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to his defence, has left a blot on his memory which can never be effaced.

CHAP.
IV.

33.

Tonnerre.

CLERMONT TONNERRE* had a generous disposition, 1789. and an uncorrupted heart; he wished for others the character of happiness, and believed there existed in them the virtue, Clermont which he felt in himself. He had a contemplative disposition, an enthusiastic mind, great facility in speaking, and unbounded application; but, like all the others of that philosophic party, he was entirely destitute of knowledge of mankind by actual experience, and though well acquainted with history, he had not sufficient force of mind to distinguish its imaginary from its real lessons. Perhaps no intellect under that of Machiavel or Montesquieu is able to do so, till instructed in the facts of value, and the real inferences to be drawn from them, by personal observation and experienced suffering. He sincerely believed it possible to construct a constitutional monarchy out of a corrupted noblesse, an irreligious middle class, and an ignorant people. His powers of application were immense: the "Résumé des Cahiers," which he prepared by order of the Assembly, in order to extract from that immense mass of instructions something like a uniform and consistent system, affords a decisive proof both of his perseverance and capacity for generalisation. In the earlier stages of the Revolution, he supported all the usurpations of the popular

* Stanislaus, Count de Clermont Tonnerre, was born in 1747. His father, the Marquis de Clermont Tonnerre, had served with distinction in the armies of Louis XV., and the son also was bred to the profession of arms. But although he rose in the service to the rank of colonel, his disposition always strongly attracted him to political speculations, and, before the Revolution broke out, his liberal tendency had become well known. When the Statesgeneral were elected, he was the first deputy named for his order, and it was as one of the representatives of the noblesse of Paris. From the very first he formed one of the minority headed by the Duke of Orleans, who contended that they should unite at once with the Tiers Etat; and he acquired, in consequence, great popularity, which was augmented by a pamphlet which he early published during the continuance of the contest, recommending the same step. He was massacred by the people during the revolt of the 10th August, with so many other of their earliest and firmest supporters among the nobility. See Biographie Universelle, ix. 90, 92, (Clermont TonnERRE.)

1789.

CHAP. party, and was thus implicated in many measures of IV. manifest illegality, which ultimately proved fatal to freedom in France; but he did so, like so many others at that period, in good faith, and without the alloy of selfish interest; and on many occasions, when the atro162. Fer- cities of the people had commenced, and the opposite i. 162, 164. leaders became the victims of their violence, he exerted his great powers of eloquence, too often without effect, in the cause of humanity.1

1 Lab. iii.

rières, Mém.

Bailly, i.

171, 186.

34.

Of Lally

Tollendal,

*

LALLY TOLLENDAL belonged to the same school; but he was more inclined to favour the monarchy than and the two Clermont Tonnerre. He belonged to the order of nobles, both by birth and inclination: but the atrocious injustice of which his father, Count Lally, so distinguished in eastern history, had been the victim

Lameths.

* Trophine Gerard, Count of Lally Tollendal, was born at Paris on 5th March 1751. He was son of the brave and unfortunate General Lally, who defended Pondicherry with so much gallantry against the English, and subsequently was condemned with such atrocious injustice and cruelty by the parliament of Paris. He had been educated during youth at the college of Harcourt, in entire ignorance of his birth, in consequence of the long-protracted proceedings against his father; and it was when the approach of his execution excited general interest and commiseration, that he learned for the first time that he was his son. He instantly flew to the place of execution, "to bid him," as he has himself told us, "an eternal adieu; to let him hear the voice of a son amidst the cries of his executioners, and embrace him on the scaffold when he was about to perish." But his filial piety was in vain; the hour of the horrid act had been accelerated, and young Lally arrived in time only to see his father's blood streaming over the scaffold. Overwhelmed with horror, he sunk in a swoon on the ground, and was carried back insensible to the college. So terrible a stroke, of necessity and as a matter of duty, inspired him with a profound hatred at the institutions of which his father had been the innocent victim. He adopted with devout resolution his father's testament, which bequeathed to him the duty of righting his memory: and exerted himself with such vigour and perseverance to procure a revision of his sentence that, under the equitable government of the just Louis XVI., it was at length accomplished, though not without the most strenuous and disgraceful resistance on the part of the parliament of Paris, headed by d'Espréménil. Voltaire took throughout a warm interest in this great act of justice, and he wrote from his deathbed in 1778, at Paris, to young Lally, on learning of his first success, in these terms;-"On the bed of death I revive on hearing this event. I embrace M. de Lally with all my heart. I see the King is the defender of justice. I die content." It is hard to say whether these lines redound more to the honour of Voltaire, of Lally, or of Louis. Though an innovator in opinion and on principle, he was a royalist in habit and by inclination, and entertained deep gratitude to Louis for his efficacious interposition, which alone extricated his father's memory from the obloquy which had been cast

