The French Revolution Part 3

The King's withdrawal of the troops implied a policy of conciliation, and he was therefore unable to resist the demand that he should demonstrate his acceptance of the events of Paris by a formal visit to the city. Reluctant, and half expecting violence, he made his entry on the 17th between lines of armed citizens representing every cla.s.s of his Parisian subjects, and proceeded to the Hotel de Ville. It was an occasion on which a little kingly grace or a little kingly boldness, which so many of his ancestors commanded, might have fired the flame of pent-up popular emotion. But there was nothing of this sort to be found in the apathetic Louis. Bailly's stores of oratory had to be drawn on freely for what the King found himself unable to supply, and the honours of the day, which he might so easily have had, were heaped instead on the das.h.i.+ng La Fayette. As it was, Louis returned safely to Versailles, having met with a not unfriendly reception, but having failed to adjust himself to the new situation, which was what he was bound to attempt, having once abandoned the policy of repression by force.

{74} The uproar of the 14th of July could not be suddenly changed to a calm, whatever Louis XVI, La Fayette and Bailly might do. Grave disorders broke out in many parts of France, and scenes of violence continued in Paris. On the 20th, Count Lally moved a resolution for the repression of the excesses that were being committed, but the a.s.sembly, with no sense of responsibility for the conduct of affairs,--directly interested, on the contrary, in weakening the executive,--defeated it. In Paris, these scenes culminated on the 23rd, when Foulon, who had been Controleur des Finances, was brought in to the city from his country estate, where he had been seized. Foulon represented all that was worst in the old regime. As commissary with the French armies and later in the internal administration of the country, he had displayed the most heartless rapacity. His att.i.tude towards the lower cla.s.ses was echoed in utterances that were popularly quoted. The people, he declared, might feed on hay while he was minister;--the people had now got him in their clutches. In vain Bailly and Lafayette, during a long agony at the Hotel de Ville, attempted to save him; the mob would not be denied. Finally Foulon was seized; he was strung up to a street lantern, and later his {75} head, the mouth stuffed full of hay and nettles, was paraded in triumph through the streets.

While such scenes were being enacted in Paris, and while all through France the large cla.s.s of poor and criminals created by Bourbonism was committing even worse excesses, the a.s.sembly was addressing itself to the task of regenerating France by endowing her with a const.i.tution.

This task appeared comparatively simple and was taken up with a light heart; it was only by degrees that the a.s.sembly discovered the difficulties in the way, and it proved to be only after two years of hard labour that it could get its const.i.tution accomplished. And even then it proved almost useless.

The Const.i.tution may be left for the present, to be considered when, in 1791, it became operative. The general trend of the a.s.sembly, however, was to dissociate itself from practical concerns of government, to interest itself in the theories of politics, and both in its att.i.tude toward the events of the day, and in its const.i.tutional policy, to weaken the executive. The executive and the Bourbon regime were synonymous, and so the men of the National a.s.sembly, with no responsibility as it seemed for the good government of France, {76} tried hard, at the moment when a vigorous and able executive was more than necessary, to pull down the feeble one that existed. It was the Nemesis that Bourbonism had brought on itself.

In the midst of these debates the practical question of disorder thrust itself forward once more in very insistent form, and with very remarkable results, on the night of the 4th of August. In parts of France the excitement had taken the form of a regular Jacquerie in which the isolated country houses and families of the aristocracy had suffered most. Details were acc.u.mulating and a terrible picture was unfolded before the a.s.sembly that night. How was the evil to be dealt with?

It was the injured themselves who indicated the remedy, at their own personal sacrifice. The n.o.bles of the a.s.sembly, led by Noailles, d'Aiguillon, Beauharnais, Lameth, La Rochefoucauld, declared that if the people had attacked the property of the n.o.bles, it was because that property represented the iniquities of feudalism, that the fault lay there, and that the remedy was not to repress the people but to suppress the inst.i.tution. They therefore proposed to the a.s.sembly that instead of issuing proclamations calling on the people to {77} restore order, it should vote decrees for the abolition of feudalism.

And so feudalism, or what pa.s.sed by the name, went by the board amid scenes of wild enthusiasm. All the seigneurial rights acc.u.mulated during a thousand years by the dominant military caste, the right of justice, the privilege of commanding armies, the hunting privileges, the warren, the dovecot, serf.a.ge, were sacrificed on the altar of patriotic regeneration. The burden of the centuries was suddenly lifted from the shoulders of _Jacques Bonhomme_.

