FIGHTING A DESPERATE STRUGGLE against the Revolution, the Queen had hitherto set her trust in only one ally—time. “Nothing but forbearance and patience can be of any avail.” Time, however, is an untrustworthy, an opportunist ally, who always espouses the cause of the stronger, contemptuously leaving in the lurch those who do not fight strenuously in their own behalf. The Revolution marched onwards inexorably. Week by week it gained thousands of new recruits in the capital, among the peasantry, in the army, and the Jacobin Club speedily became the fulcrum of a lever which was to subvert and make an end of the monarchy. At length the King and the Queen began to realise the danger of their isolation, and looked hither and thither in search of assistance. Honoré Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, sent as deputy to the National Assembly by the third estate of Aix-en-Provence, ‘the Lion of the Revolution’, both dreaded and admired, was ready, had been known since September to be ready (in a measure, and at a price), to espouse the King’s cause. “Let them know in the palace,” he wrote to a go-between, “that I am rather on their side than against them.” So long as the court was still at Versailles, it felt itself firmly seated in the saddle, and the Queen was not yet prepared to recognise the importance of this man who was better fitted than anyone to guide the Revolution, being the very spirit of revolt, the human embodiment of the will to liberty, insubordination and anarchy. The other members of the National Assembly, worthy and well-meaning intellectuals, shrewd lawyers, convinced democrats, thought in idealistic terms of order and reorganisation. None but Mirabeau among these deputies was a man for whom chaos in the state seemed a way of escaping from the chaos within his own self. His volcanic energy (which he once proudly spoke of as the energy of ten) needed a worldwide storm to give adequate scope for its development. In a condition of ruinous decay alike as regards his moral, material and family relationships, he needed to sow ruin in the state in order to have a chance of recovery from personal disaster. The previous outbursts of his daimonic nature—pamphlets, seductions of women, duels and manifold scandals—had been inadequate safety valves for his impetuous temperament, which had not been tamed even by a sojourn in many of the prisons of France. His uncontrolled spirit needed wider spaces and mightier opportunities. Like a bull kept too long in a stall and then accorded the spurious freedom of the arena and roused to fury by the banderillas of disdainful picadors, with lowered head he charged and overthrew the rickety barriers of the estates. The National Assembly was terrified when his thunderous voice was for the first time heard at its deliberations, and it bowed itself beneath his imperious yoke. Strong of will as well as an extremely able writer, Mirabeau, a mighty smith, was able within a few minutes to fashion the most difficult laws, the most dauntless formulations. His overwhelming flood of eloquence swept the Assembly into his wake, and had it not been for the distrust aroused by his questionable past, had it not been for the unconscious self-defence of order against this emissary of chaos, from its first opening the twelve hundred deputies would have had but one head, but one ruler.
However, this stentorian advocate of freedom was not himself free. Debts tied him hand and foot, a network of unsavoury lawsuits hampered his every movement. Such men as Mirabeau can only live, can only work, when they squander their resources. He needed unconcern, lavish display, full pockets, clinking gold, an open house, secretaries, women, assistants, servants. Only when surrounded by abundance could he develop his own plenty. To win freedom in the sense which to him was all-important, the man dunned by a thousand creditors was willing to sell himself to the highest bidder, offering his services to Necker, to the Duke of Orléans, to the Count of Provence and at length to the court. But Marie Antoinette, who detested no one so much as she detested renegades from the nobility, believed herself while she was still at Versailles strong enough to dispense with the venal favours of this ‘monstre’. In answer to the overtures of the go-between, the Comte de La Marck, she said: “I trust we are not yet so unfortunate as to be reduced to the painful necessity of seeking help from Mirabeau.”
