Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume I.
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Title: Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume I.
Author: Walter Scott
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Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, VOLUME I. ***
LIFE OF NAPOLEON
POCKET EDITION
VOL. I.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
1802]
LIFE OF
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
BY SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART.
VOL. I.
[Illustration: Napoleons Logement Qua Cont]
EDINBURGH; A. & C. BLACK.
1876
ADVERTISEMENT
The extent and purpose of this Work, have, in the course of its
progress, gradually but essentially changed from what the Author
originally proposed. It was at first intended merely as a brief and
popular abstract of the life of the most wonderful man, and the most
extraordinary events, of the last thirty years; in short, to emulate the
concise yet most interesting history of the great British Admiral, by
the Poet-Laureate of Britain.[1] The Author was partly induced to
undertake the task, by having formerly drawn up for a periodical
work--"The Edinburgh Annual Register"--the history of the two great
campaigns of 1814 and 1815; and three volumes were the compass assigned
to the proposed work. An introductory volume, giving a general account
of the Rise and Progress of the French Revolution, was thought
necessary; and the single volume, on a theme of such extent, soon
swelled into two.
As the Author composed under an anonymous title, he could neither seek
nor expect information from those who had been actively engaged in the
changeful scenes which he was attempting to record; nor was his object
more ambitious than that of compressing and arranging such information
as the ordinary authorities afforded. Circumstances, however,
unconnected with the undertaking, induced him to lay aside an
_incognito_, any farther attempt to preserve which must have been
considered as affectation; and since his having done so, he has been
favoured with access to some valuable materials, most of which have now,
for the first time, seen the light. For these he refers to the Appendix
at the close of the Work, where the reader will find several articles of
novelty and interest. Though not at liberty, in every case, to mention
the quarter from which his information has been derived, the Author has
been careful not to rely upon any which did not come from sufficient
authority. He has neither grubbed for anecdotes in the libels and
private scandal of the time, nor has he solicited information from
individuals who could not be impartial witnesses in the facts to which
they gave evidence. Yet the various public documents and private
information which he has received, have much enlarged his stock of
materials, and increased the whole work to more than twice the size
originally intended.
On the execution of his task, it becomes the Author to be silent. He is
aware it must exhibit many faults; but he claims credit for having
brought to the undertaking a mind disposed to do his subject as
impartial justice as his judgment could supply. He will be found no
enemy to the person of Napoleon. The term of hostility is ended when the
battle has been won, and the foe exists no longer. His splendid personal
qualities--his great military actions and political services to
France--will not, it is hoped, be found depreciated in the narrative.
Unhappily, the Author's task involved a duty of another kind, the
discharge of which is due to France, to Britain, to Europe, and to the
world. If the general system of Napoleon has rested upon force or fraud,
it is neither the greatness of his talents, nor the success of his
undertakings, that ought to stifle the voice or dazzle the eyes of him
who adventures to be his historian. The reasons, however, are carefully
summed up where the Author has presumed to express a favourable or
unfavourable opinion of the distinguished person of whom these volumes
treat; so that each reader may judge of their validity for himself.
The name, by an original error of the press, which proceeded too far
before it was discovered, has been printed with a _u_,--Buonaparte
instead of Bonaparte. Both spellings were indifferently adopted in the
family; but Napoleon always used the last,[2] and had an unquestionable
right to choose the orthography which he preferred.
EDINBURGH, _7th June, 1827._
ADVERTISEMENT TO EDITION 1834.
Sir Walter Scott left two interleaved copies of his LIFE OF NAPOLEON, in
both of which his executors have found various corrections of the text,
and additional notes. They were directed by his testament to take care,
that, in case a new edition of the work were called for, the annotations
of it might be completed in the fashion here adopted, dates and other
marginal elucidations regularly introduced, and the text itself,
wherever there appeared any redundancy of statement, abridged. With
these instructions, except the last, the Editor has now endeavoured to
comply.[3]
"Walter Scott," says Goëthe, "passed his childhood among the stirring
scenes of the American War, and was a youth of seventeen or eighteen
when the French Revolution broke out. Now well advanced in the fifties,
having all along been favourably placed for observation, he proposes to
lay before us his views and recollections of the important events
through which he has lived. The richest, the easiest, the most
celebrated narrator of the century, undertakes to write the history of
his own time.
"What expectations the announcement of such a work must have excited in
me, will be understood by any one who remembers that I, twenty years
older than Scott, conversed with Paoli in the twentieth year of my age,
and with Napoleon himself in the sixtieth.
"Through that long series of years, coming more or less into contact
with the great doings of the world, I failed not to think seriously on
what was passing around me, and, after my own fashion, to connect so
many extraordinary mutations into something like arrangement and
interdependence.
"What could now be more delightful to me than leisurely and calmly to
sit down and listen to the discourse of such a man, while clearly,
truly, and with all the skill of a great artist, he recalls to me the
incidents on which through life I have meditated, and the influence of
which is still daily in operation?"--Goëthe's _Posthumous Works_, vol.
vi., p. 253.
Sed non in Cæsare tantum
Nomen erat, nec fama ducis; sed nescia virtus
Stare loco: solusque pudor non vincere bello.
Acer et indomitus; quo spes quoque ira vocasset,
Ferre manum, et nunquam temerando parcere ferro:
Successus urgere suos: instare favori
Numinis: impellens quicquid sibi summa petenti
Obstaret: gaudensque viam fecisse ruina.
LUCANI, _Pharsalia_, Lib. I.[4]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Southey's _Life of Nelson_, 2 vols. fcap. 8vo. 1813.
[2] Barras, in his official account of the affair of the 13th
Vendémiaire, (Oct. 5, 1795,) calls him General _Buonaparte_; and in the
contract of marriage between Napoleon and Josephine, still existing in
the registry of the second arrondissement of Paris, dated March 9, 1796,
his signature is so written. No document has ever been produced, in
which the word appears as _Bonaparte_, prior to Napoleon's appointment
to the command of the Army of Italy.
[3] [Sir Walter Scott's Notes have the letter S affixed to them, all of
the others having been collected by the Editor of the 1843 Edition.]
[4]
"But Cæsar's greatness, and his strength, was more
Than past renown and antiquated power;
'Twas not the fame of what he once had been,
Or tales in old records and annals seen;
But 'twas a valour restless, unconfined,
Which no success could sate, nor limits bind;
'Twas shame, a soldier's shame, untaught to yield,
That blush'd for nothing but an ill-fought field;
Fierce in his hopes he was, nor knew to stay
Where vengeance or ambition led the way;
Still prodigal of war whene'er withstood,
Nor spared to stain the guilty sword with blood;
Urging advantage, he improved all odds,
And made the most of fortune and the gods;
Pleased to o'erturn whate'er withheld his prize,
And saw the ruin with rejoicing eyes."--ROWE.
CONTENTS
VIEW OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
PAGE
CHAP. I.--Review of the state of Europe after the Peace of
Versailles--England--France--Spain--Prussia--Imprudent Innovations
of the Emperor Joseph--Disturbances in his
Dominions--Russia--France--Her ancient System of Monarchy--how
organised--Causes of its Decay--Decay of the Nobility as a body--The
new Nobles--The Country Nobles--The Nobles of the highest Order--The
Church--The higher Orders of the Clergy--The lower Orders--The
Commons--Their increase in Power and Importance--Their Claims
opposed to those of the Privileged Classes, 1
CHAP. II.--State of France continued--State of Public Opinion--Men
of Letters encouraged by the Great--Disadvantages attending this
Patronage--Licentious tendency of the French Literature--Their
Irreligious and Infidel Opinions--Free Opinions on Politics
permitted to be expressed in an abstract and speculative, but not in
a practical Form--Disadvantages arising from the Suppression of Free
Discussion--Anglomania--Share of France in the American
War--Disposition of the Troops who returned from America, 22
CHAP. III.--Proximate Cause of the Revolution--Deranged State of the
Finances--Reforms in the Royal Household--System of Turgot and
Necker--Necker's Exposition of the State of the Public Revenue--The
Red-Book--Necker displaced--Succeeded by Calonne--General State of
the Revenue--Assembly of the Notables--Calonne dismissed--Archbishop
of Sens Administrator of the Finances--The King's Contest with the
Parliament--Bed of Justice--Resistance of the Parliament and general
Disorder in the Kingdom--Vacillating Policy of the Minister--Royal
Sitting--Scheme of forming a Cour Plénière--It proves
ineffectual--Archbishop of Sens retires, and is succeeded by
Necker--He resolves to convoke the States-General--Second Assembly
of Notables previous to Convocation of the States--Questions as to
the Numbers of which the Tiers Etat should consist, and the Mode in
which the Estates should deliberate, 39
CHAP. IV.--Meeting of the States-General--Predominant Influence of
the Tiers Etat--Property not represented sufficiently in that
Body--General character of the Members--Disposition of the Estate of
the Nobles--And of the Clergy--Plan of forming the Three Estates
into two Houses--Its advantages--It fails--The Clergy unite with the
Tiers Etat, which assumes the title of the National Assembly--They
assume the task of Legislation, and declare all former Fiscal
Regulations illegal--They assert their determination to continue
their Sessions--Royal Sitting--Terminates in the Triumph of the
Assembly--Parties in that Body--Mounier--Constitutionalists--
Republicans--Jacobins--Orleans, 58
CHAP. V.--Plan of the Democrats to bring the King and Assembly to
Paris--Banquet of the Garde du Corps--Riot at Paris--A formidable
Mob of Women assemble to march to Versailles--The National Guard
refuse to act against the Insurgents, and demand also to be led to
Versailles--The Female Mob arrive--Their behaviour to the
Assembly--To the King--Alarming Disorders at Night--La Fayette
arrives with the National Guard--Mob force the Palace--Murder the
Body Guards--The Queen's safety endangered--Fayette's arrival with
his Force restores Order--Royal Family obliged to go to reside at
Paris--The Procession--This Step agreeable to the Views of the
Constitutionalists, Republicans, and Anarchists--Duke of Orleans
sent to England, 88
CHAP. VI.--La Fayette resolves to enforce order--A Baker is murdered
by the Rabble--One of his Murderers executed--Decree imposing
Martial Law--Introduction of the Doctrines of Equality--They are in
their exaggerated sense inconsistent with Human Nature and the
progress of Society--The Assembly abolish titles of Nobility,
Armorial bearings, and phrases of Courtesy--Reasoning on these
Innovations--Disorder of Finance--Necker becomes unpopular--Seizure
of Church lands--Issue of Assignats--Necker leaves France in
unpopularity--New Religious Institution--Oath imposed on the
Clergy--Resisted by the greater part of the Order--General View of
the operations of the Constituent Assembly--Enthusiasm of the People
for their new Privileges--Limited Privileges of the Crown--King is
obliged to dissemble--His Negotiations with Mirabeau--With
Bouillé--Attack on the Palace--Prevented by Fayette--Royalists
expelled from the Tuileries--Escape of Louis--He is captured at
Varennes--Brought back to Paris--Riot in the Champ de Mars--Louis
accepts the Constitution, 102
CHAP. VII.--Legislative Assembly--Its Composition--Constitutionalists--
Girondists or Brissotins--Jacobins--Views and Sentiments of Foreign
Nations--England--Views of the Tories and Whigs--Anacharsis
Clootz--Austria--Prussia--Russia--Sweden--Emigration of the French
Princes and Clergy--Increasing Unpopularity of Louis from this
Cause--Death of the Emperor Leopold, and its Effects--France
declares War--Views and Interests of the different Parties in France
at this Period--Decree against Monsieur--Louis interposes his
Veto--Decree against the Priests who should refuse the
Constitutional Oath--Louis again interposes his Veto--Consequences
of these Refusals--Fall of De Lessart--Ministers now chosen from the
Brissotins--All Parties favourable to War, 128
CHAP. VIII.--Defeats of the French on the Frontier--Decay of
Constitutionalists--They form the Club of Feuillans, and are
dispersed by the Jacobins--The Ministry--Dumouriez--Breach of
confidence betwixt the King and his Ministers--Dissolution of the
King's Constitutional Guard--Extravagant measures of the
Jacobins--Alarms of the Girondists--Departmental Army proposed--King
puts his Veto on the decree, against Dumouriez's
representations--Decree against the recusant Priests--King refuses
it--Letter of the Ministers to the King--He dismisses Roland,
Clavière, and Servan--Dumouriez, Duranton, and Lacoste, appointed in
their stead--King ratifies the decree concerning the Departmental
Army--Dumouriez resigns, and departs for the Frontiers--New
Ministers named from the Constitutionalists--Insurrection of 20th
June--Armed Mob intrude into the Assembly--Thence into the
Tuileries--La Fayette repairs to Paris--Remonstrates in favour of
the King--But is compelled to return to the Frontiers--Marseillois
appear in Paris--Duke of Brunswick's manifesto, 152
CHAP. IX.--The Day of the Tenth of August--Tocsin sounded early in
the Morning--Swiss Guards, and relics of the Royal Party, repair to
the Tuileries--Mandat assassinated--Dejection of Louis, and energy
of the Queen--King's Ministers appear at the Bar of the Assembly,
stating the peril of the Royal Family, and requesting a Deputation
might be sent to the Palace--Assembly pass to the Order of the
Day--Louis and his Family repair to the Assembly--Conflict at the
Tuileries--Swiss ordered to repair to the King's Person--and are
many of them shot and dispersed on their way to the Assembly--At the
close of the Day almost all of them are massacred--Royal Family
spend the Night in the Convent of the Feuillans, 172
CHAP. X.--La Fayette compelled to Escape from France--Is made
Prisoner by the Prussians, with three Companions--Reflections--The
Triumvirate, Danton, Robespierre, and Marat--Revolutionary Tribunal
appointed--Stupor of the Legislative Assembly--Longwy, Stenay, and
Verdun, taken by the Prussians--Mob of Paris enraged--Great Massacre
of Prisoners in Paris, commencing on the 2d, and ending 6th
September--Apathy of the Assembly during and after these
Events--Review of its Causes, 182
CHAP. XI.--Election of Representatives for the National
Convention--Jacobins are very active--Right hand Party--Left hand
side--Neutral Members--The Girondists are in possession of the
ostensible Power--They denounce the Jacobin Chiefs, but in an
irregular and feeble manner--Marat, Robespierre, and Danton,
supported by the Commune and Populace of Paris--France declared a
Republic--Duke of Brunswick's Campaign--Neglects the French
Emigrants--Is tardy in his Operations--Occupies the poorest part of
Champagne--His Army becomes sickly--Prospects of a
Battle--Dumouriez's Army recruited with Carmagnoles--The Duke
resolves to Retreat--Thoughts on the consequences of that
measure--The retreat disastrous--The Emigrants disbanded in a great
measure--Reflections on their Fate--The Prince of Condé's Army, 199
CHAP. XII.--Jacobins determine upon the Execution of Louis--Progress
and Reasons of the King's Unpopularity--Girondists taken by
surprise, by a proposal for the Abolition of Royalty made by the
Jacobins--Proposal carried--Thoughts on the New System of
Government--Compared with that of Rome, Greece, America, and other
Republican States--Enthusiasm throughout France at the
Change--Follies it gave birth to--And Crimes--Monuments of Art
destroyed--Madame Roland interposes to save the Life of the
King--Barrère--Girondists move for a Departmental
Legion--Carried--Revoked--and Girondists defeated--The Authority of
the Community of Paris paramount even over the Convention--Documents
of the Iron-Chest--Parallel betwixt Charles I. and Louis
XVI.--Motion by Pétion, that the King should be Tried before the
Convention, 208
CHAP. XIII.--THE TRIAL OF LOUIS--Indecision of the Girondists, and
its Effects--The Royal Family insulted by the Agents of the
Community--The King deprived of his Son's society--The King brought
to Trial before the Convention--His First Examination--Carried back
to Prison amidst Insult and Abuse--Tumult in the Assembly--The King
deprived of Intercourse with his Family--Malesherbes appointed as
Counsel to defend the King--and De Seze--Louis again brought before
the Convention--Opening Speech of De Seze--King remanded to the
Temple--Stormy Debate--Eloquent attack of Vergniaud on the
Jacobins--Sentence of DEATH pronounced against the King--General
Sympathy for his Fate--Dumouriez arrives in Paris--Vainly tries to
avert the King's Fate--LOUIS XVI. BEHEADED on 21st January,
1793--MARIE ANTOINETTE on the 16th October thereafter--The Princess
ELIZABETH in May 1794--The Dauphin perishes, by cruelty, June 8th,
1795--The Princess Royal exchanged for La Fayette, 19th December,
1795, 236
CHAP. XIV.--Dumouriez--His displeasure at the Treatment of the
Flemish Provinces by the Convention--His projects in
consequence--Gains the ill-will of his Army--and is forced to fly to
the Austrian Camp--Lives many years in retreat, and finally dies in
England--Struggles betwixt the Girondists and Jacobins--Robespierre
impeaches the Leaders of the Girondists, and is denounced by
them--Decree of Accusation against Marat--Commission of
Twelve--Marat acquitted--Terror of the Girondists--Jacobins prepare
to attack the Palais Royal, but are repulsed--Repair to the
Convention, who recall the Commission of Twelve--Louvet and other
Girondist Leaders Fly from Paris--Convention go forth in procession
to expostulate with the People--Forced back to their Hall, and
compelled to Decree the Accusation of Thirty of their
Body--Girondists finally ruined--and their principal Leaders
perish--Close of their History, 258
CHAP. XV.--Views of Parties in Britain relative to the
Revolution--Affiliated Societies--Counterpoised by Aristocratic
Associations--Aristocratic Party eager for War with France--The
French proclaim the Navigation of the Scheldt--British Ambassador
recalled from Paris, and French Envoy no longer accredited in
London--France declares War against England--British Army sent to
Holland, under the Duke of York--State of the Army--View of the
Military Positions of France--in Flanders--on the Rhine--in
Piedmont--Savoy--on the Pyrenees--State of the War in La
Vendée--Description of the Country--Le Bocage--Le Louroux--Close
Union betwixt the Nobles and Peasantry--Both strongly attached to
Royalty, and abhorrent of the Revolution--The Priests--The Religion
of the Vendéans outraged by the Convention--A general Insurrection
takes place in 1793--Military Organisation and Habits of the
Vendéans--Division in the British Cabinet on the Mode of conducting
the War--Pitt--Wyndham--Reasoning upon the subject--Vendéans
defeated--They defeat, in their turn, the French Troops at
Laval--But are ultimately destroyed and dispersed--Unfortunate
Expedition to Quiberon--La Charette defeated and executed, and the
War of La Vendée finally terminated--Unsuccessful Resistance of
Bourdeaux, Marseilles, and Lyons, to the Convention--Siege of
Lyons--Its Surrender and dreadful Punishment--Siege of Toulon, 274
CHAP. XVI.--Views of the British Cabinet regarding the French
Revolution--Extraordinary Situation of France--Explanation of the
Anomaly which it exhibited--System of Terror--Committee of Public
Safety--Of Public Security--David the Painter--Law against Suspected
Persons--Revolutionary Tribunal--Effects of the Emigration of the
Princes and Nobles--Causes of the Passiveness of the French People
under the Tyranny of the Jacobins--Singular Address of the Committee
of Public Safety--General Reflections, 307
CHAP. XVII.--Marat, Danton, Robespierre--Marat poniarded--Danton and
Robespierre become Rivals--Commune of Paris--their gross
Irreligion--Gobel--Goddess of Reason--Marriage reduced to a Civil
Contract--Views of Danton--and of Robespierre--Principal Leaders of
the Commune arrested--and Nineteen of them executed--Danton arrested
by the influence of Robespierre--and, along with Camille Desmoulins,
Westermann, and La Croix, taken before the Revolutionary Tribunal,
condemned, and executed--Decree issued, on the motion of
Robespierre, acknowledging a Supreme Being--Cécilée
Regnault--Gradual Change in the Public Mind--Robespierre becomes
unpopular--Makes every effort to retrieve his power--Stormy Debate
in the Convention--Collot D'Herbois, Tallien, &c., expelled from the
Jacobin Club at the instigation of Robespierre--Robespierre
denounced in the Convention on the 9th Thermidor, (27th July, 1794,)
and, after furious struggles, arrested, along with his brother,
Couthon, and Saint Just--Henriot, Commandant of the National Guard,
arrested--Terrorists take refuge in the Hotel de Ville--Attempt
their own lives--Robespierre wounds himself--but lives, along with
most of the others, long enough to be carried to the Guillotine, and
executed--His character--Struggles that followed his Fate--Final
Destruction of the Jacobinical System--and return of
Tranquillity--Singular colour given to Society in Paris--Ball of the
Victims, 321
CHAP. XVIII.--Retrospective View of the External Relations of
France--Her great Military Successes--Whence they arose--Effect of
the Compulsory Levies--Military Genius and Character of the
French--French Generals--New Mode of Training the Troops--Light
Troops--Successive Attacks in Column--Attachment of the Soldiers to
the Revolution--Also of the Generals--Carnot--Effect of the French
principles preached to the Countries invaded by their Arms--Close of
the Revolution with the fall of Robespierre--Reflections upon what
was to succeed, 364
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
VIEW OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
_Review of the state of Europe after the Peace of
Versailles--England--France--Spain--Prussia--Imprudent
Innovations of the Emperor Joseph--Disturbances in his
Dominions--Russia--France--Her ancient System of Monarchy--how
organized--Causes of its Decay--Decay of the Nobility as a
body--The new Nobles--The Country Nobles--The Nobles of the
highest Order--The Church--The higher Orders of the Clergy--The
lower Orders--The Commons--Their increase in Power and
Importance--Their Claims opposed to those of the Privileged
Classes._
When we look back on past events, however important, it is difficult to
recall the precise sensations with which we viewed them in their
progress, and to recollect the fears, hopes, doubts, and difficulties,
for which Time and the course of Fortune have formed a termination, so
different probably from that which we had anticipated. When the rush of
the inundation was before our eyes, and in our ears, we were scarce able
to remember the state of things before its rage commenced, and when,
subsequently, the deluge has subsided within the natural limits of the
stream, it is still more difficult to recollect with precision the
terrors it inspired when at its height. That which is present possesses
such power over our senses and our imagination, that it requires no
common effort to recall those sensations which expired with preceding
events. Yet, to do this is the peculiar province of history, which will
be written and read in vain, unless it can connect with its details an
accurate idea of the impression which these produced on men's minds
while they were yet in their transit. It is with this view that we
attempt to resume the history of France and of Europe, at the conclusion
of the American war--a period now only remembered by the more advanced
part of the present generation.