The men who proposed this surrender of their rights, who had already, by joining the Tiers, done so much to accomplish the great social revolution, deserve greater consideration as a cla.s.s than history has, as a rule, meted out to them. The French n.o.bility at the close of the 18th century counted in its ranks a great number of admirable men, admirable for loyalty, for intellectuality, for generosity. It is true that the most conspicuous, those who made up the Court, or who secured the lucrative appointments, had caught the plague of Versailles, and that even, in the provincial n.o.bility there was much copying of the fas.h.i.+on of the courtiers. But there were other {78} representatives of the order. Most conspicuous was that large cla.s.s of liberal n.o.bles who played so great a part in the early days of the Revolution. The ten deputies elected by the n.o.bility of Paris to the States-General all belonged to that category: grave, educated men, writers and thinkers, versed in questions of politics, economics, religion and education, experienced in many details of practical government, soldiers and local administrators, penetrated with the thought of a protesting and humanitarian age. Some, like La Fayette, had played conspicuous roles, and proved revolution in the making; others, like La Rochefoucauld, had mastered every intricacy of political and philanthropic thought; and some, like Condorcet, had proved themselves among the masters of science of their time. Counts, marquises, dukes, they were prepared to lay all aside in the overwhelming demand which suffering humanity made for release from all its troubles. And alongside of these, more loyal to their King if less loyal to humanity, no less admirable if lagging a little in knowledge and development, were those hundreds of country gentlemen, many of them poor, who, when the day of adversity came, rallied to their sovereigns, faced the guillotine for them, or laid down their lives {79} following the fearless standard of Henri de La Rochejacquelein. The position of the French n.o.bility, and the part it played, has been too much forgotten. Its most intelligent section nearly led the Revolution, which later fell into the hands of lawyers and theorists, then of demagogues, and lastly of soldiers.

What has just been said does not imply that the action of the National a.s.sembly on the night of the 4th of August was altogether admirable.

The example of the n.o.bles was infectious. A consuming fervour of self-sacrifice seized every member of the house. Archbishops, bishops and abbots rushed to the tribune and offered all they could. t.i.thes, pluralities, and every sort of ecclesiastical privilege were sacrificed. The unprivileged cla.s.s attempted desperately, but in vain, to hold its own in the contest, and could find nothing more to surrender than some of the special privileges and franchises attached to certain provinces and cities of the kingdom.

Now all this was generous and admirable,--it forms one of the most generous and admirable pages in history. It was even more. It was the emphatic and right declaration that privilege and cla.s.s distinction was the root of all the evils of the old system and had been {80} condemned by the French nation. But it had none of the qualities of practical statesmans.h.i.+p. It did not tend to decrease disorder but the contrary; and for the moment, with reform advancing so prosperously, order was the first consideration. The effects of the decrees were disastrous and intensified the bad conditions of the country. The woodlands were immediately invaded by armies of timber and fuel cutters. Game was killed off. The poor country priest found his salary gone. The _gabelle_ itself was disregarded. Local justice came to an end. And so the Government, with all its extra load, found the already failing revenue almost entirely cut off. The peasants and people of France interpreted the decrees after their fas.h.i.+on, refused to pay taxes and abused the surrendered privileges.

Through August and September the a.s.sembly continued its const.i.tutional debates, one of the three actors in this great political tragedy; the other two, Paris and King Louis, watched its proceedings with growing impatience. Uneasy at the increasing unrest of the capital, at the now popular cry that the King ought to reside in Paris, and at the const.i.tutional demands which the a.s.sembly was gradually formulating and acc.u.mulating, Louis decided to bring {81} some troops into Versailles for his protection, this duty being a.s.signed to the regiment of Flanders. This was a small enough matter when compared with the formidable preparations of de Broglie and Besenval three months before, yet it served the purpose of immediately crystallizing two opposite currents of opinion.

In Paris suffering was intense. There had been a good harvest, and in many respects the economic situation was better. But there was a drought, and the millers, depending on water to drive their mills, could not produce flour. There had been a sudden curtailment of Court and aristocratic expenditure, so that the Parisian wage earner was unemployed. The emigration had thrown many retainers out of their places. Paris was starving even before the summer months were over, and the agitators and political leaders were not slow to point to Versailles as the cause. That city, owing to the King's presence, was always comparatively well supplied with provisions; if only Louis could be brought to the capital, Versailles might starve and Paris would fatten. And winter was fast coming on.

