THE SOCIETY AT PARIS, A MEETING OF DEPUTIES. 483

tion. In comparison with this, what are the foreign powers and all the armies of Europe?. Let us pity our fathers.

...

Now, who would enter into the vexatious detail of the world of nobles and would-be-nobles, the ancient corruption of the parliament party, their old-fashioned system of police, the most positive obstacle that Lafayette, according to his own confession, met with in Paris; or the base and servile clients, tradespeople, men of small incomes, and the crowd of petty creditors dependent on the clergy and the nobles ?

And then, these same nobles found themselves, by the favour of Lafayette and the revolutionary laws, the commanders and officers of their clients in the National Guard.

To withstand all this, the new association needed to be very strongly organised. This organisation was found in the society of Paris. The primitive originality of the latter was less in the theories than in the practical genius of its founders.

The principal was Duport, and he remained for a long time the very head of the Jacobins. "What Duport has planned," said the people, "Barnave says, and Lameth performs." Mirabeau used to call them the Triumgueusat.* From the violence of their attack on the kingly power, they were believed to be republicans; and people attributed to them a profound design, -a premeditated plan to effect a radical change. For their part, they felt flattered with this bad reputation, which they did not deserve. They were only inconsistent; and, at the critical moment, they were found to be partisans of the monarchy that they had destroyed.

And yet Duport was a thinker, endowed with a stronger and more complete mind than those of his colleagues; and being a man of speculation, he possessed at the same time much revolutionary experience, even before the Revolution. As the rival of d'Esprémesnil in the parliament, he had been one of the principal promoters of the opposition against Calonne and Brienne; and must have been thoroughly acquainted with the secret action of the parliamentary police, and the manner of organising the riots of the bazoche and the people in favour of the parliament.

During the elections of 1789, he began to assemble several

* A variation of Triumvirate, meaning the three scoundrels.--C. C.

484

IT PREPARES THE LAWS.

politicians at his house (Rue du Grand-Chantier, near the Temple). Mirabeau and Sièyes went there, but would not return a second time. It is "the polities of the low intrigue to act only by the power of ideas; but Duport, to the assistance of ideas, wanted also to add underhand manœuvring, popular agitation, and riots, if necessary.

A new meeting was formed at Versailles, composed fundamentally of the deputies from Brittany, and called the Breton club. There were prepared, under the influence of Duport, Chapelier, and others, several of the bold measures which saved the Revolution at its birth. The minority of the nobility, half composed of great philanthropic lords and discontented courtiers, joined this Breton club, and introduced a very different and a very equivocal spirit. Of the revolutionary courtiers, the most audacious and intriguing were the brothers Lameth, young colonels, of a family dissatisfied though much favoured by the Court. They were nobles of Artois, and had been elected in Franche-Comté; and it was a deputy from this last-mentioned province, very probably their agent, who, in October, 1789, when the Assembly was at Paris, hired of the Jacobin friars a room for the purpose of assembling the deputies. The monks let their refectory for two hundred francs, and, for two hundred more, the furniture, chairs, and tables. Later, the room not being sufficient, the club hired the library also, and lastly the church. The tombs of the ancient monks, the buried school of St. Thomas, and the fellow-friars of Jacques Clement, thus became the mute witnesses and the confidants of revolutionary intrigues.

Besides the members of the Breton club, many deputies who had never been in Paris, who did not feel very safe after the scenes of October, and imagined themselves lost amidst that tumultuous populace, had taken lodgings in the Rue SaintHonoré, near one another, in order to be able to assemble together in case of need. There they were, at the door of the Assembly, which then sat in the riding-school (Manège) at the spot where the Rue de Rivoli crosses the Rue de Castiglione ; and thus it was convenient for them to meet, almost opposite, at the convent of the Jacobins.

There were a hundred deputies on the first day, then two hundred, and afterwards four hundred; and they assumed the

ORGANISES A REVOLUTIONARY POLICE.

485

title of Friends of the Constitution; which constitution, in reality, they founded. It was prepared by them, for these four hundred members, more united among themselves, better disciplined, and more exact also than the other deputies, were masters of the Assembly. There they brought, ready made, both the laws and the elections, and they alone appointed the presidents, secretaries, and others; but for some time they disguised their omnipotency by choosing the president occasionally from other ranks than their own.

In the winter of 1789, all France was in Paris. Many considerable personages wanted to obtain admission to the Jacobin club. They admitted at first a few distinguished writers; the first was Condorcet; afterwards other persons who were known, and who were to be presented and recommended by six members. Nobody was admitted without a card, which was carefully examined at the door by two members placed there for that purpose.

The Jacobin club could not long confine itself to being merely a place for making laws,-a laboratory for preparing them. It soon became a vast committee of revolutionary police.

