The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic

But during this very talk of the King with the delegation of women, a plot was being hatched out for Louis's flight. The plot was discovered in time, and the palace placed under the surveillance of the National Guard. During the night, the multitude of men and women from Paris, augmented by Lafayette's army, sought shelter in the churches, or bivouacked on the palace grounds. At early dawn, several citizens, seeing a trooper at one of the windows, addressed some insults to him. The latter loaded his gun, took deliberate aim at a citizen, and killed him. The pretorians of Louis XVI opened the fight. The Parisian women and the National Guards, yielding to their legitimate indignation, invaded the palace. Blood was shed. The victorious people demanded and secured the return of the King and the royal family to Paris.

Such were the results of the days of the 5th and 6th of October, 1789.

CHAPTER II

MIRABEAU

At the end of that same year of 1789, the National Assembly decreed the abolition of tithes, without redemption, and the immediate sale of the properties of the clergy. The value of these properties amounted to more than four thousand million francs. At the beginning of the year 1790, the Assembly decreed itself the Convention. In that memorable session, Mirabeau took the floor, concluding a magnificent speech with this peroration:

"They ask since when the Deputies of the people have become a National Convention? I reply, The day when, finding the entrance to their seats blocked with soldiers, they adjourned to the Tennis Court, where they swore to die rather than abandon the rights of the people! That day our powers changed their nature, and those that we have exercised have been legitimatized, sanctified, by the adherence of the people! I would recall to you the words of that grand man of antiquity, who disregarded the formal laws to save his country. Summoned before a factious tribunal to answer, Whether he had observed the laws, he said, 'I swear that I have saved the country!'" And turning toward the deputies, Mirabeau concluded, "I swear that you have saved France!"

The entire Assembly rose to its feet with enthusiasm, and vowed that it would disband only after the completion of its work.

In spite of this energetic attitude of the Assembly, the court continued its intrigues against the Revolution. Louis XVI planned a new flight, for the purpose of seeking aid from the foreign rulers. It was at this moment that the great scandal occasioned by the discovery of the Red Book electrified the city.

Deputy Camus had found among the papers whose surrender had been demanded by the Committee on Finance, a certain ledger bound in red morocco, containing the account of the secret expenses of Louis XV and Louis XVI. In the items on this ledger figured princes, grand seigneurs, and all the royal coterie. The Count of Artois, brother to the King, was recorded as having, under the ministry of Calonne, put his fingers on 14,050,050 livres, merely for "extra expenses." Monsieur the Count of Provence, another brother of the King, had gone through, for his part, 13,880,000 livres. Among the courtiers, the Polignac family was down for 700,000 livres pension: a Marquis of Autichamp for four several pensions: the first for services of his late father; the second, for the same object; the third, same reason; and the fourth – for the same cause. A German prince was also the beneficiary of four pensions: first, for his services as a colonel; the second, the same; the third, the same; and the fourth, as a non-colonel. A certain Desgalois of La Tour was drawing 22,720 livres as the total of his four pensions: the first, as first president and intendant; the second as intendant and first president; the third for the same considerations as above, etc., etc..

"At last we have it, the Red Book," wrote Camille Desmoulins with his brilliant imagery and pitiless incisiveness. "The Committee on Finance has broken all the seven seals which locked its fatal pages. Here is fulfilled the terrible threat of the prophet, here it is accomplished before the last judgment: Revelabo pudentia tua– I shall uncover your shame!"

All the while inflaming the inhabitants in whatever provinces it could, the clergy but awaited the opportune instant to blow into a blaze the carefully sown sparks of civil war. The court and Louis XVI thought themselves at the moment of triumph in having gained Mirabeau over to their cause by the power of gold – Mirabeau, the mettlesome tribune, the mighty orator, who had so far served the cause of liberty. Alas, it was but too true. Consumed with a thirst for luxury and pleasures, that great spirit had sold himself to the court for a million down and a pension of a hundred thousand livres monthly.

