Part 13

The nobles and clergy held small meetings and elected delegates from among their own number. The Third Estate elected men of the upper middle class, or nobles of liberal views. Lafayette found considerable opposition among the nobles of Auvergne, but the common people begged him to represent them, promising to give him their unanimous vote if he would do so. He preferred, however, to make the fight in his own order and was successful, taking his seat, when the States General convened, as a representative of the nobility of Auvergne.

[Pg 191]XXI

THE TRICOLOR

When the representatives of the people of France, to the number of more than twelve hundred, came together in a great hall in the palace at Versailles on the 5th of May, 1789, the king opened the session, with the queen and royal princes beside him on a throne gorgeous with purple and gold. Immediately in front of him sat his ministers, and in other parts of the hall were the three orders in separate groups. The nobles were brilliant in ruffles and plumes. The Third Estate was sober enough in dress, but there were six hundred of them; twice as many in proportion as had ever been allowed in a similar gathering. Most of them were lawyers; only forty belonged to the farming class. In the group of clergy some wore the flaming scarlet robes of cardinals, some the plain cassocks of village priests; and events proved that these last were brothers in spirit with the six hundred. The galleries were crowded with ladies and courtiers and envoys from distant lands. Even roofs of neighboring houses were covered with spectators bent on seeing all they could.

[Pg 192]The queen looked anxious. She had no fondness for reforms; but of the two upon the throne she had the stronger character and was therefore the better king. She was brave, quick to decide, and daring to execute. Unfortunately she was also narrow-minded and had little sympathy with the common people. Louis had already proved himself a complete failure as a ruler. He was a good husband, a lover of hunting, and a passable locksmith. It was a bit of tragic irony that his hobby should have been the making of little, smoothly turning locks. After his one attempt at reform he had not even tried to govern, but spent his days in meaningless detail, while the country drifted toward ruin.

Necker, who was once more in charge of the treasury, meant to keep the States General very busy with the duty for which they had been convened, that of providing money. But if the Notables had been refractory, this assembly was downright rebellious. A quarrel developed at the very outset about the manner of voting. In previous States General the three orders had held their meetings separately, and in final decisions each order had cast only one vote. The nobles and clergy could be counted on to vote the same way, which gave them a safe majority of two to one. Expecting the rule to hold this time, very little objection had been raised to the proposal that the Third Estate elect six hundred representatives instead of three hundred. The people liked it and it meant nothing at all. Now that the six hundred had been elected, however, they contended that the three orders must sit in one [Pg 193]assembly and that each man's vote be counted separately, which made all the difference in the world. A few liberals among the nobles and more than a few of the clergy in simple cassocks appeared to agree with them. The quarrel continued for six weeks, and meanwhile neither party was able to do any work.

At the end of that time the number favoring the new way of voting had increased. These declared themselves to be the National Assembly of France and that they meant to begin the work of "national regeneration" at once, whether the others joined them or not. Reforms were to be along lines indicated in the _cahiers_, or written statements of grievances, that voters had been urged to draw up at the time of the election. Tens of thousands of these had been received, some written in the polished phrases of courtiers, some in the earnest, ill-chosen words of peasants. All expressed loyalty to the king; and almost all demanded a constitution to define the rights of people and king alike. Among other things they asked that _lettres de cachet_ be abolished; that the people be allowed liberty of speech; that the States General meet at regular intervals; and that each of the three orders pay its just share of the taxes.

Soon after the liberals declared their intention of going to work they found the great hall at Versailles closed and were told curtly that it was being prepared for a royal session. They retired to a near-by tennis-court, lifted the senior representative from Paris, an astronomer named Bailly, to a table, elected him president of their [Pg 194]National Assembly, and took an oath not to disband until they had given France a constitution. A few days later the king summoned all the members of the States General to the great hall, scolded them for their recent acts in a speech written by somebody else, commanded that each order meet in future by itself, and left the hall to the sound of trumpets and martial music. The clergy and the nobles obediently withdrew. The Third Estate and a few liberals from the other orders remained. The king's master of ceremonies, a very important personage indeed, came forward and repeated the king's order. Soldiers could be seen behind him. There was a moment's silence; then Mirabeau, a homely, brilliant nobleman from the south of France, who had been rejected by his own order, but elected by the Third Estate, advanced impetuously toward the master of ceremonies, crying, in a loud voice, "Go tell your master that we are here by the will of the people, and that we shall not leave except at the point of the bayonet." Next he turned to the Assembly and made a motion to the effect that persons laying hands upon any member of the Assembly would be considered "infamous and traitors to the nation--guilty of capital crime." The master of ceremonies withdrew and reported the scene to the king. Louis, weak as water, said: "They wish to remain? Let them." And they did remain, to his undoing.