[Sidenote: STATE OF EUROPE.]
The peace concluded at Versailles in 1783, was reasonably supposed to
augur a long repose to Europe. The high and emulous tone assumed in
former times by the rival nations, had been lowered and tamed by recent
circumstances. England, under the guidance of a weak, at least a most
unlucky administration,[5] had purchased peace at the expense of her
North American Empire, and the resignation of supremacy over her
colonies; a loss great in itself, but exaggerated in the eyes of the
nation, by the rending asunder of the ties of common descent, and
exclusive commercial intercourse, and by a sense of the wars waged, and
expenses encountered for the protection and advancement of the fair
empire which England found herself obliged to surrender. The lustre of
the British arms, so brilliant at the Peace of Fontainbleau, had been
tarnished, if not extinguished. In spite of the gallant defence of
Gibraltar, the general result of the war on land had been unfavourable
to her military reputation; and notwithstanding the opportune and
splendid victories of Rodney, the coasts of Britain had been insulted,
and her fleets compelled to retire into port, while those of her
combined enemies rode masters of the channel.[6] The spirit of the
country also had been lowered, by the unequal contest which had been
sustained, and by the sense that her naval superiority was an object of
invidious hatred to united Europe. This had been lately made manifest,
by the armed alliance of the northern nations, which, though termed a
neutrality, was, in fact, a league made to abate the pretensions of
England to maritime supremacy. There are to be added to these
disheartening and depressing circumstances, the decay of commerce during
the long course of hostilities, with the want of credit and depression
of the price of land, which are the usual consequences of a transition
from war to peace, ere capital has regained its natural channel. All
these things being considered, it appeared the manifest interest of
England to husband her exhausted resources, and recruit her diminished
wealth, by cultivating peace and tranquillity for a long course of time.
William Pitt, never more distinguished than in his financial operations,
was engaged in new modelling the revenue of the country, and adding to
the return of the taxes, while he diminished their pressure. It could
scarcely be supposed that any object of national ambition would have
been permitted to disturb him in a task so necessary.
Neither had France, the natural rival of England, come off from the
contest in such circumstances of triumph and advantage, as were likely
to encourage her to a speedy renewal of the struggle. It is true, she
had seen and contributed to the humiliation of her ancient enemy, but
she had paid dearly for the gratification of her revenge, as nations and
individuals are wont to do. Her finances, tampered with by successive
sets of ministers, who looked no farther than to temporary expedients
for carrying on the necessary expenses of government, now presented an
alarming prospect; and it seemed as if the wildest and most enterprising
ministers would hardly have dared, in their most sanguine moments, to
have recommended either war itself, or any measures of which war might
be the consequence.
Spain was in a like state of exhaustion. She had been hurried into the
alliance against England, partly by the consequences of the family
alliance betwixt her Bourbons and those of France, but still more by the
eager and engrossing desire to possess herself once more of Gibraltar.
The Castilian pride, long galled by beholding this important fortress in
the hands of heretics and foreigners, highly applauded the war, which
gave a chance of its recovery, and seconded, with all the power of the
kingdom, the gigantic efforts made for that purpose. All these immense
preparations, with the most formidable means of attack ever used on such
an occasion, had totally failed, and the kingdom of Spain remained at
once stunned and mortified by the failure, and broken down by the
expenses of so huge an undertaking. An attack upon Algiers, in 1784-5,
tended to exhaust the remains of her military ardour. Spain, therefore,
relapsed into inactivity and repose, dispirited by the miscarriage of
her favourite scheme, and possessing neither the means nor the audacity
necessary to meditate its speedy renewal.
Neither were the sovereigns of the late belligerent powers of that
ambitious and active character which was likely to drag the kingdoms
which they swayed into the renewal of hostilities. The classic eye of
the historian Gibbon saw Arcadius and Honorius, the weakest and most
indolent of the Roman Emperors, slumbering upon the thrones of the House
of Bourbon;[7] and the just and loyal character of George III.
precluded any effort on his part to undermine the peace which he signed
unwillingly, or to attempt the resumption of those rights which he had
formally, though reluctantly, surrendered. His expression to the
ambassador of the United States,[8] was a trait of character never to be
omitted or forgotten:--"I have been the last man in my dominions to
accede to this peace, which separates America from my kingdoms--I will
be the first man, now it is made, to resist any attempt to infringe it."
The acute historian whom we have already quoted seems to have
apprehended, in the character and ambition of the northern potentates,
those causes of disturbance which were not to be found in the western
part of the European republic. But Catherine, the Semiramis of the
north, had her views of extensive dominion chiefly turned towards her
eastern and southern frontier, and the finances of her immense, but
comparatively poor and unpeopled empire, were burdened with the expenses
of a luxurious court, requiring at once to be gratified with the
splendour of Asia and the refinements of Europe. The strength of her
empire also, though immense, was unwieldy, and the empire had not been
uniformly fortunate in its wars with the more prompt, though less
numerous armies of the King of Prussia, her neighbour. Thus Russia, no
less than other powers in Europe, appeared more desirous of reposing her
gigantic strength, than of adventuring upon new and hazardous conquests.
Even her views upon Turkey, which circumstances seemed to render more
flattering than ever, she was contented to resign, in 1784, when only
half accomplished; a pledge, not only that her thoughts were sincerely
bent upon peace, but that she felt the necessity of resisting even the
most tempting opportunities for resuming the course of victory which she
had, four years before, pursued so successfully.
[Sidenote: GERMANY.]
Frederick of Prussia himself, who had been so long, by dint of genius
and talent, the animating soul of the political intrigues in Europe, had
run too many risks, in the course of his adventurous and eventful reign,
to be desirous of encountering new hazards in the extremity of life. His
empire, extended as it was from the shores of the Baltic to the
frontiers of Holland, consisted of various detached portions, which it
required the aid of time to consolidate into a single kingdom. And,
accustomed to study the signs of the times, it could not have escaped
Frederick, that sentiments and feelings were afloat, connected with, and
fostered by, the spirit of unlimited investigation, which he himself had
termed philosophy, such as might soon call upon the sovereigns to arm in
a common cause, and ought to prevent them, in the meanwhile, from
wasting their strength in mutual struggles, and giving advantage to a
common enemy.
If such anticipations occupied and agitated the last years of
Frederick's life, they had not the same effect upon the Emperor Joseph
II., who, without the same clear-eyed precision of judgment, endeavoured
to tread in the steps of the King of Prussia, as a reformer, and as a
conqueror. It would be unjust to deny to this prince the praise of
considerable talents, and inclination to employ them for the good of the
country which he ruled. But it frequently happens, that the talents, and
even the virtues of sovereigns, exercised without respect to time and
circumstances, become the misfortune of their government. It is
particularly the lot of princes, endowed with such personal advantages,
to be confident in their own abilities, and, unless educated in the
severe school of adversity, to prefer favourites, who assent to and
repeat their opinions, to independent counsellors, whose experience
might correct their own hasty conclusions. And thus, although the
personal merits of Joseph II. were in every respect acknowledged, his
talents in a great measure recognised, and his patriotic intentions
scarcely disputable, it fell to his lot, during the period we treat of,
to excite more apprehension and discontent among his subjects, than if
he had been a prince content to rule by a minister, and wear out an
indolent life in the forms and pleasures of a court. Accordingly, the
Emperor, in many of his schemes of reform, too hastily adopted, or at
least too incautiously and peremptorily executed, had the misfortune to
introduce fearful commotions among the people, whose situation he meant
to ameliorate, while in his external relations he rendered Austria the
quarter from which a breach of European peace was most to be
apprehended. It seemed, indeed, as if the Emperor had contrived to
reconcile his philosophical professions with the exercise of the most
selfish policy towards the United Provinces, both in opening the
Scheldt, and in dismantling the barrier towns, which had been placed in
their hands as a defence against the power of France. By the first of
these measures the Emperor gained nothing but the paltry sum of money
for which he sold his pretensions,[9] and the shame of having shown
himself ungrateful for the important services which the United Provinces
had rendered to his ancestors. But the dismantling of the Dutch barrier
was subsequently attended by circumstances alike calamitous to Austria,
and to the whole continent of Europe.
In another respect, the reforms carried through by Joseph II. tended to
prepare the public mind for future innovations, made with a ruder hand,
and upon a much larger scale.[10] The suppression of the religious
orders, and the appropriation of their revenues to the general purposes
of government, had in it something to flatter the feelings of those of
the Reformed religion; but, in a moral point of view, the seizing upon
the property of any private individual, or public body, is an invasion
of the most sacred principles of public justice, and such spoliation
cannot be vindicated by urgent circumstances of state-necessity, or any
plausible pretext of state-advantage whatsoever, since no necessity can
vindicate what is in itself unjust, and no public advantage can
compensate a breach of public faith.[11] Joseph was also the first
Catholic sovereign who broke through the solemn degree of reverence
attached by that religion to the person of the Sovereign Pontiff. The
Pope's fruitless and humiliating visit to Vienna furnished the shadow of
a precedent for the conduct of Napoleon to Pius VII.[12]
Another and yet less justifiable cause of innovation, placed in peril,
and left in doubt and discontent, some of the fairest provinces of the
Austrian dominions, and those which the wisest of their princes had
governed with peculiar tenderness and moderation. The Austrian
Netherlands had been in a literal sense dismantled and left open to the
first invader, by the demolition of the barrier fortresses; and it seems
to have been the systematic purpose of the Emperor to eradicate and
destroy that love and regard for their prince and his government, which
in time of need proves the most effectual moral substitute for moats and
ramparts. The history of the house of Burgundy bore witness on every
page to the love of the Flemings for liberty, and the jealousy with
which they have, from the earliest ages, watched the privileges they had
obtained from their princes. Yet in that country, and amongst these
people, Joseph carried on his measures of innovation with a hand so
unsparing, as if he meant to bring the question of liberty or arbitrary
power to a very brief and military decision betwixt him and his
subjects.
[Sidenote: FLEMISH DISTURBANCES.]
His alterations were not in Flanders, as elsewhere, confined to the
ecclesiastical state alone, although such innovations were peculiarly
offensive to a people rigidly Catholic, but were extended through the
most important parts of the civil government. Changes in the courts of
justice were threatened--the great seal, which had hitherto remained
with the chancellor of the States, was transferred to the Imperial
minister--a Council of State, composed of commissioners nominated by the
Emperor, was appointed to discharge the duties hitherto intrusted to a
standing committee of the States of Brabant--their universities were
altered and new-modelled--and their magistrates subjected to arbitrary
arrests and sent to Vienna, instead of being tried in their own country
and by their own laws. The Flemish people beheld these innovations with
the sentiments natural to freemen, and not a little stimulated certainly
by the scenes which had lately passed in North America, where, under
circumstances of far less provocation, a large empire had emancipated
itself from the mother country. The States remonstrated loudly, and
refused submission to the decrees which encroached on their
constitutional liberties, and at length arrayed a military force in
support of their patriotic opposition.
Joseph, who at the same time he thus wantonly provoked the States and
people of Flanders, had been seduced by Russia to join her ambitious
plan upon Turkey, bent apparently before the storm he had excited, and
for a time yielded to accommodation with his subjects of Flanders,
renounced the most obnoxious of his new measures, and confirmed the
privileges of the nation, at what was called the Joyous Entry.[13] But
this spirit of conciliation was only assumed for the purpose of
deception; for so soon as he had assembled in Flanders what was deemed a
sufficient armed force to sustain his despotic purposes, the Emperor
threw off the mask, and, by the most violent acts of military force,
endeavoured to overthrow the constitution he had agreed to observe, and
to enforce the arbitrary measures which he had pretended to abandon. For
a brief period of two years, Flanders remained in a state of suppressed,
but deeply-founded and wide-extended discontent, watching for a moment
favourable to freedom and to vengeance. It proved an ample store-house
of combustibles, prompt to catch fire, as the flame now arising in
France began to expand itself; nor can it be doubted, that the condition
of the Flemish provinces, whether considered in a military or in a
political light, was one of the principal causes of the subsequent
success of the French Republican arms. Joseph himself, broken-hearted
and dispirited, died in the very beginning of the troubles he had
wantonly provoked.[14] Desirous of fame as a legislator and a warrior,
and certainly born with talents to acquire it, he left his arms
dishonoured by the successes of the despised Turks, and his fair
dominions of the Netherlands and of Hungary upon the very eve of
insurrection. A lampoon, written upon the hospital for lunatics at
Vienna, might be said to be no unjust epitaph for a monarch, one so
hopeful and so beloved--"Josephus, ubique Secundus, hic Primus."
These Flemish disturbances might be regarded as symptoms of the new
opinions which were tacitly gaining ground in Europe, and which preceded
the grand explosion, as slight shocks of an earthquake usually announce
the approach of its general convulsion. The like may be said of the
short-lived Dutch revolution of 1787, in which the ancient faction of
Louvestein, under the encouragement of France, for a time completely
triumphed over that of the Stadtholder, deposed him from his hereditary
command of Captain-General of the Army of the States, and reduced, or
endeavoured to reduce, the confederation of the United States to a pure
democracy. This was also a strong sign of the times; for, although
totally opposite to the inclination of the majority of the
States-General, of the equestrian body, of the landed proprietors, nay,
of the very populace, most of whom were from habit and principle
attached to the House of Orange, the burghers of the large towns drove
on the work of revolution with such warmth of zeal and promptitude of
action, as showed a great part of the middling classes to be deeply
tinctured with the desire of gaining further liberty, and a larger share
in the legislation and administration of the country, than pertained to
them under the old oligarchical constitution.
The revolutionary government, in the Dutch provinces, did not, however,
conduct their affairs with prudence. Without waiting to organize their
own force, or weaken that of the enemy--without obtaining the necessary
countenance and protection of France, or co-operating with the
malecontents in the Austrian Netherlands, they gave, by arresting the
Princess of Orange, (sister of the King of Prussia,) an opportunity of
foreign interference, of which that prince failed not to avail himself.
His armies, commanded by the Duke of Brunswick, poured into the United
Provinces, and with little difficulty possessed themselves of Utrecht,
Amsterdam, and the other cities which constituted the strength of the
Louvestein or republican faction. The King then replaced the House of
Orange in all its power, privileges, and functions. The conduct of the
Dutch republicans during their brief hour of authority had been neither
so moderate nor so popular as to make their sudden and almost
unresisting fall a matter of general regret. On the contrary, it was
considered as a probable pledge of the continuance of peace in Europe,
especially as France, busied with her own affairs, declined interference
in those of the United States.
[Sidenote: INTRIGUES OF RUSSIA.]
The intrigues of Russia had, in accomplishment of the ambitious schemes
of Catherine, lighted up war with Sweden, as well as with Turkey; but in
both cases hostilities were commenced upon the old plan of fighting one
or two battles, and wresting a fortress of a province from a
neighbouring state; and it seems likely, that the intervention of France
and England, equally interested in preserving the balance of power,
might have ended these troubles, but for the progress of that great and
hitherto unheard-of course of events, which prepared, carried on, and
matured, the FRENCH REVOLUTION.
* * * * *
It is necessary, for the execution of our plan, that we should review
this period of history, the most important, perhaps, during its
currency, and in its consequences, which the annals of mankind afford;
and although the very title is sufficient to awaken in most bosoms
either horror or admiration, yet, neither insensible of the blessings of
national liberty, nor of those which flow from the protection of just
laws, and a moderate but firm executive government, we may perhaps be
enabled to trace its events with the candour of one, who, looking back
on past scenes, feels divested of the keen and angry spirit with which,
in common with his contemporaries, he may have judged them while they
were yet in progress.
We have shortly reviewed the state of Europe in general, which we have
seen to be either pacific or disturbed by troubles of no long duration;
but it was in France that a thousand circumstances, some arising out of
the general history of the world, some peculiar to that country herself,
mingled, like the ingredients in the witches' cauldron, to produce in
succession many a formidable but passing apparition, until concluded by
the stern Vision of absolute and military power, as those in the drama
are introduced by that of the Armed Head.[15]
The first and most effective cause of the Revolution, was the change
which had taken place in the feelings of the French towards their
government, and the monarch who was its head. The devoted loyalty of the
people to their king had been for several ages the most marked
characteristic of the nation; it was their honour in their own eyes, and
matter of contempt and ridicule in those of the English, because it
seemed in its excess to swallow up all ideas of patriotism. That very
excess of loyalty, however, was founded not on a servile, but upon a
generous principle. France is ambitious, fond of military glory, and
willingly identifies herself with the fame acquired by her soldiers.
Down to the reign of Louis XV., the French monarch was, in the eyes of
his subjects, a general, and the whole people an army. An army must be
under severe discipline, and a general must possess absolute power; but
the soldier feels no degradation from the restraint which is necessary
to his profession, and without which he cannot be led to conquest.
[Sidenote: FRENCH MONARCHY.]
