was the state of affairs. The crisis was then at its height, and the combat still doubtful. It was impossible to find too high a mountain whereon to fix the standard. It was necessary to place that flag, if possible, so high that the whole world might behold it, and that its tricolor streamer might rally the nations. Recognised as the common standard of humanity, it became invincible.

There are still people who think that grand discussion excited and armed the people, that it put the torch in their hand, and promoted warfare and conflagration. The first stumblingblock to that argument is, that the acts of violence began previous to the discussion. The peasants did not need metaphysical formula in order to rise in arms. Even afterwards it had but little influence. What armed the rural districts was, as we have already said, the necessity of putting down pillage; it was the contagion of the cities taking up arms; and, above all, it was the frenzy and enthusiasm caused by the taking of the Bastille.

The grandeur of that spectacle and the variety of its terrible incidents troubled the vision of history. It has mixed together and confounded three distinct and even opposite facts which were taking place at the same time.

1st. The excursions of the famished vagrants, who cut down the corn at night, and cleared the earth like locusts. Those bands, when strong, would break open lone houses, farms, and even castles.

2ndly. The peasant, in order to repel those bands, was in need of arms, and demanded and exacted them from the castles. Once armed and master, he destroyed the charters, in which he beheld an instrument of oppression. Woe to detested nobles! Then they did not attack his parchments alone, but his person also.

3rdly. The cities, the arming of which had brought about that of the rural districts, were obliged to repress them. The National Guards, who then had nothing aristocratical about them, since they comprehended everybody, marched forth to restore order; they went to the succour of those castles which they detested. They often brought the peasants back to town as prisoners, but soon released them.*

*All this is very much embroiled by historians, according to their passions. I have consulted old men, especially my illustrious and venerable friends MM. Béranger and de Lamennais.

208

DISTURBANCES-DANGER OF FRANCE.

I speak of the peasants domiciliated in the neighbourhood. As for the bands of lawless strollers, pillagers, and brigands, as they were called, the tribunals, and even the municipalities, often treated them with extreme severity: a great number of them were put to death. Security was at length restored, and agriculture protected. If the depredations had continued, cultivation must have ceased, and France would have been starved to death the following year.

A strange situation for an Assembly to be discussing, calculating, weighing syllables, at the summit of a world in flames. Danger on the right and on the left. To repress the disorder, they have, one would think, but one means: to restore the ancient order, which is but a worse disorder.

It is commonly supposed that they were impatient to lay hold of power; that is true of certain of the members, but false, very false, with respect to the great majority. The character of that Assembly, considered in the mass, its originality, like that of the period, was a singular faith in the power of ideas. It firmly believed that truth, once found, and written in the formula of laws, was invincible. It would require but two months (such was the calculation, however, of very serious men), in two months the constitution was made; it would, by its omnipotent virtue, overawe authority and the people: the Revolution was then completed, and the world was to bloom again.

Meanwhile, the position of affairs was truly singular; Authority was in one place destroyed, in another very strong; organised on such a point, in complete dissolution on another, feeble for general and regular action, though formidable still to corruption, intrigue, and perhaps to violence. The accounts of those latter years, which appeared later, sufficiently show what resources were possessed by the court, and how they employed them, how they tampered with the press, the newspapers, and even with the Assembly. Emigration was beginning, and with it an appeal to foreigners,-to the enemy,—a persevering system of treason and calumny against France.

The Assembly felt it was sitting upon a volcano. For the general safety, it was obliged to descend from the heights where it was making laws, and take a nearer view of what was passing on the earth. A stupendous descent! Solon,

ATTEMPTS MADE BY THE COURT.

209

Lycurgus, or Moses, debased to the miserable cares of public surveillance, forced to watch over spies, and become an inspector of police!

The first hint was given by Dorset's letters to Count d'Artois, by his still more alarming explanations, and the notice of the conspiracy of Brest, so long concealed by the court. On the 27th of July, Duport proposed to create a committee of inquiry, composed of four persons. He uttered these ominous words: “ Allow me to refrain from entering into any discussion. Plots are forming. There must not be any question of sending before the tribunals. We must acquire horrible and indispensable information."

The number four reminded them too much of the three inquisitors of State. It was therefore raised to twelve.

The spirit of the Assembly, in spite of its necessities, was by no means one of police and inquisition. A very serious discussion took place as to whether the secrecy of letters was to be violated, whether they ought to open that suspected correspondence, addressed to a prince who, by his precipitate flight, declared himself an enemy. Gouy d'Arcy and Robespierre wished them to be opened. But the Assembly, on the opinion of Chapelier, Mirabeau, and even of Duport, who had just demanded a sort of State inquisition, magnanimously declared the secrecy of letters inviolable, refused to open them, and caused them to be restored.

