SKETCH OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION UP TO OCTOBER

[exécution OF THE ' GIRONDINS ']

The causes which contributed to the outbreak of the French Révolution are, briefly : —

(1) The ' spirit of the âge' which tended towards the overthrow of existing institutions, whether civil or ecclesiastical, and which was fostered by the writings of some of the most eminent authors of the day.

The theory of the Divine Right of Kings was attacked by Montesquieu {Esprit des Lois, 1748) and by Rousseau (Contrai Social, 1762) ; Voltaire {Henriade, 1723, and Procès de Jean Calas, 1762) inveighed against the spirit of intolérance in gênerai, and Christianity in particular ; the Grande Encyclopédie (1751-1780) inculcated a system of rational deism.

(2) The abuses which had crept into the administrative offices ; so-called lettres de cachet were issued arbitrarily for the arrest of suspected persons. The Lits de justice, the Cours plénières, usurped some of the functions of the Parlement.

Commissions in the army, seats in the Parlement, were purchasable, but, as a rule, only by members of the nobiUty. The clergy and nobihty were exempt from much of the direct taxation which weighed heavily upon the third estate.

(3) The enormous national debt, due in the first instance to the wars of Louis XIV, his craze for expensive building (e.g. Versailles), the luxury of his court, but increased by the extravagance of Louis XV and the cost of the North American War uuder Louis XVL

Turgot's attempt at économie reform (1774-1776), Necker's administration (1776-1781), and the Assemhly of Notables {1187), summoned on the advice of Galonné, having failed to effect any permanent improvement, the King, urged thereto by Necker, who had retumed to office in 1788, summoned the States-general 1789. to meet at Versailles.

The Tiers-État (the commonalty) to be granted the same

number of représentatives as the nobles and clergy combined.

Opposition of the latter. Resuit : the resolution, proposed by

Abbé Sieyès, of the Tiers-État into the National Assembly

1789-91. {Assemblée constituante).

Jnne 20, Li the court of the Jeu de Paume the members take an oath 1789. not to dissolve the assembly until they hâve drawn up a Constitution for France. Chief orator : Mirabeau.

SKETCH OF THE FKENCH EEVOLUTION 131

Rumours of an intended dissolution of the Assembly and the dismissal of Necker lead to an attack upon the Invalides and the Stormino of the Bastillb {Camille Desmoulins). Necker 1789. is recalled. Lafayette appointed commander of the newly formed July 14. Garde nationale, Bailly first Mayor of Paris.

Thèse events resuit in what is known as the ' First Emigration of the Nobility.'

Abolition by the National Assembly of ail feudal privilèges, 1789. dues, and tithes. August 14.

Déclaration of the Rights of Man. August 27.

Constitution drawn up, based upon one représentative chamber, September. instead of two, the King having only the right of suspensive veto.

The ' Dames de la Halle ' go to Versailles to demand the person October 5. of the King as hostage against any Royalist attack upon Paris from the provinces.

Retum of the Royal family to Paris. October 6.

The removal of the Assembly to Paris foUows as a matter of course. The history of the Révolution Unked henceforth with the history of Paris. Meetings held in the Manège. The Second Emigration,

Mirabeau attempts to induce the king to create a responsible ministry, but fails, owing to popular opposition. Henceforth monarchy doomed.

On the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille, the King takes an oath on the Constitution. Division of France into eighty-three departments, subdivided into districts and cantons. AboUtion of the Parlement ; Constitution civile of the clergy {prêtres insermentés and assermentés).

The Fête de la Fédération held in the Champ-de-Mars. A 1790. National altar erected. Mirabeau advises the King to leave July *• France. His advice neglected owing to the influence of Marie- Antoinette. Other plans made by Mirabeau with a view to saving the monarchy fail for the same reason.

The key-note of Mirabeau's poUcy was to unité France against Paris. He is convinced that an outbreak of civil war will lead to the déclaration of enough latent monarchical feeling in France to save the Bourbons. The King's hopes are, however, fixed upon an alUance with, and the intervention of, foreign powers.

Death of Mirabeau. With him perishes the last chance of the April 1791 establishment of a new constitutional monarchy in France under the Bourbons.

