Louis Blanc's Picture of the Assembly [1789 A.D.] The old feudal system had crumbled into dust. The national assembly became a constituent assembly [assemblée constituante]. It remained to be seen on what basis the new society would be raised. The assembly itself was divided. On the right-hand benches sat, in the pride of a rapidly passing splendour, archbishops, bishops, marquises, and barons, with a few deserters from the tiers-état. It is hardly possible that these phantoms of the past believed in the Revolution. They spent their force in fanning with bravado and jest the last sparks of the old court spirit. Some, who professed to be thinkers, rejoiced greatly at the rapid progress of revolutionary feeling, believing that such rapidity would speedily insure its destruction. MIRABEAU Others, younger, swore by their sword and the foreigner that the nobility would never give in, that they would march to their doom with firm eye and unlowered head, a smile of contempt on their lips; march triumphantly towards death, led by Cazales and the abbé Maury-two great powers of the past - soldier and priest-the soldier a man of eloquent sensibility, whose vehemence was only an exaggeration of his tenderness; the priest a man of cold calculation, "on whose face," says Carlyle,s "were depicted all the cardinal sins," and who, more than anyone, provoked the gross apostrophe which came threateningly from the highest tribune: "Gentlemen of the clergy, you are being shaved. If you don't keep still you will be cut." The centre of the assembly was occupied by a mass of men who had gained the sobriquet of Stick-in-themud or Bog-folk. Indecision charac terised this party. They had for mouthpiece, Lally-Tollendal; for agent, Malouet; and, for real director, Mounier. Mounier, the resolute general of a changeable army, had a soul above fear, intelligence without audacity, and brought a tireless energy to strengthen the timid opinions of others. The popular party sat on the left. There were found persons each famous in different ways: the duke of Orleans, head of a party to which one doubts whether he really belonged; La Fayette, entirely wrapped up in courting favour; Duport, whom deep meditation and study had prematurely aged; Barnave, elegant and frivolous; Lameth, a type of courtier who sought popularity only to gain honours, and whose misplaced ambition sought through public office a place in the ministry. It is said of these last three that "Duport thought, Barnave talked, and Lameth acted." But all agreed that the real thinker of the popular party was the abbé Sieyès. Much was expected of this grave personage who spoke so little and yet to such purpose. His thoughtful look, his keen eye, the light shed by his brief sentences on his method and aims, made him considered superior to any. One could [1789 A.D.] not help admiring his firm mouth, or crediting him with wonderful power merely from his ways. He had serious reserve too, a reserve which might be interpreted into a wise contempt or too great modesty. It was not for him, however, to lead the Revolution. Robespierre was there! Not that the future ascendency of Robespierre was then guessed at. Indeed the Arras advocate was frequently an object of ridicule in the eyes of those gentlemen who adopted the Greek rôle with languid ease and wit. He was not yet transformed by the revolutionary spirit. His speech was awkward and hesitating. His appearances on the tribune which later on made men tremble now provoked only smiles. Nothing in the man's outward appearance indicated his real power. Yet he alone, in each debate, sifted each question thoroughly. Alone in the midst of men tossed hither and thither by contrary opinions, he went straight forward fearlessly, unhesitatingly, with no regard for what others thought of him, his eyes fixed on the future. But those around him did not comprehend this man. His passion for ruling was of the head rather than the heart. With a keen intellect he had firm beliefs, but was as cold as steel. His convictions were unshakable but melancholy. No one guessed the power he possessed and only the Revolution revealed it. Even when he had sometimes given utterance to his deep thoughts in inflexible formulas, only insulting laughter arose from every part of the hall. Yet, in listening to his stubborn argument, in running counter to his unbendable faith, in wondering what meant the keen gaze of his curious blue eyes, in looking at that face whose green tinge often resembled that of the sea, many had a confused presentiment that the man was born to be heard. "This man," said Mirabeau once in an excess of involuntary emotion, "will do something great; he believes in his own. words." There was also in the assembly a fourth party of which the elements changed every hour, who acted on the impulse or inspiration of the moment; which by turns made itself accepted, admired, feared, despised, or compelled submission. This party was one man alone, and that man Mirabeau. But the assembly taken in its entity- what was it? First, it must be remembered that three orders composed it. The clergy alone had 308 representatives; the nobility sent 266 gentilshommes and 19 magistrates; also there were 