242

PROPOSITION REJECTED AT THE HOTEL-DE-VILLE.

theless was so perfectly adapted to the necessities of the day, that it was, a few days later, reproduced, at least the principal part of it, in the Assembly itself, by one of its most eminent members.

Loustalot and the deputation of the Palais Royal were very badly received, their proposition rejected at the Hôtel-de-Ville, and the next morning accused in the Assembly. A threatening letter, received by the president and signed Saint-Hururge (who, however, maintained it was a forgery), completed the general irritation. They caused Saint-Hururge to be arrested, and the National Guard took advantage of a momentary tumult to shut up the Café de Foy. Meetings in the Palais Royal were forbidden and dispersed by the municipal authority.

The piquant part of the affair is that the executor of these measures, M. de Lafayette, was, at that time and always, a republican in heart. Throughout his life he dreamed of the republic and served royalty. A democratical royalty, or a royal democracy, appeared to him a necessary transition. To undeceive him it required no less than two experiments.

The court trifled with Necker and the Assembly. It did not deceive Lafayette; and yet he served it, and kept Paris in check. The horror of the former acts of violence of the people, and the bloodshed, made him recoil before the idea of another 14th of July. But would the civil war which the court was preparing have cost less blood? A serious and delicate question for the friend of humanity.

He was acquainted with everything. On the 13th of September, whilst receiving old Admiral d'Estaing, the commander of the National Guards of Versailles, to dinner at his house, he told him news of Versailles of which he was ignorant. That honest man, who thought he was very deep in the confidence of the king and the queen, now learned that they had returned to the fatal project of taking the king to Metz, that is to say, of beginning a civil war; that Breteuil was preparing everything in concert with the ambassador of Austria; that they were bringing towards Versailles the musketeers, the gendarmes, nine thousand of the king's household, two thirds of whom were noblemen; that they were to seize on Montargis, where they would be joined by the Baron de Vioméniì, a man of action. The latter, who had served in almost all the wars

CONSPIRACY OF THE COURT.

243

of the century, recently in that of America, had east himself violently into the counter-revolution party, perhaps out of jealousy for Lafayette, who seemed to be playing the first part in the Revolution. Eighteen regiments, and especially the Carabiniers, had not taken the oath. That was enough to block up all the roads to Paris, cut off its supplies, and famish it. They were no longer in want of money; they had collected and enforced it from all sides; they made sure of having fifteen hundred thousand francs a month. The clergy would supply the remainder; a steward of the Benedictins was bound, for himself alone, in the sum of one hundred thousand

The old Admiral wrote to the queen on the Monday (14th): "I have always slept well the night before a naval battle, but since this terrible revelation, I have not been able to close my eyes." On hearing it at M. de Lafayette's table, he shuddered lest any one of the servants should hear it: "I remarked to him that one word from his mouth might become the signal of death." To which Lafayette, with his American coolness, replied: "That it would be advantageous for one to die for the salvation of all." The only head in peril would have been the queen's.

The Spanish ambassador said as much to d'Estaing; he knew it all from a considerable personage to whom they had proposed for his signature a list of association which the court caused to be circulated.

Thus, this profound secret, this mystery, was spread through the saloons on the 13th, and about the streets from the 14th to the 16th. On the 16th, the grenadiers of the French Guards, now become a paid national guard, declared they would go to Versailles to resume their old duties, to guard the Château and the king. On the 22nd, the grand plot was printed in the Révolutions de Paris, and read by all France.

M. de Lafayette, who believed. himself strong, too strong, according to his own expressions, wished on one hand to check the Court by making them afraid of Paris, and on the other hand, to check Paris, and repress agitation by his National Guards. He used and abused their zeal, in quieting the rabble,

* Three hundred thousand francs, or 12,0001. sterling.-C. C.

244 CONSPIRACY KNOWN TO LAFAYETTE AND EVERYBODY.

imposing silence on the Palais Royal, and preventing mobs; he carried on a petty police warfare of annoyance against a crowd excited by the fears which he himself shared; he knew of the plot, and yet he dispersed and arrested those who spoke of it. He managed so well that he created the most fatal animosity between the National Guards and the people. The latter began to remark that the chiefs, the commanders, were nobles, rich men, people of consequence. The National Guards in general, reduced in number, proud of their uniform and their arms, new to them, appeared to the people a sort of aristocracy. Being citizens and merchants, they were great sufferers by the riots, receiving nothing from their country estates, and gaining nothing; they were every day called out, fatigued, and jaded; every day, they wanted to bring matters to an end, and they testified their impatience by some act of brutality which set the crowd against them. Once, they drew their swords against a mob of peruke-makers, and there was bloodshed; on another occasion, they arrested some persons who had indulged in jokes about the National Guard. A girl, having said she did not care for them, was taken and whipped.

