IV. 1789. the clergy were known to belong to the levelling party, it CHAP. was evident that the union of the whole would give numbers an immediate and decisive preponderance over property. This, accordingly, was what instantly happened. Strong in a decided predominance of votes, the majority at once usurped the whole authority in the state, and, by assuming the exclusive right of taxation, in effect centred all power in themselves. This was not less an act of rebellion against the King than of disobedience to the mandates of their constituents - and it inflicted, in the end, as fatal a wound on the cause of freedom they were sent to support as on that of the throne against which it was directed. 119. against the II. The military did wrong, in violating alike their duty and their oaths, by revolting against the crown, and The miliuniting with the populace in an open insurrection to wrong in subvert the royal authority. Generally as this act of revolting treachery was praised at the time as wicked deeds throne. usually are by those whose interests they advance-it is now apparent that it was it which inflicted the deathblow alike on the happiness of France and the cause of its freedom; because it rendered the march of the Revolution inevitable, and destroyed all chance of arresting the evils which blasted its hopes. It will immediately appear, that within a fortnight of the revolt of the French guards, a series of causes and effects were in motion which necessarily, in their final result, induced the Reign of Terror and the carnage under Napoleon. On the heads of the faithless soldiers who deserted their King on the approach of danger, or under the influence of delusion, rest all the miseries which afterwards afflicted their country. This shameful defection had not even the excuse for it, lame as it would have been, that they meant well in deserting their duty; that their error proceeded from a generous motive. They were actuated by no real patriotic spirit; they forgot not that they were soldiers to remember they were men. Their loyalty perished in CHAP. IV. 1789. 120. King in the sen for mak the fumes of intoxication - their oaths were forgotten amidst the embraces of courtesans. Let history hold them up to the eternal execration of mankind. III. The error of the King, in this stage of the RevoError of the lution and it was an error of judgment, and having period cho- reference only to time -was, that he selected the wrong ing a stand. moment for making his stand. That it had become indispensable to take strong steps for arresting the encroachments of the Tiers Etat; and that an Assembly which had, in defiance alike of its mandates from the people, and its duty to the throne, usurped supreme and exclusive authority, required to be dissolved, is perfectly apparent. But Louis took the wrong time for effecting that object he was too late in attempting it. He first acquiesced in the forced union of the orders, and even, by the power of his prerogative, compelled the unwilling nobles into the union; and then he summoned up the military to dissolve the united Assembly. By so doing, he committed the Crown, in appearance at least, in a contest with the whole States-general; and lost the inestimable advantage he would have enjoyed, when resistance became unavoidable, of representing his hostility as directed against one only of its orders, which was striving to overwhelm the others. It is easy to see to what this calamitous delay was owing. It arose from the unbounded confidence of the monarch in the love of his subjects, which made him deem warlike preparations unnecessary till they were too late; and his unconquerable aversion to the shedding of blood, which induced him to postpone to the last moment any measures which might even have a chance of causing blood to be shed. But still the delay deprived him of his last chance of enlisting any considerable portion of the moral influence of the nation on his side; and the error in regard to time was the more inexcusable, that the nobility had clearly pointed out the period when resistance should have been made - viz. opposing the union of the orders IV. 1789. and bravely offered to throw themselves into the CHAP. breach to prevent that union. In marking this error of judgment, however, on the part of the King, history must, at the same time, do justice to the motives from which it sprang, and distinguish it from the insatiable ambition which actuated the Tiers Etat, and the infamous treachery which disgraced the army. 121. of this trea son and treachery to the cause of France. And what has been the final result of this general dereliction of duty by all classes, which at the time was Fatal results the subject of such unbounded praise, such enthusiastic exultation? Have the people secured liberty to themselves and their children by revolting against the throne? freedom in Have the soldiers chained victory to their standards, and preserved their capital inviolate, by deserting their sovereign? Has the fair fabric of general freedom been here, for the first time in the history of mankind, erected on the foundation of treachery and treason? Passing by the immediate consequences of these acts,- drawing a veil over the Reign of Terror and the guillotine of Robespierre, as the first outbreak merely of popular license,— what have been the results which have appeared at such a distance of time as to evince the lasting consequences of these deeds? Have they not been the subjugation of France by foreign armies; the occupation of its capital twice by the forces of the stranger; the failure of all attempts to establish freedom in the land? Has not a constitutional monarchy been found, after repeated attempts, and half a century of striving, bloodshed, and turmoil, impracticable in France? and is not the capital now surrounded with a circle of fortifications, ready to be mounted with two thousand pieces of cannon, to let fall the tempest of death upon its rebellious inhabitants? Have not twenty bastiles arisen instead, and one upon the very site of the fortress which has been destroyed? * "To-morrow, the 14th July, fifty-four years will have elapsed since the Parisians subverted the Bastille. On the site it occupied there has been erected since that time, in honour of another revolution, a column surmounted by the genius of liberty; but, melancholy to say, if some citizens should wish IV. CHAP. and is not a girdle of steel now put round the neck of the maniac city? Such have been the consequences of the attempt to establish freedom on the basis of treachery and treason. 