CHAP. XXXVIII. CHAPTER XXXVIII.* FROM THE MEETING OF THE STATES GENERAL TO THE 1789-1791. IT was the misfortune of Louis the Sixteenth that he was only induced to make the grand concession of a representative assembly when years of tampering and hesitation, of failure and distress, of discussion and irritation, had awakened political passions, and worked the minds of all classes to an incandescent state of excitement. At the commencement of his reign the most that was required was financial revolution, with such abatement of the privileges of birth and standing as would have compelled all men to contribute to the necessities of the state in due proportion. But neither court nor king would tolerate Turgot in his attempt to lay down this, their only plank of safety. In the years which ensued, although financial distress formed the chief perplexity of government, the people, far more interested in the doctrines of Rousseau than in those of either Necker or Calonne, began to look, not so much to fiscal, or even political, as to social revolution. * In the previous and ensuing chapters a considerable portion of the narrative is derived from the Moniteur, the Histoire Parlementaire, or other reports of the sit tings of the assembly. To avoid quoting them in every page, their mention is confined to this general reference. From the agitation, discussion, and often insurrections of the provinces, provoked by insufficient and incoherent measures to reform and assimilate them, and from the exaggerated demands made in their cahiers, or instructions for their deputies, it was manifest that to shake off the social yoke of the noblesse was the dominant desire of the middle classes. They took arms for it in Brittany. And even in Dauphiny, where the nobles fraternised with the commons, the theorists, who prevailed, loudly and openly proclaimed the principles of social revolution. It is not to be assumed that this proceeded from a sentiment of mere jealousy and impatience, however just. The doctrines which were broached, and which took possession of the minds even of the most enlightened and disinterested men, pronounced the political evils of the country irremediable until society was reconstituted upon a new basis. Rousseau had represented it as utterly pernicious and retrograde. His more rational disciples, like Sieyès, taught that all society founded upon violence, such as feudal society had been, necessarily made one man an obstruction and an enemy to the other, but that society founded upon freedom would make real brethren of the entire human race, and thus prepare a new era which was to be the millenium of the philosopher. Religious reform was to keep pace with social. Christianity and Judaism had represented man as fallen, as incapable of good, and formed for a life of misery and submission. The philosopher, on the contrary, considered man as perfectible, as animated naturally by the best motives and the highest aspirations, and only degraded to crime by the prevalence of aristocratic ambition and priestly oppression. To politicians actuated by such views, partial reforms, or modification of the feudal constitution of the monarchy, seemed illusory. They were for radical change, leaving the king indeed on the summit of CHAP. XXXVIII. CHAP. XXXVIII. power for republicanism at least in name had not yet come into vogue-but sweeping from his side and support all the personages and principles of feudalism. This was the really formidable party which the crown had to contend with, a party scattered at first, uncognisant of its strength, and so disunited in its conduct that the Abbé Sieyes, its high-priest, publicist and philosopher, who developed the doctrines of Rousseau, and fitted it to the present time, found a place in the assembly by the merest chance.* Had the king and his ministers, tardy and compulsory as was the convocation of the states general, shown themselves frankly liberal at the opening, and announced from the first those concessions which they made six weeks later; had the crown by such conduct obviated the insane and irritating struggle of the noblesse against the tiers, -the partisans of exaggerated revolution would have been in a minority, and their moderate opponents might have accomplished their desires of reconstituting the monarchy without annihilating the higher classes. The most eminent men of these moderate opinions, Malouet, Mounier, and the Bishop of Langres, pressed Necker to take the initiative, but the minister declined. He did not feel himself sufficiently strong to compel the court to assent to such a change. He looked to the assembly to do this, and was not aware of the danger of letting it seize the axe of reform, instead of government using the pruning-knife. The views of Necker, as well as of Malouet and Mounier, were chiefly directed towards the English system of two chambers, a plan of considerable difficulty, even if the nobles accepted it. But neither court, grandees, nor the lesser noblesse * See Bailly's account of the elections in Paris. The Bishop of Chartres had tried in vain to get Sieyès elected by the clergy of his diocese. relished it, and their certain opposition rendered the proposition idle. Yet there was no other middle term. If noblesse and clergy formed orders apart, and the passing of new laws and reforms was to take place by their separate votes, the tiers état would be baffled in their every effort. If, on the contrary, the commons succeeded in absorbing the other orders, these would be reduced to nullity, and the social revolution be complete. It was not to be expected that a contest in which defeat was destruction should be carried on without an appeal to force. That the commons would be supported by the people, and that the crown had but the army to depend upon, was clear. The But the French army did not offer at the time those means of support on which the court reckoned. Had the latter been wise, it would have long since sought to render the army efficient and attached, instead of disgusting the soldier by severity, the officers by economy, and allowing even the guards to become imbued with the popular tenets and passions of the time. division of command was as ill-judged as the entire mili. tary administration. The central provinces were under one commander, Paris forming an exception. The parliament, as well as the minister of the household, exercised there a kind of joint authority over the police and the military.* Besenval, commanding the army round the capital, found it no easy task to keep the corn markets quiet in those days of famine. The loose and starving population flocked to Paris, where they were less coerced. Alarmed at their aspect, the government ordered two regiments of French guards into the capital, under the command of the Marquis du Chatelet. "The soldiers," says Besenval, did not know their officers, nor did the officers, occupied exclusively with their pleasures, know the men." * Mémoires de Besenval. CHAP. XXXVIII. CHAP. Such was the military force to which was entrusted Their efficiency was soon tested. On the 27th of April, about a week previous to the meeting of the states general, a crowd collected before the paper manufactory of Reveillon, in the Faubourg St. Antoine. He was sprung from the people, had been a workman himself, and was kind to those he employed. But in the meeting of the district for electoral purposes and for drawing up the cahiers, the more wealthy citizens, like Reveillon, had felt disgust, and shown it, at the crude and wild suggestions of the working classes. These singled out Reveillon, as the chief of the burgess party, and attributing to him harsher expressions than he had ever used, they came to punish and to pillage him. On the first tidings of this, thirty soldiers and a sergeant were sent to protect him. Unequal to the task, they looked on whilst the mob broke into the factory and devastated it.* Reveillon took shelter in the Bastille, whilst the mob got drunk in his cellars. On the next day took place the races of Charenton, frequented by the better classes. As these returned, they were stopped at the gate of St. Antoine, which the rioters had seized, made to descend from their carriages, forced to cry vive le tiers, and suffered other outrages. On this the military authorities awoke, and a sufficient force was sent. The people of the faubourg resisted, and poured down tiles from their roofs. The soldiers fired, and the rioters dispersed, leaving a few dead. Such was the prelude in Paris to the meeting of the states general at Versailles. The riot has been attributed to subornation by the Duke of Orleans; but what was he to gain by the destruction of the paper fabric? It was more probably a chance outburst on the part of the envious and hungry population. The troops, though they fired at XXXVIII. the preservation of order. * Reveillon's Exposé. Memoirs of Ferrières. |