1 (Euvres, viil 141.

232 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

suffrage seemed to be justified by a partial experience. Accordingly, in 1789, there was a first and very lively feminist movement, which manifested itself in petitions and pamphlets, but which emanated, it seems, almost entirely from the women themselves ; men seem at the outset to have met it with disdainful silence.

Women pleaded their cause by means of acts as well as words : they took part in the Revolution, to the success of which they contributed : some in the salons, some in the streets, some at the taking of the Bastille. They took a hand in the municipalisation of the country in July, 1789. The decisive character of October 5th and 6th was due to women. The Commune, in 1790, decorated a number of the women of Paris with medals. Here and there, in the provinces, as, for example, at Vic-en-Bigorre, there were actual battalions of Amazons. Women had, indeed, really played the part of citizens when Condorcet took their cause in hand, with more insistence and more publicly than in 1788, and published, in July, 1790, in the Journal de la Socitti de 1789, a vigorous and eloquent article, entitled : " On the Admission of Women to the Rights of the State," which was a veritable feminist manifesto.

On this occasion men could not, as in 1789, simply pass disdainfully to the " order of the day " on the question of political rights for women. Condorcet's manifesto produced a great sensation. The matter was debated in the journals, the salons, the clubs, and at the Cercle social. This latter club, at first of indefinite views, finally adhered (December 30, 1790) to the views of Condorcet, marking this adhesion by printing and distributing a feminist pamphlet by Mme. Aelders, who was trying to found and federate throughout France patriotic societies of "citizenesses."

However, the majority of the more prominent democrats avoided any theoretical pronouncement on the

FEMALE SUFFRAGE—POPULAR CLUBS 233

subject of the women's rights, much more any encouragement of the feminist movement as Mme. Aelders was attempting to organise it. These women's clubs, established apart from and in some sense in opposition to the men's clubs, were liable to form a cause of division among revolutionists. Patriots of enthusiastic spirit a-nd enlightened mind preferred, to this schismatic effort, the noble and faithful revolutionary attempt at the fraternal co-operation of man and woman.

I am referring to the " Fraternal Societies of the two Sexes," which played so' important a part in the evolution of democracy and the Republic.

These societies were one of the means and one of the effects of the democratic anti-bourgeois movement ; they were one of the forms of the Soctites populalres.

At the present time one understands the phrase Soctttte popataires as denoting all political clubs of whatever kind, and that was, in fact, precisely what it used to mean in 1793 and 1794. But in 1790 and 1791 it was otherwise. The Jacobin Club, or the Friends of the Constitution, was a middle-class body, composed, that is, of active citizens, who gathered round an original nucleus of deputies, in order to prepare, in camera, the deliberations of the Assembly. Certainly it numbered advanced democrats, such as Robespierre, but it was not a popular club, and the people were excluded from it.

On the other hand, the Cordeliers' Club (the Society of the rights of the m'an and the citizen), which was frankly and unanimously democratic and anti-bourgeois, was truly a socittt populalre, its tribunes being public, probably counting among its members passive citizens and women.

When the antagonism between the democratic and bourgeois parties finally came to a head in 1790 a number of people's clubs (socittfc populaires) were founded, under the auspices of the Cordeliers, and these admitted passive citizens as members.

234 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Clubs of this kind were founded in the larger cities': for example, at Lyons ; but more especially in Paris. 1

Some admitted only men, but the greater number both sexes ; there were even some that admitted children above twelve years of age. 2 We have no complete list of these clubs, but they seem 1 to have been founded in every section of Paris.

The chief and avowed end of these people's clubs was the instruction of the people. In the evenings, and especially on Sunday evenings, there were gatherings of workers, to whom the Declaration of Rights and the Laws were read, and who underwent a course of civic instruction. Nothing, at the outset, could have been simpler. One of the SociStSs fraterneltes des deux sexes, which met in the same convent of the Jacobins in which the Friends of the Constitution, the Jacobins themselves, foregathered, was founded in October, 1790, it seems by a poor boarding-school master, one Claude Dajnsard. He came to each meeting with a candle-end and a tinder-box in his pocket. When the meeting was a long one, the company subscribed for another candle.

These ^humble gatherings had from the first a very great social importance, uniting, as they did, in fraternal groups, bourgeois and proletariat, men and women. They were politically of importance also, for they taught the people their rights, and made the idea of universal suffrage popular. Poor Dansard does not long enjoy his presidency at the Jacobins ; more eminent persons succeed him: Frangois Robert, Mittte, the Abb6 Mathieu, P6pin-D£grouhette.3 Well-known women

1 These clubs were founded from July, 1790, to January, 1791.

B As a general thing, members had to be at least eighteen years of age.

s Installed July 19, 1797. This is how, at this date, this society heads its manifestoes: "Live free or die. Fraternal Society of Patriots of

are admitted: Mme. Robert-Keralio, Mme. Moitte, of the Academy of Painting. Mme. Roland was at first disdainful, and rallied such women as went to the meetings, 1 but after the flight to Varennes she, too, became a member of certain of the clubs. 2

The clubs went on from instruction to action ; they watched over and denounced functionaries ; they looked after the conduct of the Department of Paris ; they published addresses. They did all that the Jacobins did, but with intentions unanimously democratic. At the beginning of 1791 the Indigents Club (Soctttt des indigents), a club of both sexes, was organised in defiance of the new aristocracy of wealth.

People begin to acquire republican manners ; they

both sexes, defenders of the Constitution, sitting at the library of the Saint-Honore Jacobins." Unhappily we have not the register of this society, nor, as far as I know, that of any people's club. But I find (Arch. Nat., papers of the Committee of Reports) an address from the club to the Assembly, "in favour of the unfortunate, deceived, and guilty citizens of the department of Haute-Garonne." This is undated, but received June 15,1791. It contains a hundred signatures. I give them, as far as I can decipher them, because there are few statistics as to the constitution of the democratic party before the flight to Varennes: Pepin-Degrouhette, president; Musquinet, secretary ; N. Chrestien, junr., secretary; Goubert, Puzin, Sadouze, Jollard, Tassart, Brocheton, Bertin, Canecie, George, Maubant, Moulin, Paris, Fournet, Guilleraut, Chabert, Dupui, Chailleux, B. Pollet, Louis Noel, Corbieni, Leger, Dufour, Ulrich, Mangin, Remaseilles, Redon, George, Dupont, Prevelle, Veuve Maillard, Leger, Potheau, Henaut, Poulain, Malvaux, Petra(?), Blanchard, Saunier(?), Aubin, Diel(?), Gannuel-Dufrcsne(?), Goupil, Mique, Mathieu, priest; De Robois, Driye, Monge, Tournie, Cretin, Joubcrt, Lalire, Bourgoin, Combaz, Surian, Le Gendre, Mander, Ferraut, Girard, De Roncy, Cauriez, Moraux, Breton, Hovel, Dafin(?), Chaboud, Deffoux, Mercier, L'Ecolaus, Montaudouin, Marion, Roye, Bernard, Petit, Beny, Kissienne, Watier, Giroux, Letournel, Guillemard, Driant, Chartier, Decret, Dechesne, Poumier (?), J. J. Janteau, J. C. Lusurier, Douzon, Mollein, Regnault, Lavaux, Sadous, Veuve Collard, Laligant, Lafosse, Poisson.

1 In February, 1791, at the " club sitting at the Jacobins," the women members took the oath never to marry an aristocrat.

a Lettres a Bancal, 199, 247.

236 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

tutoyer one another; the words " brother" and " sister " take the place of monsieur, madame, mademoiselle. Mme. Robert/ w ho in future is known as Sister Louise Robert, publicly rejoices in the important democratic rdle assumed by the people's clubs, which regard all enemies of the State with horror, and cries enthusiastically : " Our sons, who have lived to see the noblest period of public happiness, will one day raise a worthy monument to liberty, and on the stone of which it is built they will grave the words : " We owe it to the Societies of Fraternity ! "

Women are the soul of these clubs, and of the democratic movement. " All honour to the more interesting half of the human race I Until this day they have taken little part in the Revolution ; before this day there have been few women patriots ; but now at last candour and grace are also of our party, and all will surely go well." 2

The democracy these clubs have in mind is extremely comprehensive ; even domestic servants will form a part of it; Mme. Robert proposes to raise them, by fraternity, to the dignity of men .3 But it would not be a socialist democracy ; in May, 1791, the Indi-gents Club pauses to refute, in an address, an incendiary pamphlet on the partition of land .4

It would not be a feminist democracy, for I do not find that any people's club has so far demanded political rights for women. And although these clubs are republicanising their manners, although the republicans are still the most ardent ringleaders of the clubs,

1 Who belonged both to the Fraternal Club at the Jacobins and to the Indigents.

a Mercure national, April 22,1791.

s The Journal gtntral de la cow et de la milt (p. 580) says that in December, 1760, there was a servants' club near the Jacobins. But this may have been a sarcastic reference to the Fraternal Club.

« Doubtless Abbe Cournand's little book.

no one has yet, it seems, pronounced the word "republic."

Carefully restrained in manner, so as not to shock opinions too greatly, and yet so as to rally all the revolutionary forces, their programme is the suppression of property qualifications—in short, universal suffrage.

At the beginning of May there was an attempt (which would seem to have emanated from the Keralio-Robert salon) to federate the people's clubs of Paris. With Robert as presiding genius a Central Committee of thirty of these clubs was formed, which held its first two meetings on May 7th and loth in the Greyfriars convent. The bourgeois Government felt the gravity of this effort towards the unification of the democratic movement; the mayor set seals on the convent of the Greyfriars, and the Society of the Rights of Man had to migrate to the rue Dauphine.

The Central Committee held a meeting on the I4th in a tennis-court. On the isth there took place a coalition of all the clubs " for the purpose of finding a means of remaining upright in the storm," The Jacobin Club was invited to send delegates to the Central Committee. It hesitated ; was about to send them, but a speech by Gaultier de Biauzat dissuaded it ; it remained officially a bourgeois club. The Central Committee continued to meet and to transact business, first at the Roberts' house, then in a house in the rue de la Cit6. But no men of political importance joined it. Still royalists, they fought shy of a committee presided over by a republican. Robespierre and Petion prefer to live their political life against the middle-, class background of the Jacobins. But even there, they were obliged to be as democratic as the chiefs of the people's clubs.

238 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

VI.

Such was the part played by the people's clubs in the democratic movement; a movement emphasised and fortified, in Paris, by the fraternal co-operation of men and women.

Let us now review the main lines of progress of the movement from January to June, 1791.

The effects of the property qualification begin to seem altogether intolerable ; there is now a definite current of opinion against the bourgeois system, and the struggle between the classes is felt to be near at hand.

Mme. Roland herself, so moderate and so little a Radical, inveighs, in a letter to Bancal (March 15, 1791) against "the class of rich people." This politically privileged class is beginning to be known by the name it will henceforth keep, the bourgeoisie. The first instance of this new usage of an old word * I find in the Revolutions de Paris (March 5-12, 1791); in an article entitled Des Bourgeois de Paris et autres, an anonymous writer says : " The bourgeois of necessity is anything but a democrat. He is a monarchist by instinct.? Sheep also are led by the authority of a single individual; nothing will part them from the shepherd, who, none the less, shears them so close that

1 In destroying all privileges, the Revolution had done away with the old bourgeoisie. However, at Belfort, it seems, the distinction between bourgeois and habitant continued for some time longer. In a complaint addressed to the Legislative Assembly in May, 1742, we read: " The bourgeois take their part in the distribution of all the communal goods; they receive annually from the municipality their wood for fuel, their portion in the division of common lands; they enjoy the rights of acorn-gathering, carting marl, pasturage, &c. The inhabitants (habitants) are excluded from all these distributions" (Ph. Sagnac, La Legislation civile de la Revolution, p. 424).

9 The first instance I have met with of monarchist as opposed to democrat.

he takes off the skin, sells them to the butcher when they are fat, or cuts their throats himself for his own sustenance ; but sheep without a dog and without a shepherd would be sadly embarrassed, and would not know what to do with their liberty. The bourgeois is the same ; in the scale of creation we must place him between man and the mule. He holds the mean between these two species ; he is the link between the one and the other ; he has often enough the stubborn gait of the mule, and sometimes, like man, he tries to think, but in this he is not always successful."

The democrats do not limit themselves to these vague insults ; the campaign against the property qualifications becomes keener, more violent, and at last, popular.' It has a leader : Robespierre.

In the month of April, 1791, there was printed a " speech before the National Assembly/' which had not been delivered, and which proposed a decree establishing universal suffrage. The arguments were as ingenious as eloquent. To the objection that people who have no property are not interested in the maintenance of social order, and the observance of the laws, the writer replies that every man is a proprietor. Is not the poor man the proprietor of the wretched clothes that cover him? Has he not his liberty, his life, which the laws protect, and is he not interested for this reason in the maintenance of the laws? Instead of being treated as a citizen, he is relegated to the level of the most odious criminals. In fact, the crime of high treason, the most odious of all, is by law punished by the deprivation of an active citizen's rights. Thus the poor, to whom this right is refused, are confused with

r Halem writes (October 8, 1790) that he heard, at the Palais Royal, a man speaking, in a group of people, against the property suffrage. " * He is right, he is right,' was heard from all parts, and his audience increased " (Paris en ijgo, voyage de Halem, translated by A. Chuquet, Paris, 1896, p. 190).

240 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

traitors to their country 1 Yet traitors may, according to the law, recover their rights by civic actions ; the poor cannot; they are treated worse than traitors I Robespierre recalls the fact that the deputies of the Third Estate were elected to the Estates-General by a suffrage almost universal, and he delivers this eulogy of the people ; a kind of praise at that time unheard of and original: *

" I call to witness all those whom the instinct of a noble and sensitive mind has moulded, and made worthy to know and love equality, that in general there is no one so good and so just as the people, so long as they are not irritated by excessive oppression; that they are grateful for the slightest regard shown them, for the least good one does them, even for the evil one refrains from doing, that it is among them that one finds, under a gross exterior, candid and upright souls, and a good sense and energy that one would search for long and vainly in the class that despises them. The people want only what is necessary; they wish only for justice and peace. The rich claim everything; they want to invade everything, dominate everything. Abuse is the occupation, the province of the rich; they are the scourges of the people. The interest of the people is the general interest; that of the rich is the interest of the individual. And you wish to make the people impotent, the rich omnipotent!"

