VI. 1790. 51. Revolt at Metz and Nancy. CHAP. code was eminently favourable to the inferior officers; the ancient distinctions and privileges of rank were abolished, and seniority was made the sole title to promotion. In proportion as this change was beneficial to the private soldiers, it was obnoxious to their superiors, who found their advancement obstructed by a multitude of competitors from the inferior ranks, from whom they formerly experienced no sort of hindrance. The result was a general jealousy between the privates and their officers. Where the former preponderated, Jacobin clubs, in imitation of Aug. 31, those in the metropolis, were formed, and discipline, regulations, and accoutrements, subjected to the discussion of these self-constituted legislators; where the latter, dissatisfaction with the established government generally prevailed. Nowhere had the anarchy risen to a higher pitch than in the garrison of Nancy. It was composed of three regiments, one of which was Swiss, the others French; the proportion of officers in these regiments was much greater than usual in other corps, and they were drawn from a class most hostile to the Revolution. In the Swiss regiment of Chateauvieux, in particular, which had been raised in the country round Lausanne, the fervour of the Revolution was peculiarly violent. It was one of the first regiments of the line which openly declared, on the 14th July 1789, that they would not fire on the people, and 137, 140. thereby occasioned the capture of the Bastille, and overv. 215, 219, throw of the monarchy. After a long series of disputes Hist. Parl. between them and the privates, who, being decided RevoToul. i. 237, lutionists, could with difficulty be got to submit to the 254. Mich. restraints of discipline, it was found that all subordination Rév. ii, 270. was at an end.1 Many concessions had been made to them, which, as usual, only aggravated the mutiny; and 1 Bouillé, Deux Amis, vii. 60, 61. 239. Th. i. Hist. de la * "Ce régiment de Chateauvieux était, et méritait d'être, cher à l'armée, à la France. C'est lui qui, le 14 Juillet 1789, campé au Champ-de-Mars, lorsque les Parisiens allèrent prendre des armes aux Invalides, déclara que jamais il ne tirerait sur le peuple. Son refus évidemment paralysa Bésenval, laissa Paris libre et maître de marcher sur la Bastille."-MICHELET, Histoire de la Révolution, ii. 270. at length they broke out into open revolt, and put their CHAP. officers under arrest in their own barracks. VI. 1790. 52. of M. de Bouillé. The Assembly, perceiving the extreme danger of military insubordination in the unsettled state of the public Character mind, took the most energetic measures to put down the Bo revolt. Mirabeau exerted his powerful voice on the side of order; and BOUILLÉ, commander of Metz, received orders to march with the military force under his command against the insurgents. No man could be better qualified for the discharge of this delicate but important duty. In addition to the highest personal courage, he possessed the moral determination which is the invariable characteristic of a great mind. Connected with the aristocratic class by birth, and attached to the throne by principle and affection, M. de Bouillé was yet no enemy to those moderate reforms which all intelligent men felt to be indispensable in the state and the army. He was an enemy to the Revolution, not such as it was, but such as it had become. Firm, intrepid, and sagacious, he was better calculated than any other individual to stem the torrent of disaster; but the time was such, that not even the energy of Napoleon could have withstood its fury. Within the sphere of his own command, he maintained inviolate the royal authority: by separating his soldiers from the citizens, he did all that was possible, and that was but little, to preserve them from the contagion of revolutionary principles; while at the same time, by the natural ascendant of a great character, he retained their affections. For long he declined the new military oath, to be faithful "to the nation, to the law, and to the King;" Moll. iii. at length, moved by the entreaties of Louis, he agreed to Toul. i. 119. take it, in the hope of preventing the latter part from 397. being entirely forgotten in the first.1 Never was a more difficult task committed to a general than that now devolved on Bouillé ; for he had, with a small band of foreign mercenaries, to suppress a revolt of troops ten times as numerous, composed of native soldiers, 1 Bert. de 279, 280. Lab. iv. 396. VI. 1790. 53. Bouille's situation. Aug. 24. CHAP. supported by the wishes of the whole inhabitants of the provinces in which they were placed. Out of the ninety battalions which he was empowered to collect, he could Great diffi- only reckon on eight or ten, and they were all Swiss or culties of de German troops; and though more than half of the hundred and four squadrons he commanded were faithful, yet they were cantoned, for the sake of forage, in villages at a great distance from each other, and could not be drawn together without exciting suspicion, and probably extending the revolt. The King, as in all other cases, had enjoined force not to be employed except in the last extremity, when it could not by any possibility be avoided. Nevertheless, immediate steps were necessary, for the revolt at Nancy was daily attracting numbers to the standard of mutiny and plunder. Four French and two Swiss battalions, and some regiments of horse, had already joined it; four thousand men had flocked in from the vicinity, and were armed by the pillage of the arsenals, which had been broken open; the military chests had been plundered, every sort 143, 144. of excess perpetrated; and, by threats of instantly hanging bal de la the magistrates in case of refusal, and the general sack of Municipa- the town, they had succeeded in extorting first 27,000 Naney, Aug. francs, (£1100), and then 150,000 (£6000), from the Ibid. 391, municipality; the immediate spending of which in deiv. 396,397. bauchery had procured for them the unanimous support of the lower orders of the people.1 1 Bouillé, Procès ver lité de 14, 1790. 