IMPOTENCY OF NECKER AND THE ASSEMBLY.

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that she should enforce it herself, that everybody should tax himself at a fourth of his income.*

Necker had now ended his part. After having tried every reasonable means, he trusted himself to the faith, the miracle, the vague hope that a people unable to pay less was about to pay more, and that they would tax themselves with the monstrous impost of a quarter of their revenue. The chimerical financier brought forward as the last word of his balance-sheet, as cash, a Utopia which the good Abbé of Saint-Pierre would not have proposed.

The impotent willingly believes in the impossible; being incapacitated from acting himself, he imagines that chance, or some unknown and unforeseen accident, will act for him. The Assembly, no less impotent than the minister, shared his credulity. A wonderful speech from Mirabeau overcame all their doubts, and transported them out of their senses. He showed them bankruptcy, a hideous bankruptcy opening its monstrous abyss beneath them, and ready to devour both themselves and France. They voted. If the measure had been serious, if money had come in, the effect would have been singular: Necker would have succeeded in relieving those who were to drive Necker away, and the Assembly would have paid a war in order to dissolve the Assembly. Impossibility, contradiction, a perfect stand-still in every direction, was fundamentally the state of things for every man and every party. To sum up all in one word: nothing comes of nothing (nul ne peut.)

The Assembly can do nothing. Discordant in elements and principles, it was naturally incapable; but it becomes still more so in presence of tumult, at the entirely novel noise of the press which drowns its voice. It would willingly cling to the royal power which it has demolished; but its ruins are hostile : they would like to crush the Assembly. Thus Paris makes them afraid, and so does the Château. After the king's refusal, they dare no longer show their anger for fear of adding to the indignation of Paris. Except the responsibility of the ministers which they decree, they do nothing at all consonant with the situation of affairs; the dividing of France into depart

Necker, ever generous, for his own part exceeded the quarter; he taxed himself at one hundred thousand francs (£4000.)

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EVEN THE PRESS POWERLESS.

ments, and the criminal law, are discussed in empty space; the hall is thinly attended; scarcely do six hundred members assemble, and it is to give the presidency to Mounier, a personi-. fication of immobility; to him who expresses the best all the difficulties of acting, and the general paralysis.

Can the Court do anything? They think so at that moment. They see the nobility and clergy rallying around them. They perceive the Duke of Orleans unsupported in the Assembly;* they behold him, at Paris, spending much money, and gaining but little ground; his popularity is surpassed by Lafayette.

All were ignorant of the situation, all overlooked the general force of things, and attributed events to some person or other, ridiculously exaggerating individual power. According to its hatred or its love, passion believes miracles, monsters, heroes. The Court accuse Orleans or Lafayette of everything. Lafayette himself, though naturally firm and cool-headed, becomes imaginative; he is not far from believing likewise that all the disturbances are the work of the Palais Royal. A visionary appears on the press, the credulous, blind, furious Marat, who will vent accusations dictated at random by his dreams, designating one to-day, and to-morrow another to death; he begins by affirming that the whole famine is the work of one man; that Necker buys up corn on every side, in order that Paris may have none.

Marat is only beginning, however; as yet he has but little influence. He stands conspicuously apart from all the press, The press accuses, but vaguely; it complains, and is angry, like the people, without too well knowing what ought to be done. It sees plainly in general that there will be "a second fit of the Revolution." But how? For what precise object? It cannot exactly say. For the prescription of remedies, the press, that young power, suddenly grown so great through the impotency of the others, the press itself is powerless.

It does but little during the interval previous to the 5th of October; the Assembly does little, and the Hôtel-de-Ville little. And yet everybody plainly perceives that some grand deed is about to be achieved. Mirabeau, on receiving one day his

* In regulating the succession, the Assembly spared its rival the King of Spain, declaring it brought no prejudice to the renunciations of the Bourbons of Spain to the crown of France.

THE PEOPLE FIND A REMEDY.

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bookseller of Versailles, sends away his three secretaries, shuts the door, and says to him: "My dear Blaisot, you will see here soon some great calamity-bloodshed. From friendship, I wished to give you warning. But be not afraid; there is no danger for honest men like you."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE PEOPLE GO TO FETCH THE KING, OCTOBER 5, 1789. The People alone find a Remedy: they go to fetch the King.-Egotistical Position of the Kings at Versailles.-Louis XVI. was unable to act in any way. -The Queen is solicited to act.-Orgy of the Body Guards, October 1st. -Insults offered to the National Cockade.-Irritation of Paris.-Misery and Sufferings of the Women. Their courageous Compassion. They invade the Hôtel-de-Ville, October 5th.-They march against Versailles. -The Assembly receives Warning.-Maillard and the Women before the Assembly.-Robespierre supports Maillard.-The Women before the King. Indecision of the Court.

