Part 10

Lafayette and Bailly had spent the evening with the King. As soon as they had gone, to disarm suspicion Louis undressed and got into bed. Then he got up again, put on a disguise, and walked down the main staircase and out at the door. He reached his carriage, and waited a short time for the Queen, who presently joined him; and then the royal couple drove out of Paris.

The flight was not discovered until about six o’clock in the morning. Then Lafayette hurried to the Tuileries with Bailly. He found that a mob had already gathered there, vowing vengeance on all who had had charge of the King. With difficulty he rescued the officer who had been on guard the night before. He sent messengers in every direction with orders to stop the royal fugitives. He went to the Assembly, and addressed it. At the Jacobin Club, Danton, the fiery orator, declared, “The commander-general promised on his head that the King would not depart; therefore we must have the person of the King or the head of Monsieur the commander-general!” But Lafayette’s reputation was still too great for him to be reached by his enemies.

The unfortunate royal family were finally arrested at Varennes and brought back to Paris. Louis was received in an ominous silence by his people. Lafayette met him at the gates and escorted him back to the palace. There Lafayette said, “Sire, your Majesty is acquainted with my personal attachment; but I have not allowed you to be unaware that if you separated your cause from that of the people I should remain on the side of the people.”

“That is true,” answered King Louis. “You have acted according to your principles; it is an affair of party. At present, here I am. I will tell you frankly, that up to these last days, I believed myself to be in a vortex of people of your opinion with whom you surrounded me, but that it was not the opinion of France. I have thoroughly recognized in this journey that I was mistaken, and that this opinion is the general one.”

When Lafayette asked the King for his orders, the latter laughed and said, “It seems to me that I am more at your orders than you are at mine.”

The commander did all that he could to soften the hard position of the royal captives, but he took care to see that the Tuileries was better guarded after that.

Some Jacobins now petitioned the Assembly to dethrone the King, and a great meeting was held in the Champs de Mars on the seventeenth of July. As usual the meeting got out of hand and the mob turned to murder and pillage. Lafayette and Bailly rode to the field with some of their soldiers; Bailly proclaimed martial law and ordered the crowd to disperse. Jeers and threats followed, and at last Lafayette had to give his men the command to fire. A dozen of the mob were killed, and the rest took to flight.

This seemed to bring peace again, but it was only the quiet that precedes the thunder-storm. The Assembly finished its work on the new constitution for France and the King signed it. Then Lafayette, tired with his constant labors, resigned his commission and stated his intention of retiring to private life. Paris voted him a medal and a marble statue of Washington, and the National Guards presented him with a sword forged from the bolts of the Bastille. At last he rode back to his country home at Chavaniac, looking forward to rest there as Washington looked for rest at his beloved Mount Vernon.

To friends at his home in Auvergne the General said, “You see me restored to the place of my birth; I shall leave it only to defend or consolidate our common liberty, if attacked, and I hope to remain here for long.” He believed that the new constitution would bring liberty and peace to his country. But the French Revolution had only begun its course, and he was destined soon to be called back to its turmoil.

He had several months of rest in his home in the mountains, happy months for his wife, who for two years had hardly ever seen her husband leave their house in Paris without fearing that he might not return. She had been a wonderful helpmate for the General during the turbulent course of events since his return from America and had loyally entertained the guests of every varying shade of political opinion who had flocked to his house in the capital. But she liked to have her husband away from the alarms of Paris and safe in the quiet of his country home at Chavaniac. There he had more time to spend with her and their three children, Anastasie, George Washington, and Virginia, who had been named after the State where her father had won his military laurels.

The Legislative Assembly of France, which was trying to govern the country under the new constitution, was finding the making of laws which should satisfy every one a very difficult task. There were countless cliques and parties, and each had its own pet scheme for making the land a Utopia. The court party hoped that the more reckless element would lose all hold on the people through its very extravagance, and so actually encouraged many wildly absurd projects. The royalists were always expecting that a counter-revolution would bring them back into power, and the nobles who had left the country filled the border-towns and plotted and conspired and used their influence to induce foreign sovereigns to interfere and restore the old order in France. Naturally enough news of these plots and conspiracies did not tend to make King Louis or his nobles any more popular with the lawgivers in Paris.

In August, 1791, the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria met the Count d’Artois and the Marquis de Bouillé at the town of Pilnitz and formed an alliance against France, making the cause of Louis XVI. their own. The royalists who had emigrated were delighted, and filled Europe with statements of what they meant to do to the revolutionary leaders when they won back their power. The revolutionists grew more and more angry, and as they saw foreign troops gathering on the French frontiers they decided that it was high time to oppose force with force. Narbonne, the Minister of War, announced that the King and government meant to form three armies of fifty thousand men each, and that the country had chosen as commanding generals Rochambeau, Luckner, and Lafayette.

