CHAP. LXVIII. 1790. settles disputes. Affairs of France. to secure a speedy and honourable peace with the Turks, to effect a reconciliation with Prussia, and to obtain the imperial crown. By a negotiation with Prussia, in which he made his equity, good faith, and firmness equally apparent, he succeeded in gaining the promise of Frederick William to support his claims to the empire. By a convention, signed at Reichenbach, he obtained an armistice with the Turks, on condition that a negotiation for peace should be opened under the mediation of the maritime powers, on the basis of the status quo, and to give an equivalent to Prussia, should he obtain any advantage or acquisition from the Porte. He also engaged not to assist Russia, should the attempts to conclude a peace between her and the Porte fail of success; and he consented to restore to the Netherlands their ancient constitution and privileges, under the guaranty of the three allied powers. On the signature of this convention, the two armies withdrew from the frontiers: and, by the intervention of Prussia, an armistice was concluded with the Porte for nine months. A congress of plenipotentiaries from Austria, Turkey, and the mediating powers, was soon afterward assembled at Szistova, which seemed at first to promise great facilities to a final arrangement; but soon jarring interests and unforeseen combinations occasioned delay, and gave rise to protracted discussions. Hungary was quieted by reasonable concessions; and, with the support of Prussia, Leopold was elected and crowned Emperor of Germany*. In the transactions which agitated Europe, France did not, for the present, interfere actively, either by arms or by subsidies; but her influence was felt through the more effectual medium of public opinion. Sovereigns were affected by the diffusion of principles and the operation of examples, which, taking from them the surest source of authority, prevented their firm reliance on the affection and obe Principally from Coxe's House of Austria, vol. ii. cc. 51, 52. See also Mémoires tirées des Papiers d'un Homme d'Etat, tom. i. p. 87; Ségur, Histoire de Frédéric Guillaume II. tom. ii. c. 8. dience of their subjects. The people too, influenced by high sounding dogmas and fascinated by boastful pretensions, gratified with the example of greatness depressed, authority defied, learning despised, and establishments invaded, longed to try new experiments in the constitution of government, law, and religion. CHAP. LXVIII. 1790. State of the In the National Assembly, the aim constantly pursued was to annihilate the authority of the crown, the National rights of the nobility, and the existence of the clergy; Assembly. to make the property of all these classes a prey to any party which, under the appellation of the nation, and by means of the populace of Paris, should gain ascendancy. Nor were there left any means of restraining them, while uncontrolled by any superior body, holding their king a prisoner, emancipating the army from all obligations of fidelity, and making loyalty a crime*. the Jacobin It would be a mistake to say that even the National Assembly governed France. That assembly was ruled Influence of by the mob of Paris, and that mob was convoked, club. sustained, impelled, by the association called the Jacobin club. At the first meeting of the States-general, an union of some members and their friends was formed, under the title of the Breton club, because many of its original founders came from the province of Brittany. It increased in numbers daily; measures of government and all constitutional questions were unsparingly discussed; popular grievances were detailed and amplified, and the hatred of the nation was directed toward the King, the Queen, the princes of the blood, the nobility, the clergy, and all other bodies and individuals, as suited the interest, the malice, or the caprice of the popular advocates. Soon after the removal of the King to Paris, this club obtained possession of the building which had been the abode of a suppressed body of Franciscan monks, or Jacobins; they styled themselves the friends of liberty sitting at the hall of the Jacobins, and afterward, more shortly, Jacobins. They had affiliated corresponding societies, receiving instructions and impulse from them in all See Life of Gouverneur Morris, vol. ii. p. 88. CHAP. LXVIII. 1790. Emigration. Proceedings of the Chatelet. parts of France, and established communications with the disaffected in foreign countries. In a short time, the term Jacobin was used as an appellation instead of patriot. The Jacobins domineered with fatal and sanguinary ascendancy: their favour assured safety and tranquillity; and expulsion from their body, or denunciation within their walls, amounted to a decree of banishment from all public intercourse, or, more frequently, to a sentence of death. Immediately after his being brought to Paris, the King was obliged to dismiss his gardes-du-corps, who immediately emigrated. The The same measure was adopted by many members of the Assembly, who could no longer bear to see the progress of events, teeming, as they thought, with the disgrace and ruin of their country. This proceeding, if founded on prudence, was not sanctioned by wisdom, nor crowned with success. Had they remained at home, and united in any prudent, defined, and practical system, they would have formed a powerful and influential body. When they had absented themselves, they soon found that their countrymen observed the proceeding with indifference; indifference was soon