CHAP. LV.] ROYALTY ABOLISHED. 415 Club, and had filled their places with Sans-culottes. Between the Gironde and the Mountain, voting sometimes with one, sometimes with the other, was seated the Plain, or the Marsh (Marais), consisting principally of new members without settled political connections. Their principles generally inclined them to the Right, but terror often compelled them to vote with the Left.1 The Convention, on the very first day it assembled, although only 371 members were present out of 749, decreed, on the motion of the Abbé Grégoire, the abolition of royalty." This event had been prepared in the Legislative Assembly. At the instance of Chabot, September 4th, all the members had cried, "No King!" and taken an oath of eternal hatred to royalty." On September 22nd, the Republic was proclaimed under the windows of the Temple. Louis XVI. heard, it is said, the sentence of deposition without emotion, and continued to read a book on which he was engaged. It was now ordered that the date of fourth year of liberty should be altered to first of the Republic. 4 A struggle for power between the Girondists and the Mountain was inevitable. The Girondists charged their adversaries with. promoting social anarchy in order to establish a dictatorship; while the Mountain denounced the Girondists as aiming to divide France into several Federated Republics, after the manner of the United States of America; nay, they even imputed to them a design to restore royalty by means of a civil war. These were the war-cries of the two parties. Danton made some attempt to conciliate them, but without success. It was the Girondists who began the attack. Brissot preluded it by an article in his Journal, September 23rd; and Kersaint followed it up next day by a speech in the Convention. The massacres were made the chief topic of offence. "It is time," exclaimed Kersaint, "to erect scaffolds for assassins, and for those who promote assassination ;" adding, "Perhaps, it requires some courage to speak of assassins in this place." Barbaroux was put forward to made a desultory and unformal attack upon Robespierre, which led to nothing. The debate is chiefly remarkable for the first appearance in public of Marat. The Convention was not composed of very scrupulous persons; yet, when Marat mounted the tribune he was greeted with universal shouts of astonishment and horror. "I have a 1 Thos. Payne had been returned for the Pas de Calais, Dr. Priestley for the Department of the Orne, and Anacharsis Clootz for that of the Oise. Priestley declined to serve because he did not speak French. 2 Hist. Parl. t. xix. p. 81. 416 MARAT IN THE TRIBUNE. [CHAP. LV. great many personal enemies here," he coolly remarked. "All, All!" exclaimed the deputies, rising simultaneously. Nothing daunted, Marat went on to defend Robespierre. In the course of his speech he avowed having incited the people to the massacres, and concluded it with denouncing the Assembly as useless. Cries now arose on all sides, "To the Abbaye! to the Abbaye!" But Marat outbraved all attempts to put him down. He had an inexhaustible fund of self-love and self-conceit. In a debate on October 4th, he declared his contempt for the decrees of the Assembly, and replied to the bursts of laughter which this excited by exclaiming, "No! you cannot hinder the man of genius from throwing himself into the future-you cannot appreciate the man of education who knows the world and anticipates events. He despised the people, whose friend he called himself, and to whose blood-thirsty passions he pandered. His cynicism, his filthy exterior and affectation of austere poverty, were but masks. He was not half so dirty at home as abroad. His cadaverous complexion, his greenish eyes, his greasy locks, bound up in a Madras handkerchief, his well-worn apparel, made his person squalid and disgusting; but his rooms are said to have been adorned with silk draperies, flowers, gilding, luxurious ottomans.* On October 8th Buzot proposed to the Convention a project for a departmental guard of 4,470 men. The scheme was violently denounced at the Jacobins and in Robespierre's Journal. "The two preceding Assemblies had not needed any guard; now, when a Republic was established, the Convention could exist only by the means which support a tyranny! Was not the Assembly guarded by Frenchmen? What were the Parisians but a portion of the French people?" But the strongest arguments against the measure were the threatening deputations from the Sections, and especially from the Faubourg St. Antoine. The Girondists were compelled to abandon their guard; but the arrival of a third band of Marseillese, under the auspices of Barbaroux, encouraged them to proceed to their attacks upon the Mountain. On October 29th, Louvet, the author of the licentious novel of Faublas, made a formal, but rambling accusation of Robespierre," when Barère assisted his escape by an insult. "If," he said, "there was in the Assembly a man like Cæsar, Cromwell, or Sylla, he would accuse 1 Hist. Parl. t. xix. p. 97 sq. 2 Ibid. 3 Thus, for instance, he exclaims in his Journal: "Eternal asses (badauds), with what epithets would I not overwhelm you, if I knew any more humiliating than that of Parisians!"-L'Ami du Peuple, No. 402, ap. Cassagnac, t. iii. p. 419. Madame Roland, Mémoires, t. ii. p. 227 (ed. Berville et Barrière, 1827). 5 Hist. Parl. t. xix. p. 422 sqq. CHAP. LV.] PROGRESS OF THE FRENCH. 417 him, for such men were dangerous to liberty; but the little dabblers in revolutions, politicians of the hour, who would never enter the domain of history, were not worthy to occupy the valuable time of the Assembly." He then moved that they should pass to the order of the day: which was accordingly done.' We must now revert to the war on the frontiers. After the retreat of the Prussians, the French General Custine, who was acting against the Austrians, had pushed on with his division to Spires, which he took by a coup de main. Learning here that the French would be welcomed as deliverers in the Rhenish provinces, he sent a detachment of 4,500 men to Worms, who were received with open arms; and he published a proclamation containing the democratic maxim then in vogue: "War to the palace, peace to the cottage." Custine appeared before Mentz, October 19th, which place surrendered on the 21st. Here he opened a club on the model of the Jacobins, and was joined by many ecclesiastics, eager to break their vows; while the peasants also manifested a disposition to rise. Another French corps had occupied Frankfort without resistance, October 22nd. These successes, however, were