48. The Revolution
CHAPTER XLVIII. The Revolution (1789-1792)
The people all this time were not obeying the Assembly which they themselves had chosen any more than the king, neither were they obeying the men who were called the king's ministers, of whom new ones were being constantly chosen, without anyone even knowing or caring who they were, or what they wished to do. The real leaders of the people were constantly changing. When a great body of men join together to do anything, they must always have some one to lead them, but when all law and order has been overthrown, the leader is not likely to be able to keep his power long. If he tries to keep order, he is certain to become disliked and to lose his power. This happened to many different sets of men before the Revolution was over. At first the leaders of the people were members of the Assembly, and of these the chief was a man named Mirabeau, who was a great speaker and a friend of the people. He spoke so well that he almost always persuaded his hearers to agree to what he wished, and to think as he did, and as he tried to prevent the people from going too far, and to put a stop to the struggle between them and the king, he was of great use to the country, and if he had lived longer might have prevented some of the troubles which were coming upon the nation. The (Count of) Lafayette was another of the important men of this time. He was a soldier who had fought in America, a brave, honest, sensible man, loved by the people and trusted by the king. He had persuaded the people to leave the palace of Versailles when they were trying to break into it, and he always had great power over them.
There were many other men who gave the people far more violent advice. The best known of these are three men who had not become of much importance at the time of which I am writing, but who soon afterwards became so strong that no one could resist them. Their names were Robespierre, Danton, and Marat. They were amongst the fiercest and most cruel of all the leaders of the Revolution.
The king and queen soon found that they were really prisoners in their palace. The people were constantly watching them, whatever they did, and wherever they went. They would not let them leave Paris. When the king tried once to go out into the country to hunt, the people cut the traces of the carriage, so that he could not go on. When the queen went to walk, she was so much insulted by the people that at last she (left off going) out at all, and spent her time indoors, doing needlework and teaching her little son, the Dauphin, a boy of about seven years old. They were always trying to make plans for leaving Paris and joining their nobles and other friends in Germany, who were ready to raise an army and march into France to put a stop to the Revolution, if the king would come to put himself at their head. Marie Antoinette was very anxious he should do this, thinking it was worth while taking some trouble, and running the risk there would be in making his escape from prison, in order to be free from the dreadful life they were leading; but Louis could not persuade himself that things might not even yet come right, and he could not bear to declare himself openly as the enemy of his people.
The Assembly, meantime, went on making very surprising laws, and altering all old habits and customs. The right of making peace and war was taken away from the king; the clergy had their livings taken away from them, so that they were left with no means of earning money; the nobles lost all their rights, and even their titles; they were to be called only by their family names. After a time people even (left off) saying Mr. and Mrs., and called each other citoyen or citoyenne instead, as if we were to say in English Citizen Smith, or Citizeness Brown.
When the day came round on which the Bastille had been taken the year before, the people resolved to have a great meeting in honour of the event. Seats were put up in an open space in Paris, called the Champ de Mars, and there three hundred thousand people came together with the king, those of the nobles who were left, and every one of importance in the country, and solemnly took an oath to be true to the king, the law, and the nation. In the evening a dance was held on the place where the Bastille had stood.
But the leaders of the Assembly were not certain of their power in spite of all these rejoicings; the soldiers were revolting because their wages were not paid, and refusing to obey their officers. The soldiers about Metz were the worst, and Bouillé the commander there, had to fight regular battles with some of the regiments, killing or taking prisoners almost all their men before they would yield to him. The disorder grew greater all over France, and more and more of the nobles fled from the country. It became a common thing for young noblemen, when they left the opera at night, to tell the coachman to drive to Coblentz, a city in Germany, close to the borders of France, where many of the nobles had assembled to make plans for forcing their way back into France.