FUght of the King to Varennes, which arouses great popular June 20, anger, being considered a défini te proof of his aUiance with H^iforeign powers.

132 SKETCH OF THE FKENCH EEVOLUTION

After tliia event the term ' Republic ' first heard in the streets of Paris.

Public opinion as to the treatment to be meted out to the King being divided, a pétition demanding his dethronement and trial is drawn up and laid for signature upon the altar of the nation on the Champ-de-Mars. Tbe so-called Massacre of the Champ-de- Mars ensues.

Sept. 1791. A revision of the Constitution accepted by the King. Oct. 1791. The Législative Assembly.

Sept. 1792. No member of the National Assembly ehgible for the new Assembly.

Political parties, the first traces of which were discemible

during the debate on the Constitution, become more pronounced.

The Right (Constitutionals, RoyaUsts, Feuillants) gradually

decreases in power. The Lef t is divided into two chief sections :

(1) Moderate RepubUcans {la plaine), amongst whom the Girondins preponderate (Federahsts) ;

(2) The Radical party {la montagne), who demand that the république shall be une et indivisible !

Aug. 1791. Meeting at Pillnitz between Frederick William II (r. 1786-1797), King of Prussia, and Leopold II (r. 1790-1792), Emperor of Germany, for the discussion of French affairs.

Feb. 1792. Coalition between Austria and Prussia. 1792-97. War of the First Coalition, precipitated by the Girondin Ministry under Roland and Dumouriez, and declared by France, April 20. Opening campaign disastrous for France, and, in conséquence, increased revolutionary excitement.

Aug. 10, Taking of the Tuileries — suspension of the King — imprisonment 1792. in the Temple.

Sept. 2, &c. Massacres in the prisons, ordered by the Commune and Danton.

Sept. 1792 National Convention — Contending parties are the Girondins

to Oct. '95. and the Montagnards.

Sept. 21, Abohtion of monarchy {déchéance de la monarchie) and declara-

1792. tion of the RepubUc.

Dec. 1792 Trial of the King, who is condemned by a majority of one, and

to Jan. '93. executed on January 21, 1793.

April 6 1^^® Comité de Salut public, headed by Danton, and later by

1793. ' Robespierre, assumes the dictatorship.

June 2. Coup d'état : — Twenty-two members of the Gironde (the Com-

mittee of Twelve including Clavière and Lebrun) arrested by command of the Commune.

July 13. Marat murdered by Charlotte Corday.

1793-94. "^^ Reign of Terror. The guillotine. Marie- Antoinette exe-

cuted October 16, the chief members of the Gironde on October 31.

The opening passage of Book VIII of Les Girondins summari333 the state of poUtical affaira in France in the early part of 1791. For the causes which led to this isolation of the King cf. Sketch of the French Révolution, p. 130.

Pagb 1. 1. 2. le roi. . . cherchait son aplomb. Aplomb means, literally, the perpendicular indicated by the lead, hence, equilibrium or balance, self possession, assurance, hère, ' tried to hold his own.'

L 2. de dangereuses négociations avec P étranger. The King had

"pereistently, and in spite of the wamings of his minister Mirabeau,

endeavoured to form an alliance with Austria and Prussia, which

should, by armed force, re-estabhsh the tottering monarchy in

France.

1. 3. d'imprudentes tentatives de corruption à l'intérieur. This appUes rather to Mirabeau acting on behalf of the King than to the King himself. The key-note of Mirabeau's pohcy on behalf of Louis XVI was to unité France against Paris. He suggested a direct appeai to the provinces on behalf of the King, and when he reaUzed that the latter would never consent to this scheme, elaborated a vast plan for disseminating Royahst principles through the provinces by means of agents, distribution of pamphlets, j^C.

Lii4f^des hommes, les uns Girondins, les autres Jacobins, &c. The ^Jevelopment of party, as we understand the term in England, did not become marked in France until fairly late in the Revolutionary movement. A grouping together of men of similar opinions which may be described as an attempt at the formation of parties may be discemed after the removal of the Assembly to Paris (October 5, 6, 1790). The debates being pubhc, and infiamed by public opinion fed by the joumals of the day, thèse groups rapidly became more defined. But even the members of the Gironde were surprised to find, when denounced by Marat in December, 1792, that they were considered a party : ' Nous étions si peu disposés à former un parti ' (Meillan), Yet, according to Aulard, the Girondins made ' une des plus sérieuses tentatives qui se soient produites alors en France, déformer un parti à la mode britannique ' ; cf. aiso Lamartine, Les Girondins, Bk. IV.