1 It was after this manifestation of Robespierre's that advanced patriots, as a general thing, left off speaking of the people and the multitude with the disdain exhibited by the philosophers. It became the custom, in the papers and the revolutionary clubs, to speak in praise of the poor and ignorant, and to preach, in their favour, a truly paternal equality. However, as democratic as they might be, the bourgeois did not go so far as to admit that artisans, for example, should have absolutely the same rights as they themselves. Thus, they refused throughout the whole Revolution the right of co-operation and of striking. In May, 1791, the carpenters of Paris co-operated, forming a " Fraternal union of workers in the art of joinery," undertaking not to work for a less wage than 2 livres 10 sols per diem, instead of the 36 sols which they were earning, while their employers get money out of their employees at the rate of 3, 4, and even 5$ livres a day " (Mercure national, May 11,1791). At the instance of the employers, the municipality passed a resolution on May 4th, declaring "null and unconstitutional the resolutions passed by the workers of different

ROBESPIERRE IN THE ASCENDANT 241

This article caused a great sensation. It was read at the tribune of the Greyfriars, April 20, 1791. This club voted its republication, by printing and posting it up. It invited all patriotic societies to have it read at their meetings 1 : " this production of a just spirit and a pure mind " ; it besought " the fathers of families to inculcate these principles in their wives and children." l The Indig:ents felicitated Robespierre in an enthusiastic address.

The immense popularity of Robespierre seems to date from this time.

At the Assembly, April 2 7th, during some business

trades to refuse themselves and to refuse to others the right to work at wages other than those fixed by the said resolutions." Orders were given to the commissaries of police to arrest such workmen as attempted to prevent their comrades from working. Frangois Robert says, that if the workers had no right to use force towards one another, neither had the municipality the right to prevent them from co-operating. But he can see in the matter nothing but a useful principle: that of free competition. The Revolutions de Paris agrees with Robert; Marat, on this occasion, speaks vaguely. Robespierre and the chiefs of the democratic party do not attempt any intervention in favour of the workers. They seem to have made no serious opposition to the law of June I4th, which prohibits the co-operation of working-men, nor to that of June i6th, which licenses relief works (concerning which see the Respectueuses observations faites a TAssembUe nationals by the working men, June 28th, in the Arch. part, xxvii. 504). We must remember that the democrats were always afraid that the artisans, at least in the outskirts of Paris, might listen to the counter-revolutionaries. Thus we read in the Bouche de Per, April i, 1791: "I ought to warn you of a matter of the first importance. I saw yesterday, while walking just out of Paris, some workmen engaged on the public works who were reading L Ami du Roi; I went up to them and heard them approving. It is essential to keep an eye on these forty thousand men, who are fed after a fashion so that they can be made use of, and our municipality ought to blush at the indecent administration of these public works, and at the uselessness of the occupation it gives to this gathering of men devoted to idleness and corruption.—G. M."

1 See the pamphlet entitled: DiscoursparMaximilien Robespierre et amritt du club des Cordeliers.

242 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

concerning the organisation of the National Guard, he spoke against the property suffrage, and on May 28th, in the debate on the convocation of electors to nominate members to the Legislative Assembly, he made a speech against the mark of silver.

The democratic movement was accelerated. Certain bodies of bourgeois came over to it. Thus in May, 1791, the directory of the district of Longwy jmade a protest against the mark of silver.*

The Greyfriars joined the movement, and undertook a kind of revision of the whole bourgeois system. On May 3oth, while admitting a provisional submission, the Club declared that it was important—

" not to be governed long by laws which are incoherent or destructive in respect of the Declaration of Rights, of which the logical consequence is equality of suffrage. . . . Duty, virtue, our oaths, our courage imperiously command us to pierce, to destroy the maze of absurdities which compromise the Declaration of Rights. Consequently, and in conformity with this exposition, the Cordeliers Club has decided to form a committee composed of six members, among whom will be divided the decrees of the National Assembly, which form, each by itself and relatively to the others, the organic codes of the Constitution, in order to examine and to correlate them, and to pronounce between them and the Declaration of Rights; and to differentiate, refute, and present to the Club those which seem contradictory or inimical to the Declaration, of which they should be merely the result and the concrete consequence. After this work the committee will make an exact and conclusive report to the Assembly,"

This manifesto was sent to the sections and to the patriotic clubs, with the invitation to follow suit.

In June, after two speeches by Ren£ de Girardih, the Gireyfriars passed a resolution demanding not only the suppression of the decree of the silver mark, but also the future submission to the people of all laws for ratification.

A fajctor that made the democratic suffrage move-

DEMAND FOE UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 243

ment particularly lively in June was the convocation of the primary assemblies, when several sections, although composed of active citizens, showed themselves in favour of universal suffrage.' The Parisian correspondent of the Gazette de Leyde wrote that it was "a general movement " (June 28, 1791).

On June 8th, the section of Sainte-Genevifcve named two commissaries, who were to meet those from other sections for the purpose of drawing up, according to Robespierre's plan, a petition to the National Assembly. But apparently nothing came of this, and the sections do not seem to have met. 2 Another project of the section of Sainte-Genevi&ve had more success. It sent the round of the popular clubs a speech by one of its members, a certain Lorinet, on universal suffrage ; and the Central Committee (here we observe the influence of the Roberts and the republican party), meeting on June 15th, adopted the following petition : 3

•" The undersigned, meeting in the Central Committee of the various Fraternal Societies of the capital, which watch over the safety of the public interests, have become convinced that the day which will witness the commencement of the primary assemblies will be the signal for the universal protest of those whose every hope has been ravished from them.

" Fathers of our native land, those who obey laws which they have

1 There were even active citizens who protested against the property suffrage by not attending the primary assemblies. See the Courrier of Gorsas, June 16 (xxv. 256)t "Yesterday the primary assemblies commenced in Paris. A citizens' club has profited by this fact to post up a placard in which it protests against the abusive, ridiculous, inept, odious decree of the silver mark. Many excellent citizens who, like ourselves, pay it and more too have voluntarily kept away from the Assembly, where intrigue has. iaken the lead of patriotism and will perhaps finally expel it."

8 Desmoulins says that one section, fhat of the Theatre Frangais, did " accede to the petition of Sainte-Genevieve." We shall see that they did not stop there.

3 Desmoulins, in his Revolutions de France et de Brabant (vol. vij. pp. 142,144), explains in detail the part he played in the matter.

244 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

not made or sanctioned are slaves. You have declared that the law can only be the expression of the general will, and the majority is composed of citizens who are strangely called passive. If you do not name the day of the universal sanction of the law by the whole mass of citizens; if you do not put an end to the cruel difference which you have imposed by your decree of the mark of silver, between the people and their brothers; if you do not obliterate for ever these different degrees of eligibility which so manifestly violate your Declaration of the Rights of Man; if you do not do these things, the country is in danger. On July 14,1789, the city of Paris contained 300,000 armed men; the active list published by the municipality contains barely 80,000 names of citizens. Compare and judge.' 1

This petition was signed by the presidents of thirteen people's clubs. We have not these signatures, but the Boache de Per gives the list of the thirteen clubs. Here they are:

" Of Sainte-Genevieve, sitting at Navarre; of the Rights of Man, of the Faubourg Sainte-Antoine; of Equality, cloister of Notre Dame; of the Nomophiles, Saint Catherine's priory; the Fraternal, sitting at the Minimes; the Fraternal of the Markets; Central Arts; the Rights of Man and Citizen, called the Greyfriars (Cordeliers) ; the Indigents ; the Liberty, rue de la Mortellerie; the Enemies of Despotism; the Universal Confederation of the Friends of Truth; the Carmelites, place Maubert."

The petitioners did not succeed in getting their petition read before the Assembly, but they posted it up all over Paris. Here is the Bouche de Fer's account of the matter:

" We must give the news of the application of the deputies to the President of the National Assembly. He was busy: receiving no one. The patriot Mandard sent word to him that the petition, which, as he would see, bore only thirty signatures, represented at least 40,000; and the president, visible on paper only, promised to have the petition read to the Assembly. But it was not read. As it was yesterday posted up in all the streets of the capital, we do not precisely know how the astute M. Dauchy, president of the National Assembly, is going to justify himself in the eyes of his colleagues, of all the Fraternal Societies of the indignant city, and above all, of justice" (June

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE DEMANDED 245

At least two sections subscribed to this great manifestation, and took part in the petition for the suffrage.

The section of the Th££tre Frangais, united in primary assembly, refused (June 16th) to join a collective petition, which it considered illegal, but it entrusted Danton, Garran de Coulon, Bonneville, and Camille Desmoulins with the drafting of one which its members would sign individually. This was it:

" Fathers of the country, recognise your own decrees! The law is the expression of the general will, and we see with sorrow that those who saved the country on the i4th of July, who then sacrificed their lives to snatch you from the dangers which threatened you, count for nothing in the primary assemblies.

"To order citizens to obey laws which they have neither made nor sanctioned is to condemn to slavery the very men who have overthrown a despotism. No; the French will not suffer such a thing. We, active citizens, will have none of it. 1

"You have put civic degradation among the greatest penalties. The penal Code enacts that the clerk of the Court shall say to the criminal: ' Your country has found you convicted of an infamous action; the law degrades you from the quality of a French citizen/

" What is the infamous action of which you have found two hundred thousand citizens of the capital guilty?

"To declare that taxation shall be imposed by the nation alone, and, in another decree, to exclude from the rights of a citizen the majority of tax-paying citizens, is to destroy the nation. The social art is to govern all by all.

"Therefore annul these decrees, which violate your sublime

1 This phrase was first of all inserted elsewhere; namely, before the words "declare that the tax . . ." (see the Creuset, vol. ii. p. 466). In the Bouche de Per, Ixix. June 19, 1791, we read : "The second petition of the active citizens, which was published in our last issue, was drafted by several hands. A first draft was loudly applauded; a happy idea was found in another; it was insisted that this must be inserted in the approved draft. As the petition was printed in great haste, and during the night, the added phrase, by some mistake in revision, was inserted in the middle of another phrase.' 1 Then follows the revised text.

246 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Declaration of the rights of men and citizens; give back to us our brothers, to rejoice with us in the benefits of a Constitution which they impatiently await, which they have courageously sustained! Unless the whole nation sanction your decrees, there is neither Constitution nor liberty."

This petition was immediately duplicated, to some extent, by another, common to the section of Gobelins and that of the Th£fitre Frangais.

We read in the Bouche de Per of June i gth :

" In the midst of the discussion which arose concerning this petition in the section of the Theatre Frangais, a deputation from the Gobelins demanded to be introduced. This generous section had conceived the question from a novel point of view. The section of the Theatre Frangais has fraternally given its adherence and named assistants to collaborate in the drafting of a common petition. At the mere mention of the name of one of the delegates—as a matter of fact, one of our men ^—-a request was made that he should take up the pen and that the drafting of the petition should be proceeded with. Five assistants of the greatest merit were associated with the delegates from the Theatre Frangais."

The text once drafted, read, and approved,

"thanks were voted to the drafter of the address, of which the principal ideas, as regards the production of the petition, are those of the patriot Thorillon, president of the section of the Gobelins."

There is no " new point of view " in this petition, as the Bouche de Per would have it. It consists of an energetic affirmation of the ideas made popular by Robespierre. There is a contradiction between the Declaration of Rights and any property restriction of the suffrage:

"Ought not every citizen twenty-five years of age and domiciled in France, provided he pays his country his debt as a citizen, to be

THE PARTY GAINS IN STRENGTH 247

eligible ? Merely to doubt it would be to show yourselves guilty and even ungrateful for your benefits. Prepare for the blessed days of the universal sanction of the law by the citizens as an absolute whole 1 Consummate the fairest undertaking that ever was! There is no nation, no Constitution, no liberty, if, among men born free and of equal rights, a single one is forced to obey laws to the formation of which he had no opportunity of contributing." x

This petition was laid before the President of the National Assembly by sixteen delegates. 3

" The president, Beauharnais the younger, seemed to wish that the petition should be read ; but the order of the day was demanded, and some requested that it should be sent to the Committee of Constitution. D'Andre had the ear of the Assembly; and he demanded that the Committee should report as to the objects of the petition and the manner in which it was presented, in order that our laws might not be violated under our eyes, and to set a notable example/ 1

VII.

Great as the progress of the democratic party was in June, it was still in the minority, even in Paris. In this minority the Republicans, as we have seen, formed only a little group, a left wing or advance guard, which attempted, by means of the people's clubs, not to republicanise the people (for sb far the clubs

1 Bouche de Per, June iQth. The MS. text is signed by a number of citizens from the sections of the Theatre Francais and the Gobelins. Among the former I find the names of Sergent, president of the primary assembly, Momoro, N. Bonneville, and Boucher de Saint-Sauveur.

B The Bouche de Per of June iQth says "it has just been presented." But on June 2ist it says " it was presented this morning." And on the margin of the MS. in the National Archives we read : " Received July 2nd, sent to the Committee of Constitution: Alex. Beauharnais, president." I cannot explain these discrepancies. But it is evident the petition was presented on the igth or 2oth.

248 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

never spoke of the republic), but to enlarge and precipitate the democratic movement, of which the logical development must one day be the republic, and, in the meantime, to accustom the people to the word " republic," and to weaken their royalist instincts.

Let us note in chronological order the principal manifestations, whether republican or royalist, from December, 1790, to June, 1791.

At the end of 1790 the Impartials Club (founded by Clermont-Tonnerre and the " monarchiens ") transformed itself into the Club of the Friends of the Monarchical Constitution. Gorsas, in his Courrier of December 2Oth, says-: " The avowed object of the club is to oppose the spirit of republicanism, which is, so say the members, germinating in every mind." And he adds : "An assertion as false as absurd." But he himself a few days later testifies to the progress of republican ideas : " Does it [this royalist club] imagine that the Friends of the Constitution sitting at the Jacobins are the enemies of the monarchy, because a few of its members have republican sentiments? " In any case there was from this time onward an open quarrel between the monarchy and the republic. It was at the theatre that the difference of opinion broke out into open conflict. At a representation of Brut as a paper was thrown and read ; it expressed the fear that this tragedy would embolden the factious " to form themselves into a republic." At this phrase, " I love liberty with all my heart, but I also love my King 1 " a young National Guard cried out, " Very well, let him have his King for himself ! " " At this indiscreet cry," says Gorsas, " there was a frightful uproar, and they tried to make the impudent fellow apologise, but he escaped."

About the same time there were anti-republican demonstrations in the theatres of Arras and Lyons.

On the other, hand, the Revolutions de Paris pro-

THE DEMOCRATS LOYAL TO LOUIS 249

posed the formation of battalions of tyrannicides. 1 To be sure, they were for the purpose of killing foreign kings, not Louis XVI. He, on the contrary, must be protected from aristocratic plotters : " The King is of the very small number of those who would reconcile a Brutus to royalty. A King who yields the half of his throne to the nation's liberty deserves the entire devotion of the nation. The peace of the people depends on the existence of such a king." Which does not prevent the same paper from attacking, in a direct and popular manner, the idea of royalty, while representing kings in general as being enemies of the peoples. It dare not yet speak of a republic, but it does declare that " the nation can abrogate royalty," while " the King cannot abrogate the nation." It further remarks that since July 14, 1789, the word "'king 1 ' has changed its meaning for us : it conveys merely the idea of a citizen entrusted with the oversight of the execution of the decrees of a sovereign assembly." Soon, still bolder, it says : "It is amongst the most republican of the people that the second battalion of tyrannicides will be recruited." Then, immediately, as if fearing lest he had shown the colour of his skin, the writer adds in a note : " That is to say, the true friends of the public edifice. This is the primitive signification of the word ' republican.' Alas I in this time of confusion we must explain everything."