All the king's friends advised him to do the same. Even Mirabeau, who was now openly leaving the side of the people and going over to that of Louis, advised him to leave Paris, put himself at the head of some of the troops, who would still have been faithful to him, and resist his enemies by force. It was, however, settled at last that he should leave the country altogether. The royal family made a most clumsy plan for escaping. They meant all to travel together, disguised as the children and servants of a certain Baroness de Korff, who, it was said, wished to leave Paris on a particular day. The governess of the royal children was to be the baroness, the queen her waiting-maid, the king her man-servant, the king's sister, Madame Elizabeth, her friend; the little princess and prince her children. They were to travel in a large, slow, lumbering coach, so big, that no one who saw it could help noticing it, and they were to take with them a great deal of luggage and some German servants, who knew scarcely any French.
However, some of their friends arranged the journey itself very cleverly and carefully; bodies of soldiers were sent to all the towns through which the travellers would have to go till they reached the borders of Germany, which ought not to have taken them more than about two days. The soldiers could not come (quite) close to Paris, as the people would have suspected that something special was going to happen, but they stayed at a place so near, that it was supposed the coach with the royal family would reach it in about twelve hours. But everything went wrong with the king on this journey, as it did in the other events of his life.
The big coach with the royal party escaped from Paris one night, and set off on the road for Germany. The king was foolish enough to stop often, to walk up the hills, and to show himself in the villages through which he passed. It was soon found out that he had left Paris, and messengers were at once sent after him. All along the way the big coach and the soldiers waiting to meet it had been noticed. It was easy to find out which way Louis had gone, and not very difficult to (catch) him (up), for the coach went so slowly that he had only gone sixty-six miles in about twenty hours. However, the king's friends had arranged things so well for him, that he had reached the very village in which the soldiers were waiting for him before he could be caught. In the last village where he had stopped, the postmaster had seen him put his head out of the window, and had noticed his likeness to the heads of the king on the the paper money that had lately been printed. He was a friend of the Revolution, and he set out after the coach to bring the royal family back. The courier, or servant on the coach, whose business it was to know the places through which they passed, had no idea whereabouts in the village the soldiers waiting for the king were to be found. They were in another part, over the bridge, of which he knew nothing. The post-horses were also waiting at the other end of the village. It was now about eleven o'clock at night; the royal family had been travelling since about the same time the day before. The queen was in despair, she went from door to door herself, inquiring for the horses. They were delayed for half an hour, and while they were waiting the postmaster from the last village, who had found out their secret, came up with a friend, passed by them into the village, and blocked the bridge with waggons and barrows, so that no one could pass.
When the coach at last came up, the postmaster and the mayor of the village, whom he had warned of what was coming, seized the bridles of the horses, and bade the coachman stop. Muskets were put in at the window, the passports of the travellers were looked at; the mayor invited the whole party to come to his house till the morning, in order to save them from the crowd, which was beginning to collect. The king soon saw that this man knew who they were. He himself was certain that the soldiers who were to meet him must be somewhere close at hand, probably in the village; and if he had forced his way across the bridge, taking the chance of being shot by the people, he must have found them in a few minutes. But he never could do what was bold and decided; he agreed to leave the carriage and go to the mayor's house, and the poor queen was obliged to follow him. Here they spent the night, and the next morning messengers came from Paris to take them back there. One of Louis's officers made his way to Varennes, the village where Louis had been stopped, and offered to bring his soldiers and cut Louis out from his enemies, but when the king asked if it would be hot work, he was obliged to say yes, and Louis refused to give the order for it. At eight o'clock in the morning the royal family set out for Paris with a guard; the troop of soldiers who should have saved them, came into Varennes after a hasty morning's march an hour afterwards (they had left it). (They) reached Paris after a dismal journey with two of their chief enemies sitting with them in the coach, their servants bound on the roof, and a guard of ten thousand men walking by the side to keep watch over them.
After this the royal family were more than ever watched and guarded in their palace. Even while they were asleep, guards sat in the rooms next their bedrooms, and watched to see that they stayed in their beds. It would have been wiser and better for the French people, as well as for the royal family, if Louis had been allowed to leave France as he wished. They did not want to be ruled by the king, and he did not want to govern them. If they had let him go, the difficult question of what to do with him would not have had to be settled.