Every true Frenchman, therefore, submitted, without scruple to that
abridgement of personal liberty which appeared necessary to render the
monarch great, and France victorious. The King, according to this
system, was regarded less as an individual than as the representative of
the concentrated honour of the kingdom; and in this sentiment, however
extravagant and Quixotic, there mingled much that was generous,
patriotic, and disinterested. The same feeling was awakened after all
the changes of the Revolution, by the wonderful successes of the
Individual of whom the future volumes are to treat, and who transferred,
in many instances to his own person, by deeds almost exceeding
credibility, the species of devoted attachment with which France
formerly regarded the ancient line of her kings.
The nobility shared with the king in the advantages which this
predilection spread around him. If the monarch was regarded as the chief
ornament of the community, they were the minor gems by whose lustre that
of the crown was relieved or adorned. If he was the supreme general of
the state, they were the officers attached to his person, and necessary
to the execution of his commands, each in his degree bound to advance
the honour and glory of the common country. When such sentiments were at
their height, there could be no murmuring against the peculiar
privileges of the nobility, any more than against the almost absolute
authority of the monarch. Each had that rank in the state which was
regarded as his birth-right, and for one of the lower orders to repine
that he enjoyed not the immunities peculiar to the noblesse, would have
been as unavailing, and as foolish, as to lament that he was not born to
an independent estate. Thus, the Frenchman, contented, though with an
illusion, laughed, danced, and indulged all the gaiety of his national
character, in circumstances under which his insular neighbours would
have thought the slightest token of patience dishonourable and
degrading. The distress or privation which the French plebeian suffered
in his own person, was made up to him in imagination by his interest in
the national glory.
Was a citizen of Paris postponed in rank to the lowest military officer,
he consoled himself by reading the victories of the French arms in the
Gazette; and was he unduly and unequally taxed to support the expense of
the crown, still the public feasts which were given, and the palaces
which were built, were to him a source of compensation. He looked on at
the Carousal, he admired the splendour of Versailles, and enjoyed a
reflected share of their splendour, in recollecting that they displayed
the magnificence of his country. This state of things, however illusory,
seemed, while the illusion lasted, to realize the wish of those
legislators, who have endeavoured to form a general fund of national
happiness, from which each individual is to draw his personal share of
enjoyment. If the monarch enjoyed the display of his own grace and
agility, while he hunted, or rode at the ring, the spectators had their
share of pleasure in witnessing it: if Louis had the satisfaction of
beholding the splendid piles of Versailles and the Louvre arise at his
command, the subject admired them when raised, and his real portion of
pleasure was not, perhaps, inferior to that of the founder. The people
were like men inconveniently placed in a crowded theatre, who think
little of the personal inconveniences they are subjected to by the heat
and pressure, while their mind is engrossed by the splendours of the
representation. In short, not only the political opinions of Frenchmen
but their actual feelings, were, in the earlier days of the eighteenth
century, expressed in the motto which they chose for their national
palace--"Earth hath no nation like the French--no Nation a City like
Paris, or a King like Louis."
The French enjoyed this assumed superiority with the less chance of
being undeceived, that they listened not to any voice from other lands,
which pointed out the deficiencies in the frame of government under
which they lived, or which hinted the superior privileges enjoyed by the
subjects of a more free state. The intense love of our own country, and
admiration of its constitution, is usually accompanied with a contempt
or dislike of foreign states, and their modes of government. The French,
in the reign of Louis XIV., enamoured of their own institutions,
regarded those of other nations as unworthy of their consideration; and
if they paused for a moment to gaze on the complicated constitution of
their great rival, it was soon dismissed as a subject totally
unintelligible, with some expression of pity, perhaps, for the poor
sovereign who had the ill luck to preside over a government embarrassed
by so many restraints and limitations.[16] Yet, into whatever political
errors the French people were led by the excess of their loyalty, it
would be unjust to brand them as a nation of a mean and slavish spirit.
Servitude infers dishonour, and dishonour to a Frenchman is the last of
evils. Burke more justly regarded them as a people misled to their
disadvantage, by high and romantic ideas of honour and fidelity, and
who, actuated by a principle of public spirit in their submission to
their monarch, worshipped, in his person, the Fortune of France their
common country.
During the reign of Louis XIV., every thing tended to support the
sentiment which connected the national honour with the wars and
undertakings of the king. His success, in the earlier years of his
reign, was splendid, and he might be regarded for many years, as the
dictator of Europe. During this period, the universal opinion of his
talents, together with his successes abroad, and his magnificence at
home, fostered the idea that the Grand Monarque was in himself the
tutelar deity, and only representative, of the great nation whose powers
he wielded. Sorrow and desolation came on his latter years; but be it
said to the honour of the French people, that the devoted allegiance
they had paid to Louis in prosperity, was not withdrawn when fortune
seemed to have turned her back upon her original favourite. France
poured her youth forth as readily, if not so gaily, to repair the
defeats of her monarch's old age, as she had previously yielded them to
secure and extend the victories of his early reign. Louis had perfectly
succeeded in establishing the crown as the sole pivot upon which public
affairs turned, and in attaching to his person, as the representative of
France, all the importance which in other countries is given to the
great body of the nation.
Nor had the spirit of the French monarchy, in surrounding itself with
all the dignity of absolute power, failed to secure the support of those
auxiliaries which have the most extended influence upon the public mind,
by engaging at once religion and literature in defence of its authority.
The Gallican Church, more dependent upon the monarch, and less so upon
the Pope, than is usual in Catholic countries, gave to the power of the
crown all the mysterious and supernatural terrors annexed to an origin
in divine right, and directed against those who encroached on the limits
of the royal prerogative, or even ventured to scrutinize too minutely
the foundation of its authority, the penalties annexed to a breach of
the divine law. Louis XIV. repaid this important service by a constant,
and even scrupulous attention to observances prescribed by the Church,
which strengthened, in the eyes of the public, the alliance so strictly
formed betwixt the altar and the throne. Those who look to the private
morals of the monarch may indeed form some doubt of the sincerity of his
religious professions, considering how little they influenced his
practice; and yet, when we reflect upon the frequent inconsistencies of
mankind in this particular, we may hesitate to charge with hypocrisy a
conduct, which was dictated perhaps as much by conscience as by
political convenience. Even judging more severely, it must be allowed
that hypocrisy, though so different from religion, indicates its
existence, as smoke points out that of pure fire. Hypocrisy cannot exist
unless religion be to a certain extent held in esteem, because no one
would be at the trouble to assume a mask which was not respectable, and
so far compliance with the external forms of religion is a tribute paid
to the doctrines which it teaches. The hypocrite assumes a virtue if he
has it not, and the example of his conduct may be salutary to others,
though his pretensions to piety are wickedness to Him, who trieth the
heart and reins.
On the other hand, the Academy formed by the wily Richelieu served to
unite the literature of France into one focus, under the immediate
patronage of the crown, to whose bounty its professors were taught to
look even for the very means of subsistence. The greater nobles caught
this ardour of patronage from the sovereign, and as the latter pensioned
and supported the principal literary characters of his reign, the former
granted shelter and support to others of the same rank, who were lodged
at their hotels, fed at their tables, and were admitted to their society
upon terms somewhat less degrading than those which were granted to
artists and musicians, and who gave to the Great, knowledge or amusement
in exchange for the hospitality they received. Men in a situation so
subordinate, could only at first accommodate their compositions to the
taste and interest of their protectors. They heightened by adulation and
flattery the claims of the king and the nobles upon the community; and
the nation, indifferent at that time to all literature which was not of
native growth, felt their respect for their own government enhanced and
extended by the works of those men of genius who flourished under its
protection.
Such was the system of French monarchy, and such it remained, in outward
show at least, until the peace of Fontainbleau. But its foundation had
been gradually undermined; public opinion had undergone a silent but
almost a total change, and it might be compared to some ancient tower
swayed from its base by the lapse of time, and waiting the first blast
of a hurricane, or shock of an earthquake, to be prostrated in the dust.
How the lapse of half a century, or little more, could have produced a
change so total, must next be considered; and this can only be done by
viewing separately the various changes which the lapse of years had
produced on the various orders of the state.
[Sidenote: DECAY OF THE NOBILITY.]
First, then, it is to be observed, that in these latter times the
wasting effects of luxury and vanity had totally ruined the greater part
of the French nobility, a word which, in respect of that country,
comprehended what is called in Britain the nobility and gentry, or
natural aristocracy of the kingdom. This body, during the reign of Louis
XIV., though far even then from supporting the part which their fathers
had acted in history, yet existed, as it were, through their
remembrances, and disguised their dependence upon the throne by the
outward show of fortune, as well as by the consequence attached to
hereditary right. They were one step nearer the days, not then totally
forgotten, when the nobles of France, with their retainers, actually
formed the army of the kingdom; and they still presented, to the
imagination at least, the descendants of a body of chivalrous heroes,
ready to tread in the path of their ancestors, should the times ever
render necessary the calling forth the Ban, or Arrière-Ban--the feudal
array of the Gallic chivalry. But this delusion had passed away; the
defence of states was intrusted in France, as in other countries, to the
exertions of a standing army; and, in the latter part of the eighteenth
century, the nobles of France presented a melancholy contrast to their
predecessors.
The number of the order was of itself sufficient to diminish its
consequence. It had been imprudently increased by new creations. There
were in the kingdom about eighty thousand families enjoying the
privileges of nobility; and the order was divided into different
classes, which looked on each other with mutual jealousy and contempt.
The first general distinction was betwixt the Ancient, and Modern, or
new noblesse. The former were nobles of old creation, whose ancestors
had obtained their rank from real or supposed services rendered to the
nation in her councils or her battles. The new nobles had found an
easier access to the same elevation, by the purchase of territories, or
of offices, or of letters of nobility, any of which easy modes invested
the owners with titles and rank, often held by men whose wealth had been
accumulated in mean and sordid occupations, or by farmers-general, and
financiers, whom the people considered as acquiring their fortunes at
the expense of the state. These numerous additions to the privileged
body of nobles accorded ill with its original composition, and
introduced schism and disunion into the body itself. The descendants of
the ancient chivalry of France looked with scorn upon the new men, who,
rising perhaps from the very lees of the people, claimed from superior
wealth a share in the privileges of the aristocracy.
Again, secondly, there was, amongst the ancient nobles themselves, but
too ample room for division between the upper and wealthier class of
nobility, who had fortunes adequate to maintain their rank, and the much
more numerous body, whose poverty rendered them pensioners upon the
state for the means of supporting their dignity. Of about one thousand
houses, of which the ancient noblesse is computed to have consisted,
there were not above two or three hundred families who had retained the
means of maintaining their rank without the assistance of the crown.
Their claims to monopolize commissions in the army, and situations in
the government, together with their exemption from taxes, were their
sole resources; resources burdensome to the state, and odious to the
people, without being in the same degree beneficial to those who enjoyed
them. Even in military service, which was considered as their
birth-right, the nobility of the second class were seldom permitted to
rise above a certain limited rank. Long service might exalt one of them
to the _grade_ of lieutenant-colonel, or the government of some small
town, but all the better rewards of a life spent in the army were
reserved for nobles of the highest order. It followed as a matter of
course, that amidst so many of this privileged body who languished in
poverty, and could not rise from it by the ordinary paths of industry,
some must have had recourse to loose and dishonourable practices; and
that gambling-houses and places of debauchery should have been
frequented and patronised by individuals, whose ancient descent, titles,
and emblems of nobility, did not save them from the suspicion of very
dishonourable conduct, the disgrace of which affected the character of
the whole body.
There must be noticed a third classification of the order, into the
Haute Noblesse, or men of the highest rank, most of whom spent their
lives at court, and in discharge of the great offices of the crown and
state, and the Noblesse Campagnarde, who continued to reside upon their
patrimonial estates in the provinces.
The noblesse of the latter class had fallen gradually into a state of
general contempt, which was deeply to be regretted. They were ridiculed
and scorned by the courtiers, who despised the rusticity of their
manners, and by the nobles of newer creation, who, conscious of their
own wealth, contemned the poverty of these ancient but decayed families.
The "bold peasant" himself not more a kingdom's pride than is the plain
country gentleman, who, living on his own means, and amongst his own
people, becomes the natural protector and referee of the farmer and the
peasant, and, in case of need, either the firmest assertor of their
rights and his own against the aggressions of the crown, or the
independent and undaunted defender of the crown's rights, against the
innovations of political fanaticism. In La Vendée alone, the nobles had
united their interest and their fortune with those of the peasants who
cultivated their estates, and there alone were they found in their
proper and honourable character of proprietors residing on their own
domains, and discharging the duties which are inalienably attached to
the owner of landed property. And--mark-worthy circumstance!--in La
Vendée alone was any stand made in behalf of the ancient proprietors,
constitution, or religion of France; for there alone the nobles and the
cultivators of the soil held towards each other their natural and proper
relations of patron and client, faithful dependents, and generous and
affectionate superiors.[17] In the other provinces of France, the
nobility, speaking generally, possessed neither power nor influence
among the peasantry, while the population around them was guided and
influenced by men belonging to the Church, to the law, or to business;
classes which were in general better educated, better informed, and
possessed of more talent and knowledge of the world than the poor
Noblesse Campagnarde, who seemed as much limited, caged, and imprisoned,
within the restraints of their rank, as if they had been shut up within
the dungeons of their ruinous chateaux; and who had only their titles
and dusty parchments to oppose to the real superiority of wealth and
information so generally to be found in the class which they affected to
despise. Hence, Ségur describes the country gentlemen of his younger
days as punctilious, ignorant, and quarrelsome, shunned by the
better-informed of the middle classes, idle and dissipated, and wasting
their leisure hours in coffee-houses, theatres, and billiard-rooms.[18]
The more wealthy families, and the high noblesse, as they were called,
saw this degradation of the inferior part of their order without pity,
or rather with pleasure. These last had risen as much above their
natural duties, as the rural nobility had sunk beneath them. They had
too well followed the course which Richelieu had contrived to recommend
to their fathers, and instead of acting as the natural chiefs and
leaders of the nobility and gentry of the provinces, they were
continually engaged in intriguing for charges round the king's person,
for posts in the administration, for additional titles and
decorations--for all and every thing which could make the successful
courtier, and distinguish him from the independent noble. Their
education and habits also were totally unfavourable to grave or serious
thought and exertion. If the trumpet had sounded, it would have found a
ready echo in their bosoms; but light literature at best, and much more
frequently silly and frivolous amusements, a constant pursuit of
pleasure, and a perpetual succession of intrigues, either of love or
petty politics, made their character, in time of peace, approach in
insignificance to that of the women of the court, whom it was the
business of their lives to captivate and amuse.[19] There were noble
exceptions, but in general the order, in every thing but military
courage, had assumed a trivial and effeminate character, from which
patriotic sacrifices, or masculine wisdom, were scarcely to be expected.
While the first nobles of France were engaged in these frivolous
pursuits, their procureurs, bailiffs, stewards, intendants, or by
whatever name their agents and managers were designated, enjoyed the
real influence which their constituents rejected as beneath them, rose
into a degree of authority and credit, which eclipsed recollection of
the distant and regardless proprietor, and formed a rank in the state
not very different from that of the middle-men in Ireland. These agents
were necessarily of plebeian birth, and their profession required that
they should be familiar with the details of public business, which they
administered in the name of their seigneurs. Many of this condition
gained power and wealth in the course of the Revolution, thus
succeeding, like an able and intelligent vizier, to the power which was
forfeited by the idle and voluptuous sultan. Of the high noblesse it
might with truth be said, that they still formed the grace of the court
of France, though they had ceased to be its defence. They were
accomplished, brave, full of honour, and in many instances endowed with
talent. But the communication was broken off betwixt them and the
subordinate orders, over whom, in just degree, they ought to have
possessed a natural influence. The chain of gradual and insensible
connexion was rusted by time, in almost all its dependencies; forcibly
distorted, and contemptuously wrenched asunder, in many. The noble had
neglected and flung from him the most precious jewel in his
coronet--the love and respect of the country-gentleman, the farmer, and
the peasant, an advantage so natural to his condition in a
well-constituted society, and founded upon principles so estimable, that
he who contemns or destroys it, is guilty of little less than high
treason, both to his own rank, and to the community in general. Such a
change, however, had taken place in France, so that the noblesse might
be compared to a court-sword, the hilt carved, ornamented, and gilded,
such as might grace a day of parade, but the blade gone, or composed of
the most worthless materials.
It only remains to be mentioned, that there subsisted, besides all the
distinctions we have noticed, an essential difference in political
opinions among the noblesse themselves, considered as a body. There were
many of the order, who, looking to the exigencies of the kingdom, were
patriotically disposed to sacrifice their own exclusive privileges, in
order to afford a chance of its regeneration. These of course were
disposed to favour an alteration or reform in the original constitution
of France; but besides these enlightened individuals, the nobility had
the misfortune to include many disappointed and desperate men,
ungratified by any of the advantages which their rank made them capable
of receiving, and whose advantages of birth and education only rendered
them more deeply dangerous, or more daringly profligate. A plebeian,
dishonoured by his vices, or depressed by the poverty which is their
consequence, sinks easily into the insignificance from which wealth or
character alone raised him; but the noble often retains the means, as
well as the desire, to avenge himself on society, for an expulsion which
he feels not the less because he is conscious of deserving it. Such were
the debauched Roman youth, among whom were found Cataline, and
associates equal in talents and in depravity to their leader; and such
was the celebrated Mirabeau, who, almost expelled from his own class, as
an irreclaimable profligate, entered the arena of the Revolution as a
first-rate reformer, and a popular advocate of the lower orders.
The state of the Church, that second pillar of the throne, was scarce
more solid than that of the nobility. Generally speaking, it might be
said, that, for a long time, the higher orders of the clergy had ceased
to take a vital concern in their profession, or to exercise its
functions in a manner which interested the feelings and affections of
men.
The Catholic Church had grown old, and unfortunately did not possess the
means of renovating her doctrines, or improving her constitution, so as
to keep pace with the enlargement of the human understanding. The lofty
claims to infallibility which she had set up and maintained during the
middle ages, claims which she could neither renounce nor modify, now
threatened, in more enlightened times, like battlements too heavy for
the foundation, to be the means of ruining the edifice they were
designed to defend. _Vestigia nulla retrorsum_, continued to be the
motto of the Church of Rome. She could explain nothing, soften nothing,
renounce nothing, consistently with her assertion of impeccability. The
whole trash which had been accumulated for ages of darkness and
ignorance, whether consisting of extravagant pretensions, incredible
assertions, absurd doctrines which confounded the understanding, or
puerile ceremonies which revolted the taste, were alike incapable of
being explained away or abandoned. It would certainly have been--humanly
speaking--advantageous, alike for the Church of Rome, and for
Christianity in general, that the former had possessed the means of
relinquishing her extravagant claims, modifying her more obnoxious
doctrines, and retrenching her superstitious ceremonial, as increasing
knowledge showed the injustice of the one, and the absurdity of the
other. But this power she dared not assume; and hence, perhaps, the
great schism which divides the Christian world, which might otherwise
never have existed, or at least not in its present extended and
embittered state. But, in all events, the Church of Rome, retaining the
spiritual empire over so large and fair a portion of the Christian
world, would not have been reduced to the alternative of either
defending propositions, which, in the eyes of all enlightened men, are
altogether untenable, or of beholding the most essential and vital
doctrines of Christianity confounded with them, and the whole system
exposed to the scorn of the infidel. The more enlightened and better
informed part of the French nation had fallen very generally into the
latter extreme.
Infidelity, in attacking the absurd claims and extravagant doctrines of
the Church of Rome, had artfully availed herself of those abuses, as if
they had been really a part of the Christian religion; and they whose
credulity could not digest the grossest articles of the Papist creed,
thought themselves entitled to conclude, in general, against religion
itself, from the abuses engrafted upon it by ignorance and priestcraft.
