CHAP. record of public feeling, and of the address of the leaders of the Revolution at this time.* IV. 1789. 86. the Assem bly to the King. "The movements of your own heart, sire! are the only Address of safety of Frenchmen. When troops arrive on all sides, and camps are formed around us; when the capital is invested-we ask with astonishment Has the King come to distrust his people? What do these military preparations mean? Where are the enemies of the King and of the state who are to be subjugated? Where are the rebels, the conspirators, whom it is necessary to reduce?' A unanimous voice answers in the capital and in the provinces-We cherish our King; we bless heaven for the gift it has bestowed upon us in his love.' Sire! the conscientious feelings of your majesty can have been misled only by deceitful representations regarding the public good. If those who have given these counsels to our King would now stand forth and avow their motives, this moment would behold the most complete triumph of truth. throne has nothing to fear but from the bad counsels of those who surround it, and who are incapable of appreciating the motives of the most virtuous of kings. How can they have succeeded in making you doubt the love of your subjects? What have you done to alienate them? Have you shed their blood? Have you shown yourself cruel, implacable towards them? Have you abused justice? Do the people impute to you any of their misfortunes? Are they weary of your yoke, or tired of the sceptre of the Bourbons? No, sire! calumny itself has never ventured to advance any thing so monstrous it seeks a more plausible ground to conceal its machinations. + The "We should deceive you, sire! if we did not add, forced by circumstances, that this empire of love is the only one which it is now possible to exercise in France. * It was not written by Mirabeau, but by Dumont, to whose auxiliary labours he was throughout so much indebted.-See DUMONT, Souvenirs de Mirabeau, 106, 107. It was a monarch thus painted by their ablest leaders that the Revolution. ists afterwards dethroned and executed! IV. 1789. France will never permit the best of kings to be misled, CHAP. and withdrawn from the course which he himself has traced out. You have been called on with us to fix the constitution, to effect the regeneration of the kingdom. The National Assembly has solemnly declared to you that your wishes shall be accomplished; that your promises shall not be vain; that difficulties, snares, terrors, shall neither intimidate its march nor shake its resolution. Where, then, is the danger of bringing up the troops?' our enemies will perhaps say: What mean these complaints, when the Assembly is incapable of discouragement?' Sire! the danger is pressing, it is universal-it is beyond all the calculations of human prudence. 6 "The danger is for the people in the provinces: once alarmed for their liberties, where is the rein that will restrain them? Distance will magnify every thing, exaggerate every disquiet, envenom every feeling. The danger is for the capital. With what eye will the people, in the midst of want, tormented with anxiety, behold a numerous body of soldiers absorb the scanty remains of subsistence ? The presence of the troops will produce a universal excitement; and the first act of violence committed under the pretext of keeping the peace will lead to a horrible succession of misfortunes. The danger is for the troops themselves: French soldiers, close to the centre of discussion, sharing in the passions as in the interests of the people, may forget that an engagement has made them soldiers, to recollect that nature has made them men. The danger, sire! menaces the labours which are our first duty, and which cannot obtain a full success, a real permanence, save so long as the people shall regard them as entirely free. There is, moreover, a contagion in passionate emotions we are but men; distrust of ourselves, fear of appearing weak, may transport us beyond our end: we shall be besieged with violent, unmeasured counsels; and calm reason, tranquil wisdom, do not deliver their oracles in the midst of tumult, of disorder, and of faction. The IV. 1789. CHAP. danger, sire! is more terrible still, and judge of its extent by the alarms which bring us before you. Great revolutions have sprung from causes less considerable; more than one enterprise, fatal alike to nations and kings, has been announced in a manner less sinister and less formidable. Believe not those who speak lightly of the nation, and who represent it only in their own colours: sometimes insolent, rebellious, seditious; at others, submissive, docile, crouching. Always ready to obey you, sire! because you command in the name of the laws, our fidelity itself sometimes orders resistance, and we shall always glory in the reproaches which our firmness attracts. We beseech you, sire send back the troops; dismiss to the frontiers that artillery intended to protect them; dismiss, above all, those strangers, whom we pay, not to disturb, but to defend our hearths. Your majesty has no need of them: a monarch adored by twenty-five millions of Frenchmen can derive no additional support from a few thousand foreigners !"1 1 Hist. Parl. ii. 54, 57. 