Lafayette was in an embarrassing position. He sympathized with the Third Estate, yet he had been elected to represent the nobles, and his commission bound him to vote according to their wishes. He [Pg 195]considered resigning in order to appeal again to the voters of Auvergne; but before he came to a decision the king asked the nobles and clergy to give up their evidently futile opposition. Lafayette took his place with the others in the National Assembly, but refrained for a time from voting. The king and his ministers seemed to have no settled policy. One day they tried to please the Third Estate; on another it was learned that batteries were being placed where they could fire upon the Assembly and that regiments were being concentrated upon Paris. It was upon a motion of Mirabeau's for the removal of these threatening soldiers that Lafayette broke his silence and began to take part again in the proceedings of the Assembly.

On the 11th of July, about a fortnight after the nobles and clergy had resumed their seats, he presented to the Assembly his Declaration of Rights, modeled upon the American Declaration of Independence, to be placed at the head of the French Constitution. Two days later he was elected vice-president of the Assembly "with acclamations." Toward evening of the 14th the Vicomte de Noailles came from Paris with the startling news that people had been fighting in the streets for hours; that they had gained possession of the Bastille, the gray old prison which stood in their eyes for all that was hateful in the old regime; that its commander and several of its defenders had been murdered; and that their heads were being carried aloft on pikes among the crowds.

[Pg 196]On the 15th the king came with his brothers to the Assembly and made a conciliatory speech, after which Lafayette hurried away to Paris at the head of a delegation charged with the task of quieting the city. They were met at the Tuileries gate and escorted to the Hôtel de Ville, where the City Council of Paris, a parliament in miniature, held its meetings. Lafayette congratulated the city on the liberty it had won, delivered the king's message, and turned to go. As he was leaving the room somebody cried out saying that here was the man Paris wanted to command its National Guard, and that Bailly, who accompanied him, ought to be mayor. It was one of those sudden ideas that seem to spread like wildfire. Lafayette stopped, drew his sword, and, acting upon that first impulse which he was so apt to follow, swore then and there to defend the liberty of Paris with his life if need be. He sent a message to the National Assembly asking permission to assume the new office, and on the 25th took, with Bailly, a more formal oath. The force of militia which he organized and developed became the famous National Guard of Paris; while this governing body at the Hotel de Ville which had so informally elected him, enlarged and changing from time to time as the Revolution swept on, became the famous, and infamous, "Commune." Lafayette himself, not many days after he assumed the new office, ordered the destruction of the old Bastille. One of its keys he sent to Washington at Mount Vernon. Another was made into a sword and presented by his admirers to the man whose orders had reduced the old prison to a heap of stones.

[Pg 197]The court party was aghast. The Comte d'Artois and two of his friends shook the dust of their native land from their feet and left France, the first of that long army of _émigrés_ whose flight still further sapped the waning power of the king. Louis was of one mind one day, another the next. Against the entreaties and tears of the queen he accepted an invitation to visit Paris and was received, as Lafayette had been, with cheers. He made a speech, ratifying and accepting all the changes that had taken place; and to celebrate this apparent reconciliation between the monarch and his subjects Lafayette added the white of the flag of the king to red and blue, the colors of the city of Paris, making the Tricolor. Up to that time the badge of revolution had been green, because Camille Desmoulins, one of its early orators, had given his followers chestnut leaves to pin upon their caps. But the livery of the Comte d'Artois, now so hated, was green, and the people threw away their green cockades and enthusiastically donned the red, white, and blue, echoing Lafayette's prediction that it would soon make the round of Europe.

The passions which had moved the city of Paris spread outward through the provinces as waves spread when a stone is cast into a pool. One town after another set up a municipal government and established national guards of its own. Peasants in country districts began assaulting tax-collectors, hanging millers on the charge that they were raising the price of bread, and burning and looting châteaux in their [Pg 198]hunt for old records of debts and judgments against the common people. July closed in a veil of smoke ascending from such fires in all parts of the realm.