changed for hatred, and hatred was the harbinger of cruelty and injustice. In the legislature in particular, the loss of such men as Mounier, Lally-Tollendal, Bergasse, and La Luzerne, Bishop of Langres, was severely felt by the friends of order, government, truth, and justice; their absence was hailed by another party as the removal of an obstacle which delayed, if it could not finally prevent, the success of their attacks*. While the Assembly was yet detained at Versailles, by the want of a proper hall for their reception in Paris, inquiries were commenced on the causes of the transactions in October. Lafayette, conscious that it One of their body, M. Lally-Tollendal, wrote an able and eloquent defence of his conduct. He described the sufferings of the Royal Family, the rage expressed against the clergy, the fury of the mob of Paris, the encouragement it received in the Assembly, and the expressions and conduct of some of its members, as quite sufficient to justify him and others for resolving never more to set a foot in that den of anthropophagi. See Defence des émigrés françois, par M. Lally-Tollendal.- Deboffe, London, 1797. CHAP. LXVIII. 1790. was his interest to avert inquiry from his own conduct, attacked the Duke of Orléans, and, without much difficulty, obliged him to leave the realm. He arrived in England, where he found no refuge from the contempt Oct. 13th. of the upright and the virtuous, but in the indulgences and the dissipations which his dilapidated fortunes still enabled him to enjoy. Accusations of different persons, and statements of alarming facts concerning the atrocities at Versailles, were daily received: they were referred at first to a committee, and afterward to the court of the Chatelet, with power to examine wit- 22nd. nesses and report to the Assembly. Their labours were long, and their exertions diligent; among others, they interrogated the Queen, who at first declined answering, but, being pressed, made that celebrated and dignified reply, "I saw every thing, heard every thing, "and have forgotten every thing." The National Assembly in The abode, or rather the prison, for such they soon found it, assigned to the royal family, was the old, un- Paris. repaired, blood-stained palace of the Louvre. The Assembly, having before declared themselves inseparable from the person of the King, decreed their own removal to Paris: they sat at first in the Archbishop's Oct. 19th. palace (l'evéché), but afterward removed to a hall prepared for them at the riding-house near the Tuilleries. Nov. 9th. Plenty had, for a short period, seemed to be re- Famine in stored to the city, but famine soon re-appeared, and Paris. pressed with aggravated force. In their present condition, the King and his court could no longer be charged as causes of this calamity; and those who now governed the populace turned their fury against individuals, as forestallers of the markets and monopolizers of the first necessary of life; bakers, in particular, were the objects of vengeance. Two of these, who had been seized and sentenced, were rescued, on the very verge of destruction, by the national guard; but a third, named François, was murdered, with horrible barba- Oct. 21st. rity, and his pregnant widow obliged to kiss his lips, when his head had been just severed from his trunk. While this transaction was in progress, a motion was СНАР. LXVIII. 1790. Law against tumults. 24th. made in the Assembly for a decree enabling the government, in certain cases, to proclaim martial law, and for constituting a tribunal to try offences against the nation; for, as the old and well-understood term lèze majesté, would have implied too much confidence in, and deference to, the King, the new description of lèze nation was framed. In opposition to this proposal, Robespierre and several other members made characteristic speeches; but, at length, it was decreed, that whenever the public peace should be endangered, the municipal officers of the commune were to give notice, by displaying a red flag from a window of the townhouse and in the streets, that the military force would be called out. At this signal, all assemblies, armed or unarmed, were to be considered illegal, and immediately to disperse. The national guard was then to march, accompanied by one member, at least, of the municipal body, to demand of the people the cause of their being assembled; and, after certain citations and explanations, if they refused to disperse, the military were to fire. All crimes of lèze nation (but what they were was undefined) were left to the decision of the court of the Chatelet. In fact, this was now the only criminal tribunal in Paris. But the proceedings of a court, the slowness of which was always complained of when popular fury roared for victims, and which was never dreaded when popular delinquents stood at its bar, could not have much influence. Nor did the terrors of the new law produce much effect on a people whose cause was always defended by certain orators in the Assembly, whose motions were guided by instigators from the clubs which governed the legislature, and who, by their numbers and their clamour, could overawe the body by which they ought to have been controlled and governed. Far from enjoying tranquillity, Paris was in a state of constant alarm protected by no fixed public law, every man was made to feel that his life and his property depended on a capricious decree, emanated without charge, defence, or trial. Houses of municipal officers, members of the parliaments, national guards, and private indi |