Matters had come to a worse pass now, and Mirabeau’s help was indispensable! Five months had intervened, and five months are a long time in days of revolution. Through the instrumentality of Mercy, the Comte de La Marck was informed that the Queen was ready to negotiate with Mirabeau, or, in plain words, to buy his services. Fortunately it was not yet too late, and Mirabeau instantly snapped at the golden bait. His eyes glistened with greed when he heard that Louis XVI was ready to give him four promissory notes, each of two hundred and fifty thousand livres, the whole sum of one million to become payable when the sittings of the National Assembly were ended—“provided that,” said the thrifty and cautious King, “he has by then done me good service.” Directly the tribune realised that his debts were to be paid by a stroke of the pen, and that within a month he was to receive six thousand livres, being weary of the unceasing attentions of bailiffs and sheriff’s officers, he manifested “an intoxication of delight whose violence was a surprise to me” (Comte de La Marck). With the same fervour, the same passion, that he was accustomed to use in persuading others, he now persuaded himself that he alone could and would save, at one and the same time, the King, the Revolution and the country. Having money in his pocket, Mirabeau, who had been the raging lion of the Revolution, remembered that he had always been an ardent royalist! On 10th May 1790, he signed a receipt for the sale of himself by pledging himself to serve the King with “loyalty, zeal, activity, energy and courage”. Here is what he wrote in addition:
I professed monarchical principles in days when all I could see in the court was its weakness, and when, knowing neither the spirit nor the thoughts of Maria Theresa’s daughter, I could not count upon this august auxiliary … I served the monarch when I knew that from a King who, though just, was misled, I could expect neither advantages nor recompense. What, then, shall I do now, when the trust felt in me has raised my courage and when the recognition vouchsafed to me has transformed my principles into duties? I shall henceforwards be what I have always been, the defender of monarchical power regulated by the laws, and the champion of liberty as guaranteed by monarchical authority. My heart will follow the road which reason has already pointed out to it.
Despite the tribune’s emphasis, both parties to the agreement knew well enough that the pledge was not an honourable one, but one which, like an owl or a bat, would shun the clear light of day. It was therefore understood between them that Mirabeau would never visit the Tuileries, but would send his advice to Louis by letter. In the public eye, the Count had to remain an ardent revolutionist while working in the National Assembly on behalf of the King’s cause—a shady deal by which neither gained anything and in which neither of the partners trusted the other. Still, Mirabeau set to work as agreed, writing letter after letter of advice to Louis, though these letters were in truth addressed to Marie Antoinette. It was his hope to make himself understood by the Queen, for he was quick to realise that Louis XVI counted for nothing. In his second note we read:
The King has but one man to support him—his wife. The only safeguard for her lies in the re-establishment of the royal authority. It pleases me to fancy that she would not care to go on living without the crown on her head, and of this much I am certain, that she will not be able to save her life unless she saves her crown. The moment will come ere long when she will have to see what a woman and a child can do in the saddle—this has been essayed before in her family—but, meanwhile, she must show moderation, and must not believe herself able, whether by the aid of chance or by the aid of intrigue, to overcome an extraordinary crisis through the instrumentality of ordinary men and ordinary measures.
Obviously Mirabeau was putting himself forward as the extraordinary man who would help the court out of its terrible dilemma. He hoped with a trident of brave words to calm the stormy waters no less easily than he had made them turbulent. In his overweening self-confidence, he foresaw himself as simultaneously president of the National Assembly and first minister of the King and the Queen. But he deceived himself. Not for a moment did Marie Antoinette dream of giving this ‘mauvais sujet’ effective power. The average human being is instinctively suspicious of those who are daimonic, and the Queen was incapable of grasping the splendour of the way in which this man of genius transcended conventional morality, for he was the first and the only person of the kind she encountered in the course of her life. His bold changes of front were thoroughly uncongenial to her, and the titanic passion of his nature alarmed her without pleasing her. Her secret intention, therefore, was to pay off and dismiss the savage, violent, immoderate, uncontrollable, incalculable man as soon as she should no longer have need of him. She had bought him, and, for the time being, he was to work diligently for money that was hard to come by, was to give advice, as he was well able to do. She would read letters from him, act upon whatever in them was not too eccentric, too foolhardy, and there would be an end of the matter. When the deputies were about to vote upon important matters, he would be a useful agitator; he could keep the court informed about what was going on; in the National Assembly, he could be used as a peacemaker on behalf of the ‘good cause’; and, being himself venal, he could certainly be instrumental in the corruption of others. Let the lion roar his loudest before his colleagues, while led in leading strings by the court. Such were the Queen’s thoughts concerning Mirabeau, who was too great to be measured by an ordinary yardstick, but never for an instant did she give her confidence to one whom she certainly found useful at times, but whose ‘immorality’ seemed odious to her, and whose genius was, from the first hour to the last, beyond the bounds of her comprehension.