1789. 122, might have done their duty. "What," it is often asked, "could the patriots of 1789, All classes the real lovers of freedom in France, have done at the crisis which has now been described? Were the Tiers Etat to have submitted to the blasting of all their aspirations by the continued separation of the orders? Were the people to have done nothing to assert their liberties? Were the soldiers to have shed the blood of their fellow-citizens, striving for the first of human blessings?" It may be admitted that human wisdom, shaping its course by the probabilities of experience, would have found it difficult to have determined what course to pursue; and perhaps no possible foresight could have avoided the dangers with which the course was beset. But every man possessed within his own breast an inward monitor, the dictates of which, if duly attended to, would have saved the nation from all the calamities which ensued. ALL CLASSES MIGHT HAVE DONE THEIR DUTY; and if so, the good Providence of God would have rewarded them, even in this world, with peace and freedom and happiness. The King might have done his duty. He might have recollected that in this world the coercion of the bad is not less necessary than the protection of the good; and that the monarch who fails in the first, is often the cause to celebrate the glorious anniversary by going and saluting the names inscribed on the column of July, they will see there a third monument of a very different nature, which is rising upon the very spot whence the Bastile threatened Paris. Under the humble name of a guardhouse, a real citadel is at this moment being constructed, on the axis of the canal, which commands the main street of the Faubourg, the Rue Saint-Antoine, and the line of the Boulevards. That little fort, built of freestone, with battlements, and surrounded with iron palisades, will hold a numerous garrison, isolate the Faubourg, and prove in the hands of an oppressive government a very advantageous substitute for the old Bastile. It will be against Paris an advanced work of the intrenched camp of Vincennes. The men of 1789 must be astonished at the way their sons are treated, and the docility with which they suffer it."National de Paris, July 13, 1843. IV. 1789. 123. Which avoided all of calamities as great as he who neglects the last. The CHAP. Tiers Etat might have done their duty. They might have sacrificed their private ambition to their public obligations, and closed with the offer of a beneficent sovereign, who tendered to them, without a struggle, the would have whole guarantees of real freedom, and a constitution con- the calamiferring even greater liberty than experience has proved Revolution. the nation was capable of bearing.* The soldiers might have done their duty. They might have recollected that fidelity to their colours is the first of military duties; that the armed force, in Carnot's words, "is essentially obedientit acts, but should never deliberate ;" and that a revolution brought about by the revolt of troops, though generally successful in the outset, never fails to be disastrous in the end; because it rests the public weal on the quicksands of Prætorian caprice. The people might have done their duty. They might have recollected that treason is the greatest of crimes, because it leads to the commission of all the others; they might * Mr Jefferson, whose extreme democratic opinions are so well known, was at Paris in June 1789, as ambassador of the United States, and he has left the following valuable account of his view of what the patriots should have done to secure the liberties of their country.-"I consider a successful reformation of government in France as ensuring a general reformation throughout Europe, and the resurrection to a new life of their people, now ground to dust by the abuses of the governing powers. I was much acquainted with the leading patriots of the Assembly. Being from a country which had successfully passed through a similar reformation, they were disposed to my acquaintance, and had some confidence in me. I urged most strenuously an immediate compromise, to secure what the government was now ready to yield, and trust to future occasions for what might still be wanting. It was well understood that the King would grant at this time, first, freedom of the person by habeas corpus; secondly, freedom of conscience; thirdly, freedom of the press; fourthly, trial by jury; fifthly, a representative legislature; sixthly, annual meetings; seventhly, the origination of laws; eighthly, the exclusive right of taxation and appropriation; and, ninthly, the responsibility of ministers and with the exercise of these powers, they could obtain in future whatever might be further necessary to improve aud preserve their constitution. They thought otherwise, however, and events have proved their lamentable error: for after thirty years of war, foreign and domestic; the loss of millions of lives; the prostration of private happiness and the foreign subjugation of their own country for a time-they have obtained no more, not even that securely."-JEFFERSON'S Memoirs, June 1789; and SMYTH'S Lectures on the French Revolution, i. 303. VOL. I. 2 N |