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THE COURT COMPROMISED BY THE ENGLISH AMBASSADOR. 197

ning of June, the horror felt by my court, and the renewed assurance of its sincere attachment for the king and the nation. And then he entreated the minister to communicate his letter to the National Assembly.

In other words, he begged him to hang himself. His letter of the 26th of July stated, and published to the world, that the court, for two whole months, had kept the secret, without either acting or adopting, apparently reserving that plot as a last weapon in case of civil war,-the dagger of mercy (poignard de miséricorde), as they called it in the middle ages, which the warrior always kept, so that, when vanquished, thrown on the ground, and his sword broken, he might, whilst begging his life, assassinate his conqueror.

The minister Montmorin, dragged by the English into broad daylight, before the National Assembly, had but a very poor explanation to give, namely, that, not having the names of the guilty parties, they had been unable to prosecute. The Assembly did not insist; but the blow was struck, and was but so much the heavier. It was felt by all France.

Dorset's affirmation, which might have been believed to be false, a fiction, a brand cast at random by our enemies, appeared confirmed by the imprudence of the officers in the garrison of Brest, who, on the news of the taking of the Bastille, made a demonstration of intrenching themselves in the castle, menacing to subject the town to martial law, if it should stir. This it instantly did, taking up arms, and overpowering the guard of the port. The soldiers and sailors, bribed in vain by their officers, sided with the people. The noble corps of the marine was very aristocratical, but certainly anything but English. Suspicions nevertheless extended even to them, and even further, to the nobles of Brittany. In vain were the latter indignant, and vainly did they protest their loyalty.

This irritation carried to excess made people credit the foulest plots. The prolonged obstinacy of the nobility in remaining separate from the Third in the States-General, the bitter, desperate dispute which had arisen on that occasion in every town, large or small, in villages and hamlets, often in the same house, had inculcated an indelible idea in the people, that the noble was an enemy.

A considerable portion of the higher nobility, illustrious and

198 FURY OF THE OLD NOBLES AND NEW NOBLES.

memorable in history, did what was necessary to prove that this idea was false, not at all fearful of the Revolution, and believing that, do what it might, it could not destroy history. But the others, and smaller gentry, less proud of their rank, more vainglorious or more frank, moreover piqued every day by the new rising of the people whom they saw approaching nearer them, and who incommoded them more, declared themselves boldly the enemies of the Revolution.

The new nobles and the Parliament people were the most furious; the magistrates had become more warlike than the military; they spoke of nothing but battles, and vowed death, blood, and ruin. Those among them who had been till then the vanguard in opposing the wishes of the court, who had the most relished popularity, the love and enthusiasm of the public, were astounded and enraged, to see themselves suddenly indifferent or hated. They hated with a boundless hate. They often sought the cause of that very sudden change in the artful machination of their personal enemies, and political enmities were still further envenomed by ancient family feuds. At Quimper, one Kersalaun, a member of the Parliament of Brittany, one of the friends of Chalotais, and very lately the ardent champion of parliamentary opposition, becoming suddenly a still more ardent royalist and aristocrat, would walk gravely among the hooting crowds, who, however, durst not touch him, and naming his enemies aloud, used to say: I shall judge them shortly, and wash my hands in their blood."*

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One of these Parliament people, M. Memmay de Quincey, a noble seigneur in Franche-Comté, did not confine himself to threats. Envenomed probably by local animosity, and with his mind in a fever of frenzy, urged likewise perhaps by that fatal propensity of imitation which causes one infamous crime very often to engender many others, he realized precisely what De Launey had wanted to do,-what the people of Paris believed they had still to fear. He gave out at Vesoul, and in the neighbourhood, that by way of rejoicings for the good news, he would give a feast and keep open house. Citizens, peasants, soldiers, all arrive, drink, and dance. The earth opens, and a mine bursts, shatters, shivers, and destroys at random; the

* Duchatellier, La Révolution en Bretagne, i., p. 175.

TERROR OF THE RURAL DISTRICTS.

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ground is strewn with bleeding members. The whole was attested by the curé, who confessed a few of the wounded who survived, attested by the gendarmerie, and brought on the 25th of July before the National Assembly. The Assembly being exasperated, obtained leave from the king that every power should be written to, in order to demand that the guilty should be delivered up. *

An opinion was gaining ground and growing stronger, that the brigands who used to cut down the corn, in order to starve the people, were not foreigners, as had been first supposed, not Italians or Spaniards, as Marseilles believed in May, but Frenchmen, enemies to France, furious enemies of the Revolution, their agents, their servants, and bands whom they paid.†

The horror of them increased, everybody believing he had exterminating demons about him. In the morning, they would run to the field, to see whether it was not laid waste. In the evening, they were uneasy, fearing they might be burned in the night. At the very name of these brigands, mothers would snatch up their children and conceal them.