But death did not permit him to enjoy the fruits of his treason. On the 2nd of April, 1791, he died. Some hours before his death he heard the boom of cannon, and said, in his gigantic self-conceit, "Do they already sound the knell of Achilles?" His last words, in which his treason stands revealed, were: "I am in mourning for the monarchy; its remains will be the prey of the malcontents."

The people, trusting and credulous, and ignorant as yet of the renegading of their tribune, learned of his death with profound consternation. I traveled over Paris that day. Everywhere the mourning was deep. One would have thought a public calamity had fallen upon France; people accosted one another with the words, impressed with mournful despair: "Mirabeau is dead!" Tears flowed from all eyes. The weeping multitude religiously followed the ashes of the great orator, which were deposited in the Pantheon. Nevertheless two voices, two prophetic voices, rose alone above this concert of civic commiseration, protesting against the pious homage rendered to the memory of a traitor.

"As for me," wrote Camille Desmoulins in his journal, "when they raised the mortuary cloth that covered the body of Mirabeau, and I saw the man I had idolized, I vow I felt not a tear – I looked at him with an eye as dry as Cicero's regarding the body of Caesar pierced with twenty-three dagger-thrusts. It was the remains of a traitor."

And Marat, guided by a sort of intuition, wrote in The Friend of the People the day after Mirabeau's funeral: "Give thanks to the gods, people! Your most redoubtable enemy is no more! He died the victim of his many treasons, by the farsighted barbarism of his accomplices.9 The life of Mirabeau was stained with crimes. May a veil forever hide that hideous picture. Mirabeau in the Pantheon! What man of integrity would desire to repose beside him? The ashes of Rousseau, of Montesquieu, would shudder to find themselves in company with the traitor! Ah, if ever liberty is established in France, if ever some legislator, according to what I may have done for the country, should attempt to decree me the honors of the Pantheon, I here vigorously protest against the black affront! Rather would I never die! Curses on the name of Mirabeau."

Strange prophecy! Mirabeau's secret papers, discovered on August 10, 1792, in the King's secret Iron Cupboard in the Tuileries, laid bare irrefutable proofs of his treason, and the National Convention on November 27 of the following year, issued the following memorable order:10

"The National Convention, considering that there is no greatness in man without honor, decrees that the body of Honoré Gabriel Riquetti Mirabeau be withdrawn from the Pantheon. The body of Marat shall be transferred thither."

Ah, sons of Joel! Never forget those sacred words, There is no greatness in man without honor. For none was ever more exalted in genius than Mirabeau! And nevertheless, the National Assembly, responsive to a sentiment of justice and impartiality that reflects honor on it, expelled from the Pantheon the body of the man of genius, of the grand orator, of the fiery tribune who sold himself to the court, and replaced it by that of Marat, the humble journalist, the man of probity and disinterestedness, the friend of the people, the incorruptible citizen.

The death of Mirabeau disconcerted the court of Louis XVI, and shattered its hope of dominating, disarming, and vanquishing the Revolution by means of the National Assembly; the court then resolved to execute a project it had long been revolving, and had already vainly attempted at Versailles, on the days of the 5th and 6th of October. That project was:

"The King shall fly to some fortified place on the frontiers. There, surrounded by devoted troops under the command of a royalist general (the Marquis of Bouillé), Louis XVI shall protest solemnly to all Europe against the usurpatory acts of the National Assembly, shall strongly invoke against the French Revolution the spirit of solidarity which ought to bind all sovereigns, and stamp out the revolt under the heel of the foreign armies."

This criminal project Louis XVI was on the point of carrying out. But Marat, always watchful, always prophetic, had, several days before the flight of the King, denounced the fact in these terms in The Friend of the People (June 16, 1791):

"They are working might and main to get the King into the Netherlands, on the pretext that his cause is that of all the Kings of Europe! You will be brainless enough not to prevent the flight of the royal family. Parisians – senseless people of Paris! I am tired of repeating it to you: Hold fast the King and the Dauphin within our walls; watch them with care; shut up the Queen, her brother-in-law, and her family. The loss of one day may prove fatal to the nation and dig the graves of three million Frenchmen."

Here I, John Lebrenn, begin the extracts from my journal.

