CHAP. was not of that party, and thus kept the army under XXXIX. his control. Had Louis the Sixteenth the tact or good fortune to have had other ministers like him, the terrible catastrophe of 1792 might perhaps have been avoided; but his ministers had been chosen from the advice of the Feuillants more to deceive and baffle the legislative assembly than to act in accordance with it. Bertrand de Moleville, minister of marine, had succeeded Montmorin as the member of the government most trusted by Marie Antoinette. Instead of busying himself with his department, he undertook to bribe the popular and party leaders. In this he spent large sums to very little purpose. He says himself he might have purchased the Girondists had he given enough. The truth is, he failed to corrupt them, and they attacked him as a vile agent. He was accused of neglecting the marine. The naval forces had, however, gone to nothing from the desertion of the officers and the consequent insubordination of their men. The Girondists strove to oust De Moleville, and send him to trial for this crime; but the majority would not hearken to them, and on the 2nd of January acquitted De Moleville by 200 votes against 193. The assembly had, however, a ready mode of punishing such ministers and functionaries as displeased it, and which indeed placed the crown and the government completely at its mercy. This was the high court of justice and the committee of surveillance, which arrested and sent whom they pleased to be tried. The double weapon of an accusing body and an extraordinary tribunal, which became a precedent for the famous committee of public safety and the revolu tionary tribunal, was one of the bright inventions of the constituent assembly. They voted the haute cour in May 1791. The legislative assembly did not allow such an instrument to lie dormant. Denunciations flocked in upon it. And when the royalists in the last months of 1791 took the opportunity of a turbulent priest preach- CHAP. ing at Caen to excite a sedition, the assembly set its XXXIX. committee of surveillance and its haute cour in activity. The latter was to sit at Orleans, to be beyond the reach of popular clamour. Having failed in sending Bertrand de Moleville before it, Brissot and the Girondists awaited an opportunity to be more successful against Delessert, the foreign minister. His correspondence with the imperial court was poor-hearted and piteous, and disgusted not only the committee but the assembly. Still they hesitated to denounce him, until he succeeded in conjunction with the Lameth party in inducing the king to dismiss Narbonne. Narbonne unfortunately gave them the opportunity. Addressing the assembly (March the 8th) on the affair of Aix, which town, agitated by the royalists, the people of Marseilles had invaded and subdued, he maladroitly censured the general officer who had not opposed the Marseillais, and announced his dismissal. This excited the assembly against Narbonne; and when, in answer to some murmurs, he appealed to the most distinguished members present,* there was a perfect hurrah against him. Deeming him from these symptoms not only momentarily but irrecoverably unpopular, the Lafayettists urged the king to his dismissal. They discovered their mistake when the assembly not only voted its confidence in the dismissed minister, but when Brissot took the opportunity to demand and move the accusation of Delessert. The capricious dismissal of Narbonnet turned the majority against the court, and Delessert was ordered to be arrested and sent for trial to Orleans. *Histoire Parlementaire. † Narbonne is said to have indisposed Louis the Sixteenth towards him by offering the post of generalissimo in France to the Duke of Brunswick, and even hinting to that prince that he might hope for the crown. CHAP. XXXIX. Some time after the Duke de Brissac was décrété, as it was called, in the same way. The king had been allowed the power to form a constitutional guard of his person, limited to 1,800 soldiers. They were to be taken partly from the national militia of the capital, partly from that of the provinces. A wise selection of this guard was most urgent. Had it been composed of such national guards as had at once shown respect for the king as well as for the constitution, it might have done good service. But unfortunately the king did not exert himself.* He left the formation of the guard to his courtiers, who collected royalist officers; these disgusted the guardsmen sent from the provinces, who declined to serve, and their places were filled with partisans of the old regime. The vigilant press denounced the scheme and its whole particulars; and the result was a decree dissolving the guard, and sending its commander, the Duke de Brissac, to prison. Louis bore the breaking of his guard with the same nonchalance that he had shown during its formation. The arrest of Delessert deeply mortified the king, and left him at the mercy of his parliamentary foes; for no one would keep or accept ministerial office unless safe from the vengeance of the assembly. The king could thus find or appoint no other than those agreeable to the dominant party of the Gironde. His first choice was a wise one. None could be better fitted to undertake the difficult task which Narbonne had not been allowed to proceed with than Dumouriez. His character was not unlike that of Mirabeau, whose eloquence he may have wanted, but he supplied its want by a military capacity, a quality more necessary for the epoch. Passionately fond of pleasure, unscrupulous in XXXIX. pursuit of wealth and power, and plainly seeing that CHAP. popularity was the path to both, he still, like Mirabeau, had a deep respect for royalty and sympathy for the cruel position of the king. Dumouriez would have saved him, not by flight, like Mirabeau, nor by military success in the field, like Narbonne, but by the king's frank acceptance of the constitution and of its duties. It was easy to persuade the king of this. Not so the queen. She summoned Dumouriez to her presence, and told him frankly that neither she nor the king would tolerate the constitution. Dumouriez expressed his sorrow. The constitution, if in force, he said, would be of the greatest advantage to the king. He abhorred both anarchy and crime, was attached to the royal family; but he knew the state of things, and it must not be supposed the popular movement was a passing one. It was the insurrection of a great nation against inveterate abuses. Faction took advantage of it, and strove to separate king and nation. He would labour to unite them; and no one could give more powerful aid to the completion of this than the queen. Marie Antoinette seemed touched by this frank expostulation.* As colleagues to Dumouriez, Louis chose from amongst the subordinates of the Gironde, Roland, Clavière, and Servan, to be ministers of the interior, finance, and war. The former had been an inspector of manufactures, honest, methodical, and full of zeal for the revolution. Unaccustomed to good society, much less to courts, Roland displeased the king by his uncouthness, and the chamberlains by his substituting strings for shoe-buckles. He disgusted the monarch still more by his zeal in enforcing the decree of the assembly against refractory priests. Sybel represents him as more than ordinarily fanatic in this respect, but this could scarcely have been the case, since Merlin reproached him (April 23) with opening the churches to *Memoirs of Dumouriez and of Madame Roland. CHAP. these priests. XXXIX. Roland himself was softened and subdued by the bland manners of the king; but from such sentiments he was shaken by his wife, who came not in contact with the court, and was animated by all the popular prejudices against it. Madame Roland stirred her husband to activity in his department. But she could not supply the place of a man of action like Dumouriez to the Gironde. There was no one of them, not even Brissot, who out of the assembly could appeal to a popular audience and make moderate principles prevail over the wild opinions of the ultra-democrats. The Girondists were too noble in aim, too intellectual in thought, to have found influence with the rabble, whose brutal passions and powers were fast awakening and strengthening. The time had gone by when a saloon could have influence. Madame de Staël and Madame Roland successively tried to seize in turn the helm of affairs. But their feeble arms were soon pushed aside. And the violent and prudish jealousy of Madame Roland, however they may heroise the party in history, tended rather to make it succumb in the rude political struggle. Dumouriez from the first distrusted a party so pedantic and unpractical, and one, moreover, with so narrow a political basis. Much might have been done, had the king given his whole support to the ministry, but Louis gave his confidence to the Lameths and the Feuillants, who mocked the Girondists and hated the assembly. There remained the popular party, which it was indispensable to conciliate. Dumouriez's first act on his appointment was to repair to the Jacobins, mount the red cap, and demand their confidence. His speech was such that he and Robespierre embraced; but that demagogue was not sincere: he refused his confidence to the Girondists in office, till they were tried; he still opposed them on the war question, and soon showed himself their enemy. Dumouriez tried |