It was not long before the honeymoon of the initial enthusiasm began to wane. Mirabeau perceived that his letters only helped to fill the royal wastepaper basket instead of stimulating a spiritual fire. Nevertheless, whether from vanity or from the covetous desire to earn the promised million, the tribune continued to besiege the court with his adjurations. Becoming aware that his written recommendations bore no fruit, he determined upon a last venture. His experience in political life and in his countless love affairs had shown him that he was even more effective with the tongue than with the pen, indeed far more effective, for his personality radiated an electrifying influence. He therefore was perpetually urging his emissary the Comte de La Marck to procure him an opportunity for a conversation with the Queen. He believed that an hour’s talk would be enough to dispel her suspicions; that, like so many other women, she would conceive an admiration for him. An audience—one would suffice—such was his reiterated demand. Being full of self-approbation, he did not for a moment believe that the first interview would be the last. No one who had once made his acquaintance would not be eager to follow it up!
For a long time Marie Antoinette was deaf to these proposals. At length, however, she gave way, and arranged to receive Mirabeau on 3rd July in the palace of Saint-Cloud.
It need hardly be said that the meeting had to be a secret one. By one of the ironies of fate, Mirabeau was accorded what the Cardinal de Rohan, poor fool, had been accorded only in semblance, an assignation in a shady grove. At midsummer, 1790, there was a last brief respite from detention at the Tuileries. As Axel de Fersen learnt during this period, there were plenty of well-hidden spots in the park of Saint-Cloud. “I have found a place,” wrote the Queen to Mercy, “which, though not as convenient as it might be, is suitable for the proposed meeting, and free from the inconveniences of the gardens and the château.” The time chosen was Sunday morning at eight, an hour when the court was asleep, and when the park was deserted. Mirabeau, who was doubtless considerably excited about the matter, spent the night at his sister’s house in Passy. Early next morning he was driven to Saint-Cloud, his nephew, suitably disguised, acting as coachman. Having left the carriage as well ambushed as possible, Mirabeau pulled his hat down over his eyes, cloaked his face like a conspirator, and entered the park by one of the lesser gates which had expressly been left unlocked. Soon he heard a light footfall upon the gravel. The Queen appeared, unaccompanied. Mirabeau was about to make an obeisance, but as soon as Marie Antoinette caught sight of his face, deeply pitted with smallpox, seamed by the violence of his passions, framed in an untidy mat of hair, at once powerful and brutal, an involuntary shudder passed across her countenance. Mirabeau did not fail to notice these signs of alarm, with which, in other women, he had long been familiar. All members of the fair sex were the same, even the gentle Sophie Voland had shrunk back in alarm when she first caught sight of him. But, as with Medusa, his hideousness exercised an invincible attraction. Invariably, hitherto, he had been able to transform initial fear into astonishment, into admiration and, often enough, into passionate affection.
We do not know what took place at this encounter between Mirabeau and Marie Antoinette. Since there were no witnesses, the reports of the conversation, not excepting that of the omniscient lady-in-waiting Madame Campan, are purely suppositious—are, to put it more bluntly, fables. This much only has transpired, that it was not Mirabeau who bent the Queen to his will, but the Queen who bewitched Mirabeau. Her exalted position, with its nimbus of royalty; her natural dignity and the quick understanding which, at a first interview, she always manifested to a degree that was not confirmed by a closer acquaintance with her—these things exerted an overwhelming charm upon Mirabeau’s inflammable and in many respects generous nature. Courage always aroused his sympathy. On leaving the park, still in a condition of marked agitation, he grasped his nephew’s arm and said with characteristic fervour: “She is great, noble and unfortunate, but I shall save her.” In that one hour’s conversation, Marie Antoinette had transformed a man who was both vacillating and venal into a resolute champion of her cause. “Nothing shall stop me, I would rather die than fail to fulfil my promises,” he wrote to the Comte de La Marck.
The Queen did not, so far as is known, say or write a word to anyone about this meeting. No expression of gratitude or confidence ever passed her lips. She did not wish to see Mirabeau again, nor did she ever pen a line to him. She had not entered into an alliance with him, but had merely received the assurance of his devotion. She had given him her gracious permission to sacrifice himself in her behalf.