not unmixed with reverses. Bournonville, repulsed in an attempt upon Trèves at an advanced season of the year, retired into Lorraine. Custine, instead of seizing Coblenz, whither the Elector of Mentz had fled with his Court after the capture of his capital, remained inactive, bribed, it is said, by the Prussians; he also neglected the defence of Frankfort, which the Prussians re-entered, December 2nd. In conformity with their scheme of revolutionizing all Europe, the French had also declared war against the King of Sardinia; a French army under General Montesquiou soon after entered Savoy, and occupied Chambéry, September 23rd. The Savoyards received the French with open arms. Hence Montesquiou was to have pushed on to Geneva, threatening Switzerland and Italy; but his negotiations with the Genevese displeased the Assembly; his impeachment was decreed, and it was with difficulty that he saved himself by flying to Geneva itself.3 About the same time a French division under General Anselme entered Nice, and captured Villa Franca on the first summons.* Meanwhile on the side of Flanders, the Austrians, under Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, had bombarded Lille, but without effect; Hist. Parl. t. xx. p. 221 sq. 2 Homme d'etat, t. ii. p. 46. See this work for the whole campaign, t. i. pp. 433-519, t. ii. pp. 1-99. 3 Von Sybel, ii. 163 sq. (Eng. Transl.). Hist. Parl. t. xix. p. 189 sq. 418 BATTLE OF JEMAPPES. [CHAF. LV. and finding themselves deserted by the Prussians, had taken up, under Clairfait, a fortified position at Jemappes, near Mons. Here they were attacked and defeated by Dumouriez, now appointed General of the army of the Ardennes (November 6th). The Duke de Chartres (Louis Philippe) was present in this action. The victory of Jemappes opened Belgium to the French; Mons, Brussels, Liége, Namur, Antwerp, and other places, fell successively into their hands; and by the middle of December the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands was completed. The Jacobins now sent agents thither to propagate their revolutionary doctrines. But the Flemings, who had at first received the French with enthusiasm, soon discovered that their yoke was heavier than that of their former masters; were disgusted by the requisitions made upon them, and a system of general pillage. Dumouriez, who disapproved these things, and had a scheme for the conquest of Holland, to which the Girondists were opposed, now came to Paris to remonstrate. He wished also to baffle the Jacobins and rescue the King from their hands. In addition to these successes, a French fleet had appeared in November before Naples, and had compelled the Bourbon King to recognize the French Republic -the first acknowledgment of it by a foreign Power. On December 3rd the Convention decreed that Louis XVI. should be brought to trial before them. A committee of twentyfour which had been named to examine the papers found at the Tuileries, delivered a report conceived in a spirit of the most virulent hostility towards the King. His death had been demanded by deputations of the sections, and in addresses from the affiliated Jacobin Clubs, and had been represented in puppet shows in the public streets and squares. The Constitution had declared the King inviolable, and his Ministers responsible. The only head under which he could be arraigned was treasonable negotiations with foreign Powers, for which the penalty was abdication; but that penalty he had already paid on the 10th of August. It was necessary, therefore, to abandon all appeal to the law, and to substitute the plea of State necessity, of which the Sovereign People was the judge, and the Convention as its representative. In a debate on November 13th the fanatical St. Just contended that the King could not be judged as a citizen, but as an enemy; that he was not included in the national contract, and could not, therefore, be tried by the civil law, but by the law of It 1 Hist. Parl. t. xx. p. 239 sqq. charged Louis, among other things, with being an accapareur, or forestaller of sugar, wheat, and coffee. CHAP. LV.] 2 ROYAL LIFE IN THE TEMPLE. 419 nations. He denounced the inoffensive Louis as another Catiline, complained that the eighteenth century was less advanced than the age of Cæsar; then the tyrant was immolated in the Senate with no other formalities than twenty-two dagger thrusts, with regard to no other laws than the liberty of Rome.1 Robespierre adopted the arguments of his friend St. Just. Louis, he exclaimed, is King, the Republic is founded; either then Louis is already condemned, or the Republic is not acquitted. You invoke the Constitution in his favour; but the Constitution forbids what you have already done; go, fling yourselves at his feet and implore his mercy! The Ministry and the majority of the Convention were also for a trial, in order to promote their foreign propagandism by the terror which it would inspire. But when they found that England, instead of favouring their views, had been completely alienated by the September massacres, and might probably institute a war of vengeance for the King's death, they changed their tone, especially as they began to feel some apprehensions about their own fate; for the attacks of the Jacobins were now directed against them as well as the King. They proposed, indeed, that the trial should proceed, but they hoped to avert the sentence by demanding that it should be ratified by the primary electors. A futile method! for the sans-culottes of Paris were the real arbiters of the question, and to get the better of them was a plain impossibility. For though the great mass of the people sympathized with the King and the Gironde, the Mountain prevailed by its unscrupulous audacity, and the better classes were paralyzed by fear. While Louis was thus savagely denounced, he and his family were leading a most exemplary life at the Temple. The King rose at six o'clock and devoted himself to religious exercises. At nine the family assembled for breakfast, after which Louis instructed his son in Latin and geography; Marie Antoinette gave lessons to her daughter; while Madame Elizabeth read books of devotion or employed herself with needlework. At one, the family again met for dinner; after which the children played together, while the King and Queen played a game of chess or piquet, or took a walk in the wretched garden, but under the inspection of two municipal officers. Nine was the hour for bedtime, when Louis, having given his blessing to his family, concluded the day, as he had begun it, with exercises of devotion. Hist. Parl. t. xx. p. 330. |