'est en France? Non, monsieur, les Français ne sont pas heureux-je les sais: ils le seront un jour, j'espère: alors je le serai aussi, et je pourrai parler de mon bonheur." During five months and a half," adds Bertrand de Molleville, "that I was in the King's ministry at this time, I never saw the King for a single instant swerve from his attachment to the constitution."-Mémoires de BERTRAND DE MOLLEVILLE, i. 219, 311, 312. * See infra, chap. ix. 1 Toul. ii. 80. Hist. Parl. xiv. Moll. Mém. CHAP. directed the formation of a camp of twenty thousand VII. men near Paris, and sought to maintain the enthusiasm of the people by revolutionary fêtes, and to increase their efficiency by arming them with pikes. 1792. 59. the disband Of these measures, by far the most important was that Debate on which related to the disbanding of the royal guard; for ing of the it threatened to leave the monarch and his family without royal guard, even the shadow of protection, in the midst of a rebellious city, and at the mercy of a revolutionary legislature. The discussion was opened by Pétion, mayor of Paris, who drew, in the darkest colours, a picture of the agitation in the capital. "Paris," said he, "is every hour becoming more the object of general anxiety to all France. It is the common rendezvous of all without a profession, without bread, and enemies of the public weal. The fermentation is daily assuming a more alarming character. Facts on all sides demonstrate this. It is evident a crisis is approaching, and that of the most violent kind; you have long shut your eyes to it, but you can do so no longer." This was immediately followed by a deputation from the section of the Gobelins at Paris, consisting of fifteen hundred pikemen, preceded by the regiment of grenadiers of the section, who, after defiling through the Assembly with drums beating and colours flying, took post round its walls to overawe the deliberations. Nevertheless, many deputies courageously resisted the dissolution of this last remnant of protection to the sovereign. "The veil," says Girardin, "is now withdrawn; the insurrection against the throne is no longer disguised. We are called on, in a period of acknowledged public danger, to remove the last constitu234 Tol: tional protection from the crown. Why are we always ii. 121. Th. told of the dangers to be apprehended from the royalist Hist. Parl. faction-a party weak in numbers, despicable in influence, 307. Moni- whom it would be so easy to subdue? I see two 30. factions, and a double set of dangers, and one advances by hasty strides to a regicide government.1 Would to ii. 80, 81. xiv. 305, teur, May But I CHAP. God my anticipations may prove unfounded! VII. 1792. 60. is forced to May 31. So clearly did Louis perceive the extreme danger of disbanding his guard, on the eve, as had now become The King evident to all, of a popular insurrection, that he imme- sanction the diately submitted to his ministers a letter which he disbanding. proposed to write to the Assembly, refusing to sanction it. But the Girondist ministers to a man declined to countersign it. Upon this he proposed to go in person to the Assembly, and oppose the proposition, taking the whole responsibility upon himself; but they had the pusillanimity to refuse to accompany him. They then insisted so vehemently upon the extreme animosity which the guard had excited in Paris, and the peril of instant destruction to which the royal family would be exposed if the decree was not instantly sanctioned, that at length he was compelled to submit. Hardly had he done so, when he received a firm and able remonstrance from Bertrand de Molleville against so fatal a step, in which that minister demonstrated in the clearest manner the flagrant usurpation of which the Assembly had been guilty, in decreeing the dissolution of a guard which the constitution had expressly sanctioned, and subjected to his command alone. But it was too late. The King 1 On the could only reply that he had been forced to do so by 31st May his ministers, and lament the necessity to which he had de Moll. been subjected, of removing so faithful a councillor from 11, 12. his administration.1* The Girondists had their reward. * "Il n'est malheureusement plus temps de faire ce que vous proposez. Les ministres m'ont assuré que la fermentation du peuple était si violente, qu'il n'était pas possible de différer la sanction du décret sans exposer la garde et le château aux plus grands dangers ; j'en suis assez fâché; que voulez-vous que je fasse, environné comme je le suis, sans avoir personne sur qui je puisse compter ?"-LOUIS, 31st May 1792; BERTRAND DE MOLLEVILLE, ii. 12, 13. 1793. Bert. Mém. ii. |