The name ' Girondin ' was apphed more especially to Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonné, Grangeneuve, Ducos, Boyer-Fonfrède, Bei-

134 MADAME KOLAND

going, Lacaze, who were actually deputies from the department of the Gironde, but the term was afterwards extended to include deputies from other departments, more especially from the departments north of the Loire. Lamartine's book, which appeared in 1847, popularized the term, and it now dénotes that section of the Législative Assembly which hoped to estabUsh an idéal Republic upon the basis of the new Constitution, and which, reaUzing by degrees that their hopes could not be fulfilled so long as a vestige of the royal power remained, pressed for war as a means of exterminating the ancien régime. It was Brissot who originally brought together men of alUed ways of thought. They were, to their own undoing, theoreticcd pohticians. Marat ironically called them hommes d'État.

The Jacobins (cf. description, Lamartine, Les Girondins, Bk. T, chapter xix), as a pohtical party, grew out of the meetings of the Breton Club, which, after the transference of the Assembly to Paris, began to hold its meetings in the Jacobin Convent. Tlie Hall of the Jacobins became the rallying ground of the radical party in the Assembly. The chief orators were Lameth, Bamave, and Laclos. The most pronounced members of this association were known as Jacobins enragés. Such were Robespierre and Danton. The leading characteristic of the men of this section was their knowledge that things had gone too far for compromise.

The real cleavage into Jacobins and Girondins did not take place until after the meeting of the Législative Assembly, on October 1, 1791. Cf. AnlaTà, Histoire politique de la Révolviion française, and H. Morse Stephens, The French Révolution.

1. 8. Pétion was a native pf Chartres and was elected to the States-General by the Tiers-Etat of that town.

In November, 1792, he was elected Mayor of Paris in succession to Bailly, having been nominated by the Jacobin Club in opposition to La Fayette. He was, at one time, the idol of the populace of Paris, who called him le roi Pétion. His early friendship with Brissot brought about his connexion with Madame Roland.

1. 8. Robespierre. Maximilien Robespierre (1758-1794) was educated at Arras and at the Collège Louis le Grand at Paris. Having embraced the légal profession, he was appointed criminal judge of the diocèse of Arras. He made himself politically conspicuous on the occasion of the élection of deputies for the States-General, thereby securing his own élection as fifth deputy for the whole Tiers - État of Artois. Within the year 1790 he became the recognized leader of the Jacobin Club. He played a considérable part during the Législative Assembly and the Convention. Under

the latter he was a member of the Committee of Public Safety. It was this position which seems to hâve turned his head. Originally he had hoped that the overthrow of the King might pave the way for the estabUshment of an idéal repubUc on the lines of Rousseau. But in proportion as he reaUzed the practical futiUty of such a scheme, his personal ambition increased, and he devoted his position on the Committee to an attempt to estabhsh, first, the authority of the Committee over France, and next, his own over the Committee. But though the Committee were wilUng that he should serve them, they had no intention of allowing him to become their master, and when he became inconvénient to them they threw him overboard. He died by the guillotine, July 27, 1794.

1. 9. Brissot. Brissot de Ouarville, or, as he spelt it, Warville, bom 1754, has been called le penseur de la Gironde. It was he and his friends who imparted a flavour of humanitarianism to the Revolutionary movement. Since the Révolution was Vaffaire du genre humain it became a duty to assert the principles of the Révolution even with the help of armed force, and thus Brissot is largely responsible for having initiated the warUke policy of the Gironde.

Brissot's pubUcation, Le Patriote français, which continued to appear until June 2, 1793, was the chief organ of the Gironde. It preached a more consistent pohcy than any other periodical of the day, and hence the Montagnards looked upon Brissot as the chef de parti of the Girondins, and, though he himself resented the appellation, he formed the first Girondin ministry, in which Roland was Minister of the Interior, and certainly exercised a direct influence upon the Government until August 10. He was noted for his oratorical powers. He took part in the famous discussion on the déclaration of war, October 20, 1791, and himself drafted that document, proclaimed on April 20, 1792.