Lafayette at once returned to Paris from Chavaniac, paid his respects to the King, and going to the Assembly thanked the members for his new appointment and declared his unalterable devotion to the maintenance and defense of the constitution. The president of the Assembly answered that “the French people, which has sworn to conquer or to die in the cause of liberty, will always confidently present to nations and to tyrants the constitution and Lafayette.”

In view of what happened afterward it is important to remember that Lafayette accepted his appointment under the constitution of France and that he felt himself bound to support and obey it under all circumstances.

Then he departed from Paris for the frontier, the cheers of the people and the National Guards ringing in his ears. He was popular with all parties except those of the two extremes, the friends of the King considering him a rebel and the Jacobins calling him a courtier.

At Metz Lafayette met Rochambeau, Luckner, and Narbonne, and it was arranged that the three generals should make their headquarters at Liège, Trèves, and Coblentz. News of these military measures somewhat cooled the ardor of the alliance against France and enemy troops stopped collecting along the border. Lafayette took advantage of this to prepare his raw recruits for a possible struggle. They needed this preparation, for the army of France, which had once been the proudest in Europe, had been allowed to scatter during the past few years.

He accomplished much in the way of discipline, was called to Paris to consult on a plan of campaign, found the leaders there as much at odds as ever, and returned to his post at Metz. Again the emigrant nobles and their allies were uttering threats against the French government, and finally, on April 20, 1792, the government declared war on its enemies.

Lafayette’s orders were to proceed against the Netherlands, marching from Metz to Givet, and thence to Namur. Meantime Rochambeau’s army was to attack the Austrians. But there was so much discord among Rochambeau’s divisions that the attack turned into a retreat, and Lafayette, learning this when he arrived at Givet, was obliged to wait there instead of marching farther. The conduct of his soldiers so discouraged Rochambeau that he resigned his commission and the territory to be defended was divided between Lafayette and Luckner. The former concentrated his troops at Maubeuge, and spent the month of May drilling and occasionally making sorties.

In Paris the cause of law and order was having a hard time. The Jacobins wanted to upset the constitution, dethrone the King, and establish a republic, and they were steadily growing stronger. The spirit of revolution was spreading through the country, and everywhere the people gave the greatest applause to the most revolutionary orators. The Assembly was treating Louis XVI. with insolence and the King was retaliating by regarding the deputies with unconcealed contempt. The monarchy and the constitution were fast falling to pieces, and the news of the defeat of the army on the frontier helped to hasten the climax. Gouverneur Morris wrote to Thomas Jefferson in June, 1792, “The best picture I can give of the French people is that of cattle before a thunder-storm.” And a week later he wrote, “We stand on a vast volcano; we feel it tremble and we hear it roar; but how and where and when it will burst, and who may be destroyed by its irruption, are beyond the ken of mortal foresight to discover.”

Lafayette, in camp at Maubeuge, alarmed at the reports from Paris, felt that the cause of liberty and order would be lost unless some effective blow could be dealt at the power of the Jacobins. If some one would take the lead in opposing that group, or club, he believed that the Assembly and the rest of the people would follow. So he wrote a letter to the Assembly, and in this he said, “Can you hide from yourselves that a faction, and, to avoid vague terms, the Jacobite faction, has caused all these disorders? It is this club that I openly accuse.” Then he went on to denounce the Jacobins as the enemies of all order.

When the letter was read in the Assembly the Jacobins attacked it furiously, charging that the General wanted to make himself a dictator. His friends supported him, but the Jacobins were the more powerful. Through their clubs, their newspapers, and their street orators they soon led the fickle people to believe that Lafayette, their idol of a few years before, was now a traitor to them and their greatest enemy.

Another quarrel arose between King Louis and the Assembly, and the former dismissed his ministers. The Jacobins seized on this to inaugurate a reign of terror. The streets were filled with mobs, passionate orators harangued the crowds, men and women pushed their way into the meetings of the Assembly and told the deputies what they wanted done. June twentieth was the anniversary of the Tennis Court Oath, and on that day a great rabble invaded the Assembly, denounced the King, and then marched to the Tuileries, where it found that the gates had been left open. The mob surged through the palace, singing the revolutionary song “_Ça ira_,” and shouting “Down with the Austrian woman! Down with Marie Antoinette!” The Queen and her children fled to an inner room, protected by a few grenadiers. The King watched the crowd surge by him, his only concession to their demands being to put a liberty cap on his head. After three hours of uproar the leaders felt that Louis had been taught a sufficient lesson and led their noisy followers back to the streets.