The same circumstances which favoured the assault, tended to weaken the
defence. Embarrassed by the necessity of defending the mass of human
inventions with which their Church had obscured and deformed
Christianity, the Catholic clergy were not the best advocates even in
the best of causes; and though there were many brilliant exceptions, yet
it must be owned that a great part of the higher orders of the
priesthood gave themselves little trouble about maintaining the
doctrines, or extending the influence of the Church, considering it only
in the light of an asylum, where, under the condition of certain
renunciations, they enjoyed, in indolent tranquillity, a state of ease
and luxury. Those who thought on the subject more deeply, were contented
quietly to repose the safety of the Church upon the restrictions on the
press, which prevented the possibility of free discussion. The usual
effect followed; and many who, if manly and open debate upon theological
subjects had been allowed, would doubtless have been enabled to winnow
the wheat from the chaff, were, in the state of darkness to which they
were reduced, led to reject Christianity itself, along with the
corruptions of the Romish Church, and to become absolute infidels
instead of reformed Christians.
[Sidenote: THE CLERGY--DUBOIS.]
The long and violent dispute also betwixt the Jesuits and the
Jansenists, had for many years tended to lessen the general
consideration for the Church at large, and especially for the higher
orders of the clergy. In that quarrel, much had taken place that was
disgraceful. The mask of religion has been often used to cover more
savage and extensive persecutions, but at no time did the spirit of
intrigue, of personal malice, of slander, and circumvention, appear more
disgustingly from under the sacred disguise; and in the eyes of the
thoughtless and the vulgar, the general cause of religion suffered in
proportion.
The number of the clergy who were thus indifferent to doctrine or duty
was greatly increased, since the promotion to the great benefices had
ceased to be distributed with regard to the morals, piety, talents, and
erudition of the candidates, but was bestowed among the younger branches
of the noblesse, upon men who were at little pains to reconcile the
looseness of their former habits and opinions with the sanctity of their
new profession, and who, embracing the Church solely as a means of
maintenance, were little calculated by their lives or learning to extend
its consideration. Among other vile innovations of the celebrated
regent, Duke of Orleans, he set the most barefaced example of such
dishonourable preferment, and had increased in proportion the contempt
entertained for the hierarchy, even in its highest dignities,--since how
was it possible to respect the purple itself, after it had covered the
shoulders of the infamous Dubois?[20]
It might have been expected, and it was doubtless in a great measure the
case, that the respect paid to the characters and efficient utility of
the curates, upon whom, generally speaking, the charge of souls actually
devolved, might have made up for the want of consideration withheld from
the higher orders of the Church. There can be no doubt that this
respectable body of churchmen possessed great and deserved influence
over their parishioners; but then they were themselves languishing under
poverty and neglect, and, as human beings, cannot be supposed to have
viewed with indifference their superiors enjoying wealth and ease,
while in some cases they dishonoured the robe they wore, and in others
disowned the doctrines they were appointed to teach. Alive to feelings
so natural, and mingling with the middling classes, of which they formed
a most respectable portion, they must necessarily have become embued
with their principles and opinions, and a very obvious train of
reasoning would extend the consequences to their own condition. If the
state was encumbered rather than benefited by the privileges of the
higher order, was not the Church in the same condition? And if secular
rank was to be thrown open as a general object of ambition to the able
and the worthy, ought not the dignities of the Church to be rendered
more accessible to those, who, in humility and truth, discharged the
toilsome duties of its inferior offices, and who might therefore claim,
in due degree of succession, to attain higher preferment? There can be
no injustice in ascribing to this body sentiments, which might have been
no less just regarding the Church than advantageous to themselves; and,
accordingly, it was not long before this body of churchmen showed
distinctly, that their political views were the same with those of the
Third Estate, to which they solemnly united themselves, strengthening
thereby greatly the first revolutionary movements. But their conduct,
when they beheld the whole system of their religion aimed at, should
acquit the French clergy of the charge of self-interest, since no body,
considered as such, ever showed itself more willing to encounter
persecution, and submit to privation for conscience' sake.
[Sidenote: TIERS ETAT.]
While the Noblesse and the Church, considered as branches of the state,
were thus divided amongst themselves, and fallen into discredit with the
nation at large; while they were envied for their ancient immunities
without being any longer feared for their power; while they were
ridiculed at once and hated for the assumption of a superiority which
their personal qualities did not always vindicate, the lowest order, the
Commons, or, as they were at that time termed, the Third Estate, had
gradually acquired an extent and importance unknown to the feudal ages,
in which originated the ancient division of the estates of the kingdom.
The Third Estate no longer, as in the days of Henry IV., consisted
merely of the burghers and petty traders in the small towns of a feudal
kingdom, bred up almost as the vassals of the nobles and clergy, by
whose expenditure they acquired their living. Commerce and colonies had
introduced wealth, from sources to which the nobles and the churchmen
had no access. Not only a very great proportion of the disposable
capital was in the hands of the Third Estate, who thus formed the bulk
of the moneyed interest of France, but a large share of the landed
property was also in their possession.
There was, moreover, the influence which many plebeians possessed, as
creditors, over those needy nobles whom they had supplied with money,
while another portion of the same class rose into wealth and
consideration, at the expense of the more opulent patricians who were
ruining themselves. Paris had increased to a tremendous extent, and her
citizens had risen to a corresponding degree of consideration; and while
they profited by the luxury and dissipation, both of the court and
courtiers, had become rich in proportion as the government and
privileged classes grew poor. Those citizens who were thus enriched,
endeavoured, by bestowing on their families all the advantages of good
education, to counterbalance their inferiority of birth, and to qualify
their children to support their part in the scenes, to which their
altered fortunes, and the prospects of the country, appeared to call
them. In short, it is not too much to say, that the middling classes
acquired the advantages of wealth, consequence, and effective power, in
a proportion more than equal to that in which the nobility had lost
these attributes. Thus, the Third Estate seemed to increase in extent,
number, and strength, like a waxing inundation, threatening with every
increasing wave to overwhelm the ancient and decayed barriers of
exclusions and immunities, behind which the privileged ranks still
fortified themselves.
It was not in the nature of man, that the bold, the talented, the
ambitious, of a rank which felt its own power and consequence, should be
long contented to remain acquiescent in political regulations, which
depressed them in the state of society beneath men to whom they felt
themselves equal in all respects, excepting the factitious circumstances
of birth, or of Church orders. It was no less impossible that they
should long continue satisfied with the feudal dogmas, which exempted
the noblesse from taxes, because they served the nation with their
sword, and the clergy, because they propitiated Heaven in its favour
with their prayers. The maxim, however true in the feudal ages when it
originated, had become an extravagant legal fiction in the eighteenth
century, when all the world knew that both the noble soldier and the
priest were paid for the services they no longer rendered to the state,
while the _roturier_ had both valour and learning to fight his own
battles and perform his own devotions; and when, in fact, it was their
arms which combated, and their learning which enlightened the state,
rather than those of the privileged orders.[21]
Thus, a body, opulent and important, and carrying along with their
claims the sympathy of the whole people, were arranged in formidable
array against the privileges of the nobles and clergy, and bound to
further the approaching changes by the strongest of human ties,
emulation and self-interest.
The point was stated with unusual frankness by Emeri, a distinguished
member of the National Assembly, and a man of honour and talent. In the
course of a confidential communication with the celebrated Marquis de
Bouillé, the latter had avowed his principles of royalty, and his
detestation of the new constitution, to which he said he only rendered
obedience, because the King had sworn to maintain it. "You are right,
being yourself a nobleman," replied Emeri, with equal candour; "and had
I been born noble, such would have been my principles; but I, a plebeian
_Avocat_, must naturally desire a revolution, and cherish that
constitution which has called me, and those of my rank, out of a state
of degradation."[22]
Considering the situation, therefore, of the three separate bodies,
which, before the revolutionary impulse commenced, were the constituent
parts of the kingdom of France, it was evident, that in case of a
collision, the Nobles and Clergy might esteem themselves fortunate, if,
divided as they were among themselves, they could maintain an effectual
defence of the whole, or a portion of their privileges, while the Third
Estate, confident in their numbers and in their unanimity, were ready to
assail and carry by storm the whole system, over the least breach which
might be effected in the ancient constitution. Lally Tolendal gave a
comprehensive view of the state of parties in these words:--"The commons
desired to conquer, the nobles to preserve what they already possessed.
The clergy stood inactive, resolved to join the victorious party. If
there was a man in France who wished for concord and peace, it was the
king."[23]
FOOTNOTES:
[5] In consequence of the censure passed on the Peace by the House of
Commons, the Shelburne ministry was dissolved on the 26th of February,
1783.
[6] "During nearly twenty years, ever since the termination of the war
with France in 1763, the British flag had scarcely been any where
triumphant; while the navies of the House of Bourbon, throughout the
progress of the American contest, annually insulted us in the Channel,
intercepted our mercantile convoys, blocked our harbours, and threatened
our coasts."--WRAXALL, 1782.
[7] "The deepest wounds were inflicted on the empire during the
minorities of the sons and grandsons of Theodosius; and after those
incapable princes seemed to attain the age of manhood, they abandoned
the church to the bishops, the state to the eunuchs, and the provinces
to the barbarians. Europe is now divided into twelve powerful, though
unequal kingdoms, three respectable commonwealths, and a variety of
smaller, though independent states: the chances of royal and ministerial
talents are multiplied, at least with the number of its rulers; and a
Julian, or Semiramis, may reign in the north, while Arcadius and
Honorius again slumber on the thrones of the south."--GIBBON'S _Decline
and Fall_, vol. iii., p. 636.
"It may not be generally known that Louis the Sixteenth is a great
reader, and a great reader of English books. On perusing a passage in my
History, which seems to compare him to Arcadius or Honorius, he
expressed his resentment to the Prince of B*****, from whom the
intelligence was conveyed to me. I shall neither disclaim the allusion,
nor examine the likeness; but the situation of the late King of France
excludes all suspicion of flattery; and I am ready to declare, that the
concluding observations of my third volume were written before his
accession to the throne."--GIBBON'S _Memoirs_, vol. i., p. 126.
[8] On the occasion of the first audience of Mr. Adams, in June,
1785.--See WRAXALL'S _Own Time_, vol. i., p. 381.
[9] "The sum, after long debates, was fixed by the Emperor at ten
million guilders."--COXE'S _House of Austria_, vol. ii., p. 583.
[10] "Joseph the Second borrowed the language of philosophy, when he
wished to suppress the monks of Belgium, and to seize their revenues:
but there was seen on him a mask only of philosophy, covering the
hideous countenance of a greedy despot: and the people ran to arms.
Nothing better than another kind of despotism has been seen in the
revolutionary powers."--BRISSOT, _Letter to his Constituents_, 1794.
[11] "In 1780, there were 2024 convents in the Austrian dominions: These
were diminished to 700, and 36,000 monks and nuns to 2700. Joseph might
have applied to his own reforms the remark he afterwards made to General
D'Alten, on the reforms of the French:--'The new constitution of France
has not been very polite to the high clergy and nobility; and I still
doubt much if all these fine things can be carried into
execution!'"--COXE, vol. ii., p. 578.
[12] "The Pope reached Vienna in February, 1782. He was received with
every mark of exterior homage and veneration; but his exhortations and
remonstrances were treated with coldness and reserve, and he was so
narrowly watched, that the back-door of his apartments was blocked up to
prevent him from receiving private visitors. Chagrined with the
inflexibility of the Emperor, and mortified by an unmeaning ceremonial,
and an affected display of veneration for the Holy See, while it was
robbed of its richest possessions, and its most valuable privileges,
Pius quitted Vienna at the expiration of a month, equally disgusted and
humiliated, after having exhibited himself as a disappointed suppliant
at the foot of that throne which had been so often shaken by the thunder
of the Vatican."--_Ibid._, p. 632.
[13] The charter by which the privileges of the Flemings were settled,
had been promulgated on the _entry_ of Philip the Good into Brussels.
Hence this name.--See COXE.
[14] "Joseph expired at Vienna, in February, 1790, at the age of
forty-nine, extenuated by diseases, caused or accelerated in their
progress by his own irritability of temper, agitation of mind, and the
embarrassment of his affairs."--WRAXALL, vol. i., p. 277.
[15] See _Macbeth_, act iv., sc. i.
[16] The old French proverb bore,--
"Le roi d'Angleterre,
Est le roi d'Enfer."--S.
[17] See the Memoirs of the Marchioness De La Rochejaquelein, p. 48.
[18] Ségur's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 76.
[19] For a curious picture of the life of the French nobles of fifty
years since, see the first volume of Madame Genlis's Memoirs. Had there
been any more solid pursuits in society than the gay trifles she so
pleasantly describes, they could not have escaped so intelligent an
observer.--S.
[20] "A person of mean extraction, remarkable only for his vices, had
been employed in correcting the Regent's tasks, and, by a servile
complacence for all his inclinations, had acquired an ascendency over
his pupil, which he abused, for the purpose of corrupting his morals,
debasing his character, and ultimately rendering his administration an
object of universal indignation. Soon after his patron's accession to
power, Dubois was admitted into the council of state. He asked for the
Archbishopric of Cambray. Unaccustomed as he was to delicate scruples,
the Regent was startled at the idea of encountering the scandal to which
such a prostitution of honours must expose him. He, however, ultimately
yielded. This man, one of the most profligate that ever existed, was
actually married at the time he received Catholic orders, but he
suborned the witnesses, and contrived to have the parish registers,
which might have deposed against him, destroyed."--See LACRETELLE, tom.
i., p. 348.
[21] Thiers, Histoire de la Rév. Franç., tom. i., p. 34.
[22] Mémoires de Bouillé, p. 289.
[23] Plaidoyer pour Louis Seize, 1793.
CHAPTER II.
_State of France continued--State of Public Opinion--Men of
Letters encouraged by the Great--Disadvantages attending this
Patronage--Licentious tendency of the French Literature--Their
Irreligious and Infidel Opinions--Free Opinions on Politics
permitted to be expressed in an abstract and speculative, but
not in a practical Form--Disadvantages arising from the
Suppression of Free Discussion--Anglomania--Share of France in
the American War--Disposition of the Troops who returned from
America._
[Sidenote: STATE OF PUBLIC OPINION.]
We have viewed France as it stood in its grand political divisions
previous to the Revolution, and we have seen that there existed strong
motives for change, and that a great force was prepared to level
institutions which were crumbling to pieces of themselves. It is now
necessary to review the state of the popular mind, and consider upon
what principles, and to what extent, the approaching changes were likely
to operate, and at what point they might be expected to stop. Here, as
with respect to the ranks of society, a tacit but almost total change
had been operated in the feelings and sentiments of the public,
principally occasioned, doubtless, by the great ascendency acquired by
literature--that tree of knowledge of good and evil, which, amidst the
richest and most wholesome fruits, bears others, fair in show, and sweet
to the taste, but having the properties of the most deadly poison.
The French, the most ingenious people in Europe, and the most
susceptible of those pleasures which arise from conversation and
literary discussion, had early called in the assistance of men of genius
to enhance their relish for society. The nobles, without renouncing
their aristocratic superiority,--which, on the contrary, was rendered
more striking by the contrast,--permitted literary talents to be a
passport into their saloons. The wealthy financier, and opulent
merchant, emulated the nobility in this as in other articles of taste
and splendour; and their coteries, as well as those of the aristocracy,
were open to men of letters, who were in many cases contented to enjoy
luxury at the expense of independence. Assuredly this species of
patronage, while it often flowed from the vanity or egotism of the
patrons, was not much calculated to enhance the character of those who
were protected. Professors of literature, thus mingling in the society
of the noble and the wealthy upon sufferance, held a rank scarcely
higher than that of musicians or actors, from amongst whom individuals
have often, by their talents and character, become members of the best
society, while the castes, to which such individuals belong, remain in
general exposed to the most humiliating contempt. The lady of quality,
who smiled on the man of letters, and the man of rank, who admitted him
to his intimacy, still retained their consciousness that he was not like
themselves, formed out of the "porcelain clay of the earth;" and even
while receiving their bounties, or participating in their pleasures, the
favourite _savant_ must often have been disturbed by the reflection,
that he was only considered as a creature of sufferance, whom the
caprice of fashion, or a sudden reaction of the ancient etiquette, might
fling out of the society where he was at present tolerated. Under this
disheartening, and even degrading inferiority, the man of letters might
be tempted invidiously to compare the luxurious style of living at which
he sat a permitted guest, with his own paltry hired apartment, and
scanty and uncertain chance of support. And even those of a nobler mood,
when they had conceded to their benefactors all the gratitude they could
justly demand, must sometimes have regretted their own situation,
"Condemn'd as needy supplicants to wait,
While ladies interpose and slaves debate."[24]
It followed, that many of the men of letters, thus protected, became
enemies of the persons, as well as the rank of their patrons; as, for
example, no one in the course of the Revolution expressed greater
hatred to the nobility than Champfort,[25] the favourite and favoured
secretary of the Prince of Condé. Occasions, too, must frequently have
occurred, in which the protected person was almost inevitably forced
upon comparing his own natural and acquired talents with those of his
aristocratic patron, and the result could not be other than a dislike of
the institutions which placed him so far behind persons whom, but for
those prescribed limits, he must have passed in the career of honour and
distinction.
Hence arose that frequent and close inquiry into the origin of ranks,
that general system of impugning the existing regulations, and appealing
to the original states of society in vindication of the original
equality of mankind--hence those ingenious arguments, and eloquent
tirades in favour of primitive and even savage independence, which the
patricians of the day read and applauded with such a smile of mixed
applause and pity, as they would have given to the reveries of a crazed
poet, while the inferior ranks, participating the feelings under which
they were written, caught the ardour of the eloquent authors, and rose
from the perusal with minds prepared to act, whenever action should be
necessary to realize a vision so flattering.
It might have been expected that those belonging to the privileged
classes at least, would have caught the alarm, from hearing doctrines so
fatal to their own interests avowed so boldly, and maintained with so
much talent. It might have been thought that they would have started,
when Raynal proclaimed to the nations of the earth that they could only
be free and happy when they had overthrown every throne and every
altar;[26] but no such alarm was taken. Men of rank considered liberal
principles as the fashion of the day, and embraced them as the readiest
mode of showing that they were above vulgar prejudices. In short, they
adopted political opinions as they put on round hats and jockey-coats,
merely because they were current in good society. They assumed the tone
of philosophers as they would have done that of Arcadian shepherds at a
masquerade, but without any more thoughts of sacrificing their own rank
and immunities in the one case, than of actually driving their flocks
a-field in the other. Count Ségur gives a most interesting account of
the opinions of the young French nobles, in which he himself partook at
this eventful period.
"Impeded in this light career by the antiquated pride of the old
court, the irksome etiquette of the old order of things, the
severity of the old clergy, the aversion of our parents to our
new fashions and our costumes, which were favourable to the
principles of equality, we felt disposed to adopt with
enthusiasm the philosophical doctrines professed by literary
men, remarkable for their boldness and their wit. Voltaire
seduced our imagination; Rousseau touched our hearts; we felt a
secret pleasure in seeing that their attacks were directed
against an old fabric, which presented to us a Gothic and
ridiculous appearance. We were thus pleased at this petty war,
although it was undermining our own ranks and privileges, and
the remains of our ancient power; but we felt not these attacks
personally; we merely witnessed them. It was as yet but a war of
words and paper, which did not appear to us to threaten the
superiority of existence we enjoyed, consolidated as we thought
it, by a possession of many centuries. * * * We were pleased
with the courage of liberty, whatever language it assumed, and
with the convenience of equality. There is a satisfaction in
descending from a high rank, as long as the resumption of it is
thought to be free and unobstructed; and regardless, therefore,
of consequences, we enjoyed our patrician advantages, together
with the sweets of a plebeian philosophy."[27]
We anxiously desire not to be mistaken. It is not the purport of these
remarks to blame the French aristocracy for extending their patronage to
learning and to genius. The purpose was honourable to themselves, and
fraught with high advantages to the progress of society. The favour of
the Great supplied the want of public encouragement, and fostered talent
which otherwise might never have produced its important and
inappreciable fruits. But it had been better for France, her nobility,
and her literature, had the patronage been extended in some manner which
did not intimately associate the two classes of men. The want of
independence of circumstances is a severe if not an absolute check to
independence of spirit; and thus it often happened, that, to gratify the
passions of their protectors, or to advance their interest, the men of
letters were involved in the worst and most scandalous labyrinths of
_tracasserie_, slander, and malignity; that they were divided into
desperate factions against each other, and reduced to practise all those
arts of dissimulation, flattery, and intrigue, which are the greatest
shame of the literary profession.