Where then was that royal protection, on the faith of which the people had so long slept? Where that old guardianship which had so well re-assured them that they had remained minors, and had, as it were, grown up without ceasing to be

* Later, M. de Memmay was restored on the pleading of M. Courvoisier. He maintained that the accident had been occasioned by the barrel of gunpowder, left by chance beside some drunken men. Three things had contributed to create another suspicion: 1st. M. de Memmay's absence on the day of the feast; he was unwilling to be present, he said, wishing to give full scope to the rejoicings; 2ndly, his entire disappearance; 3rdly, the Parliament, of which he was an ancient member, would not allow the ordinary tribunals to make an inquiry, called the affair before a higher court, and reserved the trial to itself.

The historians all affirm, without the least proof, that these alarms and accusations, all that great commotion, proceeded from Paris, from such and such persons. Doubtless, the leaders influenced the Palais Royal; the Palais Royal, Paris; and Paris, France. It is not less inexact to attribute everything to the Duke of Orleans, like most of the royalists; or to Duport, like M. Droz; to Mirabeau, like Montgaillard, &c. See the very wise answer of Alexandre de Lameth. What he ought to have added is, that Mirabeau, Duport, the Lameths, the Duke of Orleans, and most of the men of that period, less energetic than is believed, were delighted in being thought to possess so much money, such vast influence. They replied but little to such accusations, smiled gredestly, leaving such to believe as would, that they were great villains.

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THE PEASANTS TAKE ARMS.

children? They began to perceive that, no matter what sort of man Louis XVI. might be, royalty was the intimate friend of the enemy.

The king's troops, which, at other times, would have appeared a protection, were precisely a subject of dread. Who were

at their head? The more insolent of the nobles, those who the least concealed their hate. They used to excite, to bribe when necessary the soldiers against the people, and to intoxicate their Germans; they seemed to be preparing an attack.

Man was obliged to rely on himself, and on himself alone. In that complete absence of authority and public protection, his duty as a father of a family constituted him the defender of his household. He became, in his house, the magistrate, the king, the law, and the sword to execute the law, agreeably to the old proverb: The poor man in his home is king.'

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The hand of Justice, the sword of Justice: that king has his scythe in default of gun, his mattock, or his iron fork. Now let those brigands come! But he does not wait for them. Neighbours unite, villagers unite, and go armed into the country to see whether those villains dare come. They proceed and behold a band. Do not fire however. Those are the people of another village, friends and relations, who are also hunting about.*

France was armed in a week. The National Assembly learn every moment the miraculous progress of that Revolution; they find themselves, in an instant, at the head of the most numerous army ever seen since the crusades. Every courier that arrived astonished and almost frightened them. One day, somebody came and said: "You have two hundred thousand men." The next day, another said: "You have five hundred thousand men. Others arrived: "A million of men have armed this week,—two millions, three millions."

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And all that great armed multitude, rising suddenly from the furrow, asked the Assembly what they were to do.

Where then is the old army ? It seems to have disappeared. The new one, being so numerous, must have stifled it without fighting, merely by crowding together.

People have said France is a soldier, and so she has been from that day. On that day a new race rose from the earth,—

* Montlosier, Mémoires, i., p. 233. Toulongeon, i., p. 56, &c., &c.

THE PEASANTS BURN THE FEUDAL CHARTERS.

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children born with teeth to tear cartridges, and with strong indefatigable limbs to march from Cairo to the Kremlin, and with the admirable gift of being able to march and fight without eating, of having only "their good spirits to feed and clothe them."

Relying on their good spirits, joy and hope! Who then has a right to hope, if it be not he who bears in his bosom the enfranchisement of the world?

Did France exist before that time? It might be denied. She became at once a sword and a principle.

To be thus armed is to be. What has neither idea nor strength, exists but on sufferance.

They were in fact; and they wanted to be by right.

The barbarous middle ages did not admit their existence, denying them as men, and considering them only as things. That period taught, in its singular school-divinity, that souls redeemed at the same price are all worth the blood of a God; then debased those souls, thus exalted, to brutes, fastened them to the earth, adjudged them to eternal bondage, and annihilated liberty.

This lawless right they called conquest, that is to say, ancient injustice. Conquest, would it say, made the nobles, the lords. If that be all," said Sièyes, we will be conquerors

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in our turn."

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Feudal right alleged, moreover, those hypocritical acts, wherein it was supposed that man stipulated against himself: wherein the weaker party, through fear or force, gave himself up without reserving anything, gave away the future, the possible, his children unborn, and future generations. Those guilty parchments, a disgrace to nature, had been sleeping with impunity for ages in the archives of the castles.

Much was said about the grand example given by Louis XVI., who had enfranchised the last serfs of his domains. An imperceptible sacrifice that cost the treasury but little, and which had scarcely any imitator in France.

What! it will be said, were the seigneurs in '89 hardhearted, merciless men?

By no means. They were a very varied class of men, but generally feeble and physically decayed, frivolous, sensual, and sensitive, so sensitive that they could not look closely at the

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