These hesitations on the part of the Revolutions de Paris are explained by this fact?: that so far no progress of republican ideas was to be discovered among the people. Gorsas writes on February 12, 1791 :

" Louis XVI went yesterday to the Jardin du Roi. When he had passed the gate, the charcoal-sellers (who have given the most

1 This idea was far from being accepted by all democrats. Fauchet criticised it, saying: " I am neither a killer nor an eater of tyrants. 11 Some weeks later, however, the Social Club applauded a motion concerning the "judging of kings."

250 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

thorough proof of their patriotism) formed themselves in ranks. His Majesty passed between them and received the most touching proofs of affection and respect."

Marat, at this time extremely popular/ hesitates and contradicts himself even more than does the editor of the Revolutions de Paris, on the question of the best form of government. We have seen him an open royalist in the early days of the Revolution.* However, although he is not a frequenter of Mme. Robert's salon, he does seem to have rallied to the republican party since its birth. We read in the Ami du Peaple of October 21, 1790: "It is a mistake to suppose that the French Government can be nothing but monarchical, or even that it need be so to-day." And on November 8, 1790:

"And what service is the prince in the State to-day, except to oppose the regeneration of the Empire and the happiness of its inhabitants ? To the man without prejudice the French King is less than the fifth wheel to the cart, since he can only derange the course of the political machine. If only all patriotic writers would engage to make the nation feel that the best way of assuring its peace, liberty, and happiness is to dispense with the Crown I Shall we never grow out of our second childhood?"

But he sees that the republican propaganda is wasted on the working men, and he hears the loyal cries of the charcoal-sellers by the gate, and he does not hesitate to change his opinion. " I do not know/' he writes, on February 17, 1791, " whether the counter-

1 Halem, in a letter of October 8, 1790, says: " Near the Louvre, in the open air, I saw a well-dressed man reading to an attentive crowd long passages from the Ami du peuple, filled with abuse of the ministers."

* In his Offrande h la patrie he writes: "We do not by any means wish to upset the throne, but to remind the Government of its primitive institution, and to correct its radical vices, which are ripe for the nun of both King and subject. . . . Blessed be the best of kings!"

THE KING REGARDED AS NECESSARY 251

revolutionaries will force us to change the form of the government; but I do know that an extremely limited monarchy is the form that is best for us nowadays. ... A federated republic would soon degenerate into an oligarchy." And, speaking of Louis XVI, he does not hesitate to write : " Whatever happens, we must have the King. We ought to thank Heaven for having given him to us."

Are we to believe that Marat would have written a phrase so flattering to Louis if it had not corresponded with the frame of mind of the Parisian artisans?

It was as royalists rather than as republicans that the latter were so alarmed at the rumours of flight on the part of the King. What would become of them if their father and guide were taken from them? The departure of mesdames the King's aunts (February 19, 1791) disquieted the people, who feared that the rest of the royal family were also about to go. Their fears and suspicions became a miserable nightmare. They imagined that the keep of Vincennes, garrisoned for sinister purposes, was connected with the Tuileries by means of a secret subterranean passage, by which the King would escape ; and they went off to the fortress with the purpose of destroying it. La Fayette dispersed them. The same day at the Tuileries the King was surrounded by nobles armed with daggers or pistols ; they "were disarmed by a kind of insurrection. This day of the " knights of the dagger " excited the imagination of the people to the pitch of delirium. The Assembly showed itself infected by the popular fears in its decree of March 28, 1791, in which it was stated: " The King, the first public functionary, must have his residence at a distance of twenty leagues at most from the National Assembly when the latter is sitting ; when it is not sitting, the King may reside in any other part of the kingdom."- The Queen and the heir-presumptive were confined to the same resi-

252 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

dence. Finally, " if the King left the kingdom, and if, after having been invited by a proclamation of the Legislative Assembly, he did not return to France, he would be considered to have abdicated his royal rights."

This decree, voted in spite of the protestations of the Right, made a sensation, as much by the expression 11 public functionary " as applied to the King, as because the King was deprived, as a subordinate agent, of some part of his liberty. The people, in fact, thought he was still given too much liberty, and would not have given him leave.to travel twenty leagues away. On April 18, 1791, a popular movement prevented the King by force from going to Saint-Cloud; he was now a prisoner. The people decide to keep the King with them, as a shield, a talisman; they browbeat him and love him. When, in March, 1791, Louis had suffered from a violent catarrh and a derangement of the stomach, the bulletins of his health provoked such demonstrations of sensibility as to arouse the derision of Camille Desmoulins.

But among educated democrats, in cultivated society, republicanism continues to progress. Finally, the Revolutions de Paris decides to attack royalty openly. In the issue of March 26th to April 2nd, we read " a decree proposed to the National Assembly of the eighty-three Departments, enacting the abolition of royalty." After a good deal of republican preamble, the following articles, among others, are proposed:

"The nation recognises, as supreme head of the Empire, no one but the President of its permanent and representative Assembly. No one can be elected President before his fiftieth year, nor for more than one month, nor more than once in his life. A scarf of white wool passed round the loins will be the sole distinctive mark of the dignity of President of the French. The civil list of the President of the French will consist of an apartment in the interior of the Palace of the National Assembly. In imitation of the Passover of the Hebrews, a commemorative feast will be instituted, which will fall upon the first of June, the day of the expulsion/of the Tarquins from Rome, and

consecrated to the celebration of the abolition of royalty, the greatest of all the scourges of which the human species has ever been the victim."

This proposal was signed " by a subscriber," but very soon the management of the paper formally adhered to it, excepting in certain matters of detail. 1

One of the organs of the Cordeliers, the paper called Le Creuset) edited by Rutledge, also subscribed to the republic at the end of May, 1791, and even to the federated republic so much distrusted by the public. After having spoken of the movements of the 6migr&s> Rutledge said: "As for us, little affected by these movements, we are confident in our. reading, in the infallible future, of this inevitable progress of the Revolution : the despotism of the dynasty sprung of Henry of Navarre has gradually led the people to the forced and final choice of a mixed government; but the calamities arising from the abuse of this type of government will urge them rapidly on towards a federal republican system, of which the roots, to a keen eye, are already spreading day by day in the various parts of the French Empire." 2

In this spring of 1791 the idea of establishing a republic in France is accepted even in certain salons of the nobility and the upper middle classes. Thus Gouverneur Morris writes, April 23rd :

"After dinner M. de Flahaut declared himself a republican, which is all the mode at present. I tried to make him see the folly of it, but I should have done better not to have meddled. ... I went afterwards to the house of Mme. de Labord; she rails loudly at the republican party."

1 For example, they reproach the "subscriber" with having confounded the legislative with the executive power.

a This phrase, curiously enough, has the structure and style of a phrase of Auguste Comte.

254 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

This republican party, whose existence is now real enough, has so far been unable to obtain the definite support of Marat (as we have seen) ;' Robespierre will so far have nothing to say to it, nor will any of the other official leaders, so to call them, of the democratic party. Even such of them as are already in their hearts republican still believe that, with the people in a royalist frame of mind, they will only play into the hands of the bourgeoisie (and also those of the upholders of the old absolute monarchy) by so much as speaking of a republic. Their wish is to effect the democratic reform of the suffrage in the first place ; a reform! both desired and understood by the people ; as for the republic, there is time for that 13-ter.

The republican propaganda of Mme. Robert is successfully opposed by the influence (let us call it opportunist) of Mme. Roland, 2 a republican by instinct ; 3 but a royalist by reason.4 She receives Brissot in a friendly fashion, and contributes to the Patriote frangais; and the polemics of this journal on the question of republic or monarchy tend to checkmate the politics of the republican group far more

1 Mme. Robert says, later on, that neither Robespierre nor Marat set foot in her salon (Louise Robert a Monsieur Lowvet, publ. Baudouin).

a Who returned to Paris early in March, '91.

s Sensitive to the influence of the American War of Independence; as was Brissot also; and keenly impressed by the ideas of Thomas Paine and Williams.

4 By reason is the right expression. M. Perroud, so competent in all things touching the lives of the Rolands, points out to me that they never, at any moment, even during the naive illusions of '89, regarded Louis as a regenerator. The reason is simple : Roland, inspector of manufactures, had suffered too much from the,royal administration. Since the outbreak of the Revolution both regarded France as lost, if she did not change her King, even by violent means (letter to Bosc, July 26/89).

THE EEPUBLIC NOT ANTI-MONAECHICAL 255

definitely than at the moment of the party's first appearance. 1

Choderlos de Laclos says, in his Journal of the Friends of the Constitution: i- Our Constitution has two kinds of enemies in France"; the one wants a democracy and no King, the other a King and no democracy/' Among the former he names Robert and Brissotj; among the latter, d'fepr&nesnil.

Brissot replies, in the Patriots of April 9th-i2th. He derides the antithesis of the author of Liaisons dangereuses, and makes his own confession of faith in these words :

" I have said that M. Choderlos was calumniating me in accusing me of wishing to dispense with the monarch; not that I do not believe that royalty is a plague, but because the holding of a metaphysical opinion and the actual rejection of the king adopted by the Constitution, are two different things. The adoption is permissible; the rejection is culpable. . . . The National Assembly has decreed that we shall have a king; I submit to it, but in submitting I seek to prove that the representatives of the people must be given such power that neither the executive power nor the monarch can bring about a despotism. I would have a popular monarchy, in which the scales would incline always to the side of the people. Such is my democracy. . . . The witty Clootz says with reason that all free governments are true republics. This is a truth so evident that in the ancient Estates-General the Kingdom of France is often called the Republic of France; and in a revolution in which the rights of man have been established in their entirety, in which there exists a common weal, men are calumniating, anathematising, and seeking to render hateful to the people those who wish to prevent this common weal from becoming the private weal of one or many men. 1 '

On the other hand, Petion, in a letter of April 22, 1791, to the Ami des Patriot es, complains of these discussions on the monarchy and the republic. These

1 Fundamentally Brissot and the Roberts were at loggerheads only on questions of tactics; the sympathy between them is noted by the favourable mention of them by M. and Mme. de Keralio in the Patriote (September 27, '89, January 5, '78, March 28, '90).

256 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

are words, he says, which have no precise meaning. " There is often more difference between one monarchy and another than exists between this monarchy and that republic." He protests that the friends of liberty did not wish to destroy the monarchy, but to improve it. But, whether or no they desire it, those democrats who oppose the Republicans for reasons of principle or opportunity are preparing the way for the republic by the mere fact that they are preparing for a complete democracy, by the fact that they are reducing the King to a nullity, depriving him of his royal prestige, and that they wish to reduce him to the rdle of permanent and responsible president of a democratic republic.

VIII.

It must be noted that, whether the democratic party was republicanised or not, it began to exhibit different tendencies which later on were to lead to scission.

Robespierre was in favour of a limited, prudent, and entirely domestic policy.

The majority of the democrats were in favour of a larger, bolder policy, with an international outlook.

The Revolution, for which the philosophy of the eighteenth century had paved the way, should not be merely French, but human. Its end was not merely the enfranchisement of the people of France, but of all humanity; or, at least, of all civilised humanity; of Europe, in short.

One of the effects of the Revolution was the fusion of the different provincial regions into one single country : France.

One of its logical tendencies was the fusion of the French nation with the other European countries, without being confounded with thems on the contrary,

THE "INTERNATIONAL REPUBLIC" 257

France would possess, at least morally, the hegemony of Europe. Men dreamed of inducing the other nations to form themselves into a group of nations under the auspices of the French nation, with the Declaration of the Rights of Man for banner.

It is probable that these humanitarian politics would not have played any part from this time onwards, but for the sight of the kings of Europe confederating with Louis against the people. Immediately the idea was born of federating the peoples against the kings, and of " municipalising " Europe. Immediately the system of international propaganda came into being, the republicans being its most ardent supporters.

It will be remembered that the Revolutions de Paris had, in December, 1790, proposed the formation of " battalions of tyrannicides." The same journal, in May, 1791, became the ardent advocate of revolutionary expansion throughout Europe.

"This word," it says, "so fatal to kings, this word revolution has, despite all they have done to intercept it, fallen on the ears of the people. The trumpet of the Last Judgment has been heard in the four corners of Europe. From the depths of the tombs of servitude men have heard it; they awaken; they shake off the dust of prejudices ; they tear the shrouds which cover their eyes, and see at last the light Now all but a few stand upright, looking into one another's eyes; amazed already in that they have been for so many centuries prostrated in a senseless lethargy at the foot of the thrones and dominations of the earth. See them all turning their eyes towards France ! France, whence has issued the sound that awakened them; where burns in all its splendour the day of which they see the dawn. They are as those unhappy ones whom religion paints as groaning still in their limbo, raising their heads and sighing towards the regions of the blessed."

The kings are terrified; they say: "The human

race is emancipating itself and is going to call us to

account/- The peoples are with France ; the editor:

of the Revolutions defies the kings to force them, to

258 FORMATION OF THE DEMOCEATIC PARTY

march against the French : " There is no longer any question of war between nation and nation. Since the kings have always been at one on the question of tyrannising over the peoples, the peoples are now at one on the question of dethroning the despots."

In this way external danger led to the propaganda of international revolution, and gave a few bold spirits the idea of preaching the universal republic. This was as early as the month of May, 1791. In the same way from external danger issued, in 1752, the French Republic.

IX.

Thus on the eve of the flight to Varennes there was a republican party in France.

Republicanism is the logical consequence of the philosophy of the eighteenth century and of the Declaration of Rights. But this consequence was not perceived either by the philosophers, who were unanimously for the monarchy, because the people were ignorant and royalist, nor by the men of '89 ; for the same reason, and also because Louis XVI was personally popular.

So long as Louis seemed possible as leader of the Revolution, and the guide of the new France, there was no republican party. But when religious scruples, concerning the civil constitution of the clergy, had irremediably embroiled him with the nation, and when he conspired with foreign kings against the people, towards the end of 1790, the idea of abolishing royalty began to show itself, and the republican party was born.

As the defection of the King was not evident to the mass of the people they remained royalist, neither understanding nor supporting the republicans.

The majority of democrats thought it a dangerous

folly to propose a republic in face of the ignorance and obliviousness of the masses; they, since the masses wanted a king, followed the policy of exercising a pressure, all but physical, on the said king, in order to keep him in the right road and to prevent him from coming to grief.

The republican party, which had no credit among the peasants, no support from the Parisian working class, was a party small in numbers ; an elect body, consisting of a few literati, a few journalists, a few frequenters of Mme. Robert's salon. It was the extreme Left (often disowned) of the democratic party.

But it was gaining in strength ; now by quickening the democratic movement by people's clubs, 1 now by working at the international propaganda.