Mirabeau had given a pledge, or, rather, two. He had sworn fealty both to the King and to the nation. While a fierce struggle was going on between the twain, he was chief of staff to both sides. Never has a politician played more dangerous a role, nor has any ever played it so brilliantly to the end. Wallenstein, compared with him, was no more than a bungler. Considered merely as an expenditure of bodily energy, Mirabeau’s achievement during these dramatic weeks and months was unparalleled. He delivered speeches in the National Assembly and in the clubs; he carried on agitation, parleyed, received numberless visitors, read, worked in his study—writing in the middle hours of the day reports and proposals for the National Assembly, and in the evening his secret dispatches to the King. Three or four secretaries were simultaneously trying to keep pace with the rapids of his torrential eloquence—but all this was not enough to appease his inexhaustible energy. He wanted still more work, more danger, more responsibility, and he wanted, over and above, and simultaneously, to live and to enjoy. Like a rope-dancer he kept his balance on a perilous perch, leaning now to the right and now to the left, devoting both the basic powers of his extraordinary nature to the service of either cause—both his brilliant political insight, and the fierce passion of his inflammatory temperament.
So lightning-swift were thrust and parry, so impetuous were the movements of his rapier, that no one could tell whether he was fighting for the King or for the people, against the new powers or against the old, and perhaps, in his most enthusiastic moods, he himself did not know for which cause he was fighting.
In the long run, however, so contradictory a position becomes untenable. Suspicion was rife; Marat said that the Count had sold himself to the enemy; Fréron threatened him with lynching (à la lanterne!—to the lamp post). “More virtue and less talent!” was the shout raised against him by his fellow-members in the National Assembly. Mirabeau, however, in his intoxication, knew no fear. His debts being the talk of Paris, he marched confidently forwards towards the promised wealth. What did he care because people were amazed at his new and lavish expenditure, because there was much gossip, much questioning, as to the sources from which he could have drawn the means which enabled him to give such costly banquets, to buy Buffon’s library, to hang diamonds round the necks of opera-singers and harlots. He was as indifferent as Zeus to the storms, since he himself was their lord. If anyone took him to task, he answered with the bludgeon of his wrath, with the lightnings of his mockery—a new Samson fighting the Philistines. An abyss beneath his feet, environing suspicion, deadly peril stalking in his rear, were but agreeable stimulants, now that at last he felt himself in his true element. His incomparable energies blazed heavenwards during these last decisive days when his fire was about to be extinguished for ever. At length, at length, to this scarcely credible being there had been allotted a task proportional to his genius—to arrest the inevitable, to stop the march of destiny. With formidable strength, with overwhelming frenzy, he hurled himself into events, endeavouring, a lone man fighting against myriads, to reverse the rolling of that revolutionary stone which he himself had set in motion.
Marie Antoinette, straightforward by disposition, lacked the political insight which would have enabled her to understand and to sympathize with the foolhardiness of this fight on two fronts, the grandeur of a position so amazing in its duplicity. The bolder Mirabeau’s memorials to Louis, the more sulphureous the reek of his counsel, the more did the sobriety of her understanding revolt against his extravagances. The tribune’s guiding principle at this juncture was that Satan should cast out Satan, that the Revolution by its excesses should annihilate anarchy. Since for the moment conditions could not be improved, it was necessary to adopt his notorious ‘politique du pire’—politics of the worst—deliberately to make them worse—like a physician who by means of irritant measure intensifies the crisis in order to hasten recovery. His designs, though amoral, were clairvoyant. The popular movement was not to be arrested but mastered. The aim was not to be in direct conflict with the National Assembly, but, instead, the populace was to be secretly incited to send the National Assembly to the Devil. To hope for the immediate coming of tranquillity and peace would be a mistake; for, on the contrary, the flames of injustice and dissatisfaction were to be fanned throughout the country until, in the end, there would arise a universal demand for order, for order of the old kind. Those who desired to re-establish the royal authority should shrink from nothing, not even from civil war.