CHAPTER III

AT THE JACOBIN CLUB

June 21, 1791. – The expected has happened. To-day, early in the morning, the rumor of the flight of Louis XVI and his family spread over Paris.

Victoria and I went out to observe what impression the desertion of the King and Queen would make upon the people. An innumerable multitude covered the garden of the Palais Royal, the place before the City Hall, and the grounds of the Tuileries and the National Assembly. At ten o'clock in the morning the municipal officers fired three cannon as an alarm. The tocsin sounded, the drums of the National Guard rang out the "assembly." The confusion was indescribable.

In the course of our travels we met Monsieur Hubert. It was the first time I had come face to face with him since the day I asked his niece in marriage. In full uniform, the banker was repairing to his Section, where his royalist district battalion, the Daughters of St. Thomas, was assembling. He approached me and cried brusquely:

"Well? The King has gone. But we don't want the Republic, and shall defend the Constitution to the death."

"What Constitution do you pretend to defend?" replied Victoria. "The Constitution recognizes a hereditary King, the King absconds. Circumstances themselves demand the Republic."

Hubert was dumb for a moment. Then he said, "Citizeness! The Assembly will name Lafayette provisionally Protector of the kingdom. For the rest, the Assembly has sent commissioners after the King, and we hope that they will succeed in reaching him before he gains the frontier. The question will be simplified."

At that moment a flux of the crowd tore Victoria and me away, and carried us on towards the palace of the Tuileries. The sentinels at the foot of the great stairway allowed everyone up into the apartments. The thronging visitors were, like ourselves, all under the influence of a mocking curiosity, remembering, as they did, that the monarch who inhabited these sumptuous apartments complained of the insufficiency of his 40,000,000 francs on the civil list, and pretended that he could not procure the necessaries of life. Leaving the palace again, we followed the boulevards back to the St. Antoine suburb. Everywhere were manifested aversion for royalty, contempt for the person of Louis XVI, and hatred for the Austrian, Marie Antoinette.

Several organs of the patriotic press lent their encouragement to the republican tendencies in the air, either by openly demanding the Republic, or by insisting that Louis had forfeited his title. Marat, in The Friend of the People, voiced in these words the indignation of the people against the King, the court, and the ministers:

"Citizens, Louis XVI has this night taken flight… This King, perjured, faithless, without shame, without remorse, has gone to join the foreign Kings, his accomplices. The thirst for absolute power which devours his soul will soon turn him into a ferocious assassin. He will return to steep himself in the blood of his subjects, who refuse to submit to his tyrannical yoke… And, as he waits, he laughs at the dullness of the Parisians, who took him at his word… Citizens, you are lost, if you give ear to the National Assembly, which will not cease to cajole you, to lull you to sleep, until the enemy has arrived under our walls! Despatch this instant couriers to the Departments. Call the federated Bretons to your aid! Make yourselves masters of the arsenal. Disarm the mounted constables, the guards at the gates, the patrols of the fortifications, the hired troops – all counter-revolutionists! Citizens, name within the hour a pitiless dictator, who, with the same blow, will sever the heads of the ministers, of their subalterns, of Lafayette, of all the scoundrels of his staff, of all the counter-revolutionists, of all the traitors in the National Assembly."

In his Revolutions of France, Camille Desmoulins, with his brilliant mockery, characterized the situation thus:

"The King has fired point blank on the Nation; the shot has hung fire. Now it is the Nation's turn to shoot. Doubtless it will disdain to measure itself against a disarmed man, even if he be a King! And I would be the first to fire in the air – but the aggressor must beg of me his life."

Placards, inscriptions of all nature, posted on the walls of Paris, powerfully stirred the opinions of the people. Towards the close of the day, the journal called The Mouth of Iron published in a supplement a proclamation addressed to the French by Louis XVI, which had been seized at the domicile of Laporte, one of the onhangers at court, who had been commissioned to print it and flood Paris with it.

