by Eugène Sue
Robespierre, Danton, and Billaud-Varenne were farsighted enough to detect the conspiracy hidden beneath these ostensible preparations for war. In the memorable meeting of the Jacobins, of the 12th of December, 1791, several orators of the republican party gave utterance to their sentiments.
“Far be it from me to raise my voice against the cruel necessity of an inevitable war,” declared Billaud-Varenne. “No! For when in 1789 people were congratulating themselves, saying that never had a revolution cost so little blood, I always answered: A people which breaks the yoke of tyranny can never seal its liberty irrevocably save by tracing the decree which consecrates it with the points of their bayonets! These must be plunged at least into the breasts of our enemies! Only by combating them can we be freed of them forever!”
“If it were a question of deciding whether, actually, we were to have war, I would answer, Yes,” declared Danton in turn. “Yes, the clarions of war resound; yes, the exterminating angel of liberty will smite the satellites of despotism. But when are we to have the war? Is it not after having well judged our situation, after having weighed everything, after having deeply scrutinized the intentions of the King who is going to propose war to us? Let us be on our guard against the Executive.”
Thus did Billaud-Varenne denounce at the Jacobins the plan of the counter-revolution, of which war was the mask. Thus did Danton, while sharing the same suspicion, nevertheless incline toward war, asking only that before the declaration of hostilities, the Assembly should scan closely the intentions of Louis XVI. Brissot took the floor and spoke for war, but a revolutionary war.
Robespierre finally arose to the tribunal:
“It seems to me that those who desire to provoke war have only adopted that opinion through insufficient scrutiny of the nature of the war we are about to embark upon, and of the circumstances with which we find ourselves surrounded. What sort of a war is it proposed that we declare? Is it a war of one nation against other nations? Is it a war of one king against other kings? Is it a war of revolution by a free people against the tyrants who override other peoples? No! What they propose to us, citizens, is the war of all the enemies of the French Revolution against the Revolution itself! This I shall prove by examining what has occurred up to this day, from the administration of the Duke of Broglie who in 1789 proposed to annihilate the National Assembly, up to that of the last successors of this minister....
“Behold what tissues of prevarication and perfidy, of violence and of ruse! Behold the subsidized sedition! Behold the conduct of the court and of the ministry! And is it to that ministry, is it to those agents of the executive power, that you would entrust the conduct of the war? Is it thus you would abandon the safety of the country to those who wish to destroy you?
“The thing which you have most cause to fear, is war. War is the greatest scourge which can, in our present circumstances, menace liberty! For it is in no wise a war kindled by the enmity of peoples. It is a war concerted by the enemies of our Revolution. What are their probable designs? What use would they make of these military forces, this augmentation of power which they ask of you under the pretext of war? They seek, in strengthening the powers of the crown, to force us to a deal! If we refuse, these royalists will then attempt to fasten it upon us by the force of the arms which you will have put into their hands.
“What, there are rebels to punish? The Representatives of the people aimed at them with a decree, and the King opposed his veto to the decree! Instead of allowing the punishment, imposed by the Assembly upon the Emigrants, to take its course, the King proposes a declaration of war, a sham war, whose only aim is to place a formidable military force at the disposal of the enemies of the Revolution, or to open to them our frontiers, thanks to the treason of the aristocratic generals still at the head of our armies! There you have the secret workings of this cabinet intrigue! There is the heart of this complot in which we shall be lost if we allow ourselves to be taken by the snare so craftily colored with patriotism and martial ardor, sentiments so strong in the French spirit.”
The sagacity of Robespierre thus tore the veil off the double project of Louis and the Austrian Committee, that perennial hotbed of conspiracy. The soul of this Committee was the Queen, and its numerous emissaries maintained relations with the Emigrant nobles and the foreign Kings; but Louis XVI and his court, by the sublimation of duplicity, carried treason within treason. They deceived even their accomplices.
Louis XVI wanted war because he reckoned on a victory by the allied Kings, and upon their early entry into Paris. Lafayette and his party never mingled in this machination against the country; hence, in order to obtain their support for the declaration of hostilities, Louis had to feign to conspire with them for the triumph of the constitutional kingdom and monarchic institutions.