A story is told that a young and penniless lieutenant by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte was dining with a friend in the Palais Royal when the mob attacked the Tuileries. Taking a position on the bank of the Seine he watched the scene with indignation. When he saw the King at the window with the red liberty cap on his head, he exclaimed, “Why have they let in all that rabble? They should sweep off four or five hundred of them with cannon; the rest would then set off fast enough.” But the time had not yet come for this lieutenant to show how to deal with the people.

Lafayette heard of the mob’s invasion of the Tuileries and decided to go to Paris to see what he could do to check the spirit of revolution. General Luckner had no objection to his leaving his headquarters at Maubeuge, but warned him that if the Jacobins once got him in their power they would cut off his head. Undaunted by this idea Lafayette went to the capital, and arrived at the house of his friend La Rochefoucauld, entirely unexpected, on the twenty-eighth of June.

His visit caused great excitement. He went to the Assembly and made a stirring speech in which he said that the violence committed at the Tuileries had roused the indignation of all good citizens. His words were cheered by the more sober deputies, but the Jacobins protested loudly. One of the latter asked how it happened that General Lafayette was allowed to leave his army to come and lecture the Assembly on its duties. The General’s speech had some influence in restoring order, but the power of the Jacobins was steadily increasing.

Lafayette then went to the Tuileries, where he saw the royal family. Louis was ready to receive any assurance of help that the General could give him, for the King saw now that his only reliance lay in the constitution he had signed, and felt that might prove a slight support. Marie Antoinette, however, refused to forgive Lafayette for the part he had taken in the early days of revolution, and would have no aid at his hands.

When he left the Tuileries some of his former National Guards followed his carriage with shouts of “Vive Lafayette! Down with the Jacobins!” and planted a liberty pole before his house. This gave Lafayette the idea of appealing to the whole force of the National Guard and urging them to stand by the constitution. He asked permission to speak to them at a review the next day, but the mayor, fearing Lafayette’s influence, countermanded the review. Then the General held meetings at his house and did all he could to persuade Guards and citizens to oppose the Jacobins, who, if they had their way, would, in his opinion, ruin the country.

At the end of June he returned to the army. Daily he heard reports of the growing power of his enemies, the Jacobins. Then he resolved to make one more attempt to save the King and the constitution. He received orders to march his troops by a town called La Capelle, which was about twenty miles from Compiègne, one of the King’s country residences. His plan was that Louis XVI. should go to the Assembly and declare his intention of passing a few days at Compiègne; there Lafayette’s army would meet him, and the King would proclaim that he was ready to send his troops against the enemies of France who had gathered on the frontiers and should reaffirm his loyalty to the constitution. The General thought that if the King would do this it would restore the confidence of the people in their sovereign.

But neither the King nor the nobles who were with him at the Tuileries were attracted by this plan, which meant that Louis would openly declare his hostility toward those emigrant nobles who had gathered on the borders. And when the Jacobins learned that Lafayette had been communicating secretly with the King they used this news as fresh fuel for their fire. So the result of the scheme was only to add to the currents of suspicion and intrigue that were involving Paris in the gathering storm.

The power of the Assembly grew weaker; its authority was more and more openly thwarted; the deputies wanted to stand by the constitution, but it appeared that the country did not care to live under its laws. The government of Paris was now entirely under the control of the Jacobins. They filled the ranks of the National Guards with ruffians in their pay. On July fourteenth the King reviewed soldiers who were secretly ready to tear the crown from his head and was forced to listen to bitter taunts and jibes.

Then, at the end of July, the allied armies of Austria and Prussia, accompanied by a great many French noblemen, crossed the frontier and began their heralded invasion. The general in command, the Duke of Brunswick, issued a proclamation calling on the people of Paris to submit to their king, and threatening all sorts of dire things if they persisted in their rebellion. The proclamation acted like tinder to powder. The invasion united all parties for the moment. If the Duke of Brunswick succeeded, no man who had taken part in the Revolution could think his life or property secure, and France would return to the old feudal despotism, made worse by its dependence on foreign armies.

The people of Paris and of France demanded immediate and vigorous action; the Assembly could not lead them, and the Jacobins seized their chance. Danton and his fellows addressed the crowds in the streets and told them that France would not be safe until the monarchy and the aristocracy had been exterminated. The people heard and believed, and by August first were ready to strike down any men their leaders pointed out to them.