The National Assembly had now done its work of making plans and laws, which it was supposed would set right everything that had been wrong in France. The king agreed to everything they had arranged, and the Assembly came to an end. An arrangement was made that an Assembly (like an English Parliament) should be elected every two years to manage the affairs of the country. The first of these parliaments, called the Legislative Assembly, because its business was to be to make laws, met almost directly after the National Assembly came to an end. The new deputies had been chosen like the old from all parts of France, and they were as fierce, as angry, as eager to make changes in everything, as the others had been. As the people who had joined in the Revolution had not all the same ideas as to what would be good for the country, they soon began to form into parties, some parties being more violent than others. The most violent of all were the Jacobins, a set of men who used to meet in a church belonging to a convent called the Convent of the Jacobins. The church was now used only as a hall for their meetings. The president or chief person at the meeting used to sit on the top of a monument of black marble, the other members of the club sat in the nave of the church, old instruments of torture were hanging on the walls, and bats used to fly about at night in the dark vaults, interrupting the noise of the meetings by their cries. In this strange place the fiercest men in France met to discuss and to consult.
The king, though really he had no power but what the people chose to allow him, was still (allowed) to forbid any measure of the Assembly from becoming law; it was not to be the law of the land till he had agreed to it, and he several times refused to agree to laws about which the Assembly was very eager. There was one in particular against the priests to which he would not agree, and one day the people resolved to go in a procession to the Tuileries and force him to yield to them, and give his consent to the law. They set off one morning in a body of thirty thousand men, women, and children, to plant a poplar which they called a tree of liberty on the terrace in front of the Tuileries windows. They were wearing the tricolor riband, waving pikes and olive branches round their heads, and singing some of the songs of the Revolution. There were so many people that it took them three hours to pass through the hall where the Assembly was sitting, which was the beginning of their expedition. After this they marched to the palace.
The gates were shut, but they battered at the doors and threatened to blow them in, till at last they were opened, and the mob rushed into the palace, up the staircase, and at last, breaking down the folding-doors, burst into the room where Louis was. Now when there was nothing active to be done, the king showed great courage, good sense, and good temper. He drew back into a window with a table before him to keep off the people, and quietly asked them what they wanted. They told him that they wished him to agree to the laws against the priests. He answered, "This is neither the way nor the time to obtain what you ask from me." The people crowded in with angry cries. One of the men standing near Louis told him not to be frightened. "Frightened!" said Louis, "feel here!" putting the man's hand on his heart, which was beating as steadily and quietly as usual. Some one gave the king a red woollen cap, which was considered a sign of the Revolution like the tricolor ribbon. He put it on his head, and then forgot to take it off, so that it stayed there for the rest of the day.
The queen came in with the Princess Elizabeth, Louis's sister, and the royal children. They all stayed with the king, as brave and as calm as he. After about three hours, the people, finding that Louis would promise them nothing, left the palace by degrees, and at last all were gone, and the king and his family were alone together. This disturbance happened on the 20th of June, and made all the friends of Louis more angry than ever with the men who were the chief leaders of the Revolution, and several of the chief officers in the army, and other great men in the country, offered to fight on Louis's side against the rebels, but he would give them no orders. Outside France the king's friends were more active. An army was being formed in Germany by the noblemen who had fled out of France, helped by foreigners from different countries, and a German prince, the Duke of Brunswick, took the command of it. It began to march towards France, and the people became frightened and sent for soldiers from the south of France to come up and defend Paris. A band of six hundred men arrived from Marseilles, brave, strong townsmen, who sang on their way a song which is now called the Marseillaise, and has become to the French Republic (much what "God save the Queen" is to Englishmen). When these men marched into Paris, the people there were much encouraged, and began to feel themselves strong enough to resist all their enemies.