At the palace of Versailles offended pride and rebounding hope were going out to the regiment of Flanders. On the 1st of October {82} the crisis was reached. On that day the a.s.sembly sent to the King a declaration of rights to which his a.s.sent was demanded. In the evening a banquet was given in the palace to bring together the officers of the King's bodyguard, of the regiment of Flanders and of the national guards of Versailles; and it resulted in a demonstration. The King and Queen visited the a.s.sembled officers and were received with great enthusiasm. _O Richard, o mon Roi_, the air that Blondel sings to Richard, the imprisoned king of England, in the then popular opera by Gretry, was sung, and officers of the national guard were moved to change their tricolour c.o.c.kade for the white one of the King. All this, if not very dangerous, was exciting; it was immensely magnified by rumour. In Paris the popular orators soon conjured up visions of a great royalist plot, and the renewal of military operations against the city.

On the 5th of October, the King, struggling against the pressure of the a.s.sembly, sent in a conditional acceptance of the proposals of the 1st, making some reservations as to the declaration of rights. He did not know that at the very moment Paris had risen once more, and was already marching out to Versailles to {83} carry him off and bring him back to the capital.

The insurrection of the 5th of October had rather obscure origins.

Some of its leading factors, however, stand out clearly enough. First there was the slowly rising tide of the popular impatience, the feeling that after all the efforts and success of the spring and summer the situation of affairs was still no better, and that to improve it the King must come to Paris; all this increasing vastly in force since the 1st of October. Then there was the fact that Paris knew on the evening of the 4th, that Louis would refuse, or in part refuse, the demands of the a.s.sembly, and it was necessary, therefore, to find a reply to the King's move. Last of all was hunger. And it was the part of the Parisian people most nearly touched by hunger that actually raised the standard of revolt.

The women felt the pinch of famine more bitterly than the men, and the women played a noteworthy part in the formation of those deep strata of popular opinion, or instinct, on which in turn each of the revolutionary parties had to build their power. The women were the first to turn the cannon against the King, and they were the last to raise the horrible howl of the guillotine at the prisoners as they {84} pa.s.sed the prison gates to go to the scaffold. And the reason is not far to seek. It was they who had to look after the household, to tend the sick, to feed the children, and it was they who day after day, year after year, formed in the long procession waiting to reach the baker's or the butcher's stall. Often enough they stood and struggled for hours, sometimes through the whole night, their hearts aching for the loved ones at home,--at the end of all to find nothing left, to return empty-handed. So late as the year 1795 there was a period of several months during which the individual ration, for those who could pay and for those who were lucky, was but 2 oz. of black bread a day; while butcher's meat failed completely on many occasions and was always a costly luxury. The details of the famine are scattered broadly through the pages of the contemporaries, and at every point the woman appears, wretched, lamenting, furious, ravenous for food, fighting for it and plundering, her heart dulled with bitterness, and her mouth distorted with curses for those pointed out to her as the cause of all her sufferings. Louis, Marie Antoinette, Brissot, Vergniaud, Hebert, she cared little what the name was, but was equally ready to rend them when told that they stood for the starvation of {85} her children, her sick, or her husband. And she was easily enough persuaded that some one person was responsible. In the morning hours of the 6th of October she was convinced that Louis was that person.

In the early hours of that day a knot of women, one of them beating a drum, others lugubriously chanting _du pain, du pain_, bread, bread, appeared in the streets of Paris. Growing in numbers as they advanced, an inchoate mob of women, men and boys, they proceeded to the Hotel de Ville; there perhaps they would find relief? But there was no relief, only tumult, until Maillard, a patriot agitator, conspicuous as one of the captors of the Bastille and since, harangued them. Maillard, who was in touch with the leading spirits among the politicians of the sections, told the women that there was nothing to do at the Hotel de Ville, but that he would lead them to Versailles, where they could see the King and persuade him to give them bread and to come back with them to Paris.

A motley procession poured out from Paris, following Maillard into the country roads and villages on the way to Versailles. Armed men had joined the women, and a few cannon had been found and were dragged by hand. {86} Meanwhile La Fayette, always sent for in emergencies, had arrived at the Hotel de Ville; while alarming reports began to reach Versailles of the approach of the women of Paris. La Fayette was quickly joined by a large force of national guards, and while he awaited instructions and pacified them with occasional harangues, Bailly and his councillors debated as to what course to take. Finally about five in the afternoon it was decided that La Fayette and his men should proceed to Versailles to preserve order and act according to circ.u.mstances.