The people were exasperated to such a degree, that they brought against the National Guard the strangest accusation— that of favouring the Court, and being in the plot of Versailles.

Lafayette was no hypocrite, but his position was equivocal. He prevented the grenadiers from going to Versailles to resume their duties as the king's guards, and gave warning to the minister, Saint-Priest (September 17th). His letter was turned to advantage. They showed it to the municipality of Versailles, making them take an oath of secrecy, and inducing them to ask that the regiment of Flanders should be sent for. They solicited the same step from a part of the National Guards of Versailles, but the majority refused.

That regiment, strongly suspected, because it had hitherto refused to take the new oath, arrived with its cannon, ammunition, and baggage, and entered Versailles with much noise. At the same time, the Château detained the body guards, who had concluded their service, in order to have double the number. A crowd of officers of every grade were daily arriving en poste, as the old nobility used to do on the eve of a battle, fearing to arrive too late.

UNCERTAIN CONDUCT OF THE ASSEMBLY.

245

Paris was uneasy. The French Guards were indignant ; they had been tried and tampered with without any other result than to put them on their guard. Bailly could not help speaking at the Hôtel-de-Ville. A deputation was sent, headed by the good old Dussaulx, to convey to the king the alarms of Paris.

The conduct of the Assembly in the meantime was strange. Now it seemed to be asleep, and then it would suddenly start up; one day violent, on the next moderate and timid.

66

One morning, the 12th of September, it remembers the 4th of August, and the grand social revolution it had voted. It was five weeks since the decrees had been given; all France spoke of them with joy; but the Assembly said not one word about them. On the 12th, whilst a decree was being proposed in which the judicial committee demanded that the laws should be put in force conformably to a decision of the 4th of August, a deputy of Franche-Comté broke the ice and said: Steps are being taken to prevent the promulgation of those decrees of the 4th of August; it is said they are not to appear. It is time they should be seen, furnished with the royal seal. The people are waiting." Those words were quickly taken up. The Assembly was roused. Malouet, the orator of the moderate party of the constitutional royalists,-even he (singularly enough) supported the proposition, and others with them. In spite of the Abbé Maury, it was decided that the decrees of the 4th of August should be presented for the king's sanction.

This sudden movement, this aggressive disposition of even the moderates, inclines one to suppose that the most influential members were not ignorant of what Lafayette, the Spanish ambassador, and many others, were saying at Paris.

The Assembly seemed on the morrow astonished at its vigour. Many thought that the Court would never let the king sanction the decrees of the 4th of August, and foresaw that his refusal would provoke a terrible movement—a second fit of the Revolution. Mirabeau, Chapelier, and others, maintained that these decrees, not being properly laws, but principles of constitution, had no need of the royal sanction; that the promulgation was sufficient. A bold, yet timid opinion: bold, in doing without the king; timid, in dispensing with

246 VOLNEY PROPOSES TO DISSOLVE THE ASSEMBLY.

his examining, sanctioning, or refusing: no refusal, no collision. Things would have been decided ipso facto, according as either party was predominant in this or that province. Here, they would have applied the decisions of the 4th of August, as decreed by the Assembly; there, they would have eluded them, as not sanctioned by the king.

On the 15th, the royal inviolability, hereditary right, was voted by acclamation, as if to dispose the king in their favour. They nevertheless received from him a dilatory, equivocal reply relative to the 4th of August. He sanctioned nothing, but discussed, blaming this, commending that, and admitting scarcely any article without some modification. The whole bore the impress of Necker's usual style, his tergiversation, blunders, and half measures. The Court, that was preparing something very different, apparently expected to captivate public attention by this empty answer. The Assembly was in great agitation. Chapelier, Mirabeau, Robespierre, Petion, and others usually less energetic, affirmed that in demanding the sanction for these preliminary articles, the Assembly expected only a pure and simple promulgation. Then, a great discussion, and an unexpected, but very sensible motion from Volney: "This Assembly is too mixed in interests and passions. Let us determine the new conditions of election, and retire." Applause, but nothing more. Mirabeau objects that the Assembly has sworn not to separate before having formed the constitution.

On the 21st, the king being pressed to promulgate, laid aside all circumlocution; the Court apparently believed itself stronger. He replied that promulgation belonged only to laws invested with forms which procure their execution (he meant to say sanctioned); that he was going to order the publication, and that he did not doubt but the laws which the Assembly would decree, would be such as he could sanction.

On the 24th, Necker came to make his confession to the Assembly. The first loan, thirty millions, had given but two. The second, eighty, had given but ten. The general of finance, as Necker's friends called him in their pamphlets, had been able to do nothing; the credit which he expected to control and restore had perished in spite of him. He came to appeal to the devotion of the nation. The only remedy was