CHAP. LIII.]

THE KING SUSPENDED.

375

provisionally suspended from his functions by a decree of the Assembly, June 25th. Guards were placed over him and the Queen; the gardens of the Tuileries assumed the appearance of a camp; sentinels were stationed on the roof of the Palace, and even at the Queen's bedchamber. Three commissaries, Tronchet, d'André, and Duport, were appointed to examine the King and Queen. The Duke of Orleans was talked of for Regent, but he repudiated the idea in a letter addressed to some of the revolutionary journals. Barnave, who had adopted the policy of Mirabeau, though with purer motives, namely, to arrest the Revolution, to save the Monarchy, and govern in conjunction with the Queen, suggested to Louis and Marie Antoinette what answers they should give to the questions put to them. While things were in this state, the Marquis de Bouillé addressed a highly intemperate and injudicious letter to the Assembly, threatening that if the least harm was done to the King or Queen, he would conduct the army to Paris, and that not one stone of that city should be left upon another; but this effusion only excited the laughter of the deputies."

Michelet, ibid. p. 179.

2 Toulongeon, t. ii. p. 44 and App.

376

THE CORDELIERS.

[CHAP. LIV.

FR

CHAPTER LIV.

ROM the period of the King's flight to Varennes must be dated the first decided appearance of a Republican party in France. During his absence the Assembly had been virtually sovereign, and hence men took occasion to say, "You see the public peace has been maintained; affairs have gone on in the usual way in the King's absence." The chief advocates of a Republic were Brissot, Condorcet, and the recently-established club of the Cordeliers, so called from its meeting in a former convent of that order. This club, an offset from the Jacobins, contained all the most violent promoters of a revolution. Brissot began to disseminate Republican opinions in his journal, and the arch-democrat, Thomas Payne, who was now at Paris, also endeavoured to excite the populace against the King. The Jacobin Club had not yet gone this length; they were for bringing Louis XVI. to trial and deposing him, but for maintaining the Monarchy. Robespierre, a leading member of the club, who probably disliked to see the initiative taken by Condorcet and Brissot, in an equivocal speech supported the Constitution. did not yet venture openly to speak of a Republic, but he called upon the Assembly to bring the King and Queen to trial; and by whining complaints against his colleagues, whose daggers, he said, were pointed at his breast on account of his frankness and liberality, he won the sympathies of the Jacobins. Marat was more outspoken. He proposed the appointment of a military tribune, who should make a short end of all traitors, among whom he and his faction included Lafayette, Bailly, Barnave, the Lameths, and other leaders of the Constitutionalists. But for the present the party prevailed who were both for upholding the Monarchy and retaining Louis XVI. The Jacobins resolved to get up a petition to the Assembly, inviting them to suspend their decision till the eighty-three departments should have been consulted, well knowing that, from their numerous affiliations, a vote for the King's 1 Terneau, La Terreur, t. i. p. 33. 2 L. Blanc, Hist. de la Révol. t. v. p. 461. 3 Von Sybel, i. p. 311 (Eng. tr.).

3

He

CHAP. LIV.]

JACOBIN PETITION.

377

deposition would be carried. The leaders of the Constitutionalists now separated from the Jacobins, and, with their party, which included all the members of the Assembly belonging to that club, except ten or twelve, established the Club of the Feuillants. This name was derived from their occupying an ancient convent of that order, founded by Henry III., an immense building in the Rue St. Honoré, adjoining on one side the Manège, where the Assembly sat.

The Jacobins gave notice to all the patriotic societies that their petition would be signed on the altar of the Federation in the Champ de Mars on July 17th. On the evening of the 16th, the Assembly, by decreeing that the Constitutional Charter, when finished, should be presented to Louis XVI. for acceptance, having implicitly pronounced his re-establishment, Camille Desmoulins and Marat openly incited the populace to acts of violence against the deputies. Marat pointed out by name Sieyès, Le Chapelier, Duport, Target, Thouret, Barnave, and others; and exhorted the people to impale them alive, and to expose their bodies three days on the battlements of the Senate House.' The Government gave notice that the proposed petition was illegal, and that the signing of it would be prevented by military force. Nevertheless a vast multitude congregated in the Champ de Mars on the 17th and, as it was a Sunday, the crowd was augmented by many holiday people, women and children. The petition appears to have received many thousand signatures. Meanwhile martial law had been proclaimed; the National Guards arrived, and having been assailed by the mob with volleys of stones, and even with pistol-shots, fired upon the people. Many persons were killed or wounded, and the crowd was dispersed. The leading ultra democrats displayed the most abject cowardice. Marat hid himself in a cellar; Danton withdrew into the country; Robespierre was afraid to sleep at home; Desmoulin suspended the publication of his journal. By this decisive act the Constitutionalists established for awhile their authority; but Lafayette and Bailly lost their popularity, and the Jacobins were not long in regaining their ascendency.