Long before the Parisian troops could arrive, Versailles had been taken by storm by the women. They tramped in under a beating rain, many having lagged or fallen exhausted by the way, and at once sent deputations to the a.s.sembly and the King. They wanted food, and they wanted decrees that would put an end to starvation. To the men of the regiment of Flanders, drawn up to protect the palace, they announced the same thing, and their appeals were so irresistible that after some hours the colonel of the regiment, on declaring that he could not answer for his men any longer, got permission to return to barracks.

{87} But by this time La Fayette had reached the scene, and had stationed his battalions so as to protect the palace. An anxious night was pa.s.sed. In the mob were very dangerous elements. The grilles and walls, the courts, the grounds and the buildings of the palace, covered a wide area. The organization for defence was defective; the _gardes du corps_ were trustworthy but not numerous; the King gave few orders, and those benevolent or timid; the unrest and pressure of the mob was irresistible. In the early hours of the morning a determined group of men got into the palace, and immediately began to force their way towards the Queen's apartment.

As the 6th of October opened, a scene of great excitement took place within the palace. _Gardes du corps_ were cut down while protecting the Queen's flight to the King's apartments. La Fayette was sent for in haste, and some sort of order was restored. But meanwhile the mob had invaded the main courtyard, and it required all La Fayette's great popularity and tact to avert a fatal outbreak. As it was, he persuaded Louis that the only course was to accept the popular demand for his removal to Paris; he harangued the mob; he induced the {88} King and Queen to show themselves at a window; he gracefully kissed the Queen's hand; and he eventually prevailed.

At noon Paris began to flow back from Versailles to the capital once more, but now Louis and his family were in the midst of the throng. In a great lumbering coach, surrounded by the populace, Louis and his wife and children were proceeding from the palace of Versailles to that of the Tuileries; an epoch of French history was coming to a close. The Austrian princess, looking out and seeing a man of the people riding on the step of her coach, declared contemptuously that this was the first occasion on which an individual not wearing knee breeches, an individual _sans culotte_, had occupied so honourable a position. The cry of _sans culotte_ was taken up, and approved on the spot as the symbol of worthy citizens.h.i.+p. But the cant phrase that belongs most closely to the event of the 6th of October, was that whereby the Parisians declared triumphantly that they had now brought into their midst _le boulanger, la boulangere, et le pet.i.t mitron_,--the baker, the baker's wife and the little cook boy.

{89}

CHAPTER VII

THE a.s.sEMBLY DEMOLISHES PRIVILEGE

In the preceding chapter, stress has been laid on the economic causes that had led to the rooting up of the Bourbons from Versailles; in this one the political significance of the event must be accentuated. In the history of the Revolution it is always so; the political and the economic factors are constantly fusing the one in the other.

In a sense, what had happened was that the poor people, the democracy, let us say, of Paris, had now got the King in the city and under their influence; not only the King, but also the a.s.sembly,--for it had followed Louis and was installed in a building adjacent to the Tuileries. And the a.s.sembly became quickly conscious of the fact that Paris was now unduly weighing on the representation of France, and under the lead of Mirabeau attempted to a.s.sert itself. This was the first feeble step towards the a.s.sumption of power that culminated three years later in the appointment of {90} the Committee of Public Safety.

The a.s.sembly a.s.sumed a middle position between the King on the one hand and the mob on the other. It voted the change of Louis' t.i.tle from King of France, by the grace of G.o.d, to King of the French, by virtue of the Const.i.tution; it repressed disorder by proclaiming martial law; but in the continuation of its const.i.tutional debates it a.s.serted unequivocally its middle-cla.s.s composition. A handful of democrats, Robespierre, Gregoire, and less than a dozen others, pleaded the rights of the many, but the a.s.sembly declined to listen to them and confirmed, by a nearly unanimous vote, the recommendations of its committees for drawing up the declaration of rights and const.i.tution. The greater part of French citizens were thereby declared to have only pa.s.sive, not active rights, and were excluded from the franchise. The qualification for voting was placed at the paying of taxes equal to 3 days' labour, and for being a deputy paying in taxes one marc of silver, about 54 francs.

