HISTORY OF EUROPE. CHAPTER VI. FORMATION OF A DEMOCRATIC CONSTITUTION.· FROM THE CHAP. VI. 1789. 1. the removal "In every country," says Sallust, "those who have no property envy the good, extol the bad, deride antiquity, support innovation, desire change from the alarming state of their own affairs, live in mobs and tumults, since Ruinous poverty has nothing to fear from such convulsions. But effects of many causes made the city populace pre-eminent in these of the Asrespects; for whoever in the provinces were most remark- Paris. able for their depravity or self-sufficiency-all who had lost their patrimony, or their place in society—all whom wickedness or disgrace had driven from their homes, found their way to Rome as the common sewer of the Republic."* The French Assembly experienced the truth of these "Semper in civitate," says the historian, "quibus opes nullæ sunt, bonis invident, malos extollunt; vetera odere, nova exoptant, odio suarum rerum mutari omnia student; turba atque seditionibus sine cura aluntur; quoniam egestas facile habetur sine damno. Sed urbana plebes, ea vero, præceps ierat multis de causis; nam qui ubique probro atque petulantia maxume præstabant, item alii per dedecora patrimoniis amissis, postremo omnes quos flagitium aut facinus domo expulerat, hi Romam sicuti in sentinam confluxerant.”—Sallust, Bell. Cat. § 37. VOL. II. Α sembly to VI. 1789. CHAP. principles in a remarkable manner upon the removal of the seat of its deliberations to the metropolis. To the natural depravity of a great city, its population added the extraordinary corruption arising from the profligacy and irreligion of preceding reigns. To these were now added the unbounded license and vehement desires which had grown up with the enthusiasm of the time, and the sudden acquisition of supreme power by the multitude. Never were objects of such magnitude offered to the passions of a people so little accustomed to coerce their passions ; never was flattery so intoxicating poured into the minds of men so little able to withstand it. The National Assembly, with a fatal precipitance, placed itself without any protection at the mercy of the most corrupt populace in Europe, at the period of its highest excitation. It did not require the gift of prophecy to foretell what would be the result of such a prostration. 2. leans sent Oct. 14. The removal of the court to Paris produced immediate Duke of Or- changes of importance in the contending parties. The to England. Duke of Orleans was the first to decline in influence. General Lafayette exerted himself with vigour and success to show that he had been the secret author of the disturbances which had so nearly proved fatal to the royal family, and declared publicly that he possessed undoubted proofs of his accession to the tumult, with the design of making himself lieutenant-general of the kingdom. That abandoned prince had now lost the confidence of all parties. The court was aware of his treason; the people saw his weakness; his own associates were in despair at his pusillanimity. No one can long remain at the head of a band of conspirators who wants courage to reap, for the common behoof, the fruits of their crimes. The coward!" said 1 Toul. i. 152. Lac. Mirabeau, "he has the appetite for crime, but not the vii. 259. Th. influence was lost, except with his hireling supporters; and i. 184, 185, 186. the King, glad to get quit of so dangerous a subject, with the entire concurrence of the National Assembly,1 and VI. without opposition even from his hireling supporters, sent CHAP. him into honourable exile on a mission to the court of London. 1789. 3. of Mounier Tollendal. From this departure nothing but good was to be expected; but the secession of other members diminished Retirement the influence of reason in the Assembly, and left a fatal and Lally ascendency to revolutionary ambition. Mounier and Lally Tollendal, despairing of the cause of order, retired from the capital; and the former established himself in Dauphiny, his native province, where he endeavoured to organise an opposition to the Assembly.* The departure of these well-meaning, though deluded patriots, who had taken so decided a part in the first usurpation of the Tiers Etat, was a serious calamity to France: it weakened the friends of rational freedom, and, by extending the fatal example of defection, left the country a prey to the ambitious men who were striving to raise themselves by means of the public calamities. They had expected that the people, after having delivered the Assembly on the 14th July, would immediately submit themselves to its authority; they were the first to find that popular commotions are more easily excited than regulated, and that the multitude will not shake off one authority merely to subject themselves to another. Those who were the heroes of the nation on the occasion of the Tennis-court oath and the union of the orders had already fallen into neglect; the parliaments had been passed by them in the career of 255. Mig. democracy, and they were already outstripped by their . 