The Queen trembled at the thought of such bold measures as Mirabeau advocated with a flourish of trumpets: “Four enemies are advancing at the double; taxation, bankruptcy, the army, winter. We must take the bull by the horns—or, rather, we must prepare for coming events by guiding them. In two words, civil war is not certain, but perhaps expedient.” She wrote protestingly to Mercy: “How can Mirabeau, or any other reflective being, possibly suppose … above all just now, it could be auspicious for us to instigate a civil war? … His scheme is crazy from beginning to end.” By degrees her lack of confidence in the amoralist who was ready to have recourse to all means however dreadful, became insuperable. Vainly did Mirabeau try “to shake the court out of its lethargy by a thunderclap”. Louis, Marie Antoinette and their other advisers would not listen to him. At length, angered by their mental inertia, he began to feel a contempt for the ‘royal bétail’, for the sheep who were submissively being driven to the slaughter. He realised that the court was incapable of effective action, and that he was fighting for its cause in vain. But trouble was his element. Himself foredoomed to early destruction which was now close at hand, about to drink the black wine of death, almost his last words were a despairing prophecy: “Excellent but weak King; unfortunate Queen! Contemplate the terrible abyss into which your vacillation between too blind a confidence and too exaggerated a suspicion has swept you! There still remains one possible effort for you and for the others. If you renounce it, or if it fails, a funeral pall will cover this realm. What will be its fate? Whither will the dismasted ship drive, shattered by the lightning, at the mercy of the storm? I do not know. But should I myself escape the general shipwreck, I shall be able, in my retirement, to say with pride: ‘I exposed myself to disaster in the hope of saving them. But they did not want to be saved.’”
They did not want to be saved. Does not the Bible tell us: “Thou shalt not plough with an ox and an ass together”? The court, cumbrous and conservative, could not keep step with the great tribune, fiery, hasty, fretting against bit and bridle. Marie Antoinette, being a woman of the old world, could not understand Mirabeau’s revolutionary inclinations; the straightforwardly simple was alone within her mental grasp; the neck-or-nothing policy of this brilliant political adventurer was incomprehensible to her. Yet to his last hour Mirabeau went on fighting, partly from mere lust for battle, partly from pride in his own foolhardiness. One against a multitude, mistrusted by the people, mistrusted by the court, mistrusted by the National Assembly, he twisted the three of them round his fingers even while he worked against them. With a body ravaged by his excesses, with a frame racked by fever, he returned again and again to the arena, once more imposing his will upon the twelve hundred of his fellow-deputies, until at length, in March 1791, when for eight months he had been playing double, serving both the King and the Revolution, death touched him on the shoulder. He gave one more speech; almost to the very end he went on dictating to his secretaries; during the last night of his life he slept with two opera-singers—and then his mighty strength was annulled. Huge crowds had assembled outside his house, waiting to learn when the heart of the Revolution ceased to beat, and his body was followed to its resting place by three hundred thousand persons. The Pantheon, converted to new uses by the Revolution, was to be a fitting shrine for the ashes of those who had done good service to their country. The mortal remains of the great tribune were to stay there while eternity ran its course.
But how pitiful a word is ‘eternity’ in such stirring times! No more than two years later, when Mirabeau’s double dealings with the King had come to light, what was left of his corpse was snatched from its distinguished tomb and thrown contemptuously into the pit dug for carrion from the knacker’s yard.
For the moment, however, there was general consternation at Mirabeau’s premature death. Only the court was unperturbed, for reasons still known to itself alone. We can confidently discredit Madame Campan’s foolish tale that, when the news was brought, Marie Antoinette’s eyes filled with tears. Nothing is more improbable, for we can hardly doubt that the Queen must have heaved a sigh of relief at the dissolution of what to her had been an uncongenial partnership. The man was too great to serve, too venturesome to obey. The court had feared him when alive, and feared him even after he was dead. While he was in the death-agony, a confidential agent from the palace came to his house and rifled his desk of compromising letters, so that for the time being a veil was drawn over the alliance of which both parties were ashamed—Mirabeau because he served the court, and the Queen because she allowed him to serve her. Yet when Mirabeau died, there died the last man who was perhaps capable of mediating between the monarchy and the people. Thenceforwards Marie Antoinette and the Revolution confronted one another with none between them to temper their mutual animosity.