"The King," so declared the manifesto, "has for a long time hoped to see order and happiness restored by the Assembly; he renounces that hope. The safety of persons and of property is compromised. Anarchy is everywhere. The King, considering himself a prisoner during his forced stay in Paris, protests against all the acts of the Assembly, and against the Constitution, which outrages the Church, and degrades royalty, subordinating it to the Assembly, reducing it to an insufficient civil list, etc., etc. In the face of such motives, in the disability under which I labor of stopping the evil, I had to seek my own safety. Frenchmen, you whom I call the inhabitants of my good city of Paris, beware of these insurgents! Return to your King! He will be always your friend, when our holy religion is respected, when the government is stable, and when liberty is established on unshakable foundations!

"Signed, Louis."

Hard by the site of the Bastille, on a pile of the ruins of the fortress, a young citizen, who by the elegance of his dress and the careful powdering of his hair seemed to be of the upper bourgeoisie, made the following motion:

"Gentlemen, in the present state of affairs, it would be very unfortunate for our disgraceful and perfidious King to be brought back to us! What can we do with him? This fugitive will come like Thersite, shedding those fat tears of which Homer speaks. So, then, if they commit the enormous mistake of bringing Louis XVI back to us, I propose this motion: That the Executive be exposed three days to public ridicule. That he be conducted by stages to the frontier, and that there the commissioners of the Republic who shall have so far escorted him shall solemnly present to this last of the Kings – their boots in his rear, and send him to the devil."

This novel motion was received on the part of all who heard it with shouts of laughter and applause. "Yes, yes! Let them plant their boots in the royal rear!" they echoed.

Such, in short, was the spirit of Paris on the 21st of June, 1791. The bulk of the bourgeoisie, thunder-struck at the absconding of its King, was resolved, in case the commissioners despatched by the Assembly were unable to overtake Louis XVI and bring him back, to shelter itself behind the protectorate offered to Lafayette, if they should fail to induce the Duke of Orleans to accept the constitutional royalty. The people on the contrary, were rejoiced to be rid of the King, and looked forward to a Republic.

That evening we attended the Jacobin Club, where a great audience was packed.

O, sons of Joel! I know not how to depict for you the emotions of patriotism, mingled with respect, with which we, the contemporaries of the great days of the Revolution, entered this ancient hall of the Convent of the Jacobins in St. Honoré Street, an immense hall, with walls of stone blackened and crumbled with age, lighted only by a few tapers placed on a heavy table, behind which sat the president and secretaries of the club.

The Jacobin Club was the revolutionary church most frequented by the people. In that plebeian forum were debated the great questions that agitated Paris, France, Europe! It was from that hearth glowing with patriotism that radiated the civic virtues which from one end of the country to the other fired all hearts. The Club of the Jacobins was the political school of the proletariat; it was there that the workingmen took direct hold of public affairs; it was in the midst of its tempestuous debates that the opinion of the people cleared itself and took form, whence it often went to weigh, with no negligible force, upon the deliberations of the National Assembly. It was from the heights of the ringing tribunal of the Jacobins that the vigilant citizens watched and heralded the manoeuvres of our enemies, and kept their eyes on the public functionaries; it was from this popular tribunal that issued the cries of mistrust or alarm. It was, in brief, from this tribunal that the patriots, at the approach of grave perils, reawoke the slumbering, misled or wearied public opinion, infused into it new activity, and rekindled in it the fever of revolution – a sublime mission!

Alas, by an unexplainable error of judgment, or of political tact, the Jacobins on the 21st of June, the day of the flight of Louis XVI, did not respond to the prayers of the people. The Jacobins did not profit by the circumstance, as favorable as unexpected, of the desertion of the King, to demand of the National Assembly, in the name of the Constitution, that the title of Louis XVI be declared forfeit. In this meeting, otherwise so moving, the conduct of the Jacobins was indecisive, equivocal, and blameworthy; for, in a revolution, not to profit by every favorable event is an unpardonable fault. A single error brings defeat.

When, about eight in the evening, Victoria and I entered the hall of the Jacobins, the chamber and the galleries were packed with spectators drawn thither by the importance of the debates which the events of the day were expected to call forth. Men, women, young girls, waited with feverish impatience for the meeting to be thrown open. One of the striking features of our revolution was the passionate interest taken by women in the affairs of the community; already, sons of Joel, you have seen them, these valiant Gallic women, taking as virile a part in action as in discussion, like their mothers of Gaul in the centuries agone.