It felt that logic and the future were on its side : it awaited the time when a supreme and glaring slip on the part of royalty should finally enlighten the public mind. This time was about to come ; the slip about to be made ; it was the flight to Varennes.*

1 Since the publication of this book M. Jaures has published, in his Historic socialists, a leaflet of the time, of which the heading informs us that the people's club directed by Dansard was founded January 2,1790. I must therefore rectify what I have said as to the date of this club.

0 To the list of Frenchmen who declared themselves Republicans in 1790 I must add Bar&re.

CHAPTER V

THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES AND THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT

(June 21—July 17,1791)

I. The character of Louis XVI. Historic importance of the flight to Varennes.—II. The attitude of the Constituent Assembly.—III. The attitude of Paris. The people; the sections; the clubs; the press.—IV. The King's return acts as a check on the Republican Party.—V. Polemics on the question: " Republic or Monarchy ?" —VI. The Republican movement in the provinces.—VII. The Democrats and the affair of the Champ de Mars.

I.

IN the history of the Revolution in general, and of the republican party in particular, there are few events more decisive. than the flight to Varennes, if only for the reason that thereby the true character of Louis was unmasked.

I am not of those who would make all history turn on the psychology of a few celebrated individuals. It does not seem that a small number of heroes could ever lead civilised humanity along the path of progress. In any case, in the new France born of the movement of 1789, we see evolution at work by means of spontaneously organised groups'; communal, national groups'; not by this or that Frenchman.

But the person of Louis XVI plays a part altogether

exceptional ; because he was the King ; because the nation was royalist; because when in the month of July, 1789, it gathered itself together into communes and as a nation, it entrusted its hereditary head, in its unanimous love and confidence, with the task of presiding over this constructive process and of directing the Revolution.

This being so, it is incontestable that the ensuing

course ' or "e^jjitiOTnTO^ inevitably cleared or impeded by

the conduct of Louis himselTTtor which reason a Joiow-

"Igdgejpriiis character is indispensable to the historian

^f the jCevolution, wnue the psychology of men of much

greater merit, ot a Mirabeau or a Robespierre, is not

an absolute necessity for the understanding of the

development of this history.

J\s^for the Jhistory of the republican party in par-ti£ular,jve may welTs^^^ the formation of this party was "one ot

touis was virtuous, as TtKey said of him and well-intentioned ; which is to say that he did very sincerely wish that his subjects might be happy, and he would willingly have made sacrifices with that end in view ; Although phlegmatic, he had the " sensibility " of his century, and on occasion he could be pleasantly affected by emotional scenes. He was, in the vulgar sense of the word, good.

He had not a superior order of mind. Even the royalists called him stupid; because they saw him physically gross, buried in matter; hunting, making locks, sleeping, eating'; a little boorish, incapable of conversation. But he was not wanting in intelligence, and his proclamation to his people, at the time of his flight to Varennes, which is really his own work, contains a far finer criticism of the Constitution of 1791 than that which, in our days, Taine has written.

But in this his intelligence was inadequate to his

task"; _he did not understand that under the new system, and " the establiiSlUiltiiil uf popular iljjl'ite, litt could atfll fee guile as bowerfill, AS gloilous, ami -as King as^undg^h'e'^Bt^ystem of right

~

system had annihilated tim ; contradicted by his Parliaments, his Court, and the remnants of feudality, he was only the phantom of a King.

When Turgot proposed a general reform of the kingdom, so that he might govern " like God Himself," he did not understand.

> When Mirabeau Counselled him to lean on the people and the nation, in order to escape the tutelage which the bourgeoisie wished to impose on him, he did not understand.

He saw, in all this, only disquieting novelties. As each antique ornament was torn from his royal mantle, he felt himself despoiled, denuded, lessened'; to the new and nighty pgwers which were offered him he"prei:gifftSL the old and feeble powgrgrwRich were taken trom him,

simply hpj^u.eA4hfty wgre^old and he was used, to theiq, His intelligence limited, nis will feeble, h<e was^ creature of caprices and repugnances. He gave way, step by step, without design, with no goal in view, to the influences about him, whether these were of the Queen, the Comte d'Artois, Necker, or the people of Paris.

Had he been vicious, he might have been ruled by a mistress. But he was chaste ; and no influence was permanent with him. He did not know how to act either as King of the Revolution nor as King of the counter-revolution. He lived from day to day ; saying yes or no as the counsellor of the moment was more or less importunate. Thus harassed, he lied, was crafty, anc^escaped, when he could, to peace or the chase.

However, there was one characteristic of his which was solid and unchanging: the sentiment of religion. In Louis XVI piety was, indeed, "the whole man.'-

He was, from his youth, deeply devout, a profound believer. In the sceptical Court of Louis XV he had believed, ingenuously and with his whole heart, in the dogmas of the Catechism, This apathetic man was genuinely pious .j^

Perhaps he mmld have been resigned to the transformation of his royal power, to the Revolution, if thfr Revolution had not, at one moment, stood in contradiction to all that he conceived to be his duties as a Christian.

On the day when the Pope, on the day when the Bishops, told him that in sanctioning the civil Constitution of the clergy he would endanger his salvation, he was very profoundly troubled, and went in very fear of hell. Between July 12, 1790, the day on which the Assembly finally voted the civil Constitution, and August 24th, the day on which he sanctioned it, he suffered greatly in his Christian conscience; it was a crisis in his life.

Why did he sanction this Constitution? Because those who surrounded him, who were in terror of "the probable" consequences of the veto, weighed upon him" But he ^ga-ve his consgjot_gdth anguish ;_ hejfelt_thatJbu^was committing a mortal sin.

His remorse put an end to any sympathy he ever might have had with the Revolution, and, from this time onwards, he believed he was fulfilling his duty as a Christian by fighting it with deceit, since he did not dare and had not had the strength to fight it openly.

To this man, who was not born a knave, all means became good in view of becoming once more His Very Christian Majesty, and, by reconciling France with the Pope, of delivering his conscience. ^As early as the month of October he had decided, secretlyf to go to Montm^dy. The Emperor would * See the portrait which Mme. Roland drew in her Memoir.

make a military demonstration on the frontiers. The patriots would be terrified. Louis XVI would march on Paris with Bouilte's army.

This design was concealed with ingenious duplicity.

OnTApHl i8th, the people having prevented the King from going to Saint-Cloud, he really became a prisoner in the Tuileries. Then, to conceal from France his projected flight, he had the idea of proclaiming himself free and sincere in tne tace ot Europe b'y a solemn proclamation] The Minister of Foreign Affairs, on April 237*1791, sent to the diplomatic agents of the King at the foreign Courts a circular, in which we read:

"The King charges me, Sir, to inform you that his most explicit wish is that you should manifest his sentiments regarding the Revolution and the French Constitution at the Court at which you reside. The Ambassadors and Ministers of France to all the Courts of Europe are receiving the same orders, so that no doubt shall remain as to His Majesty's intentions, nor as to his acceptance of the new form of government, nor as to his irrevocable oath to maintain it. ... The enemies of the Constitution never cease repeating that the King is not happy; as if a king could have any other happiness than that of his people; they say that his authority is diminished, as though authority founded on force were not less powerful and more uncertain than the authority of the law; finally, that the King is not free; an atrocious calumny, if it is thereby implied that he has been forced to act against his will; and absurd, if people see an infringement of his liberty in His Majesty's consent, given more than once, to remain in the midst of the citizens of Paris ; a consent which he owes to their patriotism, even to their fear, and above all to their love. . . . Give, Monsieur, the idea of the French Constitution which the King himself has formed; leave no doubt whatever as to His Majesty's intention of maintaining it with all his might. . . . His Majesty ... has ordered me to charge you to notify the contents of this letter to the Court at which you reside; and, to give it wider publicity, His Majesty has ordered that it shall be printed."

Communicated to the Assembly the same day ([April 23, 17QTTT, "^tEjg~Ietter excited the keenest pnthusiasm in' the left portion of the Hall and in all

the galleries. It was interrupted at each sentence with applause and cries a hundred times repeated of " Long live the King 1 " A deputation, despatched forthwith to the King to congratulate him, received this reply:

"I am infinitely touched by the justice done me by the National ) Assembly. If it could read in the depths of my heart, it would see only such sentiments as would properly justify the confidence of the nation ; there would be an end to all opposition between us, and we should all be happy."

^t that very moment Louis was conspiring with other countries and with Bouilte" with "a view to his flifffrt anfl Jiis coup d'ttat. He JiacL provisionally fixed the moment ot his flight for" the beginning of May.*

The proposal of flight, however, was delayed, and it was on the night of June 20th that the King fled in disguise with his family.

We know that their flight was discovered far less through the imprudence of the fugitives than because the lack of discipline among the troops rendered useless the able precautions taken by General Bouilte. Recognised and stopped at Varennes. Louis, the Queen, apd the royal family, while Monsieur gained the frontier by another route, were led back to Paris, captivejs, under the guard of three delegates from tiie"*JNationaI ^Assemblyj fetion, Barnave, and Latour-Maubourg• lunid an innumerable escort of armed citizens, whom the surrounding municipalities poured forth on the road to Paris. They re-entered the capital on June 25th.

The flight ofthe King was one of the few events of *TJQ "Revolution which excited the whole country, apd Wf* s 1gn_qwnjnij_falt by every one. 3

1 Mimoires at BouilU, ist ed. ii. 42.

* Of events of a truly national quality,—that is to say, known to the Whole people, whether in town or country—I can see no more than four or five others after the convocation of the Estates-General: the taking of the Bastille (a pre-eminently national event), with its immediate conse-

At the first news men were struck with stupor ; then followed anger and indignation ; lastly, a feeling of fear. The nation was abandoned, orphaned. The King, so felt the people, had taken with him a talisman of miraculous powers. Terrible dangers were foreseen ; France saw herself invaded, and, without her head, lost. But there were brave men, who braced themselves to appear calm. Everywhere men followed the example of the National Assembly, and affected a proud and firm expression. The municipalities set the example of rallying to the law. All were up in arms, ready to die for their country.

Then the news of the King's return. Men breathe, think themselves saved. First the sorrow, then this joy, show how loyal France is as yet.

For a moment the republican party seems to triumph in Paris, and to gain a few recruits here and there in the provinces ; but France stands aloof, and the republicans, having but now hoisted, then disguised their colours, are obliged, after one great effort, to yield, to beat a retreat, almost to disappear from view, before the sudden attack of the bourgeoisie and the general persistence of royalist feeling.

Let Louis re-ascend the throne, and henceforth let him be better advised : this is the wish of France ; of the National Assembly too.

Nevertheless, for nearly three months the royal power is suspended, and from June 2ist to September I4th there is, in very fact, a republic. An object-lesson this, proving that France can, indeed, exist as a republic, despite the opinion of philosophers. Henceforth,

quences; the danger to France and the war ; the execution of Louis XVI; the establishment, or rather the operations, of the Revolutionary Committees, and the discredit of the assignats. It is by no means certain that the famous days of August 10, May 31, 9 Thermidor, 18 FrucUdor and 18 Brumaire, were known throughout the whole of France.

the republic is no more a chimera, but a mode of government; nameless yet, but real; it has existed, has worked. When Louis becomes definitively impossible, as he will in August, 1792, men will only have to take up the threads of experience, resume the work begun, and the thing will bring forth the word.

II.

This general review of what followed the flight to Varennes—what followed, that is, from the republican point of view—is needful to a comprehension of the various manifestations we are about to consider. It is not here easy to follow a strictly chronological method ; to recount, from day to day, all the incidents that bear upon our subject; all the events, above all between June 2ist and July i/th, that befall in the Assembly and without. So many things come to pass in so little time ; there are so many seeming contradictions, in men and in things ; and the attitude of the Assembly has such an influence in the minds of men in Paris and in France, that the fate of the -republican movement will be plainer if we first of all consider the operations of the Assembly ; or at least those of its actions that bear upon the question: Monarchy or Republic?

At the first news, on June 2ist, the Assembly decrees the arrest of any person leaving the kingdom. Even of the King? Yes, even of the King. The Assembly expressly adds that it gives orders " to arrest the said carrying-off," (Such is its excitement, it no longer heeds its grammar.)

Then, without hesitation, it takes in hand the executive power. On the motion of d'Andrg, it is decreed that all decrees will be executed by the ministers without the royal sanction. An obscure deputy named Guil-laume wished to substitute for these words in the

preamble of the laws : Louis, by the grace of God and the constitutional law of the State, the following phrase : The Constituent Assembly decrees and orders. But this was the republic.* There were protests ; the motion was lost.

In the postscript of his proclamation Louis had said : " The King forbids his ministers to sign any order in his name, until they have received his final orders ; he enjoins the Keeper of the Seal of State to send it to him, in order that it may first of all be required of him 1 ." Now the Keeper of the Seal himself, one Duport-Dutertre, demands the Assembly's authority to disobey, and obtains a decree enjoining him to affix the seal himself.

Yet the Assembly refuses the appearance of governing directly by itself. Faithful to the principle of the separation of the two powers, it refuses a motion suggesting the co-operation of the ministers with commissaries taken from its own body and the formation of an Executive Committee.

But it declares itself permanent. .It sends out representatives "on mission." It sends for the ministers and gives them their orders, as*a sovereign. It notifies its accession to the foreign Powers. It reads diplomatic correspondence. The representative bodies come to its bar. It sets the National Guard in motion. It goes even farther on the republican road ; changing the form of its oath, on the motion of Prieur and Roederer, it discards the name of the King. 2

At the same time the Assembly shows that it wishes to maintain the monarchy. In its address to the French,

1 It is hardly probable that he thought to establish the republic. It was he who, later, took the initiative in the matter of the petition against the doings of June 20,1792.

2 By all its actions the Assembly shows that it takes, provisionally, the place of the King; even at the procession of his parish for \heFete-Dieu. The Courricr of Gorsas, June 24th, says : " All the processions of the Ffte-Dieu are accompanied by a religious pomp which inspires respect.

on June 22nd, it denounces, not the flight, but the "abduction" of the King. Roederer cries 1 : "It is false ! he has meanly deserted his post 1 "—. a protest that finds no echo in the Assembly.

Then Louis returns. What will the Assembly do with him?

On June 25th the Assembly decrees that Louis shall be given a guard. The guard will watch over his safety, and be responsible for his person. So behold the King a prisoner : with him the Prince Royal and the Queen. The decree as to the Seal of State continues in force ; that is, the King is suspended from his functions.

This decree was passed only after a keen debate. Malouet objected that it was a violation of the Constitution, and although he did not use the word " republic," we see that he meant that it would violate the Constitution in a republican sense. Roederer, on the other hand, thought the Assembly too fearful; he demanded a plainer form of words, indicating more clearly that the King was under provisional arrest. Members protested. Alexandre de Lameth spoke for suspension, but as a monarchist:

" Sent here to give our country a Constitution, we were of opinion that the extent of the kingdom, and a population of twenty-five million men, demanded a unity of power and of action to be found only in a monarchical Constitution. If we were right a year ago we are right now ; what has happened has in no way changed the nature of things; neither must it in any way change our actions."