Having quarrelled with Robespierre, the latter attacked him freely at the Jacobin Club, and from April 25, 1792, onwards, he was publicly denounced as chef des conspirateurs by the Jacobins, and finally arrested, and condemned to death. His defence of himself was one of his best speeches.

1. 9. Buzot. A member of the States-General for the bailliage of Evreux. He distinguished himself in the Constituent Assembly, and after the dissolution of that body he remained in Paris and became a fréquent visitor in the salon of Madame Roland, with whom he fell violently in love. It was Madame Roland' s influence which attached him to the Girondins.

On Madame, Roland's friendship for Buzot, cf. p. 42. Also C. A. Dauban Étude sur Madame Roland et son temps.

136 MADAME EOLAND

^^4^9. Vergniaud (1753-1793) was the most famous orator among the Girondins and is generally regarded as their poli tic al leader. On August 10, 1792, as Président of the Législative Assembly, it became Vergniaud's duty to proclaim the déchéance of the King, and as Président of the Convention he pronounced sentence of death on him, but throughout the légal proceedings he had shown himself to be the opponent of Marat and the Commune, and on June2 he was one of the twenty-two Girondin deputies arrested. He was executed on October 30, having decUned to commit suicide by poisoning himself. To him is attributed the famous saying : ' La Révolution sera comme Saturne, elle dévorera ses enfants.'

1. 9. Ouadet. H.e was an orator second only to Vergniaud, and has been called V Échine de la Gironde. Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonné were the mainstay of the Girondin party, and to them the name was geographically appUcable, as they were deputies for the Gironde.

1. 9. Oensonné, a member of the Gironde whose réputation was based chiefly on an inquiry he had made, on behalf of the Constituent Assembly, into the state of feeling with which the people in the west regarded the prêtres insermentés. Like Vergniaud and Guadet, he was a genuine Girondin. It was he who introduced Dumouriez to the Girondins.

1. 10. Carra. A joumaUst who, in partnership with Mercier, published the Annales patriotiques et littéraires.

1. 10. Louvet de Couvray (1760-1797), politician and man of letters. His first work. Aventures du Chevalier de Faublas (1788), created a public scandai. He declared himself an ardent Republican, and under the auspices of the Girondins he published a political journal called La Sentinelle. He became a member of the Convention, owing to the protection of Roland, and distinguished himself as the passionate and éloquent opponent of Danton, Marat, and Robespierre. Like many other Girondins, he fied, when impeached, to Caen, and did his utmost to stir up Normandy under Wimpfen. He escaped paying the extrême penalty, and ultimately retumed to Paris, where he became Président of the Convention.

1. 10. Ditcos (1765-1793), one of the most ardent Girondins. Secretary of the Convention. After the proscription of the Girondins he warmly defended their cause in public, which led to his own exécution.

1. 10. Boyer-Fonfrède, an intimate friend of Barbaroux and Vergniaud.

1. 10. Lauze Duperret, a member of the Convention, rendered famous by his connexion with Charlotte Corday. Cf. p. 95 ff.'

I. 10. Sillery de Oerdis, husband of the more celebrated Madai de Genlis, leader of one of the most famous Paris salons, and tî author of several books on éducation. He was a landed prc prietor in Champagne (cf. Arthur Young's Travels in France^ p. 196). He became a member of the Convention, and. was guillotined in 1793.

1. 13. Le foyer d'une jeune femme, i.e. of Madame Roland. The first allusion to her in Lamartine's book. Our chief information conceming Madame Roland is derived from her Mémoires written by herself.

The pohtical influence of Madame Roland's salon can hardlybe over-estimated. She was, of course, not the first woman to create a centre of the kind. The salon had become a social institution in France under Louis XV. At that time the topics discussed there were chiefly of a Uterary character, and hterature remained the engrossing subject of conversation down to the days of Horace Walpole. Cf. Letters, an. 1765.

