of noxious insects brought by the wind in summer, had a twofold result first, like so many millions of wasps, they goaded the Revolution into fury and madness; and, secondly, they obscured the truth, and so darkened the light of day that many who had been considered clear-sighted, were groping in the blaze of noon.

The faint-hearted, who till then had marched forward by impulse and sentiment, without principles, lost their way and began to inquire: "Where are we? Whither are we going? The shop-keeper began to entertain doubts about a Revolution which caused his customers to emigrate; and the bourgeois, with his regular domestic habits, called away from his home every minute, by the roll of the drum, tired out and irritated, "wanted to see the end of it." In this, entirely like Louis XVI., he would have sacrificed an interest, a throne, if necessary, rather than his habits.

This state of irritation, this need of repose and peace at any price, led astray the citizen-class, and M. De Lafayette, the king of the citizens, so far as to make a disastrous mistake, which had an incalculable influence on subsequent events.

It is no easy matter to lay aside one's ideas, prejudices, and habits of rank. M. De Lafayette, after having been for some time transported beyond his ideas by the movement of the Revolution, became gradually once more the Marquis De Lafayette. He wanted to please the queen and gain her goodwill; and there is very little reason to doubt that he was also desirous of pleasing Madame De Lafayette, an excellent woman, but a bigot, and as such addicted to retrograde ideas, always having mass said in her chapel by a priest who had not taken the civic oath. To these domestic family influences, add his entirely aristocratic relationship, his cousin M. de Bouillé, his friends, all great lords, and lastly his staff, composed of nobles and burgess aristocracy. Under a firm and reserved exterior, he was not the less gained over, and in course of time changed by these counter-revolutionary acquaintances. A stronger mind than his would not have been able to withstand the trial. The confederation at the Field of Mars completed his infatuation. A multitude of those honest people who had heard so much of Lafayette in their provinces, and had then the happiness of beholding him, afforded the most ridiculous spectacle:

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they literally adored the man, kissing his hands and his boots.

Nothing is more sensitive and irritable than an idol of the people, and the situation itself abounded with causes of irritation, being full of contrasts and violent alternatives. This god, in the vicissitudes of those riotous times, was obliged to turn superintendent of police, and even gendarme in cases of necessity; it once happened, that not being obeyed, he was obliged to arrest a man with his own hand, and lead him to prison. The great and sovereign authority which would have encouraged Lafayette and supported him in these difficulties, was that of Washington; but it entirely failed him. Washington, as is well known, was the head of the party that wanted to strengthen the unity of the government in America. Jefferson, the leader of the opposition party, had much encouraged the progress of our revolution; but Washington, notwithstanding his extreme discretion, did not conceal from Lafayette his wish that he would halt. The Americans, saved by France, and fearful of being led by her too far against the English, had found it prudent to concentrate their gratitude upon individuals Lafayette and Louis XVI. Few of them understood our situation, and many took part with the king against France. One thing, moreover, of which we had not thought, but which injured their trade, caused them to cool,-a decree of the Assembly on oil and tobacco.

The Americans, though so resolute against England in every affair of interest, are weak and partial towards her in questions of ideas. English literature is ever their literature; and the pernicious pamphlet warfare carried on by the English against us, influenced the Americans, and through them Lafayette. At least, they did not support him in his primitive republican aspirations. He postponed this grand ideal, and fell back, at least provisionally, to English ideas-to a certain Anglo-American spurious eclectism. Besides, he himself, though American in ideas, was English by education, and a little so even in figure and appearance.

For this English provisional state of things, this system of democratical royalty or royal democracy, which, said he, was good only for some twenty years, he took a decisive step, which seemed to check the Revolution, but which really impelled it forwards.

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AGITATED STATE OF THE ARMY.

Let us resume preceding events.

As early as the winter of 1790 the army was being tampered with in two ways at once: on one hand, by the patriotic societies; on the other, by the Court, by the officers who attempted, as we have seen, to persuade the soldiers that they had been insulted by the National Assembly.

In February, the Assembly increased the pay a few deniers; yet in May, the soldiers had not received any part of that augmentation; it became entirely insignificant, being almost wholly employed for an imperceptible increase of rations of bread.

It was a long expectation, and no result; and the soldiers believed they were cheated. For a long time past they had accused the officers of a want of consideration in not giving any account of the cash belonging to the regiments. What is certain is, that the officers were at the best very negligent accountants, very remiss, averse to writing, and bad calculators. In late years especially, during the general languor of the old administration, military accounts appear to have been no longer in existence. To quote one regiment: M. du Châtelet, colonel of the king's regiment, being at once accountant and inspector, neither kept accounts nor inspected.