Malouet replied :

" How is it you cannot see all the lamentable consequences of the temporary annihilation of the royal power, and the uncertain existence

That of the parish of the fugitive Louis XVI has never been more brilliant. The whole National Assembly was there in a body, on foot. ..." It returned to the Salle du Manege to the sound of the fa ira.

of the King at the present moment ? . . . Take care, messieurs, that in constituting yourselves in this manner you are able to dispense with the executive power, and consider the lamentable consequences which might result; have a care, lest a moment's sorrow and indignation, apparent in every part of the kingdom, should go far farther than you would wish; have a care ..." Several voices: "You have nothing to say; you don't reason; you are trying to waste our time." *

The theory of the Committee and of the majority was this : logically, when the Constitution was created, there should have been a suspension of all the powers of the State ; this was not possible ; now, as we are led back to first principles again, the slate is cleared ... in order that the monarchy may be established.

Two hundred and ninety deputies of the Right protested publicly, and stated that " there was no longer even an appearance of royalty," and that the condition of things was " a republican intermezzo." And Bouilte, in a letter read before the Chamber on the 2gth, denounced the existence of a republican party in the Assembly, having La Fayette for head.

La Fayette protested at the tribune, declaring himself calumniated. 2

1 Le Hodey, xxviii.

9 But he confesses, in his memoirs, that after the flight of the King he had republican leanings. At the house of his intimate friend La Rochefoucauld the republic, he says, was proposed by Du Pont. It was only a "fugitive thought." He also says that there were in the Assembly at this time a dozen republicans, whom he divides into politicians and anarchists; it certainly is very likely that a few deputies were inwardly converted by the flight to Varennes. The letters of Thomas Lindet, at this time, are those of a republican. But no member of the Assembly exhibits republican opinions! We must, however, note that Buzot tells the Convention in 1792 (September 24th): " I was not.present at the taking of the oath by which you have declared that France is a republic; but I was there when men trembled only to think of a republic; in 1791 I was there, I was in my place, and I voted for it" (Moniteur, xiv. 39). What vote is Buzot referring to ? We cannot trace any vote of the kind. . . . Another deputy, Roederer, according to the testimony of Brissot, stated, after the flight to

THE "REPUBLICAN INTERMEZZO" 271

But the Assembly was afraid of the republican, party which was forming outside; afraid, because it menaced the bourgeois system, and it was to drown Parisian republicanism beneath a huge manifestation of departmental opinion that Adrien du Port proposed (on June 2gth) that there should be a second general federation of the National Guards. 1

On July ist Malouet denounced without reading (though Petion demanded that it should be read) <a republican placard by Du Chastellet, demanding that proceedings be taken. Chabroud and Le Chapelier opposed the motion; one, because the matter was within the province of the municipality and the law-courts ; the other, because the matter was one of opinion. But both protested their aversion to the republic. Chabroud said: " It is evident that the author of this placard is a maniac ; he must be left to the care of his relatives." Le Chapelier : " I am strongly opposed to the adoption of a republican Government, because I believe it to be a very bad form of government." A certain Le Bois Desguays remarked : " It is ridiculous to denounce an individual proposal so insane, so extravagant as that made in this placard for the establishment of a republican Government." The Assembly proceeded to the business of the day.

Observe : so far the Assembly had done nothing

Varennes, " that we may have a monarchy without a hereditary king." Doubtless Roederer said this in private conversation; for I cannot find the phrase in any of his speeches. Mme. Roland says, in her Mfonoircs, that at the same period Petion was at one with Brissot in the matter of " preparing men's minds for the republic/ 1 And we read in the Souvenir* of 6tienne Dumont, p. 323, that "Claviere, Petion, and Buzot used to meet to discuss this question." On October 8, Tallien, at the tribune of the Jacobins, said he knew Buzot as a republican "in the days when it was dangerous to speak of a republic." As for Petion, he said nothing in public against the monarchy at this time. 1 Le Hodey, xxviii. 464.

which would directly restore the m'onarchy. Its Committees—Military, Diplomatic, Constitutional; Committees of Revision, of Criminal Jurisprudence, of Reports, of Inquiries—had been entrusted, united in one body, with the drawing up of a report " on the events relating to the flight of the royal family." This report, the work of Muguet de Nanthou, was presented and debated on on July I3th. The author, who indirectly aimed at exculpating Louis and restoring him to the throne, in the name of the principle of royal inviolability, reminded the Assembly, after a recital of the facts, that if they had " adopted the monarchical Government," it was because it had promised the best means of assuring the happiness of the people, and the prosperity of the State, which is the consequence of that happiness. "Therefore the monarchy was established for the nation, not for the King. . . ." Without entering upon any logical or historical discussion of the comparative advantages of republics and monarchies, Muguet de Nanthou confined himself to this contemptuous allusion to the republican party : " It is in vain that a few restless minds, always eager for change, have persuaded themselves that the flight of one man could change the form of government and upset the whole constitutional system. ..."

In the debate which immediately followed, there was no orator representing the republican party, and it was once more evident that no one in all the Assembly dared to support it openly.

D'Andr6, paraphrasing the report, spoke of the " class of people " who would have liked to seize the occasion of the King's departure to upset the Constitution. Alexandre de Lameth pointed out the dangers of establishing either a regency or an "Executive Council." Petion, without speaking against the monarchy, demanded that the King should be judged by the Assembly or by a Convention. De Ferri&res (in a discourse

printed but never spoken) denounced the " ridiculous chimera of a French republic."- During the session of July 14th Vadier demanded a Convention, which would announce the downfall of the King.

Robespierre says : "I have no wish to reply to certain reproaches of republicanism which some are willing to impute to the cause of truth and justice. . . ." " Let them accuse me, if they will, of republicanism ; I declare that I abhor any form of government in which the factious reign." He concludes by saying that the nation must be consulted as to Louis* fate ; there must be elections.'

Adrien du Port declares that the Executive Council would constitute a republic ; that they consequently have to choose between the republic and the monarchy ; and the latter " is the only form of government suited to our Empire, our manners, our position." Prieur makes a confession of faith : " I am not a factious person. ... I am not a republican either, if a republican is a person who wishes to change-the constitution." And he rallies to the views of Petion. 3

During the session of the isth, Goupil de Pr^felne utters a violent diatribe against the republicans, who wish, he declares, " to precipitate the French nation into the gulf of the horrors of anarchy an,d riot." He abuses Brissot. He stigmatises Condorcet, who had just offered a vindication of republicanism, as " a man with a reputation obtained I don't know how, and invested with the title of Academician." He places him among the Prostrates of his time. He anathematizes certain "odious and criminal pamphlets." He

1 By a decree enacted June 24th the Assembly suspended the elections which had already begun.

8 We must note two speeches, printed, not delivered, one by Petion, demanding "an elective and national council of execution"; one by Malouet, in which he declares that to make the head of the Government removable and responsible is to establish a republic (Arch. parl. t xxviii).

VOL. L 18

exalts "our divine constitution." Gr6goire demands a National Convention. Buzot speaks to the same effect as Petion.

Finally Barnave (whose views La Fayette applauds) refutes the republicans, but courteously ; explains why the example of the Americans cannot be followed by the French, and pronounces a very remarkable and brilliant eulogy of the monarchy. In'a large country, either it is necessary to establish a federation, " or else, if the national unity is untouched, you will be obliged to give the central position to an immovable power, which, being never renewed except by the law, and presenting incessant obstacles to ambition, will advantageously resist the shocks, the rivalries, and the rapid oscillations of an immense population, actuated by all the passions that a society of old standing engenders."

The Assembly, sitting July 15, 1791, passed a decree by which, without as yet replacing Louis on the throne, it indirectly exculpated him, and only blamed his counsellors. 1

III.

Such was the attitude of the Assembly on the question of the merits of the republic and the monarchy, raised by the flight of Louis XVI to Varennes.

Let us consider the attitude of Paris.

On June 2ist, at ten o'clock in the morning, the department and the municipality announced the flight of Louis by firing a cannon three times, and the tocsin rang out at the H6tel de Ville. There was a general shock of anxiety, a feverish excitement. The shops were closed. The crowd gathered round the Tuileries. It streamed curiously through the forsaken royal apart -

1 For these debates see the Monitew.

ments. There was horseplay and buffoonery ; men asked how " this fat royal person " had managed to slip out without being seen by the sentries? The King's portrait was taken from its place of honour and hung at the gate. A woman, a fruitseller, took possession of the Queen's bed, and sold her cherries from it, saying : " It's the turn of the nation to make itself at home to-day ! "

The National Guard " deployed in every part of Paris, in an imposing manner." -< The brave Santerre " (we quote from the Revolutions de Paris), " the brave Santerre, for his part, enrolled two thousand pikemen from his own quarter of Paris. The honours of the day by no means went with the active citizens and the coats of ' King's blue ' ; the woollen bonnets turned out, and eclipsed the bearskins."

The busts of Louis were everywhere destroyed, or strips of paper were pasted over the eyes. The words King, Queen, Royal, Bourbon, Louis, Court, Monsieur (the King's brother) and even the crown, were effaced, wherever painted or graven or sculptured. The Palais Royal became the Palais d'Orteans, 1 and the garden of this palace heard the most irreverent resolutions passed against the King.

The first moment of surprise passed; Paris affected

1 One paper says that the Due d'Orleans showed himself to the people as a candidate for the throne or for a Regency. But this paper, ardently royalist, was prejudiced against the Due. We read as follows in the Ami du Peuple (July 2nd): "On Tuesday the 2ist, the day of the King's departure, M. le Due d'Orleans entered his cabriolet, accompanied by a single jockei, and thus, with his horse at a walk, he drove through the Cours du Carrousel, before the Tuileries; he was still there at two in the afternoon; a smile was on his lips ; he seemed to be inviting a popular proclamation. From there he went to the Pont Royal, where a few voices were "heard in his favour; but they were quickly stifled by a thousand others, which rose in contradiction. In the afternoon, at four, he sent M. le Due de Montpensier, his son, in bourgeois clothes, with sabre, cartridge-box, and musket, to the Palais Royal battalion, which was at that time on guard at the Tuileries."

gaiety and coolness. Order reigned. To this anti-republicans testified at the tribune of the Assembly. D'Andr£, on the 22nd, marvelled, with Virieu, at "the almost miraculous tranquillity reigning throughout Paris." In an address from the section of Bondy, presented to the Assembly on June 24th, we read, with reference to this quietude : " Do not attribute, gentlemen, to a supernatural cause the order which you wonder at in a time of tempest; our hearts are freed from the ties of servitude ; we can muti&dly live without fear."

We may truly call it the calm of strength.

The people, the men in the street, strongly disapproved of La Fayette, who had allowed Louis to escape ; accused him of complicity 1 ; " made him turn pale " (Revolutions de Paris).

Such was the attitude of the Parisians and the state of the crowd. Let us see how the organised groups behaved.

Several sections declared themselves permanent. That of the Th^itre Frangais wished to establish -universal suffrage ; it proclaimed that it would receive in its bosom every citizen aged twenty-five and domiciled. It erased from the oath the words active and King.

The Cordeliers' Club took the initiative in turning the somewhat uncertain excitement of the Parisians to the profit of the republic. 1

But of the meeting of the club on June 2ist we know very little. We do know that it " was occupied in demanding a federative association of the whole Empire," 3 and that it sent the Jacobins a decree dealing with the means of supervision. This, truly, is vague ;

1 In London, the republic seemed so evidently the logical consequence of the flight of Louis that at first it was thought that the republicans had engineered his disappearance. The Parisian correspondent of the European Courier thought it necessary to disprove this theory (letter of July 7,1741).

• Bouche de Per, June 24th.

but we also know that it was on this day that it produced its famous tyrannicidal poster, at the head of which were read these lines from Voltaire's Brutus (Act I., Scene 2), arranged, and a little altered, it is true, to fit the times :

"Think! On the field of Mars, that spot august, Did Louis swear faithful to be and just; Between himself and people this the tie: Our oaths he gives us back, his proved a lie! If in all France a traitor linger yet Who would a master brook, a king regret, Then let the wretch in death a torment find I His guilty ashes cast upon the wind, Leave but a name here, odious even more Than that of Tyrant all free men abhor I'

These lines were followed by the declaration :

" The free Frenchmen composing the Club of the Cordeliers declare to their fellow-citizens that they number as many tyrannicides as members, who have all sworn individually to stab the tyrants who shall dare to attack our frontier or make any attack upon our Constitution, of whatever kind.—Legendre, president; Collin, Champion, secretaries."

If this placard does not expressly demand a republic, it evidently has for its object the preparation of men's minds for the plainly republican manifestation of the next day, of which we shall speak later on. 1

The republicans flattered themselves that they had turned the anger which the Parisians showed especially against the King, against the institution of royalty. " If the President of the Assembly," we read in the Revolutions de Paris, " had put the question of republican government to the vote, on the Place de Grfeve, in the garden of the Tuileries, or that of the Orleans Palace, France would be a monarchy no longer."

1 As to the effect of this poster, which some applauded and others deprecated, see the Counter (Gorsas) for June a6th.

But the official heads of the democratic party did not associate themselves with the republican movement of June 2ist.

On this unforgettable 2ist, for example, Danton cried to the people in the street: " Your leaders are traitors ; they are deceiving you I " He denounced the King's advisers and La Fayette, but not the King.

As for the leaders of the bourgeois patriots, the republican movement filled them with alarm ; for the republic was the logical form of democracy, and universal suffrage had already put in an appearance (along with woollen bonnets, in the section of the Th£4tre Frangais). From the 2ist onwards they made a great effort to maintain the monarchy, the keystone of the bourgeois system, and to ally themselves with the non-republican democrats against the republicans.

On the evening of the 2ist there was an important meeting of the Jacobins, at which democrats like Danton and Robespierre were present; and semi-democrats like Lameth"; and, finally, partisans of the bourgeois system, such as Barnave, La Fayette, Gaultier de Biauzat, D&neunier, Le Chapelier, and Si6y£s, who had just shown himself in favour of two Chambers.

Robespierre inveighed against the Ministers, whom the National Assembly had been weak enough to kee_p ; he praised himself and spoke of dying. Some cried : " We will all die before you do I " Men swore to defend him, to pour out their blood for him. This scene of enthusiasm spread far and wide outside the Jacobins"; the sections of the Halles and La Libert^ named delegates to serve as his body-guard.

Danton attacked La Fayette severely, and demanded his dismissal. La Fayette replied, vaguely jand graciously, praising the clubs.

"Finally, the Jacobins set to work to vote an address drawn up by. the monarchist Barnave, in which we read : "The King, led astray by criminal suggestions, has

deserted the National Assembly. Let us be calm. . . , All dissensions are forgotten, all patriots are united. The National Assembly is our guide ; our rallying-cry, the Constitution."