394. 54. Lab. Bouillé marches against Nancy. Aug. 30. Bouille's first care was to secure, by small garrisons on whom he could rely, the fortresses of Bitch, Phalsbourg, and Vic; and at the same time he sent M. de Malseigne to Nancy, armed with the decree of the Assembly, in order to endeavour to prevail on the soldiers to return to their duty, and also to inquire into their alleged grievances. The soldiers and people, however, intoxicated with their success, laughed at his speech, and trampled under foot the decree "Sa Majesté désire que la force ne soit employée que lorsque, à l'extrémité, les départemens se trouveront forcés à la requérir."—See La Tour DUPIN, Ministre de la Guerre, à M. DE BOUILLE, 24 Août 1790; BOUILLÉ, 142. VI. of the Assembly, fiercely exclaiming, "Money! money! СНАР. The Swiss were particularly loud in this demand; and to such a height did their violence proceed, that it was only 1790. by a great exertion of personal strength and courage, and with no small difficulty, that M. de Malseigne escaped death at their hands, and got off to Lunéville, where a regiment of carbineers afforded him protection. Upon hearing of this, M. de Bouillé instantly collected the few troops nearest at hand on whom he could rely, and marched on Nancy at the head of three thousand infantry and fourteen hundred horse. He found the town, which was slightly fortified, occupied by ten thousand regular troops and national guards, with eighteen pieces of cannon; but not intimidated by this great superiority, he forthwith summoned the rebels to leave the town, deliver up their guns, and four ringleaders from each regiment, and submit ; threatening them, at the same time, with instant attack in case of refusal. This vigour produced a great impression, as Bouillé's character, at once humane and firm, was well known to the soldiers; a deputation waited on him to state the proposals of the rebels, but their terms 149, 151. were so extravagant and their manners so insolent, that 403. Deux he deemed them wholly inadmissible, and prepared for an 249, 252. immediate attack.1 1 Bouillé, Lab. iv. 402, Amis, v. 55. action there, When Bouille's men approached the gates of Nancy, they were met by a deputation, which promised, on the Bloody part of the mutineers, immediate submission; and a con- Aug. 31. vention was entered into, in virtue of which the officers in confinement were liberated, and one of the regiments began to defile out of the town. But a quarrel arose between Bouillé's advanced guard and some of the mutineers, who insisted upon having their colours and defending the town, and they turned a gun, loaded with grape, on the entering column. Instantly a noble youth, M. Desilles, an officer in the regiment which had mutinied, but who had remained with it to moderate the excesses of the soldiers, placed himself across the mouth of the cannon, exclaiming, VOL. II. D VI. 1790. CHAP. "They are your friends,-they are your brothers; the National Assembly sends them: would you dishonour the regiment of the King?" This heroic conduct had no effect on the mutincers; they dragged him from the mouth of the gun-he returned and clasped it by the touch-hole, upon which he was pierced with bayonets, and the gun discharged. Fifty of Bouillé's men were struck down by the discharge, and a conflict began. But mutineers, though superior in number, are seldom able to resist the attack of soldiers acting in their duty. Bouillé's columns penetrated into the town; the regiment of the King, wavering, retired at the solicitation of its officers to the front of its barracks, and soon capitulated; and the remainder of the rebels, driven from one street to another, were obliged to surrender, after a resistance which cost them three hundred killed and wounded. The victorious general and troops signalised their triumph by their clemency; but the inflexible probity of the Swiss government condemned twenty-two of the regiment of Châteauvieux to death, and fifty-four to the galleys, which sentence was rigidly executed. Very different was the conduct of the National 152, 159. Assembly. A hundred and eighty of the French mutineers, and three hundred national guards, were taken with arms 1009. Deux in their hands; they were all pardoned by the French 254, 270. legislature, and soon paraded through the streets of Paris in triumph by the Jacobins; while Bouillé, whose firmness and humanity had shone forth with equal lustre on this 282, 284. trying occasion, became the object of secret terror and open hostility to the whole Revolutionary party.1 1 Bouillé, Moniteur, Sept. 1, 1790, p. Amis, v. Lab. vi. 404, 407. Bert. de 56. Paris, and sembly. The rapid and decisive suppression of this revolt excited Tumult in the utmost sensation among the Jacobins of Paris; they proceedings dreaded, above all things, the demonstration of the ease in the As with which a formidable revolutionary movement could be arrested by the decision of a general, supported by the fidelity of a small body of soldiers. Indefatigable, accordingly, were the efforts they made to excite the public mind on the subject, and, if possible, effect the overthrow of the |