[Sidenote: FRENCH LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY.]
As the eighteenth century advanced, the men of literature rose in
importance, and, aware of their own increasing power in a society which
was dependent on them for intellectual gratification, they supported
each other in their claims to what began to be considered the dignity of
a man of letters. This was soon carried into extremes, and assumed, even
in the halls of their protectors, a fanatical violence of opinion, and a
dogmatical mode of expression, which made the veteran Fontenelle declare
himself terrified for the frightful degree of _certainty_ that folks met
with every where in society. The truth is, that men of letters, being
usually men of mere theory, have no opportunity of measuring the
opinions which they have adopted upon hypothetical reasoning, by the
standard of practical experiment. They feel their mental superiority to
those whom they live with, and become habitual believers in, and
assertors of, their own infallibility. If moderation, command of
passions and of temper, be part of philosophy, we seldom find less
philosophy actually displayed, than by a philosopher in defence of a
favourite theory. Nor have we found that churchmen are so desirous of
forming proselytes, or soldiers of extending conquests, as philosophers
in making converts to their own opinions.
In France they had discovered the command which they had acquired over
the public mind, and united as they were--and more especially the
Encyclopedists,[28]--they augmented and secured that impression, by
never permitting the doctrines which they wished to propagate to die
away upon the public ear. For this purpose, they took care these should
be echoed, like thunder amongst hills, from a hundred different points,
presented in a hundred new lights, illustrated by a hundred various
methods, until the public could no longer help receiving that as
undeniable which they heard from so many different quarters. They could
also direct every weapon of satirical hostility against those who
ventured to combat their doctrines, and as their wrath was neither
easily endured nor pacified, they drove from the field most of those
authors, who, in opposition to their opinions, might have exerted
themselves as champions of the Church and Monarchy.
We have already hinted at the disadvantages which literature
experiences, when it is under the protection of private individuals of
opulence, rather than of the public. But in yet another important
respect, the air of _salons_, _ruelles_ and _boudoirs_ is fatal, in many
cases, to the masculine spirit of philosophical self-denial which gives
dignity to literary society. They who make part of the gay society of a
corrupted metropolis, must lend their countenance to follies and vices,
if they do not themselves practise them; and hence, perhaps, French
literature, more than any other in Europe, has been liable to the
reproach of lending its powerful arm to undermine whatever was serious
in morals, or hitherto considered as fixed in principle. Some of their
greatest authors, even Montesquieu himself, have varied their deep
reasonings on the origin of government, and the most profound problems
of philosophy, with licentious tales tending to inflame the passions.
Hence, partaking of the license of its professors, the degraded
literature of modern times called in to its alliance that immorality,
which not only Christian, but even heathen philosophy had considered as
the greatest obstacle to a pure, wise, and happy state of existence. The
licentiousness which walked abroad in such disgusting and undisguised
nakedness, was a part of the unhappy bequest left by the Regent Duke of
Orleans to the country which he governed. The decorum of the court
during the times of Louis XIV. had prevented such excesses; if there was
enough of vice, it was at least decently veiled. But the conduct of
Orleans and his minions was marked with open infamy, deep enough to
have called down, in the age of miracles, an immediate judgment from
Heaven; and crimes which the worst of the Roman emperors would have at
least hidden in his solitary Isle of Caprea, were acted as publicly as
if men had had no eyes, or God no thunderbolts.[29]
From this filthy Cocytus flowed those streams of impurity which
disgraced France during the reign of Louis XV., and which,
notwithstanding the example of a prince who was himself a model of
domestic virtue, continued in that of Louis XVI. to infect society,
morals, and, above all, literature. We do not here allude merely to
those lighter pieces of indecency in which humour and fancy outrun the
bounds of delicacy. These are to be found in the literature of most
nations, and are generally in the hands of mere libertines and men of
pleasure, so well acquainted with the practice of vice, that the theory
cannot make them worse than they are. But there was a strain of
voluptuous and seducing immorality which pervaded not only the lighter
and gayer compositions of the French, but tinged the writings of those
who called the world to admire them as poets of the highest mood, or to
listen as to philosophers of the most lofty pretensions. Voltaire,
Rousseau, Diderot, Montesquieu,--names which France must always esteem
her highest honour,--were so guilty in this particular, that the young
and virtuous must either altogether abstain from the works which are
every where the topic of ordinary discussion and admiration, or must
peruse much that is hurtful to delicacy, and dangerous to morals, in the
formation of their future character. The latter alternative was
universally adopted; for the curious will read as the thirsty will
drink, though the cup and page be polluted.
So far had an indifference to delicacy influenced the society of France,
and so widely spread was this habitual impurity of language and ideas,
especially among those who pretended to philosophy, that Madame Roland,
a woman admirable for courage and talents, and not, so far as appears,
vicious in her private morals, not only mentions the profligate novels
of Louvet as replete with the graces of imagination, the salt of
criticism, and the tone of philosophy, but affords the public, in her
own person, details with which a courtezan of the higher class should be
unwilling to season her private conversation.[30]
This license, with the corruption of morals, of which it is both the
sign and the cause, leads directly to feelings the most inconsistent
with manly and virtuous patriotism. Voluptuousness, and its
consequences, render the libertine incapable of relish for what is
simply and abstractedly beautiful or sublime, whether in literature or
in the arts, and destroy the taste, while they degrade and blunt the
understanding. But, above all, such libertinism leads to the exclusive
pursuit of selfish gratification, for egotism is its foundation and its
essence. Egotism is necessarily the very reverse of patriotism, since
the one principle is founded exclusively upon the individual's pursuit
of his own peculiar objects of pleasure or advantage, while the other
demands a sacrifice, not only of these individual pursuits, but of
fortune and life itself, to the cause of the public weal. Patriotism
has, accordingly, always been found to flourish in that state of society
which is most favourable to the stern and manly virtues of self-denial,
temperance, chastity, contempt of luxury, patient exertion, and elevated
contemplation; and the public spirit of a nation has invariably borne a
just proportion to its private morals.
[Sidenote: INFIDELITY.]
Religion cannot exist where immorality generally prevails, any more than
a light can burn where the air is corrupted; and, accordingly,
infidelity was so general in France, as to predominate in almost every
rank of society. The errors of the Church of Rome, as we have already
noticed, connected as they are with her ambitious attempts towards
dominion over men, in their temporal as well as spiritual capacity, had
long become the argument of the philosopher, and the jest of the
satirist; but in exploding these pretensions, and holding them up to
ridicule, the philosophers of the age involved with them the general
doctrines of Christianity itself; nay, some went so far as not only to
deny inspiration, but to extinguish, by their sophistry, the lights of
natural religion, implanted in our bosoms as a part of our birth-right.
Like the disorderly rabble at the time of the Reformation, (but with
infinitely deeper guilt,) they not only pulled down the symbols of
idolatry, which ignorance or priestcraft had introduced into the
Christian Church, but sacrilegiously defaced and desecrated the altar
itself. This work the philosophers, as they termed themselves, carried
on with such an unlimited and eager zeal, as plainly to show that
infidelity, as well as divinity, hath its fanaticism. An envenomed fury
against religion and all its doctrines; a promptitude to avail
themselves of every circumstance by which Christianity could be
misrepresented; an ingenuity in mixing up their opinions in works, which
seemed the least fitting to involve such discussions; above all, a
pertinacity in slandering, ridiculing, and vilifying all who ventured to
oppose their principles, distinguished the correspondents in this
celebrated conspiracy against a religion, which, however it may be
defaced by human inventions, breathes only that peace on earth, and good
will to the children of men, which was proclaimed by Heaven at its
divine origin.
If these prejudiced and envenomed opponents had possessed half the
desire of truth, or half the benevolence towards mankind, which were
eternally on their lips, they would have formed the true estimate of
the spirit of Christianity, not from the use which had been made of the
mere name by ambitious priests or enthusiastic fools, but by its vital
effects upon mankind at large. They would have seen, that under its
influence a thousand brutal and sanguinary superstitions had died away;
that polygamy had been abolished, and with polygamy all the obstacles
which it offers to domestic happiness, as well as to the due education
of youth, and the natural and gradual civilisation of society. They must
then have owned, that slavery, which they regarded, or affected to
regard, with such horror, had first been gradually ameliorated, and
finally abolished by the influence of the Christian doctrines--that
there was no one virtue teaching to elevate mankind or benefit society,
which was not enjoined by the precepts they endeavoured to misrepresent
and weaken--no one vice by which humanity is degraded and society
endangered, upon which Christianity hath not imposed a solemn anathema.
They might also, in their capacity of philosophers, have considered the
peculiar aptitude of the Christian religion, not only to all ranks and
conditions of mankind, but to all climates and to all stages of society.
Nor ought it to have escaped them, that the system contains within
itself a key to those difficulties, doubts, and mysteries, by which the
human mind is agitated, so soon as it is raised beyond the mere objects
which interest the senses. Milton has made the maze of metaphysics, and
the bewildering state of mind which they engender, a part of the
employment, and perhaps of the punishment, of the lower regions.[31]
Christianity alone offers a clew to this labyrinth, a solution to these
melancholy and discouraging doubts; and however its doctrines may be
hard to unaided flesh and blood, yet explaining as they do the system of
the universe, which without them is so incomprehensible, and through
their practical influence rendering men in all ages more worthy to act
their part in the general plan, it seems wonderful how those, whose
professed pursuit was wisdom, should have looked on religion not alone
with that indifference, which was the only feeling evinced by the
heathen philosophers towards the gross mythology of their time, but with
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. One would rather have
expected, that, after such a review, men professing the real spirit
which searches after truth and wisdom, if unhappily they were still
unable to persuade themselves that a religion so worthy of the Deity (if
such an expression may be used) had emanated directly from revelation,
might have had the modesty to lay their finger on their lip and distrust
their own judgment, instead of disturbing the faith of others; or, if
confirmed in their incredulity, might have taken the leisure to compute
at least what was to be gained by rooting up a tree which bore such
goodly fruits, without having the means of replacing it by aught which
could produce the same advantage to the commonwealth.
Unhappily blinded by self-conceit, heated with the ardour of
controversy, gratifying their literary pride by becoming members of a
league, in which kings and princes were included, and procuring
followers by flattering the vanity of some, and stimulating the cupidity
of others, the men of the most distinguished parts in France became
allied in a sort of anti-crusade against Christianity, and indeed
against religious principles of every kind. How they succeeded is too
universally known; and when it is considered that these men of letters,
who ended by degrading the morals, and destroying the religion of so
many of the citizens of France, had been first called into public
estimation by the patronage of the higher orders, it is impossible not
to think of the Israelitish champion, who, brought into the house of
Dagon to make sport for the festive assembly, ended by pulling it down
upon the heads of the guests--and upon his own.
We do not tax the whole nation of France with being infirm in religious
faith, and relaxed in morals; still less do we aver that the Revolution,
which broke forth in that country, owed its rise exclusively to the
license and infidelity, which were but too current there. The necessity
of a great change in the principles of the ancient French monarchy, had
its source in the usurpations of preceding kings over the liberties of
the subject, and the opportunity for effecting this change was afforded
by the weakness and pecuniary distresses of the present government.
These would have existed had the French court, and her higher orders,
retained the simple and virtuous manners of Sparta, united with the
strong and pure faith of primitive Christians. The difference lay in
this, that a simple, virtuous, and religious people would have rested
content with such changes and alterations in the constitution of their
government as might remove the evils of which they had just and pressing
reason to complain. They would have endeavoured to redress obvious and
practical errors in the body politic, without being led into extremes
either by the love of realising visionary theories, the vanity of
enforcing their own particular philosophical or political doctrines, or
the selfish arguments of demagogues, who, in the prospect of bettering
their own situation by wealth, or obtaining scope for their ambition,
aspired, in the words of the dramatic poet, to throw the elements of
society into confusion, and thus
"disturb the peace of all the world,
To rule it when 'twas wildest."
It was to such men as these last that Heaven, in punishment of the sins
of France and of Europe, and perhaps to teach mankind a dreadful lesson,
abandoned the management of the French Revolution, the original
movements of which, so far as they went to secure to the people the
restoration of their natural liberty, and the abolition of the
usurpations of the crown, had become not only desirable through the
change of times, and by the influence of public opinion, but
peremptorily necessary and inevitable.
[Sidenote: FEUDAL SYSTEM.]
The feudal system of France, like that of the rest of Europe, had, in
its original composition, all the germs of national freedom. The great
peers, in whose hands the common defence was reposed, acknowledged the
king's power as _suzerain_, obeyed his commands as their military
leader, and attended his courts as their supreme judge; but recognised
no despotic authority in the crown, and were prompt to defend the
slightest encroachment upon their own rights. If they themselves were
not equally tender of the rights and liberties of their own vassals,
their acts of encroachment flowed not from the feudal system, but from
its imperfections. The tendency and spirit of these singular
institutions, were to preserve to each individual his just and natural
rights; but a system, almost purely military, was liable to be
frequently abused by the most formidable soldier, and was, besides,
otherwise ill fitted to preserve rights which were purely civil. It is
not necessary to trace the progress from the days of Louis XIII.
downwards, by which ambitious monarchs, seconded by able and subtle
ministers, contrived to emancipate themselves from the restraints of
their powerful vassals, or by which the descendants of these high
feudatories, who had been the controllers of the prince so soon as he
outstepped the bounds of legitimate authority, were now ranked around
the throne in the capacity of mere courtiers or satellites, who derived
their lustre solely from the favour of royalty. This unhappy and
shortsighted policy had, however, accomplished its end, and the crown
had concentrated within its prerogative almost the entire liberties of
the French nation; and now, like an overgorged animal of prey, had
reason to repent its fatal voracity, while it lay almost helpless,
exposed to the assaults of those whom it had despoiled.
We have already observed, that for a considerable time the Frenchman's
love of his country had been transferred to the crown; that his national
delight in martial glory fixed his attachment upon the monarch as the
leader of his armies; and that this feeling had supported the devotion
of the nation to Louis XIV., not only during his victories, but even
amid his reverses. But the succeeding reign had less to impose on the
imagination. The erection of a palace obtains for the nation the praise
of magnificence, and the celebration of public and splendid festivals
gives the people at least the pleasure of a holiday; the pensioning
artists and men of letters, again, is honourable to the country which
fosters the arts; but the court of Louis XV., undiminished in expense,
was also selfish in its expenditure. The enriching of needy favourites,
their relations, and their parasites, had none of the dazzling
munificence of the Grand Monarque; and while the taxes became daily more
oppressive on the subjects, the mode in which the revenue was employed
not only became less honourable to the court, and less creditable to the
country, but lost the dazzle and show which gives the lower orders
pleasure as the beholders of a pageant.
The consolation which the imagination of the French had found in the
military honour of their nation, seemed also about to fail them. The
bravery of the troops remained the same, but the genius of the
commanders, and the fortune of the monarch under whose auspices they
fought, had in a great measure abandoned them, and the destiny of France
seemed to be on the wane. The victory of Fontenoy[32] was all that was
to be placed in opposition to the numerous disasters of the Seven Years'
War, in which France was almost everywhere else defeated; and it was
little wonder, that in a reign attended with so many subjects of
mortification, the enthusiastic devotion of the people to the sovereign
should begin to give way. The king had engrossed so much power in his
own person, that he had become as it were personally responsible for
every miscarriage and defeat which the country underwent. Such is the
risk incurred by absolute monarchs, who are exposed to all the popular
obloquy for maladministration, from which, in limited governments, kings
are in a great measure screened by the intervention of the other powers
of the constitution, or by the responsibility of ministers for the
measures which they advise; while he that has ascended to the actual
peak and extreme summit of power, has no barrier left to secure him from
the tempest.
Another and most powerful cause fanned the rising discontent, with which
the French of the eighteenth century began to regard the government
under which they lived. Like men awakened from a flattering dream, they
compared their own condition with that of the subjects of free states,
and perceived that they had either never enjoyed, or had been gradually
robbed of, the chief part of the most valuable privileges and immunities
to which man may claim a natural right. They had no national
representation of any kind, and but for the slender barrier offered by
the courts of justice, or parliaments, as they were called, were subject
to unlimited exactions on the sole authority of the sovereign. The
property of the nation was therefore at the disposal of the crown, which
might increase taxes to any amount, and cause them to be levied by
force, if force was necessary. The personal freedom of the citizen was
equally exposed to aggressions by _lettres de cachet_.[33] The French
people, in short, had neither, in the strict sense, liberty nor
property, and if they did not suffer all the inconveniences in practice
which so evil a government announces, it was because public opinion, the
softened temper of the age, and the good disposition of the kings
themselves, did not permit the scenes of cruelty and despotism to be
revived in the eighteenth century, which Louis XI. had practised three
ages before.
These abuses, and others arising out of the disproportioned privileges
of the noblesse and the clergy, who were exempted from contributing to
the necessities of the state; the unequal mode of levying the taxes, and
other great errors of the constitution; above all, the total absorption
of every right and authority in the person of the sovereign,--these were
too gross in their nature, and too destructive in their consequences, to
have escaped deep thought on the part of reflecting persons, and hatred
and dislike from those who suffered more or less under the practical
evils.
[Sidenote: SUPPRESSION OF FREE DISCUSSION.]
They had not, in particular, eluded the observation and censure of the
acute reasoners and deep thinkers, who had already become the guiding
spirits of the age; but the despotism under which they lived prevented
those speculations from assuming a practical and useful character. In a
free country, the wise and the learned are not only permitted, but
invited, to examine the institutions under which they live, to defend
them against the suggestions of rash innovators, or to propose such
alterations as the lapse of time and change of manners may render
necessary. Their disquisitions are, therefore, usefully and beneficially
directed to the repair of the existing government, not to its
demolition, and if they propose alteration in parts, it is only for the
purpose of securing the rest of the fabric. But in France, no
opportunity was permitted of free discussion on politics, any more than
on matters of religion.
An essay upon the French monarchy, showing by what means the existing
institutions might have been brought more into union with the wishes and
wants of the people, must have procured for its author a place in the
Bastile; and yet subsequent events have shown, that a system, which
might have introduced prudently and gradually into the decayed frame of
the French government the spirit of liberty, which was originally
inherent in every feudal monarchy, would have been the most valuable
present which political wisdom could have rendered to the country. The
bonds which pressed so heavily on the subject might thus have been
gradually slackened, and at length totally removed, without the perilous
expedient of casting them all loose at once. But the philosophers, who
had certainly talents sufficient for the purpose, were not permitted to
apply to the state of the French government the original principles on
which it was founded, or to trace the manner in which usurpations and
abuses had taken place, and propose a mode by which, without varying its
form, those encroachments might be restrained, and those abuses
corrected. An author was indeed at liberty to speculate at any length
upon general doctrines of government; he might imagine to himself a
Utopia or Atalantis, and argue upon abstract ideas of the rights in
which government originates; but on no account was he permitted to
render any of his lucubrations practically useful, by adapting them to
the municipal regulations of France. The political sage was placed, with
regard to his country, in the condition of a physician prescribing for
the favourite Sultana of some jealous despot, whom he is required to
cure without seeing his patient, and without obtaining any accurate
knowledge of her malady, its symptoms, and its progress. In this manner
the theory of government was kept studiously separated from the
practice. The political philosopher might, if he pleased, speculate upon
the former, but he was prohibited, under severe personal penalties, to
illustrate the subject by any allusion to the latter. Thus, the eloquent
and profound work of Montesquieu professed, indeed, to explain the
general rights of the people, and the principles upon which government
itself rested, but his pages show no mode by which these could be
resorted to for the reformation of the constitution of his country. He
laid before the patient a medical treatise on disease in general,
instead of a special prescription; applying to his peculiar habits and
distemper.