191. more ambitious inferiors.1 The latter thus justified himself to one of his friends for retiring from public life :-" My health renders my continuance in the Assembly impossible; but laying that aside, I could no longer endure the horror occasioned by that blood, those heads, that queen half-murdered, that king led a captive in the midst of assassins, and preceded by the heads of the unhappy guards who had died in his service; those murderers, those female cannibals, that infernal cry, 'A la lanterne tous les évêques;' Mirabeau exclaiming that the vessel of the Revolution, far from being arrested in its course, would now advance with more rapidity than ever: these are the circumstances which have induced me to fly from that den of cannibals, where my voice can no longer be heard, and where for six weeks I have striven in vain to raise it."-LACRETELLE, vii. 265, 266. 1 Lac. vii. i. 97. Th. CHAP. VI. 1789. 4. Tumult in murder of Paris, and Oct. 19. The national guard of Paris, under the command of the deluded Lafayette, who still fondly clung to the illusion that order could be preserved under democratic rule, for some days succeeded in re-establishing tranquillity in the capital. in the capital. Ere long, however, the former scenes of François. violence recurred. A baker named François was murdered in the streets, on the 19th October, by a mob who were. enraged at finding that the return of the King had not immediately had the effect of lowering the price of provisions. With the savage temper of the times, they put his head on a pike, and paraded it through the streets, compelling every baker whom they met to kiss the remains. The wife of François, far advanced in pregnancy, who was running in a state of distraction towards the Hôtel de Ville, met the crowd; at the sight of the bloody head she fainted on the pavement. The mob had the barbarity to lower it into her arms, and press the lifeless lips against her face. The magistrates and National Assembly did nothing to prevent or punish this barbarity: elected by universal suffrage, they were paralysed at every step by the dread of losing their popularity. Such unparalleled atrocity, however, excited the indignation of all the better class of citizens, and by their influence martial law was proclaimed, and Lafayette, putting himself at the head of the national guard, attacked the mob, and seized the ruffian who carried the head, who was executed next day. The indignant populace murmured at this severity. "What!" they exclaimed, "is this our liberty? We can no longer hang whom we please!" But this first and 168. Mig. almost single punishment of popular crime which took 192. Lac. place during the Revolution had a surprising effect for a short time in restoring order, and clearly demonstrated with how much ease all the atrocities of the Revolution might have been checked by proper firmness, first in the King, and after this period in the Assembly, if they had been seconded by the faithful obedience of the troops.1* 1 Toul. i. i. 98. Th. vii. 226. Parl. Hist. iii. 190. Prudhom. Crimes de la Rév. iii. 169, 170. " * L'Assemblée Constituante devait du moins s'empresser de punir avec VI. 1789. Decree seditious Oct. 21. The Assembly, acting under the impulse of the indig- CHAP. nation which this murder excited, entertained a motion for a decree against seditious assemblages, known by the name of the decree of Martial Law. It was proposed, 5. that on occasion of any serious public disturbance, the against municipality should hoist the red flag, and immediately mobs. every group of citizens were to be bound to disperse, on pain of military execution. Mirabeau, Buzot, and Robespierre vehemently opposed the measure they felt the importance of such popular movements to aid their sanguinary designs. "If we do not awaken from our stupor," said the last named, "it is all over with public freedom. The deputies of the municipality demand bread and soldiers. Why? to repress the people at a moment when passions and intrigues of all sorts are conspiring to render the Revolution abortive. Those who excite them are well aware, that popular tumults are the most effectual means of repressing the multitude and extinguishing freedom. When the people are dying of famine they will always collect in mobs; to remove these disturbances you must ascend to their cause, and discover their authors, who would ruin us all. There can be no mistake so great as to suppose that the duty of repressing those delinquencies should be committed to others; the National Assembly alone is entitled to take cognisance of crimes committed against the nation. We should organise a tribunal in this Assembly, to take a final and definite cognisance of all state offences; we should trust nothing to the Procureur du Roi at the Châtelet. If we do not do this, the constitution, amidst all our deliberations, will be stifled in its cradle." Already Robespierre had the Revolutionary Tribunal in view. But the recollection of the 6th October, the excesses of the peasantry in the provinces, and the murder of François, 1 Hist. Parl. was too recent; and the law authorising the magistrates iii. 201, 207. to hoist the red flag, and proclaim martial law to disperse iii. 316, 322. seditious assemblies, was passed by a large majority.1 éclat, mais chacun voulait se populariser, et ce motif seul a fait presque tous les crimes qui souillèrent la Révolution."-PRUDHOMME, iii. 168. Deux Amis, |