The state of affairs would have it so. What, indeed, was the use of making a constitution, if the Court, by some skilful manœuvre, overthrew all their work prepared with so much trouble? We have seen that, at the report of the conspiracy at Brest, which, so it was said, was about to be delivered up to the English, Duport had caused the committee of inquiry to be created by the Assembly (July 27th, 1789). This committee had no other agents than those of the government it had to watch. These agents, which it needed, were found among the Jacobins. Lafayette, who became acquainted, to his cost, with their organisation, says that its nucleus was a meeting of ten men, called by themselves the Sabbat, who received every day their orders from the Lameths; each of the ten forwarded them to ten others, heads of battalions and different sections, so that all the sections received the same denunciation against the authorities, and the same proposition of riot, &c., at the very same time.

Lafayette had on his side the committee of inquiry of the town, and many persons devoted to him in the National Guard.

THE REVOLUTION ASSUMES THE OFFENSIVE.

486 These two bodies of police thwarted each other and that of the Court. The police of the Jacobins, acting in the same direction as the popular movement, and going with the stream, progressed with as much facility as the others met with difficulty. It extended everywhere, was organised in every town in opposition to the municipalities, and brought against every civil and military body a society of surveillance and denunciation.

We have spoken of the club of '89 which Lafayette and Sièyes attempted at first to oppose to that of the Jacobins. That conciliatory club, which expected to unite the monarchy with the Revolution, would have ended, if it had succeeded, only in the destruction of the Revolution. At the present day, when so many things then secret are known to the world, we can boldly state that, without the strongest and most energetic influence, the Revolution would have perished: if it had not turned aggressive, it was lost. The imprudent association of Lafayette with Bouillé had inflicted upon it the most serious blow; and it was through the Jacobins that it resumed the offensive.

On the 2nd of September, Paris learned the news of the massacre at Nancy, and a few hours later, on the same day, forty thousand men were crowding the Tuileries, besieging the Assembly, and shouting, "Dismiss the Ministers! The heads of the ministers! Hang the ministers! Les ministres à la lanterne !"

The effect of the news was deadened, emotion being overawed by emotion, and terror by terror.

The singular rapidity with which this insurrection was arranged proves at once the inflammable state in which the people then were, and the vigorous organisation of the Jacobin society, which was able, at the very moment it gave the signal, to realise the performance.

And M. de Lafayette, with his thirty-odd thousand men of the National Guard, and his military and municipal police, together with the resources of the Hôtel-de-Ville and those of the Court, united to him for a moment in order to strike the blow at Nancy,-Lafayette, I say, with so many resources, had not the power to prevent this insurrection.

The minister against whom the people were first directed, was Necker, the minister of finance, who at that moment acted

the least. All he did, was to write: he had just published a memorial against the assignats. A few crowds were sent to shout and threaten him. Lafayette, who could strike such blows at Nancy, durst not strike any at Paris, and advised Necker to provide for his own safety. On the motion of a Jacobin deputy, the Assembly decreed that it would itself direct the public Treasury: a serious decision, one of the most violent blows that could be given to the kingly power.

Here we have two parties, the Jacobin and the Constitutional, both employing force, violence, and terror. Lafayette strikes by Bouillé, and the Jacobins by revolt: a reign of Terror at Nancy, and a reign of Terror at Paris.

How many ages have passed since the confederation of July?

Who would believe it? Only two months. Whither has fled that gentle ray of peace? The bright sun of July is suddenly eclipsed; and we are entering upon a gloomy time of plots and violence. As early as September, all grows dark. Even the press, so fervent and anxious, is, we perceive, groping its way in obscurity. It can no longer see, but haunts about, and guesses. The inquisition of the Jacobins now beginning, gives but a faint, uncertain, flickering glimmer, like those famous lights in the nave of the church where they are now assembled, at the convent in the Rue Saint-Honoré.

Only one thing was clear amid this general obscurity, which was the insolence of the nobles. They had everywhere assumed the attitude of defiance and provocation; and, on all sides, were insulting the patriots, the most peaceful people,-the National Guard. Occasionally the people would interfere, and then very sanguinary scenes were the result. To quote only one instance: at Cahors, two brothers, who were nobles, amused themselves with insulting one of the National Guard who had sung Ça ira. The people wanted to have them arrested; but they killed or wounded whoever went near them, and then retreated to their house, where, being supported, and having several loaded guns, they fired upon the crowd, and killed a great many men. To put an end to this slaughter, the people burnt down the house.

Even in the Assembly, in the sanctuary of the laws, nothing was heard but the insults and challenges of the nobles. M. d'Ambly threatened Mirabeau with his cane; and another went