In consequence of these unhappy restrictions upon open and manly
political discussion, the French government, in its actual state, was
never represented as capable of either improvement or regeneration; and
while general and abstract doctrines of original freedom were every
where the subject of eulogy, it was never considered for a moment in
what manner these new and more liberal principles could be applied to
the improvement of the existing system. The natural conclusion must have
been, that the monarchical government in France was either perfection in
itself, and consequently stood in need of no reformation, or that it was
so utterly inconsistent with the liberties of the people as to be
susceptible of none. No one was hardy enough to claim for it the former
character, and, least of all, those who presided in its councils, and
seemed to acknowledge the imperfection of the system, by prohibiting all
discussion on the subject. It seemed, therefore, to follow, as no unfair
inference, that to obtain the advantages which the new elementary
doctrines held forth, and which were so desirable and so much desired, a
total abolition of the existing government to its very foundation, was
an indispensable preliminary; and there is little doubt that this
opinion prevailed so generally at the time of the Revolution, as to
prevent any firm or resolute stand being made in defence even of such of
the actual institutions of France, as might have been amalgamated with
the proposed reform.
[Sidenote: ANGLOMANIA.]
While all practical discussion of the constitution of France, as a
subject either above or beneath philosophical inquiry, was thus
cautiously omitted in those works which pretended to treat of civil
rights, that of England, with its counterpoises and checks, its liberal
principle of equality of rights, the security which it affords for
personal liberty and individual property, and the free opportunities of
discussion upon every topic, became naturally the subject of eulogy
amongst those who were awakening their countrymen to a sense of the
benefits of national freedom. The time was past, when, as in the days of
Louis XIV., the French regarded the institutions of the English with
contempt, as fit only for merchants and shopkeepers, but unworthy of a
nation of warriors, whose pride was in their subordination to their
nobles, as that of the nobles consisted in obedience to their king. That
prejudice had long passed away, and Frenchmen now admired, not without
envy, the noble system of masculine freedom which had been consolidated
by the successive efforts of so many patriots in so many ages. A sudden
revulsion seemed to take place in their general feelings towards their
neighbours, and France, who had so long dictated to all Europe in
matters of fashion, seemed now herself disposed to borrow the more
simple forms and fashions of her ancient rival. The spirit of imitating
the English, was carried even to the verge of absurdity.[34] Not only
did Frenchmen of quality adopt the round hat and frock coat, which set
etiquette at defiance--not only had they English carriages, dogs, and
horses, but even English butlers were hired, that the wine, which was
the growth of France, might be placed on the table with the grace
peculiar to England.[35] These were, indeed, the mere ebullitions of
fashion carried to excess, but, like the foam on the crest of the
billow, they argued the depth and strength of the wave beneath, and,
insignificant in themselves, were formidable as evincing the contempt
with which the French now regarded all those forms and usages, which had
hitherto been thought peculiar to their own country. This principle of
imitation rose to such extravagance, that it was happily termed the
Anglomania.[36]
While the young French gallants were emulously employed in this mimicry
of the English fashions, relinquishing the external signs of rank which
always produced some effect on the vulgar, men of thought and reflection
were engaged in analyzing those principles of the British government, on
which the national character has been formed, and which have afforded
her the means of rising from so many reverses, and maintaining a sway
among the kingdoms of Europe, so disproportioned to her population and
extent.
[Sidenote: AMERICAN WAR.]
To complete the conquest of English opinions, even in France herself,
over those of French origin, came the consequences of the American War.
Those true Frenchmen who disdained to borrow the sentiments of political
freedom from England, might now derive them from a country with whom
France could have no rivalry, but in whom, on the contrary, she
recognised the enemy of the island, in policy or prejudice termed her
own natural foe. The deep sympathy manifested by the French in the
success of the American insurgents, though diametrically opposite to the
interests of their government, or perhaps of the nation at large, was
compounded of too many ingredients influencing all ranks, to be overcome
or silenced by cold considerations of political prudence. The nobility,
always eager of martial distinction, were in general desirous of war,
and most of them, the pupils of the celebrated _Encyclopédie_, were
doubly delighted to lend their swords to the cause of freedom. The
statesmen imagined that they saw, in the success of the American
insurgents, the total downfall of the English empire, or at least a far
descent from that pinnacle of dignity which she had attained at the
Peace of 1763, and they eagerly urged Louis XVI. to profit by the
opportunity, hitherto sought in vain, of humbling a rival so formidable.
In the courtly circles, and particularly in that which surrounded Marie
Antoinette, the American deputation had the address or good fortune to
become popular, by mingling in them with manners and sentiments entirely
opposite to those of courts and courtiers, and exhibiting, amid the
extremity of refinement, in dress, speech, and manners, a republican
simplicity, rendered interesting both by the contrast, and by the
talents which Benjamin Franklin and Silas Deane evinced, not only in the
business of diplomacy, but in the intercourse of society.[37] Impelled
by these and other combining causes, a despotic government, whose
subjects were already thoroughly imbued with opinions hostile to its
constitution in Church and State, with a discontented people, and a
revenue wellnigh bankrupt, was thrust, as if by fatality, into a contest
conducted upon principles most adverse to its own existence.
The king, almost alone, whether dreading the expense of a ruinous war,
whether alarmed already at the progress of democratic principles, or
whether desirous of observing good faith with England, considered that
there ought to be a stronger motive for war, than barely the opportunity
of waging it with success; the king, therefore, almost alone, opposed
this great political error. It was not the only occasion in which, wiser
than his counsellors, he nevertheless yielded up to their urgency
opinions founded in unbiassed morality, and unpretending common sense. A
good judgment, and a sound moral sense, were the principal attributes of
this excellent prince, and happy it would have been had they been
mingled with more confidence in himself, and a deeper distrust of
others.
Other counsels prevailed over the private opinion of Louis--the war was
commenced--successfully carried on, and victoriously concluded. We have
seen that the French auxiliaries brought with them to America minds apt
to receive, if not already[38] imbued with, those principles of freedom
for which the colonies had taken up arms against the mother country, and
it is not to be wondered if they returned to France strongly
prepossessed in favour of a cause, for which they had encountered
danger, and in which they had reaped honour.[39]
The inferior officers of the French auxiliary army, chiefly men of
birth, agreeably to the existing rules of the French service, belonged,
most of them, to the class of country nobles, who, from causes, already
noticed, were far from being satisfied with the system which rendered
their rise difficult, in the only profession which their prejudices, and
those of France, permitted them to assume. The proportion of plebeians
who had intruded themselves, by connivance and indirect means, into the
military ranks, looked with eagerness to some change which should give a
free and open career to their courage and their ambition, and were
proportionally discontented with regulations which were recently
adopted, calculated to render their rise in the army more difficult than
before.[40] In these sentiments were united the whole of the
non-commissioned officers, and the ranks of the common soldiery, all of
whom, confiding in their own courage and fortune, now became indignant
at those barriers which closed against them the road to military
advancement, and to superior command. The officers of superior rank, who
derived their descent from the high noblesse, were chiefly young men of
ambitious enterprise and warm imaginations, whom not only a love of
honour, but an enthusiastic feeling of devotion to the new philosophy,
and the political principles which it inculcated, had called to arms.
Amongst these were Rochambeau, La Fayette, the Lameths, Chastellux,
Ségur, and others of exalted rank, but of no less exalted feelings for
the popular cause. They readily forgot, in the full current of their
enthusiasm, that their own rank in society was endangered by the
progress of popular opinions; or, if they at all remembered that their
interest was thus implicated, it was with the generous disinterestedness
of youth, prompt to sacrifice to the public advantage whatever of
selfish immunities was attached to their own condition.
The return of the French army from America thus brought a strong body of
auxiliaries to the popular and now prevalent opinions; and the French
love of military glory, which had so long been the safeguard of the
throne, became intimately identified with that distinguished portion of
the army which had been so lately and so successfully engaged in
defending the claims of the people against the rights of an established
government.[41] Their laurels were green and newly gathered, while those
which had been obtained in the cause of monarchy were of an ancient
date, and tarnished by the reverses of the Seven Years' War. The
reception of the returned soldiery and their leaders was proportionally
enthusiastic; and it became soon evident, that when the eventful
struggle betwixt the existing monarchy and its adversaries should
commence, the latter were to have the support in sentiment, and probably
in action, of that distinguished part of the army, which had of late
maintained and recovered the military character of France. It was,
accordingly, from its ranks that the Revolution derived many of its most
formidable champions, and it was their example which detached a great
proportion of the French soldiers from their natural allegiance to the
sovereign, which had been for so many ages expressed in their war-cry of
"Vive le Roi," and which was revived, though with an altered object, in
that of "Vive l'Empereur."
There remains but to notice the other proximate cause of the Revolution,
but which is so intimately connected with its rise and progress, that we
cannot disjoin it from our brief review of the revolutionary movements
to which it gave the first decisive impulse.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes.
[25] See his Maximes et Pensées, &c. &c. He died by his own hand in
1794.
[26] Revolution of America, 1781, pp. 44, 58. When, however, Raynal
beheld the abuse of liberty in the progress of the French Revolution, he
attempted to retrieve his errors. In May, 1791, he addressed to the
Constituent Assembly a most eloquent letter, in which he says, "I am, I
own to you, deeply afflicted at the crimes which plunge this empire into
mourning. It is true that I am to look back with horror at myself for
being one of those who, by feeling a noble indignation against ambitious
power, may have furnished arms to licentiousness." Raynal was deprived
of all his property during the Revolution, and died in poverty in 1796.
[27] Ségur's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 39.
[28] Diderot, &c., the conductors of the celebrated Encyclopédie.
[29] Lacretelle Hist. de France, tom. i., p. 105; Mémoires de Mad. Du
Barry, tom. ii., p. 3.
[30] The particulars we allude to, though suppressed in the second
edition of Madame Roland's Mémoires, are restored in the "Collection des
Mémoires rélatifs à la Révolution Française," published at Paris, [56
vols. 8vo.] This is fair play; for if the details be disgusting, the
light which they cast upon the character of the author is too valuable
to be lost.--S.
[31]
"Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reason'd high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost."
PAR. LOST, b. ii.
[32] The battle was fought May 1, 1745, between the French, under
Marshal Saxe, and the allies, under William Duke of Cumberland.
[33] Private letters or mandates, issued under the royal _signet_, for
the apprehension of individuals who were obnoxious to the court.
[34] Ségur, tom. i., p. 268; ii., p. 24.
[35] One striking feature of this Anglomania was the general institution
of _Clubs_, and the consequent desertion of female society. "If our
happy inconstancy," wrote Baron de Grimm, in 1790, "did not give room to
hope that the fashion will not be everlasting, it might certainly be
apprehended that the taste for clubs would lead insensibly to a very
marked revolution both in the spirit and morals of the nation; but that
disposition, which we possess by nature, of growing tired of every
thing, affords some satisfaction in all our follies."--_Correspondence._
[36] An instance is given, ludicrous in itself, but almost prophetic,
when connected with subsequent events. A courtier, deeply infected with
the fashion of the time, was riding beside the king's carriage at a full
trot, without observing that his horse's heels threw the mud into the
royal vehicle. "Vous me crottez, monsieur," said the king. The horseman,
considering the words were "Vous trottez," and that the prince
complimented his equestrian performance, answered, "Oui, sire, à
l'Angloise." The good-humoured monarch drew up the glass, and only said
to the gentleman in the carriage, "Voilà une Anglomanie bien forte!"
Alas! the unhappy prince lived to see the example of England, in her
most dismal period, followed to a much more formidable extent.--S.
[37] See Ségur, tom. i., p. 101.
[38] By some young enthusiasts, the assumption of republican habits was
carried to all the heights of revolutionary affectation and
extravagance. Ségur mentions a young coxcomb, named Mauduit, who already
distinguished himself by renouncing the ordinary courtesies of life, and
insisting on being called by his Christian and surname, without the
usual addition of Monsieur.--S.--"Mauduit's career was short, and his
end an unhappy one; for being employed at St. Domingo, he threw himself
among a party of revolters, and was assassinated by the
negroes."--SÉGUR.
[39] "The passion for republican institutions infected even the
courtiers of the palace. Thunders of applause shook the theatre of
Versailles at the celebrated lines of Voltaire--
"Je suis fils de Brutus, et je porte en mon cœur
La liberté gravée et les rois en horreur."
SÉGUR, tom. i., p. 253.
[40] Plebeians formerly got into the army by obtaining the subscription
of four men of noble birth, attesting their patrician descent; and such
certificates, however false, could always be obtained for a small sum.
But by a regulation of the Count Ségur, after the American war,
candidates for the military profession were obliged to produce a
certificate of noble birth from the king's genealogist, in addition to
the attestations which were formerly held sufficient.--S.
[41] Lacretelle, tom. v., p. 341.
CHAPTER III.
_Proximate Cause of the Revolution--Deranged State of the
Finances--Reforms in the Royal Household--System of Turgot and
Necker--Necker's Exposition of the State of the Public
Revenue--The Red-Book--Necker displaced--Succeeded by
Calonne--General State of the Revenue--Assembly of the
Notables--Calonne dismissed--Archbishop of Sens Administrator of
the Finances--The King's Contest with the Parliament--Bed of
Justice--Resistance of the Parliament and general Disorder in
the Kingdom--Vacillating Policy of the Minister--Royal
Sitting--Scheme of forming a Cour Plénière--It proves
ineffectual--Archbishop of Sens retires, and is succeeded by
Necker--He resolves to convoke the States General--Second
Assembly of Notables previous to Convocation of the
States--Questions as to the Numbers of which the Tiers Etat
should consist, and the Mode in which the Estates should
deliberate._
We have already compared the monarchy of France to an ancient building,
which, however decayed by the wasting injuries of time, may long remain
standing from the mere adhesion of its parts, unless it is assailed by
some sudden and unexpected shock, the immediate violence of which
completes the ruin which the lapse of ages had only prepared. Or if its
materials have become dry and combustible, still they may long wait for
the spark which is to awake a general conflagration. Thus, the
monarchical government of France, notwithstanding the unsoundness of all
its parts, might have for some time continued standing and unconsumed,
nay, with timely and judicious repairs, might have been entire at this
moment, had the state of the finances of the kingdom permitted the
monarch to temporize with the existing discontents and the progress of
new opinions, without increasing the taxes of a people already greatly
overburdened, and now become fully sensible that these burdens were
unequally imposed, and sometimes prodigally dispensed.
[Sidenote: DERANGEMENT OF THE FINANCES.]
A government, like an individual, may be guilty of many acts, both of
injustice and folly, with some chance of impunity, provided it possess
wealth enough to command partisans and to silence opposition; and
history shows us, that as, on the one hand, wealthy and money-saving
monarchs have usually been able to render themselves most independent of
their subjects, so, on the other, it is from needy princes, and when
exchequers are empty, that the people have obtained grants favourable to
freedom in exchange for their supplies. The period of pecuniary distress
in a government, if it be that when the subjects are most exposed to
oppression, is also the crisis in which they have the best chance of
recovering their political rights.
It is in vain that the constitution of a despotic government
endeavours, in its forms, to guard against the dangers of such
conjunctures, by vesting in the sovereign the most complete and
unbounded right to the property of his subjects. This doctrine, however
ample in theory, cannot in practice be carried beyond certain bounds,
without producing either privy conspiracy or open insurrection, being
the violent symptoms of the outraged feelings and exhausted patience of
the subject, which, in absolute monarchies, supply the want of all
regular political checks upon the power of the crown. Whenever the point
of human sufferance is exceeded, the despot must propitiate the wrath of
an insurgent people with the head of his minister, or he may tremble for
his own.[42]
In constitutions of a less determined despotical character, there almost
always arises some power of check or control, however anomalous, which
balances or counteracts the arbitrary exactions of the sovereign,
instead of the actual resistance of the subjects, as at Fez or
Constantinople. This was the case in France.
No constitution could have been more absolute in theory than that of
France, for two hundred years past, in the matter of finance; but yet in
practice there existed a power of control in the Parliaments, and
particularly in that of Paris. These courts, though strictly speaking
they were constituted only for the administration of justice, had forced
themselves, or been forced by circumstances, into a certain degree of
political power, which they exercised in control of the crown, in the
imposition of new taxes. It was agreed on all hands, that the royal
edicts, enforcing such new impositions, must be registered by the
Parliaments; but while the crown held the registering such edicts to be
an act purely ministerial, and the discharge of a function imposed by
official duty, the magistrates insisted, on the other hand, that they
possessed the power of deliberating and remonstrating, nay, of refusing
to register the royal edicts. The Parliaments exercised this power of
control on various occasions; and as their interference was always on
behalf of the subject, the practice, however anomalous, was sanctioned
by public opinion; and, in the absence of all other representatives of
the people, France naturally looked up to the magistrates as the
protectors of her rights, and as the only power which could offer even
the semblance of resistance to the arbitrary increase of the burdens of
the state. These functionaries cannot be charged with carelessness or
cowardice in the discharge of their duty; and as taxes increased and
became at the same time less productive, the opposition of the
Parliaments became more formidable. Louis XIV. endeavoured to break
their spirit by suppression of their court, and banishment of its
members from Paris; but, notwithstanding this temporary victory, he is
said to have predicted that his successor might not come off from the
renewed contest so successfully.
Louis XVI., with the plain well-meaning honesty which marked his
character, restored the Parliaments to their constitutional powers
immediately on his accession to the throne, having the generosity to
regard their resistance to his grandfather as a merit rather than an
offence. In the meanwhile, the revenue of the kingdom had fallen into a
most disastrous condition. The continued and renewed expense of
unsuccessful wars, the supplying the demands of a luxurious court, the
gratifying hungry courtiers, and enriching needy favourites, had
occasioned large deficits upon the public income of each successive
year. The ministers, meanwhile, anxious to provide for the passing
moment of their own administration, were satisfied to put off the evil
day by borrowing money at heavy interest, and leasing out, in security
of these loans, the various sources of revenue to the farmers-general.
On their part, these financiers used the government as bankrupt
prodigals are treated by usurious money-brokers, who, feeding their
extravagance with the one hand, with the other wring out of their ruined
fortunes the most unreasonable recompense for their advances. By a long
succession of these ruinous loans, and the various rights granted to
guarantee them, the whole finances of France appear to have fallen into
total confusion, and presented an inextricable chaos to those who
endeavoured to bring them into order. The farmers-general, therefore,
however obnoxious to the people, who considered with justice that their
overgrown fortunes were nourished by the life-blood of the community,
continued to be essentially necessary to the state, the expenses of
which they alone could find means of defraying;--thus supporting the
government, although Mirabeau said with truth, it was only in the sense
in which a rope supports a hanged man.
Louis XVI., fully sensible of the disastrous state of the public
revenue, did all he could to contrive a remedy. He limited his personal
expenses, and those of his household, with a rigour which approached to
parsimony, and dimmed the necessary splendour of the throne. He
abolished many pensions, and by doing so not only disobliged those who
were deprived of the instant enjoyment of those gratuities, but lost the
attachment of the much more numerous class of expectants, who served the
court in the hope of obtaining similar gratifications in their
turn.[43] Lastly, he dismissed a very large proportion of his household
troops and body-guards, affording another subject of discontent to the
nobles, out of whose families these corps were recruited, and destroying
with his own hand a force devotedly attached to the royal person, and
which, in the hour of popular fury, would have been a barrier of
inappreciable value. Thus, it was the misfortune of this well-meaning
prince, only to weaken his own cause and endanger his safety, by those
sacrifices intended to relieve the burdens of the people, and supply the
wants of the state.