ON the 5th of October, eight or ten thousand women went to Versailles, followed by crowds of people. The National Guard forced M. de Lafayette to lead them there the same evening. On the 6th, they brought back the king, and obliged him to inhabit Paris.

general, after the 14th of The one of October was

This grand movement is the most July, that occurs in the Revolution. unanimous, almost as much so as the other; at least in this sense, that they who took no part in it wished for its success, and all rejoiced that the king should be at Paris.

Here we must not seek the action of parties. They acted, but did very little.

The real, the certain cause, for the women and the most miserable part of the crowd, was nothing but hunger. Having dismounted a horseman at Versailles, they killed and ate his horse almost raw.

For the majority of the men, both the people and the National Guards, the cause of the movement was honour, the outrage of the Court against the Parisian cockade, adopted by all France as a symbol of the Revolution.

Whether the men, however, would have marched against

Versailles, if the women had not preceded them, is doubtful. Nobody before them had the idea of going to fetch the king. The Palais Royal, on the 30th of August, departed with SaintHururge, but it was to convey complaints and threats to the Assembly then discussing the veto. But here, the people alone are the first to propose; alone, they depart to take the king, as alone they took the Bastille. What is most people in the people, I mean most instinctive and inspired, is assuredly the women. Their idea was this: "Bread is wanting, let us go and fetch the king; they will take care, if he be with us, that bread be wanting no longer. Let us go and fetch the baker!"

A word of simple yet profound meaning! The king ought to live with the people, see their sufferings, suffer with them, and be of the same household with them. The ceremonies of marriage and those of the coronation used to coincide in several particulars; the king espoused the people. If royalty is not tyranny, there must be marriage and community, and the couple must live, according to the low but energetic motto of the middle ages, With one loaf and one pot.' "'*

66

Was not the egotistical solitude in which the kings were kept, with an artificial crowd of gilded beggars in order to make them forget the people, something strange and unnatural, and calculated to harden their hearts ? How can we be surprised if those kings became estranged, hard-hearted, and barbarous? How could they, without their isolated retreat at Versailles, ever have attained that degree of insensibility? The very sight of it is immoral: a world made expressly for one man! There only could a man forget the condition of humanity, and sign, like Louis XIV., the expulsion of a million of men; or, like Louis XV., speculate on famine.

To

The unanimity of Paris had overthrown the Bastille. conquer the king and the Assembly, it was necessary that it should find itself once more unanimous. The National Guard and the people were beginning to divide. In order to re-unite them, and make them concur for the same end, it required no less than a provocation from the Court. No political wisdom would have brought about the event; an act of folly was

necessary.

* See my Origines du Droit: symboles et formules juridiques.

LOUIS XVI. UNABLE TO ACT IN ANY WAY.

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That was the real remedy, the only means of getting rid of the intolerable position in which everybody seemed entangled. This folly would have been done by the queen's party long before, if it had not met with its chief stumbling-block and difficulty in Louis XVI. Nobody could be more averse to a change of habits. To deprive him of his hunting, his workshop, and his early hour of retiring to rest; to interrupt the regularity of his meals and prayers; to put him on horseback en campagne, and make an active partisan of him, as we see Charles I., in the picture by Vandyck, was not easy. His own good sense likewise told him that he ran much risk in declaring himself against the National Assembly.

On the other hand, this same attachment to his habits, to the ideas of his education and childhood, made him against the Revolution even more than the diminution of the royal authority. He did not conceal his displeasure at the demolition of the Bastille.* The uniform of the National Guards worn by his own people; his valets now become lieutenants— officers; more than one musician of the chapel chanting mass in a captain's uniform; all that annoyed his sight: he caused his servants to be forbidden "to appear in his presence in such an unseasonable costume."+

It was difficult to move the king, either one way or the other. In every deliberation, he was very fluctuating, but in his old habits, and in his rooted ideas, insuperably obstinate. Even the queen, whom he dearly loved, would have gained nothing by persuasion. Fear had still less influence upon him ; he knew he was the anointed of the Lord, inviolable and sacred; what could he fear?

Meanwhile, the queen was surrounded by a whirlwind of passions, intrigues, and interested zeal; prelates and lords, all that aristocracy who had so aspersed her character, and now were trying to effect a reconciliation, crowded her apartments, fervently conjuring her to save the monarchy. She alone, if they were to be believed, possessed genius and courage; it was time that she, the daughter of Maria-Theresa, should show herself. The queen derived courage, moreover, from two very different sorts of people; on one hand, brave and worthy chevaliers of + Campan, ii.

*Alexandre de Lameth.