"The soldiers," says M. de Bouillé, "formed committees, chose deputies, who laid before their superiors, at first moderately enough, their claims for the pay that had been kept back... Their claims were just; and they received justice. He adds that they then made others which were unjust and exorbitant. How can he know? With such an irregular system of keeping accounts, who was able to calculate?

Brest and Nancy were the principal scenes of this strange dispute, in which the officer, the noble, the gentleman, was accused as a swindler.

The officers recriminated both violently and cruelly. Strong in their position as chiefs, and in their superiority in fencing, their insolence to the soldiers and to the burgesses friendly to the soldiery knew no bounds. They did not fight with the soldiers, but set on them fencing-masters and hired bullies, who, sure of their superior science, gave them the choice of exposing themselves to certain death, or of declining, receiving a bloody nose, and becoming a laughing-stock. One was discovered at Metz,

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who, disguised by the officers, and paid by them so much per head, used to go about at night, dressed now as a National Guard, now as a citizen, insulting and wounding, or killing the soldiers. And whoever refused to encounter that infallible sword, was next morning placarded, and laughed at, as a subject of amusement and ridicule at the barracks.

The soldiers at length found out and caught this rogue, whom they forced to tell the names of the officers who lent him his clothes. They did no harm to him, but merely scouted him with a paper cap and his name-Iscariot.

The officers, being discovered, crossed the frontier, and, like so many others, entered the bodies of troops which Austria was directing towards Brabant.

Thus the natural division was effected: the soldier drawing closer to the people, and the officer to foreigners.

The confederations were a fresh occasion for this division to display itself. The officers did not attend them.

They threw off the mask once more when the oath was required. After being imposed by the Assembly, delayed, taken against their will, and by several with a derisive flippancy, it did but add contempt to the hatred which the soldiers felt for their commanders. And they remained debased by it.

Such was the state of the army and its intestine warfare. And foreign warfare was likewise imminent. In July, the news spread that the king had granted a passage to the Austrians marching to stifle the Revolution in the Low-Countries. Was it a passage or a residence?.. Who knew whether they would not halt, whether Leopold, the brother-in-law, would not take up a fraternal abode at Mézières or at Givet?.. The population of the Ardennes, feeling no confidence in an army so disorganised, and in Bouillé its commander, were resolved to defend themselves. Thirty thousand National Guards put themselves in motion, and marched against the Austrians, when they suddenly heard that the National Assembly had refused the passage.

The officers, on the contrary, by no means concealed before the soldiers the joy they felt at the approach of the foreign army. Somebody having asked whether the Austrians were really arriving: "Yes," said an officer, "they are coming, and to chastise you."

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PERSECUTION OF THE VAUDOIS REGIMENT.

Meanwhile duelling continued and increased in a frightful manner, being used, as at Lille, for the purging of the army. Every advantage was taken of the disputes and idle rivalries which often rise between different bodies of troops without anybody knowing the reason. At Nancy, two bodies of 1500 men each were going to fight together; but a soldier rushed between them, forced them to come to an explanation, and made them sheath their swords.

Leaves of absence were given in great numbers (at the approach of the enemy!); and many soldiers were dismissed in a degrading manner, with yellow cartouche boxes.

Things were in this state when the king's regiment, which was at Nancy with two others,-Mestre-de-Camp, and Châteauvieux, a Swiss regiment,—thought proper to ask its officers for a settling of accounts, and managed to get paid. This tempted the Châteauvieux regiment. On the 5th of August, it deputed two soldiers to the king's regiment, to ask for information respecting the examination of the accounts. Those poor Swiss believed themselves to be Frenchmen, and wanted to do like Frenchmen; but they were cruelly reminded that they were Swiss. Their officers, in the terms of the capitulations, were their supreme judges for life and death: officers, judges, lords, and masters; some, patricians of the sovereign towns of Berne and Fribourg; others, feudal lords of Vaud and other subject countries who inflicted upon their vassals all the contempt they received from Berne.

This proceeding of their soldiers appeared to them three-fold criminal; as soldiers, subjects, and vassals, they could never be too severely punished. The two envoys were shamefully flogged in open parade. The French officers looked on in admiration, and complimented the Swiss officers for their inhumanity.

They had not reflected how the army might take this affair. The indignation was extreme; for the French felt every blow inflicted upon the Swiss.

That regiment of Châteauvieux was, and deserved to be, dear to the army and to France. It was the same that, on the 14th of July, 1789, encamped in the Field of Mars when the Parisians went to take arms at the Invalids, declared that it would never fire on the people. Its refusal evidently paralysed Besenval, and left Paris free to march against the Bastille.