Thus the Jacobins had every intention, on the day after the King's flight, of maintaining the monarchy ; and both democracy and republicanism were provisionally set aside.

After the first day, then, the republicans had against them the National Assembly, whose prestige and popularity were enormous, and the Jacobin Club, at this time the interpreter and regulator of the average man's opinions.

But so long as Louis was actually running away the chances seemed all in their favour ; for no other king was possible, and if he had succeeded in crossing the frontier, the throne would have remained vacant.

The republican movement became more clearly defined. The " republican intermezzo" which the Assembly had decreed was already habituating men's minds to the idea of an actual republic. A Parisian correspondent x of Prince Emmanuel de Salen wrote him a letter, dated June 24th, summing up his impressions of the attitude of the people since the King's flight: 3 " The wise measures taken by the Assembly have m'ade it clear even to the poorest understanding that the King can be dispensed with, and everywhere I have heard the cry, ' We don't need the King ; the Assembly and the Ministers are all we want. What do we want with an executive power costing twenty-five millions, when everything can be done for two or three? ' "

Some of the journals rallied to the republican ideal.

1 Bernard.

a In the same letter we read—apparently of the 2ist, "All this time the citizens were taking arms and going to their sections. In the afternoon, in certain private houses, I heard some greatly praising the King's conduct; but I must say not many did so."

In the Patriote frangais, edited by Brissot, the organ of the Roland group l and of the future Girondists, we read, under the date of the 22nd: " Louis XVI has himself shattered his crown. . . . Let us have no half-measures in profiting by this lesson." And on the 23rd: "A King, after such a perjury as this, and our Constitution, are irreconcilable."

The Revolutions de Paris, the Annales patriotiques^ the Bouche de Per all pronounce against royalty. Doubtless, the word " republic " a little singes the mouths of the writers ; the Bouche de Per, for instance, prefers the term " national government." 3 But it is really a republic that is now demanded by a part of the democratic press.

As for Marat, he demands a dictator 3 :

"One means only is left you," he says, on June 22nd, "of drawing back from the precipice to which your unworthy leaders have dragged you; it is to name instantly a military tribunal, and a supreme dictator; to lay hands upon the principal known traitors. You are lost without hope of help if you lend your ears to your present leaders, who will not cease to cajole you and lull you to sleep, until the enemy is at your gates. Let the tribunal be named this very day. Let your choice fall on the citizen who hitherto has shown the greatest enlightenment, zeal, and fidelity. Swear to give him an inviolable devotion and obey him religiously, in all that he may command you, in order to rid yourself of your mortal enemies." "A tribune, a military tribune, or you are lost without hope of recovery. Up to the present I have done all human power could do to save you; if you neglect this salutary counsel, the only one that is left for me to give you, I have nothing more to say to you, and I have done with you for ever. . . ."

From this sort of language, which, to be exact, is

1 The King's flight made Mme. Roland a republican (see her letters to Bancal).

9 See the issue of June 23rd: " No king, no protector, no Due d'Orleans. . . . Let the eighty-three departments confederate themselves, and declare that they will have neither tyrants, nor monarchs, nor protectors, nor regents. . . . Let universal suffrage be established."

s Marat probably thought of Danton as dictator; he was often praising him. See the Courtier, June 26th.

neither republican nor monarchical, we can only conclude that Marat did not think the French were ripe for liberty as yet. Nothing will change his way of regarding the matter ; but his views are not openly adopted by any other democrat.

We have now seen what was said by the democratic papers before the news came that Louis was arrested.

It was before the arrival of this news that the Cordeliers* Club drew up an address to the National Assembly demanding the establishment of the republic in France :

"We are now, consequently, in the state we were in after the taking of the Bastille: free and without a king, It remains to consider whether it would be profitable to name another. . . . The Society of the Friends of the Rights of Man . . . can no longer blink the fact that royalty, above all hereditary royalty, is incompatible with liberty. Perhaps it would not so soon have demanded the suppression of royalty if the King, faithful to his oaths, had made a duty of his condition. . . . We beg you, in the name of our native land, to declare here and now that France is no longer a monarchy; that it is a republic, or at least to wait until all the departments, until all the primary assemblies, have expressed their desires in this important matter, before you think of casting, for a second time, the fairest empire on earth among the chains and fetters of monarchism."

This petition was voted on a motion of Robert's;; and he, according to his own statement, was its principal author. The Cordeliers instructed him, with three more of their members, to carry it to the Jacobin Club. On the way he saw the National Guard arresting persons who were already posting up either the petition or the tyrannicidal address. He protested; was arrested himself; taken to the Commissariat of Saint-Roch ; was bullied and struck by the officers of the National Guard. One of them cried: " You are an incendiary, a crank, a bad subject, and, b— you, you'll pay for it 1 " l Several sectional clubs demanded

1 These details are from the very interesting proch-verbal of Robert's examination before Bernard, public accuser to the court of the 6th arrondissement.

his release, and the Jacobins did the same. He was, released.

The same evening he went to the Jacobins, and, relating his arrest, said that he was the bearer of an address demanding the destruction of the Monarchy. Immediately he was interrupted by cries of disapproval: "The Monarchy is the Constitution! Villainy!" The great majority of the club rose to demand the business of the day. 1

So the Greyfriars could not get the Jacobins to join them ; and it seems that none of the sections joined them either. But the cry, " The Republic! " 2 was heard in the streets, and it is certain that on the morrow of the King's flight there was a very strong tide of republican feeling in Paris, headed not merely by the Roberts and a few dilettanti, but by the chief democratic club and the various Fraternal Societies or People's Clubs.

IV.

At half-past nine in the evening of June 22nd the National Assembly had news of the King's arrest.

All supporters of the Revolution, whether bourgeois or democrats, were agreed in thinking that he could not be at once, and with matters unchanged, replaced on the throne.

On the evening of the 23rd Danton, at the Jacobin Club, proposed, since the King was " criminal or imbecile," to establish "a council of interdiction," named by the departments—that is to say (it would seem), to maintain the King with an elective executive council.

1 The Jacobin journal says the assembly rose as one man. But one of the most reliable of witnesses, the German Olsner, who was a member, says. a. minority was in favour of the Cordeliers' address ; at most a fifth of those present (Luzifer, p. 260).

CJlsner even says the whole people were crying, "The Republic!" that night.

We know of this motion of Danton's only from an obscure summary of it, which makes him say that there must be no regent. Yet Mme. Roland wrote at the time to Bancal that Danton considered a regency to be the only possible expedient. What Danton thought of the Due d'Orl&ms there is nothing to show. But we do know that the Due, also on the 23rd, was solemnly admitted to the club (before Danton went to the tribune), and that immediately after his admission Choderlos de Laclos, his own man, demanded that the question as to what was to be done with the King should be placed on the order of the day. There was at least the beginning of an Orldanist intrigue. I repeat that I do not believe that Danton took part in this intrigue. But the Due was perhaps hoping to become a member of the " council of interdiction," proposed by Danton.

There is little doubt that some, immediately after the flight to Varennes, had schemes of giving the throne to the younger branch of the royal family, or else to offer the regency to the Due d'Orteans. It will be recalled that the Palais Royal was rechristened the Orleans Palace on the 2ist. It will also be recalled that on this day the Due exhibited himself, in a somewhat affected manner, to the people of Paris. In a letter of the 22nd, Thomas Lindet wrote that the question of the Due was being considered. 1 But Mirabeau had already experienced and denounced the ineptness of Origans, who was, moreover, despised for his immorality ; and he was seen to be anything but

1 See Lindef s correspondence, publ. M. A. Montier. But we read in a letter of Badouin de Maisonblanche, deputy of the Third Estate for the seneschalry of Morlaix (June 21, 22): " Kings are made for the nations, not nations for kings, and if, through the flight of ours, we are forced to resort to a regency, we are at least assured of placing the power in patriotic hands." These patriotic hands are evidently the Due's, for the King's two brothers had left the country.

popular, in spite of real services rendered by him at the time of the Revolution. The Organist scheme was stillborn, by reason of the indifference of the people and the distrust of the democrats. Orleans felt himself practically thrown aside, and immediately withdrew into himself.

A species of Organist manifesto appeared in the Journal de Perlet of June 25th, recommending a petition demanding 1 a regency.

Orleans disowned this manifesto in a letter which appears in the papers of the 28th, in which he declares his desire to renounce for ever his eventual claims to the regency. His supporters (few, half ashamed of their cause, and half disguised) are by no means discouraged •'; they demand the impeachment and the downfall of Louis XVI, in the hope that their leader will play an important part in the new order of things. 1

Later on the Assembly closed all legitimate outlets to the ambitions of the Organist party by declaring (August 24th) that the members of the royal family in the line of succession to the throne would not be eligible to any of the places in the nomination of the people, and that they would even be unable to exercise the duties of a minister.

The King re-entered Paris on the 25th. He reached the Tuileries at half-past seven in the evening.

1 At the Jacobins, on July 3, 1791, there was a curious incident, involving the Due's name. Real proposed the nomination of a "royal guardian" during the suspension of Louis XVI. He says that this guardian would naturally be the Due d'Orleans, if that prince had not signified his refusal In default of the Due, the guardian would be Conti. But Real hopes Conti will refuse. The eighty-three departments are to nominate the "guardian." Despite lively objections, Danton puts to the vote a motion to have Real's speech printed and sent to the affiliated clubs. Now the Due d'Orleans had renounced his rights to the regency, but had not refused to fill a post, such as that of ^"guardian of royalty/' unforeseen by the Constitution. Could not Real's motion, approved by Danton, have been turned to the profit of the Due d'0rl6ans?

How was he received by the Parisians? We read in the Ccarrier of Gorsas (June 26th) :

" No sign of disapproval, no visible sign of contempt, has escaped this great multitude. They have confined themselves to withholding from the fugitives all military honours. They have been received with arms reversed. Every citizen kept his hat on his head, as by a common understanding."

Speaking of this unanimous attitude, the Boache de Per, of the same day, says :

" Here, at last, is a popular vote: the Republic is sanctioned."

A singular illusion, this I On the contrary, Louis 1 return was about to put new life into the royalist party, and to ruin the chances of the republicans. 1

But the republican movement continued. The Revolutions de Paris tried to bring about a demand for a republic, which alone, said the writer, could conquer Europe .* The Mercure national of July 3rd states that " this is the wish of the numerous patriotic clubs of the capital," with the sole exception of the Jacobins.

And in truth the Jacobins persisted more than ever in their aversion for the republican form of government. On July ist Billaud-Varenne, then little known, was hooted for having spoken of the republic .3

* Desmoulins wrote, in the Revolutions de France et de Brabant, " What can the Capets have hoped, on reading this placard carried at the point of a pike, posted up in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and hawked about in all the journals : ' Whosoever applauds the King will be clubbed; whosoever insults him will be hanged' ?"

a Every one believed in the imminence of war. The royalist Journal general de la coivr et de la mile rejoiced in the coming arrival of the foreign armies, and declared " that France could only be re-generated in a bath of blood " (June 27th).

3 La Societd des Jacobins, ii. 573, 574. At this time no one spoke before the Jacobins of the republic except as an ideal only to be

And the working classes? On July 7th a deputation of working men went to the section of the Theatre Frangais, saying:: " Citizens, -we swear before God and man to be faithful to the nation and to the law— and to the law—and by no means to the King I " But the mass of the workers do not seem to be interested in the word republic; they do not very well understand it, and they are impressed by the attitude of the Jacobins and the Assembly. 1

It must not, however, be supposed that the republican movement was factitious. The deputy Thomas Lindet wrote on July i8th : "Opinion in Paris was settled ; it was not that of a few agitators, nor was it a factitious opinion ; there was no longer any trace left of the name of the King ; everywhere it was effaced, and men wanted to see the thing abolished also." But this was not a general movement, nor was it even progressing.

In fact, immediately after the return of Louis XVI the republican party seemed to become dismembered.

Many of the more notable democrats who on the 2ist and 22nd rallied round the original republican

realised later on. Thus Real says, at the tribune, on July 3rd: "In circumstances as serious as these, when the press, according to our principles, enjoys the greatest freedom, opinion is fettered in this hall, this temple of liberty. The word republic terrifies the proud Jacobins. I will not pronounce it to-day. It is meat for strong men; it is the nourishment of which Rousseau speaks; juicy enough, but demanding, for its digestion, other stomachs than ours. In twenty years our youth will be educated, our old men will no longer be prejudiced, all will have stability, and this name, which to-day produces convulsions, this government (which exists in our representative government by the mere fact of its nature) will be, do not doubt it, the government of France, and perhaps that of all the peoples of Europe. Let us adjourn the question for a few years if you will, and discuss to-day the question submitted to us by the theory of monarchy."

1 The agitations caused by the recent suppression of relief works throw no particular light on the political opinions of the Parisian workers at this date.

THE REPUBLIC STILL DOUBTFUL 287

group, the Keralio-Robert coterie, were now anxious only to leave it.

Thus we find an article by Carra in the Annales patriotiqttes of July 8th, entitled " On the Important Question of a Republic in France," in which after a refutation of "those who, like M. Alexandre Lameth, never cease repeating that a great nation cannot embrace the republican state," and after a magnificent eulogy of the republic, which will assuredly become established, the republic is formally adjourned until the time when the people shall be more moral and enlightened.

"Doubtless," says Carra, "the nation has already made great strides in this direction : but it has not yet, that I can see, attained that homogeneity and general strength of character which would he essential to republicans confederated in eighty-three departments. I think, then, we must let the Constitution run a few years longer under the monarchical form, while giving an elective Executive Council to the son of Louis XVI, a council whose president would change every three months, and of which each member, elected by the nation, would be responsible for his public conduct If the young head of the executive power forms his mind according to the true principles of justice, reason, and virtue, he will propose, of his own accord, when his years are ripe, the French Republic; if, on the contrary, he is false, mischievous, ambitious, and in love with arbitrary power, like Monsieur his father and Madame his mother, the nation will by then know how to take its own part."

He adds that he had expounded these ideas "about twelve days ago/ 1 at the Jacobins ; but I -'find no record of anything of the kind.

On the other hand : Brissot, who on June 23rd had represented a king and the Constitution as irreconcilable, partly contradicts himself. In the Patriote fran-fais for June 26th, he says : " People are trying to mislead and bewilder men f s minds on the subject of making France a republic, without thinking that in this respect the Empire will obey the force of circum-

stances rather than the intentions of men." On June 2 gth he writes :

" If you retain the monarchy, let the Executive Council be elected by the departments, and be removable. If this point were gained we should all be gainers, and liberty would be out of danger. . . . Such is the idea that seems most popular at the Jacobins. It was first proposed by M. Danton. The Jacobins will have a king only on this condition. They do not, however, wish to be taken for republicans. Do not let us quarrel over terms. I wish for no other republic than this monarchy. The Jacobins are republicans without knowing it; as M. Jourdain made prose without knowing it. What does it matter ? —-the prose is excellent."