160 parliamentarians of different degrees. Fifteen gentilshommes and four priests were included in the third estate. It would indeed have been wonderful if an assembly so formed had not been subject to disturbance, internal strife, and occasional downfalls. The assembly had to control a tempest which threatened to burst the walls of the room, a tempest of which it hardly grasped the tremendous force. It is true that a certain unity ruled among the divisions and contrary opinions. In the midst of passions and hostile interests certain leading tendencies stood out. But what were these tendencies? Those which the philosophy of the eighteenth century had begotten, stopping at Montesquieu and not going beyond Voltaire; originating with the majority, the third estate, that is, the phalanx of merchants, writers, advocates, sceptical gentilshommes, discontented priests, who trembled at having to yield to popular opinion the place they themselves had so largely occupied in the fray. There are parvenues in power no less than in riches, and the characteristic vices of exclusiveness, injustice, and pride exist no less in the middle class than in the upper. On the débris of feudal power in decay, what the majority of the constituents really considered themselves called upon to found was the power of the middle classes and nothing else. [1789 A.D.] But the constituent assembly is shown as furnishing, above and beyond its chosen work, the stamp of an often brilliant career. Have we not already seen signs of it sufficient to command respect? Its oath of the Jeu de Paume [oath of the tennis court], its serenity among bared swords, its strong, inflexible will in the drama of its conquered unity, its intrepid deliberations with the dragons raised by the court on one side and a people pulling down the Bastille on the other. All that bore an indelible seal; all that was worthy of the new era then opening. It was because the people were there and fought with the assembly. Behind that third estate, that grew weaker every time it consulted its own interests alone, the great and incomparable Revolution was working, urging it forward, animating and enveloping it with its fiery breath. If it paused, a voice, a startling voice, a voice one-toned though formed, like ocean roaring, of countless murmuring waves, cried: "Advance yet and always!" If the members drooped discouraged, a thunder-clap awakened them. This explains the double character that one notices in the acts of this constituent assembly. It shut itself in the narrow path of duty, and rose occasionally to sublime heights. It made a perishable constitution and proclaimed immortal truths, because it was upheld by two distinct forces, coming from itself and from the people. These facts are undeniable. Those modern historians who have reproached the assembly with being completely subservient to the Palais Royal and its wire-pullers have missed the mark entirely. Not only did the national assembly resist street clamours, but came, as we shall see, to do its duty under the domination of the false idea that it was the nation. This much is true. It experienced in many circumstances a mysterious pressure unaccountable to itself. This is also true that the chief mainspring of action in deceiving its egotism of caste was a passion, then new to France, of popularity. In reality, the assembly feared the threats though it sought the praise of the Palais Royal. Bearing this in mind one can follow its actions more clearly. It was general, moreover-this rivalry in seeking public applause. Each century has idols that it presents for human worship. Liberty and equality were the divinities of the day, though as yet veiled and only half comprehended. One had to offer incense, even at a distance, or be deemed behind the times. So it resulted that many supported the Revolution to gain public favour, a favour almost indispensable to a successful career, even an empty one. What said opinion in the faubourgs? What did the newsmongers think? Thus the spirit of flattery descended gradually from the high spheres it had lately inhabited. Sovereignty displaced, had, in its turn, displaced court flatterers. Now the people had for flatterers those who had once insolently deemed themselves the masters. They were avenged. It is a calumny to depreciate the revolutionary force because it influenced frivolous passions and cowardly thoughts; because innumerable impurities are in the wide bosom of the ocean is it less imposing? Because millions of individuals are represented in the work of humanity, is it less majestic? When truth is fiery, passionate, the story of her triumph is not dimmed by the baseness of those who serve her. Men are insignificant. is great.t Man THE FALL OF THE BASTILLE AND OF THE OLD RÉGIME [1789 A.D.] If Germany was the cradle of reform, England was its citadel; but A GENERAL anxiety seemed to possess everyone, a vague desire for change. Hitherto the Frenchman had been under a vigilant and severe police system, which controlled his movements, spied out his very thoughts. He had been a stranger to political combinations; had not even primitive ideas on the rights of a nation or a king, even of different classes of