The members of the bureau of the club took their places, and the tumult hushed. Citizen Prieur, of La Marne, presided; at his sides were the secretaries, Goncourt, Chéry, Jr., Lampidor, and Danjou. The president rang his bell, and announced the reading of an address sent to all the societies in the departments, which were in correspondence with the central club. Thus was explained the marvelous unanimity between the parent society of the Jacobins and the affiliated societies in the provinces. A profound silence now reigned in the chamber, while Citizen Danjou read the address:

"Brothers and friends:

"The King, led astray by criminal suggestions, has separated himself from the National Assembly. Far from being downcast over this development, our courage and that of our fellow citizens is risen to the emergency. Not a shadow of trouble, not a disordered movement, has accompanied the impression made upon us by this fact.

"A calm and determined firmness leaves us the disposition of all our forces; consecrated to the defense of a great cause, they will be victorious!

"All divisions are forgotten, all patriots are united. The National Assembly – that is our guide; the Constitution – that is our rallying cry."

It would be difficult to express the surprise, the disfavor, I had almost said the sorrow, which were produced in the audience by the reading of this opiate-laden manifesto, accepted by the majority of the members of the club.

But unexpectedly Camille Desmoulins appeared on the scene. He strode toward the tribunal and demanded of the president the floor for a communication he had to make to the Jacobins. Though still a young man, Desmoulins was an influential member of the Club of the Cordeliers. His physiognomy was expressive, ironical, and finely cut. He leaped to the platform, and in his incisive voice, while sober in gesture and bearing, he let loose his biting sarcasm:

"Citizens, while the National Assembly decrees – and decrees and decrees and never lets up decreeing – as much good as bad, and more bad than good – the people is acting admirably as police; and, showing itself no less a friend of provisional rule than the Assembly, it has decreed that all pillagers shall be provisionally – hanged to the lamp-post. Crossing Voltaire Quay just now, I saw Lafayette preparing to review the batallions of the blue-bonnets, drawn up on the quay. Convinced of the need of uniting on one leader, I yielded to an attraction which drew me over to the famous white horse. 'Monsieur Lafayette,' I called to him, 'I have indeed said some evil of you during the year, and thought no less. Now is the time to convict me of false testimony in safeguarding public affairs!' 'I have always known you for a good citizen,' gallantly replied the General, holding out his hand to me; 'the common danger has united all parties. There is no longer in the Assembly but one single spirit!' – 'One single spirit! That is very few for so numerous and illustrious an assembly,' quoth I to the General. 'But why does this single soul of the Assembly affect to speak in its decrees of the carrying off of the King, when the Executive writes to the Assembly that no one is carrying him off at all, that he is going himself? I can pardon the lie of a servant who lies in the fear of losing his place if he tells the truth,' continued I, 'but the Assembly is not, to my knowledge, the servant of the Executive, whether present or in flight. The Assembly has three million pikes and bayonets at its service. Whence, then, comes the baseness, or the treason, which dictated to it such a vile falsehood!' 'The carrying off of the King! The Assembly will correct that mistake in wording,' the General answered me. And he added several times, 'The conduct of the King is indeed infamous.'"

Camille Desmoulins stopped. He had seen Robespierre enter the hall, and prepared to descend from the tribunal, saying with cordial deference:

"Here is my friend and master. I yield him the floor."

Had it not been for the certainty of hearing Robespierre, the audience would undoubtedly have insisted on the completion of the lively oration just begun. But Robespierre was one of the most esteemed orators of the Jacobin Club, a high appreciation which he merited by his great talent, his tireless energy, the loftiness of his character, his integrity, the austerity of his morals, and his devotion to the revolutionary cause. Unhappily, that medal had a reverse: Robespierre carried his mistrust of men to an extreme; he showed himself always cold, harsh, and suspicious, to the point of committing acts of injustice towards citizens as devoted as himself to the public cause, but who had the pretension to serve it by means different from his.