[Sidenote: ECONOMICAL REFORMS.]
The king adopted a broader and more effectual course of reform, by using
the advice of upright and skilful ministers, to introduce, as far as
possible, some degree of order into the French finances. Turgot,[44]
Malesherbes,[45] and Necker,[46] were persons of unquestionable skill,
of sound views, and undisputed integrity; and although the last-named
minister finally sunk in public esteem, it was only because
circumstances had excited such an extravagant opinion of his powers, as
could not have been met and realized by those of the first financier who
ever lived. These virtuous and patriotic statesmen did all in their
power to keep afloat the vessel of the state, and prevent at least the
increase of the deficit, which now arose yearly on the public accounts.
They, and Necker in particular, introduced economy and retrenchment into
all departments of the revenue, restored the public credit without
increasing the national burdens, and, by obtaining loans on reasonable
terms, were fortunate enough to find funds for the immediate support of
the American war, expensive as it was, without pressing on the patience
of the people by new impositions. Could this state of matters have been
supported for some years, opportunities might in that time have occurred
for adapting the French mode of government to the new lights which the
age afforded. Public opinion, joined to the beneficence of the
sovereign, had already wrought several important and desirable changes.
Many obnoxious and oppressive laws had been expressly abrogated, or
tacitly suffered to become obsolete, and there never sate a king upon
the French or any other throne, more willing than Louis XVI. to
sacrifice his own personal interest and prerogative to whatever seemed
to be the benefit of the state. Even at the very commencement of his
reign, and when obeying only the dictates of his own beneficence, he
reformed the penal code of France, which then savoured of the barbarous
times in which it had originated--he abolished the use of torture--he
restored to freedom those prisoners of state, the mournful inhabitants
of the Bastile, and other fortresses, who had been the victims of his
grandfather's jealousy--the compulsory labour called the _corvée_,[47]
levied from the peasantry, and one principal source of popular
discontent, had been abolished in some provinces and modified in
others--and while the police was under the regulation of the sage and
virtuous Malesherbes, its arbitrary powers had been seldom so exercised
as to become the subject of complaint. In short, the monarch partook the
influence of public opinion along with his subjects, and there seemed
just reason to hope, that, had times remained moderate, the monarchy of
France might have been reformed instead of being destroyed.
Unhappily, convulsions of the state became from day to day more violent,
and Louis XVI., who possessed the benevolence and good intentions of his
ancestor, Henry IV., wanted his military talents, and his political
firmness. In consequence of this deficiency, the king suffered himself
to be distracted by a variety of counsels; and vacillating, as all must
who act more from a general desire to do that which is right, than upon
any determined and well-considered system, he placed his power and his
character at the mercy of the changeful course of events, which firmness
might have at least combated, if it could not control. But it is
remarkable, that Louis resembled Charles I. of England more than any of
his own ancestors, in a want of self-confidence, which led to frequent
alterations of mind and changes of measures, as well as in a tendency to
uxoriousness, which enabled both Henrietta Marie, and Marie Antoinette,
to use a fatal influence upon their counsels. Both sovereigns fell under
the same suspicion of being deceitful and insincere, when perhaps
Charles, but certainly Louis, only changed his course of conduct from a
change of his own opinion, or from suffering himself to be
over-persuaded, and deferring to the sentiments of others.
Few monarchs of any country, certainly, have changed their ministry, and
with their ministry their counsels and measures, so often as Louis XVI.;
and with this unhappy consequence, that he neither persevered in a firm
and severe course of government long enough to inspire respect, nor in a
conciliatory and yielding policy for a sufficient time to propitiate
regard and confidence. It is with regret we notice this imperfection in
a character otherwise so excellent; but it was one of the leading causes
of the Revolution, that a prince, possessed of power too great to be
either kept or resigned with safety, hesitated between the natural
resolution to defend his hereditary prerogative, and the sense of
justice which induced him to restore such part of it as had been usurped
from the people by his ancestors. By adhering to the one course, he
might have been the conqueror of the Revolution; by adopting the other,
he had a chance to be its guide and governor; by hesitating between
them, he became its victim.
It was in consequence of this vacillation of purpose that Louis, in
1781, sacrificed Turgot and Necker to the intrigues of the court. These
statesmen had formed a plan for new-modelling the financial part of the
French monarchy, which, while it should gratify the people by admitting
representatives on their part to some influence in the imposition of new
taxes, might have released the king from the interference of the
parliaments, (whose office of remonstrance, although valuable as a
shelter from despotism, was often arbitrarily, and even factiously
exercised,) and have transferred to the direct representatives of the
people that superintendence, which ought never to have been in other
hands.
For this purpose the ministers proposed to institute, in the several
provinces of France, convocations of a representative nature, one-half
of whom was to be chosen from the Commons, or Third Estate, and the
other named by the nobles and clergy in equal proportions, and which
assemblies, without having the right of rejecting the edicts imposing
new taxes, were to apportion them amongst the subjects of their several
provinces. This system contained in it much that was excellent, and
might have opened the road for further improvements on the constitution;
while, at the same time, it would probably, so early as 1781, have been
received as a boon, by which the subjects were called to participate in
the royal counsels, rather than as a concession extracted from the
weakness of the sovereign, or from his despair of his own resources. It
afforded also an opportunity, peculiarly desirable in France, of forming
the minds of the people to the discharge of public duty. The British
nation owe much of the practical benefits of their constitution to the
habits with which almost all men are trained to exercise some public
right in head-courts, vestries, and other deliberative bodies, where
their minds are habituated to the course of business, and accustomed to
the manner in which it can be most regularly despatched. This advantage
would have been supplied to the French by Necker's scheme.
But with all the advantages which it promised, this plan of provincial
assemblies miscarried, owing to the emulous opposition of the Parliament
of Paris, who did not choose that any other body than their own should
be considered as the guardians of what remained in France of popular
rights.
[Sidenote: NECKER'S COMPTE RENDU.]
Another measure of Necker was of more dubious policy. This was the
printing and publishing of his Report to the Sovereign of the state of
the revenues of France. The minister probably thought this display of
candour, which, however proper in itself, was hitherto unknown in the
French administration, might be useful to the King, whom it represented
as acquiescing in public opinion, and appearing not only ready, but
solicitous, to collect the sentiments of his subjects on the business of
the state. Necker might also deem the _Compte Rendu_ a prudent measure
on his own account, to secure the popular favour, and maintain himself
by the public esteem against the influence of court intrigue. Or lastly,
both these motives might be mingled with the natural vanity of showing
the world that France enjoyed, in the person of Necker, a minister bold
enough to penetrate into the labyrinth of confusion and obscurity which
had been thought inextricable by all his predecessors, and was at length
enabled to render to the sovereign and the people a detailed and
balanced account of the state of their finances.
Neither did the result of the national balance-sheet appear so
astounding as to require its being concealed as a state mystery. The
deficit, or the balance, by which the expenses of government exceeded
the revenue of the country, by no means indicated a desperate state of
finance, or one which must either demand immense sacrifices, or
otherwise lead to national bankruptcy. It did not greatly exceed the
annual defalcation of two millions, a sum which, to a country so fertile
as France, might even be termed trifling. At the same time, Necker
brought forward a variety of reductions and economical arrangements, by
which he proposed to provide for this deficiency, without either
incurring debt or burdening the subject with additional taxes.
But although this general exposure of the expenses of the state, this
appeal from the government to the people, had the air of a frank and
generous proceeding, and was, in fact, a step to the great
constitutional point of establishing in the nation and its
representatives the sole power of granting supplies, there may be doubt
whether it was not rather too hastily resorted to. Those from whose eyes
the cataract has been removed, are for some time deprived of light, and
in the end, it is supplied to them by limited degrees; but that glare
which was at once poured on the nation of France, served to dazzle as
many as it illuminated. The _Compte Rendu_ was the general subject of
conversation, not only in coffee-houses and public promenades, but in
saloons and ladies' boudoirs, and amongst society better qualified to
discuss the merits of the last comedy, or any other frivolity of the
day. The very array of figures had something ominous and terrible in it,
and the word _deficit_ was used, like the name of Marlborough of old, to
frighten children with.
To most it intimated the total bankruptcy of the nation, and prepared
many to act with the selfish and shortsighted license of sailors, who
plunder the cargo of their own vessel in the act of shipwreck. Others
saw, in the account of expenses attached to the person and dignity of
the prince, a wasteful expenditure, which, in that hour of avowed
necessity, a nation might well dispense with. Men began to number the
guards and household pomp of the sovereign and his court, as the
daughters of Lear did the train of their father. The reduction already
commenced might be carried, thought these provident persons, yet
farther:--
"What needs he five-and-twenty, ten, or five?"
And no doubt some, even at this early period, arrived at the ultimate
conclusion,
"What needs ONE?"
Besides the domestic and household expenses of the sovereign, which, so
far as personal, were on the most moderate scale, the public mind was
much more justly revolted at the large sum yearly squandered among needy
courtiers and their dependents, or even less justifiably lavished upon
those whose rank and fortune ought to have placed them far above adding
to the burdens of the subjects. The king had endeavoured to abridge this
list of gratuities and pensions, but the system of corruption which had
prevailed for two centuries, was not to be abolished in an instant; the
throne, already tottering, could not immediately be deprived of the band
of stipendiary grandees whom it had so long maintained, and who afforded
it their countenance in return, and it was perhaps impolitic to fix the
attention of the public on a disclosure so peculiarly invidious, until
the opportunity of correcting it should arrive;--it was like the
disclosure of a wasting sore, useless and disgusting unless when shown
to a surgeon, and for the purpose of cure. Yet, though the account
rendered by the minister of the finances, while it passed from the hand
of one idler to another, and occupied on sofas and toilettes the place
of the latest novel, did doubtless engage giddy heads in vain and
dangerous speculation, something was to be risked in order to pave the
way of regaining for the French subjects the right most essential to
freemen, that of granting or refusing their own supplies. The publicity
of the distressed state of the finances, induced a general conviction
that the oppressive system of taxation could only be removed, and that
approaching bankruptcy, which was a still greater evil, avoided, by
resorting to the nation itself, convoked in their ancient form of
representation, which was called the States-General.
It was true that, through length of time, the nature and powers of this
body were forgotten, if indeed they had ever been very thoroughly fixed:
and it was also true, that the constitution of the States-General of
1614, which was the last date of their being assembled, was not likely
to suit a period when the country was so much changed, both in
character and circumstances. The doubts concerning the composition of
the medicine, and its probable effects, seldom abate the patient's
confidence. All joined in desiring the convocation of this
representative body, and all expected that such an assembly would be
able to find some satisfactory remedy for the pressing evils of the
state. The cry was general, and, as usual in such cases, few who joined
in it knew exactly what it was they wanted.
[Sidenote: TIERS ETAT.]
Looking back on the period of 1780, with the advantage of our own
experience, it is possible to see a chance, though perhaps a doubtful
one, of avoiding the universal shipwreck which was fated to ensue. If
the royal government, determining to gratify the general wish, had taken
the initiative in conceding the great national measure as a boon flowing
from the prince's pure good-will and love of his subjects, and if
measures had been taken rapidly and decisively to secure seats in these
bodies, but particularly in the Tiers Etat, to men known for their
moderation and adherence to the monarchy, it seems probable that the
crown might have secured such an interest, in a body of its own
creation, as would have silenced the attempts of any heated spirits to
hurry the kingdom into absolute revolution. The reverence paid to the
throne for so many centuries, had yet all the influence of unassailed
sanctity; the king was still the master of an army, commanded under him
by his nobles, and as yet animated by the spirit of loyalty, which is
the natural attribute of the military profession; the minds of men were
not warmed at once, and wearied, by a fruitless and chicaning delay,
which only showed the extreme indisposition of the court to grant what
they had no means of ultimately refusing; nor had public opinion yet
been agitated by the bold discussions of a thousand pamphleteers, who,
under pretence of enlightening the people, prepossessed their minds with
the most extreme ideas of the popular character of the representation of
the Tiers Etat, and its superiority over every other power of the state.
Ambitious and unscrupulous men would then hardly have had the time or
boldness to form those audacious pretensions which their ancestors
dreamed not of, and which the course of six or seven years of protracted
expectation, and successive renewals of hope, succeeded by
disappointment, enabled them to mature.
Such a fatal interval, however, was suffered to intervene, between the
first idea of convoking the States-General, and the period when that
measure became inevitable. Without this delay, the king, invested with
all his royal prerogatives, and at the head of the military force, might
have surrendered with a good grace such parts of his power as were
inconsistent with the liberal opinions of the time, and such surrender
must have been received as a grace, since it could not have been exacted
as a sacrifice. The conduct of the government, in the interim, towards
the nation whose representatives it was shortly to meet, resembled that
of an insane person, who should by a hundred teazing and vexatious
insults irritate into frenzy the lion, whose cage he was about to open,
and to whose fury he must necessarily be exposed.
[Sidenote: STATE OF THE REVENUE.]
Necker, whose undoubted honesty, as well as his republican candour, had
rendered him highly popular, had, under the influence of the old
intriguer Maurepas, been dismissed from his office as minister of
finance, in 1781. The witty, versatile, selfish, and cunning Maurepas,
had the art to hold his power till the last moment of his long life, and
died at the moment when the knell of death was a summons to call him
from impending ruin.[48] He made, according to an expressive northern
proverb, the "day and way alike long;" and died just about the period
when the system of evasion and palliation, of usurious loans and lavish
bounties, could scarce have served longer to save him from disgrace.
Vergennes,[49] who succeeded him, was, like himself, a courtier rather
than a statesman; more studious to preserve his own power, by continuing
the same system of partial expedients and temporary shifts, than willing
to hazard the king's favour, or the popularity of his administration, by
attempting any scheme of permanent utility or general reformation.
Calonne,[50] the minister of finance, who had succeeded to that office
after the brief administrations of Fleury and d'Ormesson, called on by
his duty to the most difficult and embarrassing branch of government,
was possessed of a more comprehensive genius, and more determined
courage, than his principal Vergennes. So early as the year 1784, the
deficiency betwixt the receipts of the whole revenues of the state, and
the expenditure, extended to six hundred and eighty-four millions of
livres, in British money about equal to twenty-eight millions four
hundred thousand pounds sterling; but then a certain large portion of
this debt consisted in annuities granted by government, which were
annually in the train of being extinguished by the death of the holders;
and there was ample room for saving, in the mode of collecting the
various taxes. So that large as the sum of deficit appeared, it could
not have been very formidable, considering the resources of so rich a
country; but it was necessary, that the pressure of new burdens, to be
imposed at this exigence, should be equally divided amongst the orders
of the state. The Third Estate, or Commons, had been exhausted under the
weight of taxes, which fell upon them alone, and Calonne formed the bold
and laudable design of compelling the clergy and nobles, hitherto
exempted from taxation, to contribute their share to the revenues of the
state.
This, however, was, in the present state of the public, too bold a
scheme to be carried into execution without the support of something
resembling a popular representation. At this crisis, again might Louis
have summoned the States-General, with some chance of uniting their
suffrages with the wishes of the Crown. The King would have found
himself in a natural alliance with the Commons, in a plan to abridge
those immunities, which the Clergy and Nobles possessed, to the
prejudice of The Third Estate. He would thus, in the outset at least,
have united the influence and interests of the Crown with those of the
popular party, and established something like a balance in the
representative body, in which the Throne must have had considerable
weight.
Apparently, Calonne and his principal Vergennes were afraid to take this
manly and direct course, as indeed the ministers of an arbitrary monarch
can rarely be supposed willing to call in the aid of a body of popular
representatives. The ministers endeavoured, therefore, to supply the
want of a body like the States-General, by summoning together an
assembly of what was termed the Notables, or principal persons in the
kingdom. This was in every sense an unadvised measure.[51] With
something resembling the form of a great national council, the Notables
had no right to represent the nation, neither did it come within their
province to pass any resolution whatever. Their post was merely that of
an extraordinary body of counsellors, who deliberated on any subject
which the King might submit to their consideration, and were to express
their opinion in answer to the Sovereign's interrogatories; but an
assembly, which could only start opinions and debate upon them, without
coming to any effective or potential decision, was a fatal resource at a
crisis when decision was peremptorily necessary, and when all vague and
irrelevant discussion was, as at a moment of national fermentation, to
be cautiously avoided. Above all, there was this great error in having
recourse to the Assembly of the Notables, that, consisting entirely of
the privileged orders, the council was composed of the individuals most
inimical to the equality of taxes, and most tenacious of those very
immunities which were struck at by the scheme of the minister of
finance.
Calonne found himself opposed at every point and received from the
Notables remonstrances instead of support and countenance. That Assembly
censuring all his plans, and rejecting his proposals, he was in their
presence like a rash necromancer, who has been indeed able to raise a
demon, but is unequal to the task of guiding him when evoked. He was
further weakened by the death of Vergennes, and finally obliged to
resign his place and his country, a sacrifice at once to court intrigue
and popular odium. Had this able but rash minister convoked the
States-General instead of the Notables, he would have been at least sure
of the support of the Third Estate, or Commons; and, allied with them,
might have carried through so popular a scheme, as that which went to
establish taxation upon a just and equal principle, affecting the rich
as well as the poor, the proud prelate and wealthy noble, as well as the
industrious cultivator of the soil.
Calonne having retired to England from popular hatred, his perilous
office devolved upon the Archbishop of Sens, afterwards the Cardinal de
Loménie,[52] who was raised to the painful pre-eminence [May] by the
interest of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, whose excellent qualities
were connected with a spirit of state-intrigue, proper to the sex in
such elevated situations, which but too frequently thwarted or bore down
the more candid intentions of her husband, and tended, though on her
part unwittingly, to give his public measures, sometimes adopted on his
own principles, and sometimes influenced by her intrigues and
solicitations, an appearance of vacillation, and even of duplicity,
which greatly injured them both in the public opinion. The new minister
finding it as difficult to deal with the Assembly of Notables as his
predecessor, the King finally dissolved that body, without having
received from them either the countenance or good counsel which had been
expected; thus realizing the opinion expressed by Voltaire concerning
such convocations:
"De tous ces Etats l'effet le plus commun,
Est de voir tous nos maux, sans en soulager un."[53]
[Sidenote: BED OF JUSTICE.]
After dismission of the Notables, the minister adopted or recommended a
line of conduct so fluctuating and indecisive, so violent at one time in
support of the royal prerogative, and so pusillanimous when he
encountered resistance from the newly-awakened spirit of liberty, that
had he been bribed to render the crown at once odious and contemptible,
or to engage his master in a line of conduct which should irritate the
courageous, and encourage the timid, among his dissatisfied subjects,
the Archbishop of Sens could hardly, after the deepest thought, have
adopted measures better adapted for such a purpose. As if determined to
bring matters to an issue betwixt the King and the Parliament of Paris,
he laid before the latter two new edicts for taxes,[54] similar in most
respects to those which had been recommended by his predecessor Calonne
to the Notables. The Parliament refused to register these edicts, being
the course which the minister ought to have expected. He then resolved
upon a display of the royal prerogative in its most arbitrary and
obnoxious form. A Bed of Justice,[55] as it was termed, was held, [Aug.
6,] where the King, presiding in person over the Court of Parliament,
commanded the edicts imposing certain new taxes to be registered in his
own presence; thus, by an act of authority emanating directly from the
Sovereign, beating down the only species of opposition which the
subjects, through any organ whatever, could offer to the increase of
taxation.