The same idea is developed in the Patriots for July ist, together with this scheme : the Constituent Assembly will pronounce the provisional removal of the King, and will consult the primary assemblies as to the definitive removal; the King removed, the crown will pass to his son. As he is a minor, he will be given a Council formed as follows: each departmental electoral assembly will nominate a citizen, and these eighty-three citizens "will choose from among themselves those who are to form the Council and the ministry.' 1 In the issue of July 3rd is a letter from a reader who proposes that all kings of France, even in their majority, should have such a council. Brissot adds : " Supported." In the issues of the 5th and 6th of July is a long article entitled: " My profession of faith in the matter of the republic and the monarchy," which concludes as follows :

" Here, then, is my credo:

" I believe the French Constitution is republican in five-sixths of its elements: that the abolition of royalty is a necessary result of the Constitution; that the office of royalty cannot subsist beside the Declaration of Rights.

" I believe that in calling our Constitution a representative government, we bring republicans and monarchists into agreement, and wipe out their differences.

SHALL ROYALTY BE PRESERVED? 289

" I believe that the legal abolition of royalty is to be expected from the progress of reason and the astonishing nature of the evidence, and that in consequence we must have an absolutely open field for the discussion of this matter.

" I believe above all that, if royalty is to be preserved, it must be surrounded by an elective and renewable Council, and that without this essential precaution the country will infallibly fall into anarchy and incalculable misfortunes.

" In a word, no king, or a king with an elective and renewable Council; such, in a sentence, is my profession of faith." *

This policy, thus formulated by Brissot, 3 not only in his journal, but also at the Jacobins (July loth), is precisely that adopted at a later date by the democratic party.

On June 24th 30,000 citizens assembled in the Place Venddme petitioned the Assembly to decide nothing as to Louis before consulting the departments^ and the spokesman of these petitioners, Th^ophile Mandar, then declared himself a monarchist. The Cordeliers supported this petition on July gth, and on the i2th they invited the nation itself to suspend the decree announcing the elections. They said nothing more of the republic.

1 All these articles appeared without signature in the Patriote; but later on Brissot acknowledged them as his and united them in the booklet entitled : Recueil de quelques ecrits.

9 See Brissot's speech as to whether the King could be tried, in the Societe" des Jacobins, ii. 608 et seq. In reality Brissot changed his tactics, not his principles. In 1793, in his Reponse au rapport de Saint-Just, we shall find him saying: " I have always belonged to the republican party." Elsewhere in his Reponse, as in his Prqjet de defense (Memoires, iv. 280 et seq.), we find long explanations of the policy, monarchical in appearance and republican in reality, which Brissot followed from July, 1791, to August, 1792.

s Certain people's clubs, from the time of Louis' return to Paris, considered that he should be treated as an accused or guilty person. The Fraternal Society of both sexes, sitting at the Jacobins, posted up a petition demanding of the Assembly that "the former King of France and his wife " should be sent to the bar of the Assembly, there to be examined. We have not the text of this petition, and know of it only by the indignant criticism of Royeu in the Ami du Roi.

We see that the Cordeliers and such of the Jacobins as were democrats were in agreement. The Cordeliers provisionally renounced the republic : x but Louis XVI, suspended or dethroned, was to be tried ; there was to be an elective executive Council. Some demanded a Convention. Others wished all the laws to be submitted to the sanction of the people. Such was the policy which, after reciprocal concessions, united the principal leaders of the democratic party. It was the policy which was afterwards defeated at the Champ de Mars on July i;th.

V.

The republicans, despite the defections which have reduced their number, affect an easy optimism, 2 and make a great effort to spread their doctrines.

They publish pamphlets against royalty, such as the Acephocratie of Billaud-Varenne, or Louis XVI, King of the French, dethroned by himself, by an anonymous author who thinks the French can only conquer Europe by establishing the republic with an elective head of the executive. One of these pamphleteers is quite willing that the head of the State should bear the name of king, so long as it is not hereditary. The most able and interesting of these republican pamphlets is

1 Later, Brissot even says that at this time "the Cordeliers were putting their heads together against the republicans."

3 Thus, we read in the Mercure national et itranger of July 3, 1791, with regard to republican opinion: "The writers on several of the public journals choose to say that republican opinion is to-day losing ground; but those who say so deceive themselves or wish to deceive others. We see, on the contrary, that republicanism is every day gaining more supporters. It is the desire of all the numerous patriotic clubs of the capital with the sole exception of the Jacobins; concerning whom we are, however, assured that if it were not for a remnant of foolish respect felt for certain members of the Club, they would long ago have announced it publicly."

entitled : Grande visite de mademoiselle Republique chez notre mire la France^ pour I 9 engager a chasser de chez elle madame Royalty, et conversation trh inttressante entre elles. The objections of the monarchists are herein set forth with no less emphasis than the arguments of the republicans, and it presents a faithful and agreeable picture of the mind of a sincere patriot after the flight to Varennes.

We may be sure that Frangois Robert was no stranger to this war of pamphlets. la one he published himself, Avantages de la fuite de Louis XVI et nicessite d 9 un nouveau gouvernement, he demanded a representative Government, an elective chief of the executive, and the republic. He declared that this was the desire of " the Cordeliers Club, the various Societies of Friends of the Constitution, of all the people's clubs, and of a very large proportion, in fact the majority, of the departments." The majority of the departments I We shall see how much truth there was in this fanfaronade. But to exaggerate their number, in order to catch the undecided, was a piece of republican tactics. 1

Lively and interesting, these republican pamphlets were not the least numerous of those which appeared at the end of June and the beginning of July, I79 1 -The greater number were in agreement with the policy of the Assembly, the policy of replacing the King on the throne and supervising him severely in the future. Such, for example, was the conclusion of Voild a qu'il faut faire da roi (by Drouet), in which the author says : " At the moment of writing, all the streets and street corners, the clubs, and cafes, all resound with republican cries, and all hearts are in favour of royalty." Another pamphlet denounces the republican Achille du

1 Thus, even after the movement was checked for a time, the Rfruo-lutions de Paris says: "Paris, the majority of the departments, almost' the whole of France, have come to desire a republican Constitution."

Chastellet, as being a friend to Bouill6. Olympe de Gouges, in his incoherent pamphlet: Sera-t-il le roi? ne le sera-t-il pas? shows a preference for a constitutional monarchy. Others uphold the policy of the Jacobins. Thus, in a letter from " the two Brutuses to the French people " an elective council is demanded, in, which Robertus-Petrus, Petionus, and Gregerius are to have seats.

A new republican journal was founded about this time, Le Rgptiblicain, on le dSfenseur da gouvernement reprfeentatif, par une Society de r6publicains, of which the prospectus, by Achille du Chastellet, provoked a violent scene in the Assembly. Thomas Paine and Condorcet were the principal editors, and employed it to expound the theory of the republic. But only four numbers appeared.

The republican journals were in the minority ; but their discussions with other journals on the question of republic and monarchy, excited, perhaps not the people, but certainly the educated middle class.

Here are some examples of these discussions.

Gorsas, in his Courrier of June 28th, after having said that he put all his hopes in the son of Louis XVI, of whom a good education might make a new Marcellus, formulated these objections, which created a great sensation against the republic :

" Independently of constitutional law, which has declared France a kingdom, we are of opinion that the republican government cannot be in any way suited to a State as large as France. Besides, there is no doubt that those who are to-day aspiring to figure in the French Republic are in general factious people or men eaten up with ambition. A king, the first subject of the law and reigning only by the law ; that is what we need. Finally, our opinion is this : it is better to have a SUck of a Jftflgthan a Republican Crane; and we say, like the frogs in the fable of the sun looking out for a wife : // one only has dried up our marshes, what will it be when there are a dozen suns 1 Such is our advice; we give it frankly, without wishing to blame certain worthy citizens we might name who think differently,"

The republican crane of Gorsas made the street -loafers laugh, and remained famous as long as the discussion lasted.

Serious men were more impressed by the intervention of Si£y&s, who was still the venerated oracle of the middle classes, and who pronounced dogmatically against the republic in the Moniteur of July 6, 1791.

" I will enter the lists/ 1 he says, " against the republicans in good faith. I shall not cry out at their impiety, nor anathematise them; I shall not insult them. I know several whom I love and honour with all my heart. But I will give them my reasons, and I hope to prove to them, not that the monarchy is preferable in this or that situation, but that under any hypothesis, one is freer under a monarchy than under a republic."

Thomas Paine, who at this time was in Paris, and encouraged the republican party with his sympathy and advice, wrote a letter to Steyfes which appeared in the Moniteur for July i6th, and in which, taking up the challenge, he speaks in favour of the republic :

" I by no means understand by republicanism, he says, " that which goes by the name in Holland and in some of the Italian States. I understand republicanism to mean simply a representative government, a government founded on the principles of the Declaration of Rights, principles which many parts of the French Constitution contradict The Declaration of Rights of France and that of America are one and the same thing in principle, and very nearly in expression; this is the republicanism which I undertake to defend against what we call a monarchy or an aristocracy. ... I am the declared, open, and fearless enemy of what is known as monarchy; and I am its enemy by reason of principles that nothing can alter or corrupt, by my love of humanity, by the anxiety I feel for the dignity and honour of the human species, by the disgust which I feel when I see men directed by children and governed by beasts, by the horror inspired in me by all the evils which the monarchy lias spread over the earth; the poverty, the exactions, the wars, the massacres with which it has crushed humanity; it is, in short, against all this hell of monarchy that I have declared war."

replied, in the s,ame number of the Moniteur, that the monarchists were by no means in disagreement with the republicans on the question of representative government.

"Will you make all political action culminate, or what you please to call the executive power reside, in an Executive Council deliberating according to the majority, and nominated by the people or the National Assembly ?— this is the republic. Or will you on the contrary put at the head of the departments which you call ministerial, and which would be better separated, so many responsible heads, independent of one another, but dependent for their ministerial existence on an individual of superior rank, representing the stable unity of the government; or, what comes to the same thing, representing the national monarchy ; entrusted with the election or dismissal, in the name of the people, of these executive heads, and with the exercise of certain other functions useful to the common weal, but in which his irresponsibility cannot be productive of danger ?— this is monarchy."

The monarchical government ends in a point; the republican, in a platform.* Now, " the monarchical triangle is far more united than the republican platform to that division of powers which is the highway of public liberty." It is because the republicans are polyarchists, polycrats, that Steyfes is not a republican. " How far from understanding me are those," he says, " who reproach me with not adopting republicanism, and who believe that in stopping short of that I am stopping in one place ! Neither the ideas nor the feelings known as republican are unknown to me ; but, in my design of advancing always towards the maximum of social liberty, I had to pass the republic, leave it far behind, and finally come to the true monarchy/' And the future theorician of the Constitution of the year VIII declares that he is not anxious for an hereditary monarchy ; it should be elective if the nation should so desire it. But in what

1 A kind of double meaning is lost here ; the French is " en plate-forme"— <x in a flat form— -a superfities.— -[TRANS.]

respect would this elective king differ from a president of a republic of the American kind, except in title? And what is the fundamental point of difference between Si£y&s and Thomas Paine, if it is not a word, the word republic?

In this important battle of opinions the republicans had a champion using other arms, and strong with another strength than those of Thomas Paine : namely, Condorcet. Raillery, dialectic—he used them turn by turn. On July i6th he published in the Rtpublicain a letter from " a young mechanic," who undertook to furnish in a fortnight, and for a moderate price, a king with his royal family and all his court; a king who would walk up and down, sign, and give the constitutional sanction :

" If it is the fact that it is the very essence of the monarchy that a king should choose and dismiss his ministers, then as we know that according to sane politics he should always follow the wishes of the party which has the majority in the legislature, and that the president is one of the leaders, it is easy to imagine a mechanism by means of which the king shall receive the list of ministers, from the hand of the president of the fifteen, with an inclination of the head full of grace and majesty. ... My king would not in any way be a danger to liberty, and yet, if he were carefully repaired, he would be eternal, which is still better than being hereditary. One might even, without injustice, declare him to be inviolable, and, without absurdity, call him infallible."

Before writing this letter, Condorcet had solemnly upheld the republic of the Social Clubs, before the " federative Assembly of the Friends of Truth.'* This was on July 8th, 1 and it was an event indeed to hear the greatest thinker of the time, the disciple and heir of the encyclopaedists, preaching the republic which all the philosophers who were his masters had declared

1 This is not the date usually given; I have elsewhere given it otherwise myself; but from the accounts given in the journals I think the 8th is correct

that it was impossible or dangerous to establish in France. Now that the French are enlightened, says Condorcet; now that they are " freed, by an unforeseen event, from the ties which a kind of gratitude has impelled them to preserve and contract anew ; delivered from the remnant of those chains which, in their generosity, they have consented still to wear, they can at last decide if, in order to be free, they must needs give themselves a king." And he refutes, one by one, the classic objections against a republic. The extent of France? It is favourable, rather than otherwise, to the establishment of a republican government; since it " will not allow us to fear lest the idol of the capital become the tyrant of the nation." A tyrant? JHow could a tyrant establish himself, with such a division of powers as that existing, and in spite of the liberty of the press? Let but a single journal be free, and the usurpation of a Cromwell is impossible. Some say a king will prevent the usurpations of the legislative power. But how could this power be abused if it were frequently renewed, if the limits of its functions were fixed, if the National Conventions were to revise the Constitution at stated periods? It would be better, say some, to have one master than many. But why have masters at all?

To " individual oppressors " one must oppose, not a king, but the laws and the judges. It is alleged that a king is necessary to give authority to the executive power. " People still speak," says Condorcet, " as in the times when powerful associations gave their members the odious privilege of violating the laws ; as in the times when it was a matter of indifference to Brittany if Picardy paid imposts or not; then, no doubt, a powerful authority was necessary to the head of the executive ; then, as we have seen, even the authority of armed despotism was not sufficient." But to-day, when equality reigns, very little force is needed to bring individuals to obedience." It is, on the con-

trary, the existence of a hereditary head which deprives the executive power of some of its effective force, by arming against it the defiance of the friends of liberty ; by forcing them to fetter it in such a way as to embarrass and retard its movements." Experience justified Con-dorcet; it was when the Revolution was rid of the King that the government became centralised and the executive became powerful; it was then that the government rose from the administrative anarchy organised by the monarchical Constitution. But does not experience contradict the reasons given by Condorcet for ignoring the possibility of a military dictatorship? " What conquered provinces would a French general despoil," he says, " in order to purchase our votes? Will some ambitious man propose, as to the Athenians, to levy tributes on our allies to raise temples or give feasts? Will he promise our soldiers, as the citizens of Rome were promised, the pillage of Spain or of Syria? No ; and it is because we cannot be a people-king that we shall remain a free people."