But as the eighteenth century advanced literature yielded to poHtics. The friends of ministers met in the salon of Madame Necker, whose daughter. Madame de Staël, was the great attraction of an assembly uniting Uterary and pohtical interests. Madame de Genhs entertained the friends of the Duc d'Orléans at the Palais- Royal. Madame de BrogUe received people hke Bamave and the two Lameth ; even the extrême revolutionary party had its salons, the most notable being that of M'^*^ Tliéroigne de Méricourt, which was frequented by such men as Mirabeau, Pétion, and even Robespierre. The salon of Madame de Condorcet became the rallying point of ail the theoretical revolutionists of the day, just as the salon of Madame Roland was the common meeting-groxmd of the Girondins.

Cf. Ed. de Concourt, La Société française pendant la Révolution ; Taine, JJ Ancien Régime ; Arthur Young's Travels in France.

l^-io. la Montagne. Name given to the extrême left or Jacobin party, on account of the raised seats which they occupied in the Assembly ; cf. Lamartine, Girondins, xiii. 15.

1. 25. une philosophie nouvelle qui promet le bonheur aux hommes. The philosophy of the eighteenth century may briefly be said to hâve preached two doctrines : —

(1) The doctrine of the rights of man, which found Uterary expression in the works more especially of Rousseau, and which was reduced to a pohtical formula in the famous Déclaration of Rights, first promulgated in America, but adopted also by the French Revolutionists ;

(2) The doctrine of the supremacy of Reason ; or, in other words, it asserted that ail men are by nature equal, and hence are

138 MADAME KOLAND

entitled to equal political rights ; that ail men are by nature reasonable and would act reasonably if their reasoning faculties had not been blunted by unfavourable social conditions. Thèse conditions must be remedied, either by force (révolution), or by argument (encyclopédie). A retum to nature would resuit in the physical welfare of man, consequently in his virtue, and therefore in his happiness. In its main features this philosophy may be said to hâve been first enunciated by Locke. From England it spread to France, and having been given a popular and striking form in the works of Montesquieu, Rousseau, and the Encyclopédistes, it spread with the rapidity and force of a new gospel over the greater part of Europe and America.

1.27. néophytes, Gk. veô^vros from véos, new + 0uTor, grown. A term applied in the early church to new converts from paganism. Hère applied to those who became imbued with the new philosophical doctrines of the eighteenth century.

'Page 2. 1.36. Jean-Jocf^u&s J2ozi«seaM (1712-1778), the greatest literary force of the eighteenth century. Author of La Nouvelle Héloise, Le Contrat social, and Emile. The story of his obscure origin and sordid life may be read in his Confessions.

Page 4. 1. 5. ses Mémoires. The social aspect of the Revolutionary movement may best be gathered from the Mémoires of the period (cf. those of Pétion and Barbaroux), amongst which those of Madame Roland are of primary importance. They convey an accurate impression not only of the part played by Madame Roland herself in the history of the period, but contain a séries of portraits of the more important Girondins, Buzot, Barbaroux, &c. They were written during her imprisonment in the Abbaye and in Sainte-Pélagie. The first édition was pubUshed in 1795 by her friend Bosc, under the title : Appel à V impartiale postérité, par la citoyenne Roland, femme du ministre de l'intérieur, ou Recueil des récits qu'elle a rédigés pendant sa détention aux prisons de V Abbaye et de Sainte-Pélagie, imprimé au profit de sa fille unique, privée de la fortune de ses père et mère dont les biens sont toujours séquestrés. Another édition was pubUshed in 1800 by Champagneux, father-in-law of Eudora, Madame Roland's daughter. The best critical édition is that by C. A. Dauban, 1864. It contains several passages that had been suppressed by Bosc, and the hitherto unpubUshed correspondence of Madame Roland and Buzot.

Inreading Madame Roland's ilfémoir&swe must not forget that she was writing with a view to publication — that, as Michelet says of her, she was née scribe, and that ' distance lends enchantment ' to the picture she has drawn of her youth. The sketch of her girlhood given by Lamartine is taken from her Mémoires.