All day long on the 4th of August the Assembly listened to reports of these events, a dismaying recital that went on and on until darkness fell and the candles were brought in. About eight o'clock, when the session seemed nearing its end, De Noailles mounted the platform and began to speak. He said that there was good reason for these fires and the hate they disclosed. The châteaux were symbols of that kind of unjust feudal government which was no longer to be tolerated. He moved that the Assembly abolish feudalism. His motion was seconded by the Duc d'Aiguillon, the greatest feudal noble in France, with the one exception of the king. The words of these two aristocrats kindled another sort of fire--an emotional fire like that of a great religious revival. Noble after noble seemed impelled to mount the platform and renounce his special privileges. Priests and prelates followed their example. So did representatives of towns and provinces. The hours of the day had passed in increasing gloom; the night went by in this crescendo of generosity. By morning thirty or more decrees had been passed and feudalism was dead, so far as law could kill it.

The awakening from this orgy of feeling was like the awakening from any other form of emotional excess. With it came the knowledge that neither the world nor human nature can be changed overnight. When the news went [Pg 199]abroad there were many who interpreted as license what had been given them for liberty. Forests were cut down. Game-preserves were invaded and animals slaughtered. Artisans found themselves out of work and hungrier than ever because of the economy now necessarily practised by the nobility. Such mighty reforms required time and the readjustment of almost every detail of daily life. Even before experience made this manifest the delegates began to realize that towns and bishoprics and provinces might refuse to ratify the impulsive acts of their representatives; and some of the nobles who had spoken for themselves alone did not feel as unselfish in the cold light of day as they had believed themselves to be while the candles glowed during that strange night session. The final result was to bring out differences of opinion more sharply and to widen the gulf between conservatives who clung to everything which belonged to the past and liberals whose desire was to give the people all that had been gained and even more.

[Pg 200]XXII

THE SANS-CULOTTES

Lafayette's position as commander of the National Guard of Paris was one of great importance. "He rendered the Revolution possible by giving it an army," says a writer of his own nation, who does not hesitate to criticize him, but who also assures us that from July, 1789, to July, 1790, he was perhaps the most popular man in France. Being a born optimist, he was sure that right would soon prevail. If he had too great belief in his own leadership it is not surprising, since every previous undertaking of his life had succeeded; and he certainly had more experience in revolution than any of his countrymen--an experience gained in America under the direct influence of Washington. He had gone to America a boy afire with enthusiasm for liberty. He returned to France a man, popular and successful, with his belief in himself and his principles greatly strengthened. He was impulsive and generous, he had a good mind, but he was not a deep thinker, and from the very nature of his mind it was impossible for him to foresee the full difficulty of applying in France the principles that had been [Pg 201]so successful in America. In France politics were much more complicated than in a new country where there were fewer abuses to correct. France was old and abuses had been multiplying for a thousand years. To borrow the surgeon's phrase, the wound made by revolution in America was a clean wound that healed quickly, "by the first intention." In France the wound was far more serious and horribly infected. It healed in time, but only after a desperate illness.

It is interesting that three of Lafayette's most influential American friends, Washington, Jefferson, and Gouverneur Morris, had misgivings from the first about the situation in France, fearing that a revolution could not take place there without grave disorders and that Lafayette could not personally ride such a storm. Morris, who was then in Paris, urged caution upon him and advised him to keep the power in the hands of the nobility. When Lafayette asked him to read and criticize his draft of The Declaration of Rights before it was presented to the Assembly, Morris suggested several changes to make it more moderate; "for," said this American, "revolutions are not won by sonorous phrases."

Although keen for reform and liking to dress it in sonorous phrases, Lafayette had no wish to be rid of the king. He did not expect to have a president in France or the exact kind of government that had been adopted in the United States. "Lafayette was neither republican nor royalist, but always held that view half-way between the two which theorists call a constitutional monarchy," says a French writer. "In [Pg 202]all his speeches from 1787 to 1792 he rarely used the word 'liberty' without coupling it with some word expressing law and order."

Events proved that he was too thoroughly a believer in order to please either side. One party accused him of favoring the aristocrats, the other of sacrificing everything for the applause of the mob. What he tried to do was to stand firm in the rush of events, which was at first so exhilarating and later changed to such an appalling sweep of the furies. If he had been less scrupulous and more selfish he might have played a greater role in the Revolution--have risen to grander heights or failed more abjectly--but for a time he would have really guided the stormy course of events. As it was, events overtook him, carried him with them, then tossed him aside and passed him by. Yet even so he managed for three years to dominate that tiger mob of Paris "more by persuasion than by force." This proves that he was no weakling. Jefferson called him "the Atlas of the Revolution."