The Parliament yielded the semblance of a momentary obedience, but
protested solemnly, that the edict having been registered solely by the
royal command, and against their unanimous opinion, should not have the
force of a law. They remonstrated also to the Throne in terms of great
freedom and energy, distinctly intimating, that they could not and would
not be the passive instruments, through the medium of whom the public
was to be loaded with new impositions; and they expressed, for the first
time, in direct terms, the proposition, fraught with the fate of France,
that neither the edicts of the King, nor the registration of those
edicts by the Parliament, were sufficient to impose permanent burdens on
the people; but such taxation was competent to the States-General
only.[56]
In punishment of their undaunted defence of the popular cause, the
Parliament was banished to Troyes; the government thus increasing the
national discontent by the removal of the principal court of the
kingdom, and by all the evils incident to a delay of public justice. The
Provincial Parliaments supported the principles adopted by their
brethren of Paris. The Chamber of Accounts, and the Court of Aids, the
judicial establishments next in rank to that of the Parliament, also
remonstrated against the taxes, and refused to enforce them. They were
not enforced accordingly; and thus, for the first time, during two
centuries at least, the royal authority of France being brought into
direct collision with public opinion and resistance, was, by the energy
of the subject, compelled to retrograde and yield ground. This was the
first direct and immediate movement of that mighty Revolution, which
afterwards rushed to its crisis like a rock rolling down a mountain.
This was the first torch which was actually applied to the various
combustibles which lay scattered through France, and which we have
endeavoured to analyze. The flame soon spread into the provinces. The
nobles of Brittany broke out into a kind of insurrection; the Parliament
of Grenoble impugned, by a solemn decree, the legality of _lettres de
cachet_. Strange and alarming fears,--wild and boundless
hopes,--inconsistent rumours,--a vague expectation of impending
events,--all contributed to agitate the public mind. The quick and
mercurial tempers which chiefly distinguish the nation, were half
maddened with suspense, while even the dull nature of the lowest and
most degraded of the community felt the coming impulse of extraordinary
changes, as cattle are observed to be disturbed before an approaching
thunder-storm.
The minister could not sustain his courage in such a menacing
conjuncture, yet unhappily attempted a show of resistance, instead of
leaving the King to the influence of his own sound sense and excellent
disposition, which always induced him to choose the means of
conciliation. There was indeed but one choice, and it lay betwixt civil
war or concession. A despot would have adopted the former course, and,
withdrawing from Paris, would have gathered around him the army still
his own. A patriotic monarch--and such was Louis XVI. when exercising
his own judgment--would have chosen the road of concession; yet his
steps, even in retreating, would have been so firm, and his attitude so
manly, that the people would not have ventured to ascribe to fear what
flowed solely from a spirit of conciliation. But the conduct of the
minister, or of those who directed his motions, was an alternation of
irritating opposition to the public voice, and of ill-timed submission
to its demands, which implied an understanding impaired by the perils of
the conjuncture, and unequal alike to the task of avoiding them by
concession, or resisting them with courage.
The King, indeed, recalled the Parliament of Paris from their exile,
coming, at the same time, under an express engagement to convoke the
States-General, and leading the subjects, of course, to suppose that the
new imposts were to be left to their consideration. But, as if to
irritate men's minds, by showing a desire to elude the execution of what
had been promised, the minister ventured, in an evil hour, to hazard
another experiment upon the firmness of their nerves, and again to
commit the dignity of the sovereign by bringing him personally to issue
a command, which experience had shown the Parliament were previously
resolved to disobey. By this new proceeding, the King was induced to
hold what was called a Royal Sitting of the Parliament, which resembled
in all its forms a Bed of Justice, except that it seems as if the
commands of the monarch were esteemed less authoritative when so issued,
than when they were, as on the former occasion, delivered in this last
obnoxious assembly.
Thus, at less advantage than before, and, at all events, after the total
failure of a former experiment, the King, arrayed in all the forms of
his royalty, once more, and for the last time, convoked his Parliament
in person; and again with his own voice commanded the court to register
a royal edict for a loan of four hundred and twenty millions of francs,
to be raised in the course of five years. This demand gave occasion to a
debate which lasted nine hours, and was only closed by the King rising
up, and issuing at length his positive and imperative orders that the
loan should be registered. To the astonishment of the meeting, the first
prince of the blood, the Duke of Orleans, arose, as if in reply, and
demanded to know if they were assembled in a Bed of Justice or a Royal
Sitting; and receiving for answer that the latter was the quality of the
meeting, he entered a solemn protest against the proceedings. [Nov. 19.]
Thus was the authority of the King once more brought in direct
opposition to the assertors of the rights of the people, as if on
purpose to show, in the face of the whole nation, that its terrors were
only those of a phantom, whose shadowy bulk might overawe the timid, but
could offer no real cause of fear when courageously opposed.
The minister did not, however, give way without such an ineffectual
struggle, as at once showed the weakness of the royal authority, and the
willingness to wield it with the despotic sway of former times. Two
members of the Parliament of Paris[57] were imprisoned in remote
fortresses, and the Duke of Orleans was sent in exile to his estate.
A long and animated exchange of remonstrances followed betwixt the King
and the Parliament, in which the former acknowledged his weakness, even
by entering into the discussion of his prerogative; as well as by the
concessions he found himself obliged to tender. Meantime, the Archbishop
of Sens nourished the romantic idea of getting rid of these refractory
courts entirely, and at the same time to evade the convocation of the
States-General, substituting in their place the erection of a
_Cour-plénière_, or ancient Feudal Court, composed of princes, peers,
marshals of France, deputies from the provinces, and other distinguished
persons, who should in future exercise all the higher and nobler duties
of the Parliaments, thus reduced to their original and proper duties as
courts of justice.[58] But a court, or council of the ancient feudal
times, with so slight an infusion of popular representation, could in no
shape have accorded with the ideas which now generally prevailed; and so
much was this felt to be the case, that many of the peers, and other
persons nominated members of the _Cour-plénière_, declined the seats
proposed to them, and the whole plan fell to the ground.
[Sidenote: RIOTS AND INSURRECTIONS.]
Meantime, violence succeeded to violence, and remonstrance to
remonstrance. The Parliament of Paris, and all the provincial bodies of
the same description, being suspended from their functions, and the
course of regular justice of course interrupted, the spirit of revolt
became general through the realm, and broke out in riots and
insurrections of a formidable description; while, at the same time, the
inhabitants of the capital were observed to become dreadfully agitated.
There wanted not writers to fan the rising discontent; and, what seems
more singular, they were permitted to do so without interruption,
notwithstanding the deepened jealousy with which free discussion was now
regarded in France. Libels and satires of every description were
publicly circulated, without an attempt on the part of the government to
suppress the publications, or to punish their authors, although the most
scandalous attacks on the royal family, and on the queen in particular,
were dispersed along with these political effusions. It seemed as if the
arm of power was paralyzed, and the bonds of authority which had so long
fettered the French people were falling asunder of themselves; for the
liberty of the press, so long unknown was now openly assumed and
exercised, without the government daring to interfere.[59]
To conclude the picture, as if God and man had alike determined the fall
of this ancient monarchy, a hurricane of most portentous and unusual
character burst on the kingdom, and laying waste the promised harvest
far and wide, showed to the terrified inhabitants the prospect at once
of poverty and famine, added to those of national bankruptcy and a
distracted government.[60]
The latter evils seemed fast advancing; for the state of the finances
became so utterly desperate, that Louis was under the necessity of
stopping a large proportion of the treasury payments, and issuing bills
for the deficiency. At this awful crisis, fearing for the King, and more
for himself, the Archbishop of Sens retired from administration,[61] and
left the monarch, while bankruptcy and famine threatened the kingdom, to
manage as he might, amid the storms which the measures of the minister
himself had provoked to the uttermost.
[Sidenote: STATES-GENERAL CONVOKED.]
A new premier, and a total alteration of measures were to be resorted
to, while Necker, the popular favourite, called to the helm of the
state, regretted, with bitter anticipation of misfortune, the time which
had been worse than wasted under the rule of the archbishop, who had
employed it in augmenting the enemies and diminishing the resources of
the crown, and forcing the King on such measures as caused the royal
authority to be generally regarded as the common enemy of all ranks of
the kingdom.[62] To redeem the royal pledge by convoking the
States-General, seemed to Necker the most fair as well as most politic
proceeding; and indeed this afforded the only chance of once more
reconciling the prince with the people, though it was now yielding that
to a demand, which two years before would have been received as a boon.
We have already observed that the constitution of this assembly of
national representatives was little understood, though the phrase was in
the mouth of every one. It was to be the panacea to the disorders of the
nation, yet men knew imperfectly the mode of composing this universal
medicine, or the manner of its operation. Or rather, the people of
France invoked the assistance of this national council, as they would
have done that of a tutelary angel, with full confidence in his power
and benevolence, though they neither knew the form in which he might
appear, nor the nature of the miracles which he was to perform in their
behalf. It has been strongly objected to Necker, that he neglected, on
the part of the crown, to take the initiative line of conduct on this
important occasion, and it has been urged that it was the minister's
duty, without making any question or permitting any doubt, to assume
that mode of convening the states, and regulating them when assembled,
which should best tend to secure the tottering influence of his master.
But Necker probably thought the time was past in which this power might
have been assumed by the crown without exciting jealousy or opposition.
The royal authority, he might recollect, had been of late years
repeatedly strained, until it had repeatedly given way, and the issue,
first of the Bed of Justice, and then of the Royal Sitting, was
sufficient to show that words of authority would be wasted in vain upon
disobedient ears, and might only excite a resistance which would prove
its own lack of power. It was, therefore, advisable not to trust to the
unaided exercise of prerogative, but to strengthen instead the
regulations which might be adopted for the constitution of the
States-General, by the approbation of some public body independent of
the King and his ministers. And with this purpose, Necker convened a
second meeting of the Notables, [November,] and laid before them, for
their consideration, his plan for the constitution of the
States-General.
There were two great points submitted to this body, concerning the
constitution of the States-General. I. In what proportion the deputies
of the Three Estates should be represented? II. Whether, when assembled,
the Nobles, Clergy, and Third Estate, or Commons, should act separately
as distinct chambers, or sit and vote as one united body?
[Sidenote: THE TIERS ETAT.]
Necker, a minister of an honest and candid disposition, a republican
also, and therefore on principle a respecter of public opinion,
unhappily did not recollect, that to be well-formed and accurate, public
opinion should be founded on the authority of men of talents and
integrity; and that the popular mind must be pre-occupied by arguments
of a sound and virtuous tendency, else the enemy will sow tares, and the
public will receive it in the absence of more wholesome grain. Perhaps,
also, this minister found himself less in his element when treating of
state affairs, than while acting in his proper capacity as a financier.
However that may be, Necker's conduct resembled that of an unresolved
general, who directs his movements by the report of a council of war. He
did not sufficiently perceive the necessity that the measures to be
taken should originate with himself rather than arise from the
suggestion of others, and did not, therefore, avail himself of his
situation and high popularity, to recommend such general preliminary
arrangements as might preserve the influence of the crown in the
States-General, without encroaching on the rights of the subject. The
silence of Necker leaving all in doubt, and open to discussion, those
arguments had most weight with the public which ascribed most importance
to the Third Estate. The talents of the Nobles and Clergy might be
considered as having been already in vain appealed to in the two
sessions of the Notables, an assembly composed chiefly out of the
privileged classes, and whose advice and opinion had been given without
producing any corresponding good effect. The Parliament had declared
themselves incompetent to the measures necessary for the exigencies of
the kingdom. The course adopted by the King indicated doubt and
uncertainty, if not incapacity. The Tiers Etat, therefore, was the body
of counsellors to whom the nation looked at this critical conjuncture.
"What is the Tiers Etat?" formed the title of a pamphlet by the Abbé
Siêyes; and the answer returned by the author was such as augmented all
the magnificent ideas already floating in men's minds concerning the
importance of this order. "The Tiers Etat," said he, "comprehends the
whole nation of France, excepting only the nobles and clergy." This view
of the matter was so far successful, that the Notables recommended that
the Commons, or Third Estate, should have a body of representatives
equal to those of the nobles and the clergy united, and should thus
form, in point of relative numbers, the moiety of the whole delegates.
This, however, would have been comparatively of small importance, had it
been determined that the three estates were to sit, deliberate, and
vote, not as a united body, but in three several chambers.
Necker conceded to the Tiers Etat the right of double representation,
but seemed prepared to maintain the ancient order of debating and voting
by separate chambers. The crown had been already worsted by the rising
spirit of the country in every attempt which it had made to stand
through its own unassisted strength; and torn as the bodies of the
clergy and nobles were by internal dissensions, and weakened by the
degree of popular odium with which they were loaded, it would have
required an artful consolidation of their force, and an intimate union
betwixt them and the crown, to maintain a balance against the popular
claims of the Commons, likely to be at once so boldly urged by
themselves, and so favourably viewed by the nation. All this was,
however, left, in a great measure, to accident, while every chance was
against its being arranged in the way most advantageous to the monarchy.
The minister ought also in policy to have paved the way, for securing a
party in the Third Estate itself, which should bear some character of
royalism. This might doubtless have been done by the usual ministerial
arts of influencing elections, or gaining over to the crown-interests
some of the many men of talents, who, determined to raise themselves in
this new world, had not yet settled to which side they were to give
their support. But Necker, less acquainted with men than with
mathematics, imagined that every member had intelligence enough to see
the measures best calculated for the public good, and virtue enough to
follow them faithfully and exclusively. It was in vain that the Marquis
de Bouillé[63] pointed out the dangers arising from the constitution
assigned to the States-General, and insisted that the minister was
arming the popular part of the nation against the two privileged orders,
and that the latter would soon experience the effects of their hatred,
animated by self-interest and vanity, the most active passions of
mankind. Necker calmly replied, that there was a necessary reliance to
be placed on the virtues of the human heart;--the maxim of a worthy man,
but not of an enlightened statesman,[64] who has but too much reason to
know how often both the virtues and the prudence of human nature are
surmounted by its prejudices and passions.[65]
It was in this state of doubt, and total want of preparation, that the
King was to meet the representatives of the people, whose elections had
been trusted entirely to chance, without even an attempt to influence
them in favour of the most eligible persons. Yet surely the crown,
hitherto almost the sole acknowledged authority in France, should have
been provided with supporters in the new authority which was to be
assembled. At least the minister might have been prepared with some
system or plan of proceeding, upon which this most important convention
was to conduct its deliberations; but there was not even an attempt to
take up the reins which were floating on the necks of those who were for
the first time harnessed to the chariot of the state. All was
expectation, mere vague and unauthorised hope, that in this multitude of
counsellors there would be found safety.[66]
Hitherto we have described the silent and smooth, but swift and
powerful, stream of innovation, as it rolled on to the edge of the sheer
precipice. We are now to view the precipitate tumult and terrors of the
cataract.
FOOTNOTES:
[42] When Buonaparte expressed much regret and anxiety on account of the
assassination of the Emperor Paul, he was comforted by Fouché with words
to the following effect:--"Que voulez vous enfin? C'est une mode de
destitution propre à ce pais-là!"--S.
[43] Louis XV. had the arts if not the virtues of a monarch. He asked
one of his ministers what he supposed might be the price of the carriage
in which they were sitting. The minister, making a great allowance for
the monarch's paying _en prince_, yet guessed within two-thirds less
than the real sum. When the king named the actual price, the statesman
exclaimed, but the monarch cut him short. "Do not attempt," he said, "to
reform the expenses of my household. There are too many, and too great
men, who have their share in that extortion, and to make a reformation
would give too much discontent. No minister can attempt it with success
or with safety." This is the picture of the waste attending a despotic
government: the cup which is filled to the very brim cannot be lifted to
the lips without wasting the contents.--S.
[44] Turgot was born at Paris in 1727. Called to the head of the
Finances in 1774, he excited the jealousy of the courtiers by his
reforms, and of the parliaments by the abolition of the corvées. Beset
on all sides, Louis, in 1776, dismissed him, observing at the same time,
that "Turgot, and he alone, loved the people." Malesherbes said of him,
that "he had the head of Bacon, and the heart of L'Hopital." He died in
1781.
[45] Malesherbes, the descendant of an illustrious family, was born at
Paris in 1721. When Louis the Sixteenth ascended the throne, he was
appointed minister of the interior, which he resigned on the retirement
of his friend Turgot. He was called back into public life, at the crisis
of the Revolution, to be the legal defender of his sovereign; but his
pleadings only procured for himself the honour of perishing on the same
scaffold in 1794, together with his daughter and grand-daughter.
[46] Necker was born at Geneva in 1732; he married, in 1764,
Mademoiselle Curchod, the early object of Gibbon's affection, and by her
had the daughter so celebrated as the Baroness de Staël Holstein. M.
Necker settled in Paris, rose into high reputation as a banker, and was
first called to office under the government in 1776. He died in 1804.
[47] The corvées, or burdens imposed for the maintenance of the public
roads, were bitterly complained of by the farmers. This iniquitous part
of the financial system was abolished in 1774, by Turgot.
[48] Maurepas was born in 1701. "At the age of eighty, he presented to
the world the ridiculous spectacle of caducity affecting the frivolity
of youth, and employed that time in penning a sonnet which would more
properly have been devoted to correcting a despatch, or preparing an
armament." He died in 1781.--See LACRETELLE, tom. v., p. 8.
[49] The Count de Vergennes was born at Dijon in 1717. He died in 1787,
greatly regretted by Louis, who was impressed by the conviction that,
had his life been prolonged, the Revolution would not have taken place.
[50] Calonne was born at Douay in 1734. After being an exile in England,
and other parts of Europe, he died at Paris in 1802.
[51] They were summoned on 29th December, 1786, and met on 22d February
of the subsequent year.--S.
[52] M. Loménie de Brienne was born at Paris in 1727. On being appointed
Prime Minister, he was made Archbishop of Sens, and on retiring from
office, in 1788, he obtained a cardinal's hat. He died in prison in
1794.
[53]
Such Convocations all our ills descry,
And promise much, but no true cure apply.
[54] Viz., One on timber, and one on territorial possessions.--See
THIERS, vol. i., p. 14.
[55] "Lit de Justice"--the throne upon which the King was seated when he
went to the Parliament.
[56] Mignet, Hist. de la Rev. Française, tom. i., p. 21.
[57] Freteau and Sabatier. They were banished to the Hières. In 1794,
Freteau was sent to the guillotine by Robespierre.
[58] Mignet, tom. i., p. 22; Thiers, tom. i., p. 19.
[59] De Staël, tom. i., p. 169.
[60] Thiers, tom. i., p. 37.
[61] 25th August, 1788. The archbishop fled to Italy with great
expedition, after he had given in his resignation to his unfortunate
sovereign.--See _ante_, p. 50.--S.
[62] When Necker received the intimation of his recall, his first words
were, "Ah! why did they not give me those fifteen months of the
Archbishop of Sens? Now it is too late."--DE STAËL, vol. i., p. 157.
[63] De Bouillé was a native of Auvergne, and a relative of La Fayette.
He died in London, in 1800.
[64] See Mémoires de Bouillé. Madame de Staël herself admits this
deficiency in the character of a father, of whom she was justly
proud.--"Se fiant trop il faut l'avouer, à l'empire de la
raison."--S.--("Confiding, it must be admitted, too much in the power of
reason.")--_Rev. Franç._, tom. i., p. 171.
[65] "The concessions of Necker were the work of a man ignorant of the
first principles of the government of mankind. It was he who overturned
the monarchy, and brought Louis XVI. to the scaffold. Marat, Danton,
Robespierre himself, did less mischief to France: he brought on the
Revolution, which they consummated."--NAPOLEON, as reported by
_Bourrienne_, tom. viii., p.
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