IV.

1789.

under Louis XV.,* necessarily, and as a matter of CHAP. filial duty, threw him into the arms of the popular party. He sincerely desired the continuance of the royal authority; but he desired it shorn of its despotic character, and, above all, with the ministers of the crown deprived of those despotic powers which they had hitherto possessed, and sometimes exercised with such iniquity. A constitution on the model of England was the object of his desires; and he saw no difficulty in accomplishing it, by the simple division of the Statesgeneral into two chambers-the nobility and clergy forming the upper house. Ardent, active, and enthusiastic, he had inherited all his father's warmth of character; but to that he added a patient industry, a habit of application, which rendered him the able coad-Lab. iii. jutor of Clermont Tonnerre in the herculean labour of Univ. vol. forming the "Résumé of the Cahiers."1 Alexander (Lameth.) and Charles LAMETH† embraced the same

principles,

upon it by the parliament of Paris. Young Lally was bred to the army; but the idea which wholly preoccupied him of vindicating his father's character, both developed his talents, added to his information, and gave firmness to his character. Like Clermont Tonnerre, he was one of the minority who voted for the union of orders, and subsequently took a lead on the liberal side in the first proceedings of the Assembly: but he easily saw whither general fervour and popular fury were impelling his party; his love of justice was soon shocked by the excesses committed; and, so early as the 20th and 23d July, he was found at the tribune vainly endeavouring to arrest the atrocities, in preparing which he had been no inconsiderable actor. On the last occasion he ventured to attack Mirabeau himself, saying, looking sternly at that redoubted leader-"One may have talent, great ideas, and be a tyrant." Along with Mounier, he laboured for the formation of a constitution similar to that of England for his country; but, like all the early and rational friends of freedom in France, he was swept away by the torrent of democratic ambition; and, after the 5th of October 1789, finding all his efforts in vain, he resigned his situation as deputy, and retired to Switzerland. Subsequently he was thrown into prison on the 10th August 1792, escaped by almost a miracle the massacres of September, and at length found a refuge and asylum in England. The rest of his life was devoted to combating the principles of the Revolution. -See Biographie Universelle, lxix. 513, 517, Supplement, (LALLY TOLLENDAL.) * Ante, CHAP. II. § 85, note.

+ Charles, Count of Lameth, was born on 5th October 1757, and, like his brother Alexander, who was three years younger, owed his education and first advancement in life to the kindness of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. He was a captain in the army when he was sent to America with Rochambeau, and imbibed his first liberal ideas from his service in that country. On his return

162. Biog.

lxi. 95, 108,

IV.

1789.

CHAP. and were actuated by the same motives; but in their case, ingratitude for signal benefits from the King and Queen gave an ungenerous character to their measures, and exposed them to vehement and general obloquy from the nobles, to which class they belonged by birth. All their efforts, after the power of the crown had been overthrown by a usurpation in which they bore a part, were ineffectual to stem the flood of democracy, which soon streamed over and swept away the whole bulwarks alike of order and freedom in the state.

35.

Barnave.