The outcry against this legislation was so loud, and so widespread, as to show what genuine political aspirations were to be found in the ma.s.s of the Parisian population. The greater part of that population was excluded {91} from voting. For to say nothing of the fact that about 120,000 inhabitants were cla.s.sed as paupers, it so happened that the capitation tax had been remitted for a term of years, leaving only the well-to-do shopkeeper, some part of the professional, and the capitalist cla.s.s on the voters' list. Workmen of the faubourg St.

Antoine signed a pet.i.tion to be allowed to pay taxes so as to obtain a vote. Robespierre, a narrow, prudish, jealous, puritanical but able lawyer from Arras, with journalists like Desmoulins and Loustallot, inveighed against what they described as iniquitous cla.s.s legislation that would have excluded from the councils of the French nation Jean Jacques Rousseau and even that _pauvre sans culotte_ Jesus Christ. But the a.s.sembly was obdurate, and, in fact, remained middle cla.s.s in its point of view all through the Revolution except when irresistible pressure was brought to bear against it.

The journalists, however, tended far more rapidly towards democracy than the deputies. Journalism had sprung from the events of July. The pamphlets of Camille Desmoulins had, by a natural metamorphosis, become journals after that date. Their popularity did not, however, attain that of Loustallot's {92} _Revolutions de Paris_, of which one number is said to have reached a circulation of 200,000. Marat's _Ami du peuple_, first published in September, soon became the most formidable organ of opinion, and remained so until the rise of Hebert and his atrocious _Pere d.u.c.h.esne_, at a later period. These papers and their editors played a great part, and will often be noticed, but for the present all that need be said is that their rise at this period is one of the symptoms of the tremendous change that had come over the city of Paris.

Paris before 1789 was, in a sense, mediaeval, provincial. Although the largest city of France, its capital, the centre of thought and art, the resort of many French and foreign visitors, the city was still in a way a local centre, and isolated, unrelated with the rest of France. The Court did not reside there, the administration, especially of justice, was in large measure decentralized, and Paris was the abode of the Parisian almost in the same narrow sense that the province was the abode of the provincial. But now all this was rapidly changing. The arrival of the Court and of the National a.s.sembly suddenly made of Paris the heart of France. The fever of revolution made that heart beat faster, and a rapid {93} current of the best life blood of the nation began circulating from the provinces to Paris and from Paris back again to the provinces, bringing energy and a broadening of sympathy with it. And if a glance is taken at Europe during the same period, during the twenty-five years that follow the outbreak of the French Revolution, the same process may be seen at work, but on a larger scale. The old stagnation, the feudal congestion of Germany and Italy, the immobility of the population, is broken through, the old barriers are shaken down; great centralized states send official, economic, and national action sweeping back and forth; great armies tramp through the whole breadth of Europe; roads are built in all directions to facilitate their movements, people begin to know one another, to mix, to form larger conceptions of humanity.

The most potent of the agencies that effected this change in Paris was the direct work of the deputies themselves. The move to the capital had been attended by the formation of several well-marked currents of opinion among the deputies. One of these had been a movement of protest,--of protest and in part of timidity. The violence and compulsion applied to the King, and all that the removal to Paris implied {94} under such circ.u.mstances, had led to the withdrawal of about 200 members of the a.s.sembly. Of these Mounier was the chief; he returned to his province of Dauphine and attempted to provoke const.i.tutional action to free the King from the domination of Paris.

His efforts were unsuccessful and he eventually had to leave the country. This group, however, of which Mounier was the boldest member, represented merely a negative force, dispersion; another, equally large, stood for something more concrete.

The Club Breton began to develop very rapidly after the removal to Paris. Its members, styling themselves _Amis de la Const.i.tution_, eventually settled themselves in quarters conveniently near the palace at the Jacobin monastery. Here the club quickly became a debating a.s.sociation, and the headquarters of a party. Early in 1790 it began to develop a system of affiliating clubs all through France, and by August of that year had planted 150 Jacobin colonies in direct correspondence with the mother society. By 1794 this number had grown to a thousand, and Jacobinism had become a creed. But in 1789 and 1790 the Jacobins were as yet moderate in their views; they were the men who wanted to create a {95} const.i.tution under the monarchy; they were presided during that period by such men as the Duc de Noailles, the Duc d'Aiguillon, and Mirabeau.