citizens, and followed errors because they seemed more gigantic and imposing. He abandoned himself to intemperance in ideas and words which might almost make one believe that this people, suddenly emerging from long enchantment, had just recovered the faculty of speaking and thinking. It was in the cafés of the Palais Royal that this new development of the national character first showed itself. A curiosity to hear and tell everything led crowds to these places. One would present himself armed with a constitution which he assured everyone with confident gaiety ought to be the subject of the statesgeneral; another emphatically declaimed the same thing with variations. One ran down the ministers, nobles, and priests, and moulded opinions to his own will, whilst a fourth climbed on to a table and argued concerning the great question of personal representation, proposing chimerical plans for the administration. Each had his audience to approve or blame. One event, to which not enough attention was paid, had caused wellfounded alarm to people who, reflecting on this political effervescence, could not but be uneasy at the general restlessness. On the 27th of April five or six thousand men and women, many of them working people, and excited by leaders who kept themselves in the background, had gone to a man named Réveillon, a rich papermaker in the faubourg St. Antoine. They cried out that he was the people's enemy, that he wished to make them die of hunger; that he had said to the primary assembly in his district it was quite enough if a workman gained fifteen sous a day; they intended, they [1789 A.D.] added, to kill Réveillon, his wife, and his children. There were races that day at Charenton, a fact known and taken advantage of. The people attacked the house, burned his stores, broke the glasses, pictures, sofas, cupboards, secretaries, carried off money and bank-notes. They staved in casks and got drunk on wine, brandy, and liquors. There were some who drank whole bottles of absinthe and were found dead next day in the cellars. Another set stopped everyone returning from the races at the St. Antoine gate, asking them if they were for the nobility or the third estate. They insulted those who declared themselves nobles, made their wives get out of their carriages and cry, "Vive la Tiers État!" "Vive la Tiers État!" The duke and duchess of Orleans were alone exempted from this humiliation. The people greeted them with applause, repeating with enthusiasm, "Vive Monseigneur et Madame la Duchesse d'Orléans!" A chain of circumstances had made this prince the idol of the people and the leader of a party composed of nobles discontented with the court; of philosophers desirous of all sorts of goods and honours, who were fretted by their inferior position-adventurers, insolvent men, who all, after the convocation of the states-general and the rapid march of public opinion, were open to any change or hope. The duke, aged by a sensual life, by an avarice which would have been bad enough in a private person but was shameful and degrading in a prince, had all the vices which nourish crime and none of those brilliant qualities which make men illustrious in the eyes of posterity. It was necessary to animate this moral corpse, to give it a will. They showed him supreme power under the name of "lieutenant-general of the kingdom," with all the public treasure at his disposal, and, in a future that would surely be his, the crown for his children and he perhaps himself the beginner of a new dynasty. A voyage in England, relations with the prince of Wales and opposition leaders, had made him suspected at court. They profited by this disfavour to make him more popular with the people, always ready to judge favourably of those who opposed the dominant authority.b It will perhaps save no little confusion in the chronicle of confusion that follows if we detach here for a moment this duke of Orleans and tell his story in completeness, showing the end of him and the story of his family which has played in France a part so large and yet so ill-understood abroad.a THE DUKE OF ORLEANS AND THE REVOLUTION The son of the regent, Louis (1703-1752), who succeeded him as duke of Orleans, played no part in politics, though his name frequently occurs in the social history of the time. His son, Louis Philippe (1725-1785), was equally adverse to politics; his great delight was the theatre, and his place is rather in the history of the Paris green-rooms than in the history of France. But to Louis Philippe Joseph (1747-1793), son of the preceding, a more adventurous life was allotted, and his part in the history of the French Revolution is one of the most difficult problems to solve of that exciting period. In 1769 he married Louise, the only daughter and heiress of the duke of Penthièvre, grand admiral of France, and the richest heiress of the time. Her wealth made it certain that he would be the richest man in France, and he determined to play a part equal to that of his greatgrandfather, the regent, whom he resembled in character and debauchery. As duke of Chartres he opposed the plans of Maupeou in 1771, and was promptly exiled to his country estate of Villers-Cotterets (Aisne). |