Born with fiercer passions, endowed with brighter Character of talents, impelled to good or evil by more impetuous dispositions, BARNAVE* was a more prominent character in the early history of the Revolution. He was a young advocate in Dauphiné, who already had made himself conspicuous in the troubles of Grenoble ; and

to Paris he was cordially received by the court, and became in an especial manner the object of favour and protection to the Queen, who procured for him in marriage Mademoiselle Peroti, daughter of a rich Bordeaux merchant, with whom he acquired a considerable fortune. He was thus bound, as well as his brother Alexander, who was in like manner promoted beyond all precedent by the court, by all the ties of gratitude to the royal cause: nevertheless they became from the very first among its most determined and envenomed opponents. Charles was appointed deputy of Artois to the Statesgeneral in 1789; Alexander obtained a seat in the same assembly as deputy for the noblesse of Peronne. Both brothers evinced from the first a determined hostility to the royal cause, which, to say the least of it, was, considering their numerous obligations both to the King and Queen, ungrateful in the extreme. It appeared when the celebrated Livre Rouge, or record of the secret expenses of the court, was published, that he and his brother had cost the King for their education alone, 60,000 francs (£2800.) Charles was arrested after the 10th August, like all the other early friends of liberty in the aristocracy, and owed his life to Danton's intercession, but on condition of instantly leaving France. Alexander Lameth, equally with his brother, was violent and ungrateful to his royal benefactors; he was one of the forty-seven nobles who, with the Duke of Orleans, joined the Tiers Etat. He was in the army, and has admitted, in his history of the Constituent Assembly, that he was privy to the insurrection of the troops on the 14th July, which overturned the throne. Subsequently he took an active part in the most hasty and destructive acts of the Constituent Assembly, and was rewarded for all his sacrifices of honour and duty on the altar of the Revolution, by being obliged to fly from his country, and, like Lafayette, found refuge from his former associates in an Austrian dungeon.-See Biographie Universelle, vol. lxi. 95, 108, (CHARLES AND ALEXANDER LAMETH.)

* Antoine Barnave was born at Grenoble in 1761. He was the son of a Protestant, and himself belonged to that persuasion; so that he imbibed from

IV.

1789.

on that account he was elected member for the Tiers CHAP. Etat of Vizille. His figure was thin and little, his voice weak, and his physical qualities such as little qualified him to bear a leading part in the stormy scenes of the National Assembly. But within that frail and unprepossessing frame, he concealed a powerful mind, an ardent spirit, a candid and generous heart. His rapid thought, quick discernment, and ready elocution, rendered him peculiarly powerful in debate; and being enthusiastic on the popular side, he would, but for the towering strength of Mirabeau, have acquired the lead on that side in the Assembly. On many occasions he stood forth second only to him, in these stormy discussions. Profoundly imbued with hatred of the aristocracy, he brought to the popular cause the ardent passions of the south of France; and the vehemence of his temper made him utter some expressions,* in palliation of the early excesses of the popular party, which have affixed a lasting stigma on his name. But in cooler moments the candour of his disposition prevailed over these unworthy passions; the clearness of his intellect at length opened his eyes to the fatal effects, upon the cause alike of order and of freedom, of the course which he was pursuing; his heart was touched by the dignity with which the Queen, on the journey from Varennes, bore the reverses of fortune ;1

infancy those democratic opinions by which that sect in France were at that period generally distinguished. His father was an attorney, and he himself was bred to the bar; where, having attained some distinction before the courts of Grenoble, he was chosen representative for that town to the States-general. At first he showed himself a warm partisan of the Revolution; and his eloquence, impetuosity, and imagination speedily acquired for him a brilliant reputation. Subsequently, however, he perceived the fatal tendency of the innovations which were going forward, and strove to moderate them. From that moment his reputation was at an end. It will appear in the sequel what an important part he played in the interesting episode of the journey from Varennes, and how the line of conduct which he subsequently adopted, brought him before the revolutionary tribunal, by whom he was condemned and executed on the 29th October 1793.-See Biographie Universelle, iii. 390, 391, (BARNAVE.)

* "Was, then, the blood which has been shed so very pure?"

1

Biog. Univ. 391, (Bari. 20.

vol. iii. 390,

nave.) Lab.

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