There was opposition to him from the first. Mirabeau and Lafayette could never work wholeheartedly together, which was a pity, for with Mirabeau's eloquence to carry the National Assembly and Lafayette's popularity with the National Guard they could have done much. The cafés, those people's institutes of his young days, speedily developed into political clubs of varying shades of opinion, most of which grew more radical hourly. Marie Antoinette continued to be resentful and bitter and did all in her power to thwart reform and to influence the [Pg 203]king. In addition to parties openly for and against the new order of things there were individuals, both in high and low places, who strove to spread disorder by underhand means and to use it for selfish ends. One was the powerful Duc d'Orléans, cousin of the king, very rich and very unprincipled, whose secret desire was to supplant Louis upon the throne. He used his fortune to spread discontent through the Paris mob during the long cold winter, when half the inhabitants of the town went hungry. His agents talked of famine, complained of delay in making the Constitution, and gave large sums to the poor in ways that fed their worst passions, while supplying their very real need for bread.

Even after the lapse of one hundred and thirty years it is uncertain just how much of a part he played in the stormy happenings of the early days of October, 1789. On the night of the 2d of October the king and queen visited the hall at Versailles where the Garde du Corps, the royal bodyguard, was giving a banquet. The diners sprang to their feet and drank toasts more fervent than discreet. In the course of the next two days rumor spread to Paris that they had trampled upon the Tricolor and substituted the white of the Bourbons. Out of the garrets and slums of the city the mob boiled toward the Hôtel de Ville, crying that a counter-revolution had been started and that the people were betrayed. Lafayette talked and harangued. On the 5th he held the crowds in check from nine o'clock in the morning until four, when he learned that a [Pg 204]stream of malcontents, many of them women, had broken away and started for Versailles, muttering threats and dragging cannon with them.

Lafayette had confessed to Gouverneur Morris only a few days before that his National Guard was not as well disciplined as he could wish. Whether this was the reason or because he felt it necessary to get express permission from the Hôtel de Ville, there was delay before he and his militia set out in pursuit. He had sworn to use the Guard only to execute the will of the people. For what followed he has been severely blamed, while other witnesses contend just as hotly that he did all any commander could do. That night he saved the lives of several of the Garde du Corps; posted his men in the places from which the palace guard had been withdrawn by order of the king; made each side swear to keep the peace; gave his personal word to Louis that there would be no violence; saw that everything was quiet in the streets near the palace where the mob still bivouacked; then, worn with twenty hours' incessant labor, went to the house of a friend for a little sleep.

That sleep was the cause of more criticism than any act of his seventy-six years of life; for the mob, driven by an instinct for evil which seems strongest in crowds at dawn, hurled itself against the palace gates, killed the two men on guard before the queen's door, and forced its way into her bedchamber, from which she fled, half dressed, to take refuge with the king. Lafayette hurried back with all possible haste; made his way to the royal couple; addressed the crowd in the palace courtyard, telling them the king would show his trust by going [Pg 205]back with them voluntarily to take up his residence in Paris; and persuaded the queen to appear with him upon a balcony, where, in view of all the people, he knelt and kissed her hand. After that he led out one of the palace guard and presented him with a tricolored cockade; and, touched by these tableaux, the mob howled delight. That night, long after dark, the royal family entered the Tuileries, half monarchs, half prisoners. But discontent had been only partly appeased, and during the melancholy ride to the city Marie Antoinette gave the mob its watchword. Seeing a man in the dress of the very poor riding on the step of her coach she had remarked disdainfully that never before had a sans-culotte--a man without knee-breeches--occupied so honorable a position. The speech was overheard and taken up and shouted through the crowd until "sans-culotte" became a symbol of the Revolution.

The events of that day proved that Lafayette had not the quality of a great leader of men. How much of his ill success was due to bad luck, how much to over-conscientiousness in fulfilling the letter of his oath, how much to physical weariness, we may never know. The royal family believed he had saved their lives, and the vilest accusations against him, including the one that he really wished Louis to fall a victim of the mob, appear to have been manufactured twenty-five years later in the bitterness of another political struggle. It is significant that very soon after the king came to Paris Lafayette held a stormy interview with the Duc d'Orléans, who forthwith left France.

[Pg 206]Since that melancholy ride back to Paris the rulers of France have never lived at Versailles. Within ten days the National Assembly followed the king to town, and during the whole remaining period of the Revolution the mob had the machinery of government in its keeping. It invaded the legislative halls to listen to the making of the Constitution, it howled approval of speeches or drowned them in hisses, and called out from the windows reports to the crowds packing the streets below.