They began to ask that the king should be dethroned, and that they should have the little prince, who was then about seven years old, for king, with protectors, who should be friends of the Revolution. As this was not done, the people grew more and more discontented, and at last, on the 9th of August, they resolved to rise up in a body the next day, with the soldiers from Marseilles to help them, and to attack the Palace of the Tuileries, make themselves masters of the king, and prevent him from bringing in his friends to do them harm. The king and his family knew what was coming, and had a body of the National Guard with them in the palace — men whom they believed they could trust; but their chief hope was in the Swiss Guards, a body of men who had always been faithful to the royal side, and who were ready to die in the king's defence. These men were posted outside the Tuileries, in a square now called the Place de la Carrousel, between the palace and the people.
It was the morning of the 10th of August, soon after daybreak, when the crowd of people began to rush towards the Tuileries. Messengers came to ask the king whether his guards were to fire against the people. He would answer nothing, but sat hesitating. At last some one advised him to leave the Tuileries, and go for shelter to the hall where the Assembly was sitting close by. He was told that his National Guard could not be trusted, and that in a quarter of an hour more he would not be able to escape. He sat doubtful for a few minutes, then looked up at the queen, and said, "Let us go." She was obliged to follow him, though she would sooner have seen him fight, at the risk of death, to defend his crown and his palace. They walked through the crowd with their children and Princess Elizabeth to the hall of the Assembly, and the king told the deputies that he was come to put himself and his family under their protection. They were at once taken into the hall, where they knew their enemies would not dare to attack them.
But while they made themselves safe in this way, they left their brave Swiss soldiers to take care of themselves, and without giving any orders as to what they were to do. Now that the king was gone, there was really no use in their staying to guard the Tuileries, but the king sent them no message, and they stood steadily at their posts. The Jacobins, with the Marseillese and other troops, soon appeared, and when they heard the king was gone, tried to make their way into the Tuileries. The Swiss resisted them; the Marseillese fired, the Swiss fired back, and soon a fierce fight had begun. The Swiss had no chance against the enormous number of their enemies, but they fought like lions, and at first drove back the French and took a few guns. But no help came, and their enemies came back in greater and greater numbers. They stood in their places till they were shot down one after another, so that at last scarcely any of them were left alive. Too late Louis sent an order to stop firing. This was impossible, for nothing would have made the other side stop. All through the evening and night the people hunted for any Swiss who might by chance have escaped, and if they found any, put them to death (, so that at last scarcely any) were left.
These Swiss are among the few men who did their duty bravely and honestly in the Revolution, and were not led away by the excitement and great events of the time to do what was wrong, hoping that it might bring some good to themselves. A stone monument, representing a dead lion, has been put up at Lucerne, in Switzerland, to their honour.
That evening some deputies from Paris came to the Assembly to ask that the king's power might for a time be entirely taken away from him, and to this the Assembly agreed. Louis and his family were sent a few days afterwards to a building called the Temple, where they would be safe from the people, and could be strictly watched to see that they did not escape. The rest of the lives of almost all of them were passed in this place.
The Temple was really a prison, and for the six months in which the king and his family were there, they were treated in every way as prisoners. They had guards always watching them — at their meals, when they walked in the garden, even when they slept, or were amusing themselves as best they might in their private rooms. They had many plans by which they managed to hear news from their friends of what was going on in France and Germany, but they did not hear of much to cheer them. The army of nobles under the Duke of Brunswick took one town; but, after that, the French general sent against him was able to prevent him from coming farther into France, and the people only became more fierce and angry with the king the more they feared his friends. On the 2d of September, about a fortnight after the king had been sent to the Temple, there grew up an absurd idea in Paris that all the nobles, priests, and people of importance in the prisons had a scheme for rising up against the people of Paris and destroying them. The people were so much excited by this notion, which they had no reason to think was true, that they broke into the prisons, seized upon the prisoners, and murdered hundreds of them. They had up each prisoner in turn before a kind of sham court, where a pretended trial was held to decide (if) the prisoner were guilty of doing anything against the Revolution. If he were found guilty, he was turned out to the people waiting at the doors, who killed him at once. Women were treated in the some way as the men. Some of the few prisoners who escaped alive have written terrible accounts of all that they and their companions suffered in the prisons, waiting to be brought up for trial, and of the deaths of many of their friends before their eyes. At almost all the prisons in Paris the prisoners were treated in this way, so that more than a thousand people were murdered in Paris on this one night. They all died without trial or fair judgment of any kind.