Mirabeau stood out in the a.s.sembly as the one constructive statesman, the one man who might bridge the gulf that still separated the deputies from the responsibility of power and the practice of government. If a const.i.tutional or parliamentary ministry were possible, if both King and a.s.sembly would recognise in that the practical step towards re-establis.h.i.+ng order and making reform effective, Mirabeau was the necessary leader of such a ministry. In the period that followed the arrival of the King in Paris he amply demonstrated both his qualifications and his defects for such a position. Urgent questions pressed the a.s.sembly from all sides, and in debating them Mirabeau took a lion's share.

Finance was most urgent of all. Necker could do no more. A fundamental remedy for the needs of the exchequer must be found. On the 7th of October the a.s.sembly had voted that the Crown lands should become the property of the nation, in return for which a civil list would be a.s.signed to the King. Three days later Talleyrand-Perigord, the sceptical {96} but able Bishop of Autun, proposed that the property of the Church should be similarly dealt with. This was, in one sense, as the previous step had been, the a.s.sertion of the national interest over the special privilege; in another sense it was merely one step more in those numerous secularizations of Church property which the utilitarian and unreligious 18th century had carried out. It was proposed to take over for the use of the State all the property of the Church and in return to pay salaries to its priests. This represented the acquisition of real property valued at the capital sum of 2,100,000,000 of francs; but as it only brought in capital value, not cash in hand, it did not afford any immediate relief for the needs of the Government. Then another expedient was tried, the appeal for patriotic gifts, and that, though it resulted in a good deal of patriotic emotionalism, did little to fill the yawning gulf of bankruptcy. Finally in December, drastic measures were taken. Some of the State's payments were provisionally suspended; the sale of Church and other lands to the value of 400 millions was ordered; a loan of 80 millions was sanctioned; and 400 millions of _a.s.signats_ were issued.

The a.s.signat in this first form was an {97} inchoate mortgage bond. It bore interest; it was guaranteed by the State; it purported to be secured in a general way on the national property; and it was to circulate as money and to be accepted in payment for the national lands. If it had been strictly secured, on a close valuation, and by a registered claim against specified property, it would doubtless have given a permanent support to the finances of the Government. As it was it proved, at first, a successful step, and it was only by gradual stages and from unwise measures that it eventually failed. In April 1790, a.s.signats were made legal tender; a few months later they ceased to bear interest,--in other words, though still bonds on their face they really became paper money. In September 1790, another 800 millions were issued, and in June another 600, and in small denominations, and from that moment they began to sink in value rapidly. Until the month of January 1791 they stood at over 90; in July 1791 they were at 87; during 1792-93, years of the greatest crisis, they fell fast; in 1795 they had almost lost value and during the Directoire period the a.s.signat becomes almost worthless, one recorded transaction giving 3,080 francs in paper for 20 in gold.

{98} Behind the financial policy of the a.s.sembly was Mirabeau. He had long been connected with the bankers and promoters of Paris, had produced pamphlets to serve their financial projects. The bond issues of the a.s.sembly, and the probable sales of large blocks of real property, were of great interest to these groups, and Mirabeau was their natural connecting link with the a.s.sembly. He was the strongest advocate of the a.s.signat measures, and whatever interest his friends took in them, it need not be doubted that he believed them salutary and wise.

The Court in its new perplexity, helplessly entangled in Paris, having learnt just a little from experience, now turned to Mirabeau for a.s.sistance. He secretly advised that the King should take the initiative, and should put forward the policy of a moderate const.i.tution on the English model with a responsible ministry. If this brought on a conflict, or if his situation otherwise made it advisable to leave Paris, he should seek refuge in the well-disposed province of Normandy, and not with the army on the German frontier. The advice of Mirabeau was not unsound, and it implied as a step the formation of a Mirabeau, Necker, La Fayette ministry.

{99} But Mirabeau was too much handicapped by his past. The a.s.sembly viewed him with rooted suspicion and dislike, and for this reason the Court could not have chosen a worse agent. At the end of November the a.s.sembly voted decrees excluding its members from the King's ministry, thus barring Mirabeau's path, and thus accentuating once more its own destructive att.i.tude towards the Government. If it would not partic.i.p.ate, even indirectly, in the executive, it was partly because it was at heart anxious to pull that executive down to earth.

Notwithstanding this check, Mirabeau continued to impose on the a.s.sembly by his tremendous personality and by his statesmans.h.i.+p. He struggled hard in the early part of 1790 to bring the deputies into line on a question of foreign affairs that then arose,--the Nootka Sound question. This involved all the traditions of France's foreign policy and her system of alliances, the _pacte de famille_; but the a.s.sembly saw in it merely a text on which to formulate the limitations it intended to impose on the royal power in the matter of foreign relations. At this moment the Court had renewed its clandestine communications with Mirabeau, there was even one secret {100} interview between him and the Queen, and large sums were given him as payment for his advice. These sums he squandered profusely, thus advertising a fact that was already more than suspected by the public, and rapidly destroying his hold on opinion.

