CHAP. LIV.] ROLAND AND HIS WIFE. 385 He security of the French nation. His refraining to answer before March 1st, was to be considered equivalent to a declaration of war. The news of this proceeding excited the Emperor's anger. now converted the preliminary treaty with Prussia of July 25th, 1791, into a definitive alliance by the Treaty of Berlin, February 7th, 1792;1 he gave orders for the formation of a corps d'armée in Bohemia, and marched 6,000 men into the Breisgau. The orders given to Bender were justified; complaints were made of the captivity in which the French King, the Emperor's brother-in-law, was held, and of the anarchy in France; and all these misfortunes were imputed to the pernicious sect of the Jacobins. This reply was received by the Assembly with insult and derision. The somewhat sudden death of Leopold II. (February 29th), arrested for a while the proceedings of the Coalition; which was also weakened by the assassination of Gustavus III. of Sweden, a fortnight afterwards: an event hailed with joy by the Girondists. and Jacobins. The brother of Gustavus, Regent during the minority of his nephew, Gustavus IV., determined to observe the strictest neutrality; and Spain seemed to incline the same way, after the Count d'Aranda became Prime Minister. The correspondence with the Emperor led to a change of Ministry in France. De Lessart, the Foreign Minister, was impeached for having concealed the real state of affairs; Narbonne had already been dismissed; and the Girondists achieved a triumph by forcing on the Court a Ministry selected from their own party. These men had already begun to display the violence of their principles. Vergniaud, in accusing the Minister, had not obscurely threatened some of the Royal family with death; and his words had been greeted with thunders of applause.* The Gironde now imposed Dumouriez on the King as Foreign Minister; Roland was made Minister of the Interior; De Graves, of War; Lacoste was appointed to the Marine in place of Bertrand de Moleville; Clavière to the Finances, Duranton to the Department of Justice. The most remarkable of the new Ministers were Dumouriez and Roland, the latter, however, chiefly through his extraordinary wife. Roland himself is a good specimen of the talking, scribbling, Martens, Recueil, t. v. p. 5, and the Suppl. t. ii. p. 172. Ac 2 Homme d'état, t. i. p. 232 sqq. cording to Madame de Staël, Considérations, c. partie iii. ch. 5, this note was drawn up by Barnave and Duport, the secret counsellors of the Queen, and by her transmitted to Leopold. 4 66 3 Garden, Traités, t. v. pp. 180 and 219. Que tous ceux qui habitent le palais sachent que le roi seul est inviolable, que la loi y atteindra sans distinction tous les coupables, et qu'il n'y a pas une tête qui convaincue d'être criminelle, puisse échapper à son glaive."-Hist. Parl. t. xxiii. p. 397 sqq. Cf. L. Blanc, t. vi. p. 296. 386 VIEWS OF THE GERMAN POWERS. [CHAP. LIV. He had dissipated in his philosophical, and factious Girondists. youth the greater part of his patrimony, and at the mature age of fifty-eight he married Marion, or Marie Jeanne Phlipon, the daughter of an engraver on the Quai des Lunettes. Handsome, clever, inquisitive, self-educated, Marion had devoured, but without judgment or selection, a vast quantity of books; had studied by turns Jansenius and Pascal, Descartes and Malebranche, Voltaire and the Encyclopædists; and had been alternately a Jansenist, a Cartesian, and a Deist. The reading of Plutarch, whose works she took to church instead of the Semaine Sainte, had made her at an early period an ardent Republican, and her chief regret was not to have been born a citizen of Athens, Sparta, or Rome. With these unfeminine studies and aspirations, she possessed an inhuman and bloodthirsty mind.1 She had so far outstripped the leaders of the Revolution, that in a letter, written soon after the taking of the Bastille, she urged, in obscene language, either the trial and execution of the King and Queen, or their assassination. But she had great talent and a ready pen; she shared the official labours of her husband, wrote many of his papers, and became the very soul of the Gironde. The Girondists were thus masters of the Government, but unfortunately not of the Jacobins. In fact their advancement to the Ministry produced an open breach between them and Robespierre, the Jacobin leader, who