87. the King. July 10. The deputation, consisting of four-and-twenty members Answer of of the Assembly, was introduced to the King on the succeeding evening, and he made the following answer :"No one can be ignorant of the scandalous scenes which have taken place, and been renewed at Paris, under my eyes and those of the States-general. It is necessary that I should make use of the means which are in my power to maintain public order in the capital and its environs; it is one of my first duties to watch over the public tranquillity. These are the motives which have induced me to assemble the troops around Paris: you may assure the assembly of the States-general that they have no other object but to maintain the public peace, and preserve that freedom which should ever characterise your deliberations. None but the evil-disposed could seek to mislead my people as to the intentions I had in view in bringing them together. I have constantly aimed at the happiness of my people, and always had reason to CHAP. 1789. 1 Bert. de be satisfied with their fidelity. If, however, the unavoidable presence of the troops in the environs of Paris gives you any umbrage, I will, at the desire of the Statesgeneral, transfer the Assembly to Noyon or Soissons, and Moll. i. 288. repair in person to Compiègne, to maintain the communi- ii. 74, 75. cation between the Assembly and myself."1 Hist. Parl. 88. tion of the This well-advised answer satisfied all the reasonable men, but it excited loud murmurs among the majority Dissatisfacof the Assembly. "The King," said the Count de Crillon, Assembly. "has given us his royal word that the advance of the July 11. troops has been dictated solely by the necessity of providing for his own safety and that of the capital, and that he has no intention of overawing the deliberations of the Assembly. We are bound to believe the word of his majesty. The word of an honourable man is a sufficient guarantee it should dispel all our alarms. Let us then remain with the King, and declare that in doing so we yield alike to our love and his virtues."-" The word of the King," replied Mirabeau, "is a sufficient security for his own intentions, but none at all for those of a minister who has more than once violated his oath. Is any of us ignorant that it is want of foresight, blind confidence in others, which has brought us to our present predicament, and which should open our eyes if we would not continue for ever slaves? The answer of the King is in effect a refusal. We asked the removal of the troops from ourselves, we did not ask the removal of ourselves from the troops. The presence of the troops near the capital threatens public tranquillity, and may produce the greatest dangers. Those dangers would not be diminished, but, on the contrary, greatly augmented, by the removal of the Assembly. Let us then continue to insist upon the removal of the troops as the only means of safety." The discussion dropped after these observations--the subject was too delicate to be further probed; but they sufficiently revealed the spirit of the Assembly. They had no real fears of the soldiers, with whose mutinous spirit they CHAP. were well acquainted, still less of any intention of being removed from Paris even to a place of the most perfect 1789. safety; they had need of its enthusiasm, its riots, its wine, and its women. What they wanted was to deliver over the King defenceless to its violence and intimidation. And on the same day, to augment the already formidable popularity of the Duke of Orleans, a pretended offer of that prince to the Committee of Subsistence in the Asii. 76, 77. sembly of 300,000 francs (£12,000) was hawked about the streets a total fabrication, but which answered the 290. Deux purpose of increasing the general excitement, and pro266. curing shouts from his hired retainers in praise of his generosity and virtues.1 1 Hist. Parl. Bert. de Moll. i. 289, Amis,i. 265, 89. ment of the tion, and July 11. The first signal for the revolt which overturned the Commence- throne, was given at eleven on the evening of the 11th insurrec- July, by the issuing of a mob from the quarters of New dismissal of France and Little Poland, who attacked and burned the M. Necker. barrier of the chaussée d'Antin. The object of this was to let in the smugglers and desperate characters from the environs; and it was to have been immediately followed by the burning, on the same day, of the Palais Bourbon, which was the signal agreed on for a general insurrection, during the confusion of which the Duke of Orleans was to have been proclaimed lieutenant-general of the kingdom.* But before these designs could be carried into complete effect, intelligence arrived in Paris of an event which, as it indicated the adoption of vigorous measures by the court, added immensely to the general effervescence. The King, seeing that matters had now come to such a pass that resistance was necessary to prevent an immediate revolt, at length resolved on the dismissal of M. Necker, and embraced the views of the Comte d'Artois, M. de Breteuil, the Queen, and others, who urged vigorous measures. The chief ministers were changed: M. de * See the depositions of M. Guilheim, Dufraisse, Duchey, and Tailhardat de la Maison-Neuve. Procédure du Châtelet sur les attentats des 5 et 6 Octobre, (120 and 126 witnesses;) and BERTRAND DE MOLLEVILLE, Histoire de la Révolution, i. 293; and LABAUME, iii. 174. |