In this same month a new Assembly met to take the power which had belonged to the old one. The Legislative Assembly had lasted only for one year, instead of two as had been proposed; but the leaders of the Revolution wished for a change. The new Assembly, as soon as it met, began making decrees, of which one of the first was that from that day there should be no more royalty in France. The country was no longer to be a kingdom with a monarch to rule over it, but a republic, where the ruler was to be changed continually, and to be chosen by the people whom he was to govern. France is a republic at this day; but it has had several kings and several republics as well since the time when this first republic was set up. The ministers who had been carrying on the Government in the king's name, though they were always being changed, so that no one knew exactly who they were, were done away with altogether, and a body of men was chosen to manage the affairs of France. Now that the country had become a republic, it became an important question what was to be done with King Louis. He was living in the Temple prison patiently waiting for what might happen to him, teaching his little son, reading to himself or aloud to his family, and waited on by a faithful servant called Clery, who refused to leave him. The guardians of the Temple were rude and unkind to the royal family, and after a time separated the king from his family in order to make his life still harder than it had been. Questions as to what was to become of him began at last to be asked in the Assembly; almost all the deputies looked upon him as their enemy, and wished that he should be punished in some way or other for being the enemy of the Republic.
At this time some papers which Louis had written a few months before were found in an old iron press which the king had made with the help of the locksmith who used to teach him his trade. This man told the secret of the papers having been put in the press, and took some of the members of the Assembly to the place where the press was hidden. The letters were to his different friends, asking them for help, and telling them his plans. The people were made very angry by finding that some of the letters were to men whom they had always till then supposed to have been entirely on their side, but who now proved to have been secretly friends of Louis.
One morning in December a message was sent to Louis that he was to come before the Convention, which was the name given to the new Assembly, to be tried as a prisoner. When he came in, the president, or chief person in the Convention, spoke to him as Louis, adding no title of any kind, and questioned him as to all the crimes which he was supposed to have committed. He answered shortly and calmly, defending himself so well that his enemies were surprised and disappointed. After this he chose a lawyer to defend him, and his trial began in a fortnight's time. Fifty-seven charges against him were read, and his lawyer answered them, defending him on every question. Then the members of the Convention discussed for many days what should next be done. At last they decided to ask three questions: — Is Louis guilty ? Has the Convention a right to try him ? If he is guilty, what punishment shall he have ? Each deputy gave his vote separately; they all said he was guilty. Two-thirds of them said that the Convention had the power of trying him.
As to the question of the punishment, it took forty hours for all the members to give their votes, though they went on voting night and day. One member after another went up into the tribunal, or place where the speeches were made, and said what he wished for; some were for imprisonment, some for banishment, some for death. When the votes were counted it was found that the greatest number wished for death, and, after another long voting, it was decided that Louis XVI. should die within twenty-four hours.
Louis was allowed to see his family once more, to tell them this terrible news. He sat with them for nearly two hours on the last evening of his life — his wife and sister on either side of him, his daughter, the Princess Royal in front, his little son between his knees. When at last they left him, all in the deepest grief, he promised that they should see him again in the morning; but this promise was not kept. He thought that another meeting would be too sad for them to bear, and instead of seeing him they only received his last affectionate messages. No one went with him to the scaffold but the abbot, his confessor, who stayed with him till the last moment of his life. It was early in the morning when he drove through the streets to the place where the execution was to be. He began to make a speech to the people; but one of the Republican officers who stood by made a sign to the drums, which began to beat, and drowned his voice before he could say more than a few sentences. What he did say was: — " Frenchmen ! I die innocent. I pardon my enemies; I pray to God that France -" Here the drums began, and the executioner seized him. The confessor stooped down and spoke these last words to him: — "Son of Saint Louis, ascend to heaven!" The axe of the guillotine fell, and the executioner held up his head to the people.
He was little more than thirty-eight years old.