Ei«SE 5. 1. 9. Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet de) (1694-1778), ^^dîstinguished alike as dramatist, historian, pamphleteer, and letter-writer, perhaps the greatest intellect of the eighteenth century. He is commonly regarded as the arch-enemy of Christianity, but his attacks on revealed religion contributed greatly to the cause of rehgious toleration.

1. 9. Montesquieu (Charles de Secondât, baron de) (1689-1775), a native of the Gironde, one of the greatest poli tic al writers of the eighteenth century. His fîrst book, the Lettres persanes, appeared in 1721; he becameamember of the Academy in 1728, and pubUshed De r esprit des lois in 1748. The latter, based for the most part upon Locke, exercised a far-reaching influence upon the political ideals of 1789. Its effects can be compared only with those produced by Rousseau's Contrat social.

1. 9. les philosophes anglais. In her Mémoires she alludes specially to Locke (1632-1704) and his Essay on the Human Under standing.

1. 11. Plutarque. A Greek writer of biographies and miscellaneous works, bom at Chaeronea, a.d. 50. His famé is founded principally upon his Paralld Lives, which was a favourite book in the latter part of the eighteenth century, especially among women. Cf. Charlotte Corday's fondness for it, p. 87. Contemporary admirers of her character could bestow no greater praise upon her than to compare her with Bru tus as depicted by Plutarch : — ' Corday vit auprès de Brutus ' (Louvet) ; ' plus grande que Brutus ' (Gaudet). Michelet considers this appréciation of the idéal characters of the ancient world by the women of the eighteenth century to hâve been one of the most potent factors in the rapid development of the Révolution ; cf. Introduction, p. xii.

1. 12. c'est de ce moment [le carême de 1783] (/we datent les impressions et les idées qui me rendirent républicaine. This is probably an unconscious attribution of republican principle to a period when Madame Roland was innocent of any such feehngs.

L^7. Fénelon (François de Salignac de la Mothe) (1651-1715), ^.d^hbishop of Cambrai, author of the famous romance Télémaque, the history of the adventures of the son of Ulysses, written for the instruction of his pupil, the Duc, de Bourgogne, son of Louis XIV (1699), and of the Traité de l'Education des Filles {16S1). famous Lettre à l'Académie is the most important critical work in France after Boileau's L'Art poétique.

Fénelon is the last représentative of the seventeenth century, and attracted the eighteenth century because there was in him something of the spirit of that century. He was a philosopher, a sentimentaUst, and a philanthropist. He indicated that retum

140 MADAME KOLAND

to nature of which Rousseau was to become the irrésistible exponent.

1. 18. Le Tasse (Torquato Tasso) (1544-1595), famous Italian poet, author of the Oerusalemme Liberata.

Page 6. 1. 1. Entrée au couvent. In 1765, when she was eleven years old, Madame Roland requested as a spécial favour to be allowed to spend the time of préparation for her first communion in a convent where she would be freer from the distractions of the world than in her quiet home. She was accordingly placed with the Dames de la Congrégation, rue Neuve-Saint- Etienne, faubourg Saint-Marcel.

1. 8. Sensible, comme Rousseau, à la beauté du feuillage, &c. The revival of the love of nature, which is one of the characteristic features of the latter portion of the eighteenth century, is largely due to the influence of Rousseau. It was he who preached the worship of nature. The ' proper study of mankind ' is no longer man alone, but the ' meanest flower that springs,' the sunrise and the sunset, Mont-Blanc and the skylark. The délicate descriptions of nature to be found in Rousseau are ' new features in literature.'

1. 16. Une novice 'prit le voile. For a description of the ritual observed on the occasion of the réception of a novice, cf. Pontificale Romanum ; Huysmans, En Route, ch. viii.

Page 7. 1. 3. Pont-Neuf. In spite of its name one of the most ancient bridges of Paris. In the sixteenth century it was the scène of the récitals of Tabarin, a famous satirist of the day, and it long remained the rendez- vous of news-vendors, jugglers, showmen, loungers, and thieves. Any popular witticism in verse was known as un Pont-Neuf.

1. 9. Champs-Elysées. Famous promenade in Paris, extending from the Place de la Concorde to the Arc de Triomphe. The grounds were originally laid out and planted with elms and Umetrees at the end of the seventeenth century.