This decision restored courage to the partisans of the court. They made three bold attempts. On Sieyès being proposed for president, they opposed to him the eminent legist of Rouen, Thouret, a man much esteemed, and very agreeable to the Assembly. His merit in their estimation was his having voted, on the 17th of June, against the title of National Assembly, that simple formula of Sieyes which contained the Revolution. To bring into opposition those two men, or rather those two systems, in the question of the presidency, was putting the Revolution on its trial, and attempting to see whether it could not be made to retrograde to the 16th of June.

The second attempt was to prevent the trial of Besenval. That general of the queen against Paris had been arrested in his flight. To judge and condemn him was to condemn

P

210 THE COURT WISHES TO PREVENT THE TRIAL OF BESENVAL

also the orders according to which he had acted. Necker, in returning, had seen him on his journey, and given him hopes. It was not difficult to obtain from his kind heart the promise of a solemn step to be taken with the city of Paris.* Το obtain a general amnesty, in the joy of his return, end the Revolution, restore tranquillity, and appear as after the deluge, the rainbow in the heavens, was most charming to the vanity of Necker.

He went to the Hôtel-de-Ville, and obtained everything of those who happened to be there,-electors, representatives of districts, simple citizens, a mixed, confused multitude, without any legal character. The joy of the people was extreme, both in the hall and in the public square. He showed himself at the window, with his wife on his right, and his daughter on his left, both weeping and kissing his hands. His daughter, Madame de Staël, fainted with delight.†

That done, nothing was done. The districts of Paris justly protested; this clemency filched from an Assembly lost in emotion, granted in the name of Paris by a crowd without authority, a national question, settled at once by a single town, -by a few of its inhabitants,-and that at the moment the National Assembly was creating a committee of inquiry and preparing a tribunal,-this was unprecedented and audacious. In spite of Lally and Mounier, who defended the amnesty, Mirabean, Barnave, and Robespierre obtained a decision for a trial. The court were again defeated; however, they had one great consolation, worthy of their usual wisdom: they had compromised Necker, and destroyed the popularity of the only man who had any chance of saving them.

The court failed in the same way in the affair of the Presidency. Thouret, alarmed at the exasperation of the people, and the menaces of Paris, retired.

A third and far more serious attempt of the royalist party was made by Malouet; this was one of the strangest and most dangerous trials that the Revolution had met with in her perillous route, where her enemies were every day laying stumbling-blocks, and digging pits at every step.

* He says expressly that he was speaking in the name of the king. See his speech, Hist. de la Révolution, par deux amis de la liberté, ii., p. 235. + Staël, Considérations, 1st part, ch. xxiii. See also Necker, t. vi., ix.

AND GET POSSESSION OF PUBLIC CHARITIES.

211

The reader may remember the day, when, before the Orders had yet united, the clergy had gone hypocritically to show the Third Estate the black bread which the people had to eat, and to engage them, in the name of charity, to lay aside useless disputes, in order to undertake with them the welfare of the poor. This is precisely what was done by Malouet, in other respects an honourable man, but a blind partisan of a royalty then all but destroyed.

He proposed to organise a vast poor-rate, bureaus for relief and work, the first funds of which should be furnished by the establishments of charity, the rest by a general tax on all, and by a loan-a noble and honourable proposal, countenanced at such a moment by pressing necessity, but giving the royalist party a formidable political initiative. It placed in the hands of the king a three-fold fund, the last portion of which, the loan, was unlimited; it made him the leader of the poor, perhaps the general of the beggars against the Assembly. It found him dethroned, and placed him upon a throne, far more absolute, more solid, by making him king of famine, reigning by what is most imperious, food and bread.

What became of liberty?

For the thing to create less alarm, and appear a mere trifle, Malouet lowered the number of the poor to four hundred thousand,- -an amount evidently false.

If he did not succeed, he nevertheless derived a great advantage, that of giving his party, the king's, a fine colouring in the eyes of the people,—the glory of charity. The majority, which would be too much compromised by refusing, was about compulsorily to follow and obey, and to place that grand popular machine in the hands of the king.

Malouet proposed, lastly, to consult the Chambers of Commerce and the manufacturing towns, in order to aid the workmen, "to augment work and wages."

A sort of opposition bidding was about to be established between the two parties. The question was to obtain or to bring back the people. The proposal of giving to the indigent could only be met by one to authorise workmen to pay taxes no longer,-one, at least, to authorise country labourers no longer to pay the most odious of taxes, the feudal tributes.

Those rights were in great jeopardy. In order to destroy