The winter was a much milder one than the preceding, food was less scarce, money more plentiful owing to the issue of a.s.signats, public confidence greatly increased. But the tension between the King and the a.s.sembly did not relax; there was no serious attempt on either side to take advantage of the improved situation for effecting a reconciliation. The a.s.sembly legislated against the members of the aristocracy who, following the example of the Comte d'Artois, had emigrated. Instead of helping the Government to enforce police measures that would have made their residence in France secure, it decreed the confiscation of their rents unless they returned within three months. This was the first of a long series of laws aimed against the emigres.

Turning from one privileged order to the other, the a.s.sembly continued the attacks on the fabric of the Church which had been begun by the churchmen themselves in August and October 1789. The surrender of the t.i.thes, (101) 70,000,000 francs annually, had told most heavily against the poor country priest and in favour of the landowner, who bore the burden of his salary. The taking over of the Church lands by the State had been most felt by the higher ecclesiastics and the monastic orders.

In February 1790 the latter were suppressed, and their members were relieved of their vows by the a.s.sembly, which had now frankly embarked on an anti-clerical policy. It would not recognise of itself that it was less representative of France in the matter of religion than in any other; for it was the intellectual and professional cla.s.s only, to which nearly all the deputies belonged, that was Voltairian or anti-Catholic, the ma.s.s of the people of France were still attached to their ancient faith. During the protracted debates that took place on the Church question in the spring of 1790, the a.s.sembly attempted several times to evade the question of the Catholic members as to whether or not it would recognise the existence of the Church. At last, with great reluctance, in June, the a.s.sembly voted that the Catholic religion was that of France; but it followed this up by pa.s.sing what was known as the _Const.i.tution civile du clerge_. This decree provided that all priests should receive their {102} salaries from the State; that the old dioceses of France should be broken up and made to fit the new departmental division that had supplanted the old provincial one; that the bishop should be created by the vote of the electors of his department; and that the Pope should exercise no authority over bishops or priests.

It needs but little acquaintance with history to realize how wilfully subversive this plan was. The maintenance of the clergy by the t.i.thes, placed it outside the sphere of Government control, and helped to maintain the ancient Roman internationalism; whereas the breaking off of the Pope's direct connection with the bishops was Gallicanism of the most p.r.o.nounced character. Pope Pius VI unequivocally declared that the carrying through of any such law in France would amount to a schism, and transmitted that opinion to Louis XVI.

The falseness of the King's position was made intolerable by the dilemma in which he was now placed. There was as yet no formal Const.i.tution, only a revolutionary situation in which the a.s.sembly had usurped a large part of the King's prerogative. It was, however, virtually accepted by both sides that under the {103} const.i.tution when pa.s.sed, the King should have the power of veto, and by tacit accord that arrangement had been from the first put into force. The a.s.sembly voted decrees and sent them to the King for his signature. But in reality the veto, even before its strict const.i.tutional existence, was little more than a sham. The situation was revolutionary. Both parties were hostile, and almost without exception every signature of the King was an act of moral compulsion. Hitherto, however, his acceptance of the situation had not involved more than bowing before a political storm; now the matter was graver, the question was of schism, and therefore of heresy.

Louis was a faithful believer in the Roman theology, as well as in the divine right of kings, and he struggled hard to withhold his signature from the civil const.i.tution of the clergy. And when, after some weeks, he finally gave in, it was under protest. From that moment he adopted the att.i.tude of the man acting under restraint who ascribes no binding force to acts and deeds resulting from compulsion.

The acceptance of the civil const.i.tution of the clergy by the King did not conclude the matter. Furious protests arose. In the south {104} of France, bishops, priests and national guards for some weeks threatened an outbreak of religious war. The a.s.sembly met this disorder more firmly than that proceeding from economic and political reasons. Towards the close of the year it imposed on the clergy an oath of adhesion to the civil const.i.tution, and this only four bishops were found to accept. In January 1791 elections were ordered for filling the places of those members of the Church who had refused the oath, and presently France found herself with two bodies of clergy, official and non-official, const.i.tutional and anti-const.i.tutional.