The tributes of our allies, tyrannical conquests, the pillage of Spain, the people-king—all this was precisely what the future had in store for us. But this dictatorship was not the result of the democratic Republic, which, on the contrary, severely subordinated the military to the civil power. It was when the bourgeois class was substituted for the democracy ; when it called to its help, against the wishes of the dispossessed people, the sword of a soldier ; it was when the republican principles had been violated, that the republic disappeared in a military dictatorship. If Condorcet had been listened to, if the republic had been established in time—that is, in 1791—before we were in a state of war with Europe, who knows but that this republic, established in a time of peace, would not have led to another order of things than that which resulted from the Republic of 1792, established in the

midst of war, and obliged to resolve the difficult problem of making France at once a rational democracy and a vast camp under military discipline?

Be this as it may, these words of Condorcet's produced a profound impression. 1 The Social Club, a very large club, consisting of men and women of many different tendencies, thanked the orator, voted the publication of this speech, and thus supported the republic. There were immediately individual conversions ; thus young Th^ophile Mandar, the spokesman of the petition of the thirty thousand, who had declared himself a monarchist on June 26th, publicly supported the republic after having heard Condorcet's speech. Before the speech, the authority of Jean Jacques Rousseau was arrayed against all French republicans. Now orxe could call oneself a republican without fear of heresy. The republican party felt ennobled, legitimatised by this startling intervention on the part of the heir to the philosophers.

Then this party made a great, a supreme effort. All the Fraternal Societies were invited to the Cercle social for the following Friday, July I5th, in order to continue there the discussion on the republic. This meeting took place ; but the debate was interrupted by the news of the decree exculpating the King ; henceforth it was illegal to demand a republic.

1 The Patriot* francais of July i;th speaks of the success of this speech. The anger of the monarchists was such that they abused and calumniated Condorcet and insulted his wife. We read in the Correspondence litteraire secrete of July 3oth: A friend of M. Condorcet reproaches the Academician with his change of opinion, and his writings in favour of republicanism. " What would you ?" replied Condorcet. " I have allowed myself to be influenced by my wife, who is influenced by others. Need one trouble the peace of a household by a king more or less ? >f A caricature represents Mme. Condorcet nude as Venus, but by no means with the same attributes. Above is written : Respublica. La Fayette kneels before this "public thing" and says, holding out his hand: " There is my charter, and I swear to be faithful to it."

On the day before there had been an attempt at " republicanising" the f&te of the Federation. We read in the Bouche de Per of July 15th:

" The Federation of the Champ de Mars was celebrated with great pomp. The oath was not renewed; but the name of King was effaced from the tablets of the Altar. Nearly three hundred thousand men successively inundated the Champ de Mars; following on in crowds, like a torrent, a sea, an ant-hill of men ; and thousands on thousands of bonnets were thrown to the sky, while thousands of voices cried, ' Live free and without a King I'"

If this manifestation of republicanism really took place it was an important fact. But the Bouche de Per is alone in relating it. Perhaps there were a few isolated cries of " No king 1 " The silence of all the other journals as to the three hundred thousand men repudiating royalty shows plainly that the federation of July 14th was not as republican as the organ of the Cercle social would have us believe.

There is no doubt that from the time of the decree of July 15th the republicans beat a retreat. 1

VI.

Such was the republican movement in Paris, from June 2ist to the following July isth.

In the provinces there were also certain republican manifestations.

At D61e (in the Jura), on July I3th, the people's club, presided over by Prost, the future Member of Convention, voted a republican address. Certain republicans wrote, on the statue of Louis XVI, these

1 Thus, the Journal gtn&ral de TEurope bows before the decision of the Assembly, and confines itself to saying that it would have "preferred that the abolition of royalty had been decided on; that is, republicanism, or, if one prefers it, polycraty."

words, which the municipality had effaced : First and last King of the French.* More than sixty republicans of this commune were served with writs of arrest.

On June 23rd and 24th and July 3rd, Bancal des Issarts proposed to the Jacobins of Clermont-Ferrand the substitution of a republic for the monarchy. This motion, which fired Mme. Roland's enthusiasm, was printed, and caused a great sensation.*

This was not the only republican manifestation in Auvergne. The Society of the Friends of the Constitution of Artonne (Puy-de-D6me) congratulated the Cordeliers for having demanded " that France should be constituted as a republic."

At Metz, a few republicans won applause by preaching the hatred of royalty, and demanding that the new Legislature should be entrusted with the establishment of the republic.3

1 Session of the Municipal Council at Dole, July 4,1791 (Terrier de Monciel, mayor): " The municipality, informed of an inscription made at the base of the statue of Louis XVI, reading thus, First and last King of the French ; considering that it is not the part of any citizen to alter public monuments or to cover them with writings contrary to the Constitution decreed by the National Assembly; having heard the Procurator of the Commune, has decreed that the said inscription shall be effaced, the Procurator of the Commune being entrusted with the task."

* Le conventional Bancal des Issarts, Fr. Mege, Paris, 1887.

3 We only know of this manifestation from this vague account in the Journal general de f Europe, formerly the Mercure national, for July 6 : " In this city, one of those which were still the most thickly encrusted with the prejudices of slavery, the wish of the people, of that portion of society whom men are still trying to humiliate, revile, and calumniate, has been sufficiently made clear. There exist in its midst thinkers ; eternal enemies of kings and tyrants of every kind ; they have dared openly to urge their hatred of royalty, and the abolition of this monstrous power; and the people have replied with loud applause; and have demanded that a new Legislature, less soiled with monarchical principles, shall be entrusted with the establishment of this new form of government." M. Matouchet, in a biography of Philippeaux, informs us that on July i^th the Society of Friends of the Constitution of

During the session of the National Assembly of July 5th, an address was read from the Society of Friends of the Constitution of Bounnont (Haute-Marne), which asked " if royalty were necessary to a great nation, and if, in keeping it as head of the executive power, the Assembly could not make the King's Council elective and renewable."

But the most important manifestation was that of the " Friends of the Constitution and of Equality of Montpellier." This Jacobin society, whose president at this time was the future Member of Convention, Cambon, presented to the National Assembly the following petition:

"Representatives 1 It is of the greatest importance that you should know the opinion of the public; here is ours.

" To be indeed Romans, we lacked only hatred and the expulsion of kings. We have the first; the second we await at your hands.

" With the Government organised as it is, a king serves no useful purpose; the execution of the laws can proceed without him; and this superfluous ornament of the Constitution is so costly, that it is of immediate importance to destroy it, above all on the eve of a foreign war. We do not fear this war, because we know that great nations, like great men, are the pupils of difficult circumstances.

" Our conclusions might not perhaps be so severe, if they had been dictated only by simple reasons of economy; but we have considered that, in a representative Government, thirty-five millions would be dangerous in the hands of a single man, when this man is interested in corrupting them.

" We are well aware that he cannot win over the majority of those elected by the people; but he has no need of this in order to control the results of their assemblies. Your majority has never been corrupted; yet you have passed the decree of the mark of silver and that concerning the right to petition. Let all honour be given you, that the decrees of this nature are few in number; but what is to assure us that all legislative assemblies will have the sublime strength that you have displayed ? And should they be weak, and should the

Mans received an address from that of Metz, stating that the citizens of the latter town had sworn to raise up their children " hating kings and tyrants."

always corrupt and corrupting race of kings win over the tacticians of the Assembly (a thing quite possible, as you know), what would become of the people ?

"Confess, Representatives, that you were possessed by a very unphilosophical idea when you thought the executive power must needs be rich.

" In principle, you have done as the legislator of the Hebrews did: you have given us laws which were not good; but your hands were forced by prejudice. To-day those prejudices are destroyed, the people enlightened; and their opinion permits, nay, warrants you, to deliver them from the evil of kings, the moment this evil is no longer necessary. Seize the occasion : you will never have a better. Make France a republic. This will not be difficult. A word omitted from the Constitution, and you will evoke in us all the virtues of Greece and Rome.

"What a republic you would make, Representatives! It would begin with twenty-five million men and three million soldiers; in all the pageant of the world you will not find its like.

" If you refuse the honour which circumstances offer you; if, through you, the Capets and their throne are still to weigh us down for any length of time, then be sure, Representatives, we shall curse you for all the ill they will do us, and they will work us ill without a doubt, for the race of kings is maleficent.

"We say nothing to you of Louis; he is cast down, and we despise him too much to hate or fear him. We leave to the judges the axe of vengeance, and confine ourselves to demanding of you that henceforth f he Frenchman shall have no king other than himself.

"CAMBON, President "J. GOGUET, AIGOIN, Secretaries."

Having been printed, this petition was communicated to the other people's clubs, with a circular soliciting their support; "the National Assembly having need, in order that it may act with ease and convenience, of appearing to be forced by public opinion."

We have only one of the replies that the Montpellier club must have received : the reply of the Limoges branch, dated July 19, 1791. Herein we read:

" At a moment of anarchy, such as that we are now passing through ; at a moment when the powers of the State are not yet determined and settled, when our troops are almost without leaders, when France, divided into two parties, is ready to behold war break out in her own

bosom, we should further divide her by creating a third party, and this division would be the tomb of Kberty, since it would affect the patriots themselves. Finally, it is evident that in overturning the throne you would give a chance to the most crafty usurper, and that we should have to begin all over again to regain a liberty that has cost us so much travail. Besides, the position of France will not permit of a republican Government Consult experience: look at England, which has an area considerably smaller; also she is an island. Her people, who saw the light of liberty long ago, have recognised that a monarchical Government is the most convenient. On this subject consult the reign of James II."

We may guess, also, what sort of an answer the Jacobins of Montpellier received from the Jacobins of Perpignan. They begged them, no doubt, not to speak of republics, and to limit themselves to suppressing the hereditary factor of the monarchy. In fact, they sent the National Assembly an address which Barfere inserted in the Point da Jour for July 12th, in which they copy word for word almost the entire preamble of the petition of the Jacobins of Montpellier. But, instead of the passage relating to the republic, they substituted this :

"Seize the occasion; you will never have such another ; ensure for France a government without a hereditary king; give her a monarch who will only differ from her constitutional king, in that, regulated by a chief minister and six councillors, who would form the directing portion of a larger council, all would be elected by the people, instead of by the king, and the presidency would alternate between them. All would be elected and changed every two years. Then, so to say, there would be only the scourge of the hereditary nature of the throne to suppress in your sublime work. One word omitted from the Constitution : hereditary, and you will inspire us with all the virtues of Greece and Rome. . . ."

We do not know what sort of welcome the republican petition of the club of Montpellier received from the other clubs. There is nowhere any trace of a debate on the subject at the Jacobins at Paris. No " patriotic " journal, to our knowledge, reproduced it. It was reproduced only in an " aristocratic " paper,

the Journal glntral de France (July 12, 1791), and in a royalist pamphlet, La Horde de Brigands de Mont-pettier. By the time it could have been known in Paris, many republicans had already provisionally renounced their principles.

One of the journals which persisted in maintaining the republican cause, the Journal general de V Europe^ the organ of the Robert group, finds the news coming in from the departments entirely satisfactory from the republican point of view. We read under the date July 5th :

" This diversity of opinion [on the form of the Constitution and the execution of the laws] is beginning to increase in the departments; everywhere people have provisionally formed the habit of suppressing the word king in all the formulas in which it was previously united to the words law and nation; in some they are beginning to discuss the very important question of the preservation or abolition of royalty; and we have in our hands private letters written from the department of the Moselle, of which one preaches republicanism, while the other implores the indulgence of the nation for Louis 1 misbehaviour."

We see that the republican movement is no longer confined to Paris, and that there are republican manifestations in the provinces. But republicanism must, at this time, have had converts all over France. It will be remarked that the greater number of the incidents that we have related occurred in the east l of France (Moselle, Haute-Marjrie, Jura), or in the extreme south, but still towards the east (H6rault, Pyr£n6es-Orientales). In the centre of France we find republicans only in Auvergne. Yet in these parts there are only a few individuals, a few clubs—very few indeed— which here and there, and without " federating " themselves with any others, speak against royalty, and

* However, there was at least one republican manifestation in the west; at Nantes; but the evidence appeared much later. The Patriote for the loth of Prairial, year VI, speaks of a republican address by Letourneaux*

nowhere succeed in creating a current of opinion either among the people or even among the bourgeoisie. In reality the mass of France is refractory to the republican idea ; the addresses received from so many points of the kingdom by the Assembly leave no doubt as to the persistence of the monarchical spirit among the people of the departments in June and July, 1791. But the monarchical creed is not intact; Louis XVI is jio longer as popular as he was. He has been surprised in flagrante delicto, in lying, in deserting his post as national head of the Revolution. The prestige of royalty is shattered. Fresh faults on his part, a year later, will bring about the fatal blow to this prestige, and will open the way for the republic ; that republic so feared, by the majority of Frenchmen in 1791, as anarchic and federalistic.

VII.

But France had not the same aversion for democracy as for the republic ; and we have seen that it was especially by reason of their fear of democracy that the Constituent Assembly wished to preserve the monarchy.

The manoeuvre of the bourgeoisie on July 17, 1791, was a blow against the republicans and the democrats at the same time.

I have been obliged, in recounting the manifestations of the republican spirit in Paris, to speak of the democratic manifestations at the same time, the two being inseparable. To explain the inquietude and the final violence of the bourgeoisie, we must recall the ever-increasing audacity of the democratic demands since June 21 st. First of all, as we have seen, the section of the Theatre Frangais established universal suffrage in its arrondissement. But a considerable part of the democratic party was not content with the substitution

VOL. i. 20

of universal for property suffrage. It wanted, if not a pure democracy such as Rousseau had derided as chimerical, at least a democracy in which the people would co-operate directly with their representatives in the making of laws. It will be remembered that Loustallot, in 1790, had recommended and explained a democratic system in which the laws were submitted by a referendum to the sanction of the primary assemblies. Ren6 de Girardin had borrowed the idea, and obtained its adoption, in a form a little more precise and in some respects novel, by the Cordeliers on June 7, 1791 ; its essential idea was to control the Chamber of Deputies not by an upper Chamber, but by the people. The Senate, in this ideal democratic Constitution, would have been the French people.

After the flight to Varennes, the advanced democrats sought to create a current of opinion in favour of this species of democracy. Thus the Fraternal Societies and the Social Club insistently demanded the national sanction of the laws. The formula of the Cordeliers was : "A national government, that is to say, universal and annual sanction or ratification."

An occasion offered for the application of this sysjtem : the placing, on the order of the day, of the question : What was to be done with Louis XVI ?

We have seen that as early as June 24th thirty thousand citizens, assembled in the Place Vendome, had petitioned the National Assembly to decide nothing with regard to Louis before consulting the departments. Presented to the President of the Assembly, this petition was mumbled rather than read by a secretary, in such a way that no one heard or understood it. On July gth the Cordeliers fathered a petition of the same kind, drawn up by Boucher Saint-Sauveur. But the President of the Assembly, Charles du Lameth, refused to read it. On the I2th the anger of the Cordeliers found vent in an address to the nation, in