was jealous at seeing all place and power in their hands. The Girondists on their side dreaded Robespierre's influence with the people; and, on April 25th, 1792, Brissot and Guadet, two leading members of the Assembly, denounced him to the Jacobin Club as an agitator. But Robespierre made a triumphant defence in a speech which was much applauded, and is also remarkable as giving the first indication of his system of blood and terror. He conjured the Brissotins to unite with him against the common enemy, and to cause the sword of the executioner to move horizontally, so as to strike off the heads of all the conspirators against liberty." Francis, who at the age of twenty-two succeeded to the Austrian hereditary dominions on the death of Leopold II., adopted his father's policy with regard to France; though, not having been yet elected Emperor, he was under no obligation to support the cause of the German Princes. One of the first acts of his reign was to assure the King of Prussia of his adherence to the principles 1 Croker, Essays on Fr. Revol. p. 175 sq. 2 Mém. de Wéber, ch. v. p. 322; Croker, Essays, p. 335 sqq. CHAP. LIV.] LOUIS XVI. DECLARES WAR. 387 of the recent alliance. Frederick William was inclined to cooperate in the deliverance of Louis XVI. and his restoration to his former power; but this feeling was not shared by his Cabinet, nor by the Duke of Brunswick, one of his principal advisers. Indeed, the sympathy of the King himself did not go the length of any great self-devotion; and he told the Austrian Cabinet that, though he was not unwilling, under certain circumstances, that an armed intervention should be threatened, yet, should war unhappily arise, he must insist upon a just compensation for any losses and dangers,' by which he meant a share in the contemplated partition of Poland. The views of Prussian statesmen were now directed towards a second partition of that country, and if they were inclined to assist the King of France, it was only in compliance with the wishes of the Czarina, who had made it a condition of admitting Prussia to a share of the Polish spoils. Catharine II. had exhibited a violent animosity against the French Revolution, which was, perhaps, partly sincere, but which was also suspected of originating in a desire to facilitate her views upon Poland, by despatching to a distance the armies of Austria and Prussia. In some negotiations with M. de Noailles, the French Ambassador at Vienna, Prince Kaunitz laid down as points from which Austria could not depart: 1st, the satisfaction of the German Princes for their possessions in Alsace and Lorraine; 2nd, the satisfaction of the Pope for the County of Avignon; 3rd, France to take such domestic measures as she might think proper, but which should be such that the Government should be sufficiently strong to repress everything calculated to disturb other States.2 These demands were ill-received. The Girondists, especially Brissot and Dumouriez, were for an immediate appeal to arms, and compelled the King to proceed to the Assembly, April 20th, and to declare war against his nephew, Francis I., King of Hungary and Bohemia, which he did with a trembling voice and evident reluctance. But the announcement was hailed with enthusiasm by the French nation. At this time the French army of the North, numbering about 50,000 men, under Marshal Rochambeau, was cantoned between Dunkirk and Philippeville. The army of the Centre, under Lafayette, which was rather stronger, stretched from Philippeville to Weissenburg; while that of the Rhine, about 40,000 men, under Luckner, was posted between Weissenburg and Basle. Letter ap. Von Sybel, ii. 7. 2 Hist. Parl. t. xiv. p. 26; Homme d'état, t. i. p. 322. 388 INVASION OF BELGIUM. [CHAP. LIV. The frontier of the Alps and the Pyrenees was confided to the care of General Montesquiou; but this quarter was not yet threatened. Dumouriez, who had sent secret agents into Belgium to excite the Brabanters to revolt, determined on taking the offensive; and he ordered columns of attack from the armies of Rochambeau and Lafayette to be rapidly directed on different parts of Belgium, in the hope that the inhabitants would rise and aid the invasion. But in this he was disappointed. The leading columns, which were too weak, advanced as far as Lille and Valenciennes; but although there was only a small Austrian force at present in the