Danton and the Jacobins made their plans rapidly. They filled the floor and the galleries of the Assembly with men whose violent threats kept the deputies constantly in fear of physical force. They taught the people to hate all those who defended the constitution, and chief among the latter Lafayette, whom the Jacobins feared more than any other man in France. So great was their fury against him that Gouverneur Morris wrote to Jefferson at the beginning of August, “I verily believe that if M. de Lafayette were to appear just now in Paris unattended by his army, he would be torn in pieces.”

On August tenth the mob, armed with pikes, surrounded the Tuileries. The King looked out on a crowd made up of the most vicious elements of the city. He tried to urge the National Guards to protect him, but they were demoralized by the shouts of the throngs. Finally he decided to take refuge with the National Assembly, and with the Queen and their children succeeded in reaching the Assembly chamber.

The Swiss guards at the Tuileries attempted to make some resistance, but the mob drove them from their posts and killed many of them. The reign of terror spread. Nobles or citizens who had opposed the Jacobins were hunted out and murdered. When the Assembly adjourned the deputies found armed bands at the doors, waiting to kill all those who were known to have supported the constitution.

Meantime the royal family had found the Assembly a poor refuge. A deputy had moved that the King be dethroned and a convention summoned to determine the future government of the country. The measure was instantly carried. Louis XVI. and his family were handed over to officers who took them to the Temple, which then became their prison.

The Jacobins had won the day by force and violence. They formed a government called the “Commune of August 10th,” filled it with their own men, drove all respectable soldiers out of the National Guard and placed Jacobin pikemen in their places. All nobles and friends of the King who were found in Paris were thrown into the prisons, which were soon crammed. The Reign of Terror had begun in fact. Only a short time later the prisoners were being tried and sent to the guillotine.

Lafayette heard of the events of August tenth and begged his troops to remain true to the King and the constitution. Then the Commune of Paris sent commissioners to the armies to announce the change of government and to demand allegiance to the Commune. Lafayette met the commissioners at Sedan, heard their statements, and declaring them the agents of a faction that had unlawfully seized on power, ordered them imprisoned.

News of Lafayette’s arrest of the commissioners added to the turmoil in Paris. Some Jacobins wanted to have him declared a traitor at once; others, however, feared that his influence with the army might be too great for them to take such a step safely. But troops in the other parts of France had come over to the Commune, and so, on the nineteenth of August the Jacobin leaders felt their power strong enough to compel the Assembly to declare Lafayette a traitor.

Lafayette now had to face a decision. France had declared for the Commune of Paris and overthrown King and constitution. He had three choices. He might accept the rule of the Jacobins and become one of their generals; he might continue to oppose them and probably be arrested by his own soldiers and sent to the guillotine; he might leave the country, seek refuge in some neutral land, and hope that some day he could again be of service to liberty in France. To accept the first course was impossible for him, because he had no confidence in Jacobin rule. To take the second would be useless. Therefore the third course was the one he decided on.

He turned his troops over to other officers, and with a few friends, who, like himself, had been declared traitors because they had supported the constitution, rode away from Sedan and crossed the border into Belgium at the little town of Bouillon. He was now an exile from his own country. The cause of liberty that he had fought so hard for had now become the cause of lawlessness. His dream of France, safe and prosperous under a constitution like that of the young republic across the sea, had come to an end, at least for the time being. He could do nothing but wash his hands of the Reign of Terror that followed on the footsteps of the Revolution he had helped to start.

XI

LAFAYETTE IN PRISON AND EXILE

Lafayette knew that he could expect to find no place of refuge on either side of the French frontier; on the one hand were the Jacobin soldiers of the Reign of Terror who held him to be a traitor, and on the other the emigrant noblemen and their allies who regarded him as in large part responsible for all the troubles that had befallen Louis XVI. and his court. He had got himself into a position where both sides considered him an enemy; and his best course seemed to be to make his way to England and there take ship for America, where he was always sure to meet a friendly welcome.

Austrian and Prussian troops held the northern border of France and garrisoned the outpost towns of Belgium. Lafayette and his companions crossed the frontier on their road to Brussels, but were stopped at the town of Rochefort because they had no passports. One of the party, Bureaux de Pusy, rode to Namur, the nearest large town, to try to get the necessary papers, but when he told the officer in charge there that the passports were wanted for General Lafayette and several friends there was great commotion. “Passports for Lafayette, the enemy of the King and of order!” the Austrian officer exclaimed. Lafayette was too important a man to let escape in any such fashion. And at once the command was given to arrest the Frenchman and his companions.