The constitutional party, in absolving the King, appears to have been a good deal influenced by the attitude assumed at this time by foreign States, though this circumstance is ignored by the French historians of the Revolution. Several of the European

L'Ami du peuple, No. 514, ap. L. Blanc, t. v. p. 475. 2 Ferrières, Mém. t. iii. p. 70 sqq.

378

VIEWS OF FOREIGN COURTS.

[CHAP. LIV. Powers had begun to manifest a lively sympathy for Louis. Gustavus III. of Sweden, then at Aix-la-Chapelle, had made a vigorous declaration against the outrages to which the French King was subjected after his attempted flight, and had directed his Ambassador to break off all intercourse with the Ministers of the Assembly. Eight of the Swiss Cantons had forbidden their troops in the pay of France to take any oath except to Louis XVI. The King of Spain had addressed a memoir to the Assembly, calling upon it to respect Louis's dignity and liberty. The Emperor Leopold, on learning the capture of the French King, had addressed a circular from Padua to the principal Sovereigns of Europe, calling upon them to demand his liberation, and to declare that they would avenge any further attempt on the freedom, honour, and safety of Louis, his Queen, and the Royal family.' Many of the principal Courts declined to receive a French Ambassador so long as the King should be under constraint. The leaders of the Revolution appear to have made some military preparations to resist this dictation; but finding themselves unable to sustain a war, they resolved to avoid, or, at all events, to postpone it; a result to which the discordant views of the different parties contributed. It has even been affirmed that, towards the end of 1791, it might have been possible to regulate the political state of France by means of a Congress, aided by the Constitutional party."

No Sovereign was more zealous in Louis's cause than Frederick William II. of Prussia, who must be regarded as the very Agamemnon of the Coalition. After the French King's arrest, he despatched Bischofswerder to the Emperor in Italy, and a preliminary treaty between these two Sovereigns was signed, July 25th, to be converted into a defensive alliance so soon as Austria should have concluded a peace with the Turks. The accession of the Czarina was expected; and in fact these events appear to have hastened the Peace of Galatz between Catharine and the Porte, August 11th. The impetuous Gustavus III. was for immediate

It is said that at the date of this circular, a treaty for the partition of France was concluded between the Emperor, the King of Prussia, the King of Spain, and the emigrant French princes. The treaty is in Martens Recueil, t. v. p. 5 (from the Coll. of State Papers); but it is very apocryphal; and still more so the pretended accession of Great Britain and Holland in March, 1792. It was probably only a project, afterwards super

seded by the Treaty of Vienna. Garden, t. v. p. 160 sq.

2 Garden, ibid. p. 159. Austria and Prussia, in their joint note to the Danish Court, May 12th, 1792, take credit for having procured the release of Louis in the preceding summer, as well as the establishment of his inviolability, and of a Constitutional Monarchy. Ibid. P. 211.

&c.

3 Homme d'état, t. i. p. 116 sqq. 146,

CHAP. LIV.]

DECLARATION OF PILLNITZ.

379

action. He engaged to land 16,000 men at Ostend, requested George III. to furnish 12,000 Hanoverians, to be paid by the French Princes, and took De Bouillé into his service, who pointed out how easily France might be invaded. The French Constitutionalists exerted themselves to avert an interference that would upset their whole policy. Barnave, Duport, and the Lameths addressed a letter to the Count d'Artois, begging him to return when the King should have accepted the Constitution; and it was forwarded to that Prince by Louis's order. The Constitutionalists also assured the Emperor that their object was to save the throne.1

At this juncture the Emperor and the King of Prussia met at Pillnitz, a residence of the Elector of Saxony on the Elbe, principally for the purpose of considering the affairs of Poland, which then occupied the attention of the Eastern Powers; but the state of France was also debated, and the Count d'Artois, attended by Calonne, obtruded himself on the Conference. This Prince, with a view to gain the Emperor, had offered to cede Lorraine; but the scheme which he drew up for the government of France, by which his elder brother, Monsieur, was to be declared Regent, and the King completely set aside, filled Leopold with disgust. He was chiefly actuated by his wishes for the safety of the King and Queen, his relatives, and was inclined to listen to the representations of his sister, Marie Antoinette, who deprecated civil war and an invasion of the Emigrants. She recommended that the King should accept the Constitution, and that the European Powers should combine in demanding that the King should be invested with the authority necessary for the government of France and the safety of Europe. The Emperor and the King of Prussia, in their answer to D'Artois, dated August 27th, declined his plans for the government of France; they sanctioned the peaceable residence of emigrants in their dominions, but declared against armed intervention unless the co-operation of all the European Powers should be obtained. And as it was well known that England was not inclined to interfere, this declaration was a mere brutum fulmen meant to intimidate the Parisian democrats, but fitted rather to irritate than to alarm the French." England had at this period declared for a strict neutrality. Public

Bouillé, Mém. ch. xii. p. 274; Corr. entre Mirabeau et La Marck, t. iii. p. 163 sqq. L. Blanc, t. v. p. 29.

2 Von Sybel, Revolutionszeit, i. 366

(Eng. trans.).

3 Homme d'état, t. i. pp. 137, 143. Von Sybel, ibid. p. 364.