Low Countries, the French fled in panic at the first sight of the enemy, April 28th; and Lafayette, who had advanced to Bouvines, was compelled by their flight also to retire. The retreating troops fired on their officers, and massacred General Dillon and other of their commanders. Rochambeau was now superseded by Luckner, and the French army stood on the defensive. This reverse, which was imputed to treachery, excited great distrust and suspicion at Paris, and increased the dissensions between the Feuillants and the Girondists. The Assembly declared itself en permanence, and seized the whole management of affairs. The Girondist faction had begun a course of policy which was highly distasteful, not only to the King, but also to Dumouriez. They denounced, through the journalist Carra, what they called an Austrian Committee, or a conspiracy of the Court with the Coalition, an accusation aimed chiefly at the Queen. They carried a decree forbidding ecclesiastics to appear in public in their costume. They obtained the dismissal of the King's guard of 12,000 men, and sent their commander, the Duke de Brissac, a prisoner to Orleans. They procured a decree for the transportation of priests who refused to take the civic oath. Servan, the new Minister of War, without saying a word to his colleagues in the Council, suddenly proposed to the Assembly to form a federal army of 20,000 men, selected from all the departments of France, to be encamped on the north side of Paris; and the Assembly decreed the measure, June 8th.1 The King could not help showing his aversion to these measures, and he refused to sanction the decrees for the banishment of the priests and the establishment of a federal army. Roland now addressed to him his famous letter, written by his wife, ex Séance du 4 Juin, 1792, Hist. Parl. t. xiv. p. 419. 389 CHAP. LIV.] ROBESPIERRE ATTACKS THE GIRONDISTS. horting Louis to put himself at the head of the Revolution.' But it only confirmed the King in his intention to break with the Gironde; and on June 13th, Servan, Roland, and Clavière were dismissed. A few days afterwards, Dumouriez also resigned, being offended at the coldness and disdain with which the King treated him. Of the Girondist Ministry only Lacoste and Duranthon were retained; and the places of the others were supplied by persons of no note, selected from the Feuillant party. Lafayette, at this crisis, by an ill-judged attempt to support the Constitutional Monarchy, addressed a dictatorial letter to the Legislative Assembly from his camp at Maubeuge (June 16th), in which he denounced the Jacobin faction, demanded the suppression of the clubs, and exhorted the Assembly to rally round a Constitutional throne. This imprudent step gave the finishing blow to Lafayette's reputation as a patriot, and helped to prepare the insurrection of June 20th and August 10th. None had hitherto been admitted into the National Guard except those who could provide their own uniform and equipments, a regulation which had kept the force in some degree select; but now it was ordered that pikes should take rank with bayonets, and that all who presented themselves should be admitted to serve. The sixty battalions were also reduced to forty-eight, the number of the new sections; which served to create a fresh mixture of the men, and still further to destroy Lafayette's influence over them." It must be borne in mind that, besides the quarrel of the Gironde with the King, a struggle for power was now going on between Robespierre and the Girondists. The measures of that party just described, the persecution of the priests, the raising of a federal army, even the declaration of war against Austria, were bids for mob popularity; and they were now contriving how they might regain power by means of an insurrection. Robespierre, irritated at seeing his functions taken out of his hands, denounced the Girondists as "hypocrites of liberty;" inveighed, in the Jacobin Club, June 13th, against any partial insurrections, as calculated only to weaken the popular cause; sent Chabot and others into the Faubourg St. Antoine to persuade the inhabitants to confine themselves to a simple petition in favour of the decrees of May 24th and June 8th; exhorted them to await the expected. arrival of the Marseillese, and not to rise till the decisive moment It will be found in the Mémoires de Madame Roland, t. i. App. C. |