The Girondins, scenting peril and treachery, sought to conjure away the dangers of the situation by imposing on Louis XVI three ministers whom they thought worthy of their confidence: General Dumouriez was charged with Foreign Affairs; Servan with the Department of War; and Roland with the ministry of the Interior. Dumouriez was a man of war, resourceful, bold and fiery, cunning and subtle of policy, but already grown old in underground intrigue and occult diplomacy; ambitious, cynical, intemperate of habit, covetous to the point of exaction, unreasonable in pride, without virtues, without principles, capable of serving valiantly the Republic and the Revolution, or of shamefully betraying both, according to the exigencies of his interest or ambition. Servan, an officer of genius, was a soldier of integrity, industry and modesty. He was capable and upright, and devoted to the Revolution. Roland was one of the purest and most beautiful characters of the time — simple, stoical, austere, disinterested, of scrupulous honesty, and with a firmness of will equal to the rigidity of his republican convictions, which were shared by his young and charming wife, the soul of the Girondin party, where she reigned as much by the loftiness of her spirit as by her qualities of heart and the attraction of her person.
On April 19, 1792, the Assembly declared war on Austria. Some days after the opening of the campaign the army corps under Count Theobald of Dillon, was, at the first engagement, stampeded before the armies of the coalition. The royalist officers gave the cry “Each for himself!” and provoked a panic among the troops. The army fled in full rout. The enemy crossed our frontiers and the heart of France fell under the menace of the foreign cohorts.
The Girondins recognized the trap into which their patriotism had led them, and spurred by the realization took three active revolutionary measures. They pronounced a sentence of exile upon the fractious priests, the promoters of civil war, who refused to stand by the Constitution; they had the Assembly decree the dissolution of the paid guard of Louis XVI; and they ordered the establishment of a camp of twenty thousand men around Paris, to form a reserve army and to cover the threatened capital. But Louis entered upon an open war with the Assembly, maintained his veto in the matter of the refractory priests, and refused to sanction the organization of the camp at Paris. Roland and Servan, the two patriot ministers, were unseated the 13th of June, and Louis formed a new cabinet, choosing its members from among the enemies of the people.
Still in the dark as to the designs of Louis XVI, and believing that the moment for a coup-d’-etat had arrived, Lafayette wrote from his camp a threatening letter to the Assembly, under date of June 16. The Assembly summoned Lafayette before its bar. He refused to appear. His trial was carried on without him, and he was acquitted by an immense majority. The clubs were thrown into a ferment. Danton at the Cordeliers, Robespierre at the Jacobins, organized for the 20th of June a peaceful demonstration to celebrate the anniversary of the oath of the Tennis Court, and to give Louis XVI a solemn warning. A huge multitude, swelled by women and children, gathered and marched down from the suburbs. The men were in arms; each district dragged its cannon with it. The delegates of the demonstration appeared at the bar of the Assembly. The spokesman delivered himself of his message:
“Legisl
ators, the people comes this day to make you share its fears and its disquietudes. This day recalls to us the memorable date of the twentieth of June, 1789, at the Tennis Court, when the Representatives of the nation met and vowed before heaven not to abandon our cause, to die in its defense. The people is up and alive to what is occurring; it is ready to take decisive measures to avenge its outraged majesty. These rigorous measures are justified by Article II of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, Resistance to Oppression.”
While part of the manifestants stationed themselves in the vicinity of the meeting hall of the Assembly, a large body of them planted a tree, symbolic of Liberty, in the garden of the Tuileries. The invasion of the palace gardens was accomplished with perfect order. Louis stood upon a chair in the recess of a window, surrounded by a detachment of National Guards.
One citizen, bearing a red cap on the end of a pole, passing in turn before the King, stopped for an instant and cried “Long live the Nation!” Then Louis XVI, leaning over and making a sign to the citizen to approach his pole nearer, voluntarily took the red cap and placed it on his head. A burst of fervid applause, from everyone who witnessed it, greeted the King’s act.
It was a day of suffocating heat; and Louis, seeing a National Guardsman with a water-gourd, indicated by signs that he wished to drink. The guard with alacrity offered his gourd to the King, who slowly quaffed its contents.
But the demonstration of the 20th of June changed in nothing the disposition of the court. Louis XVI continued his shady machinations, and, on the 25th of July, the Duke of Brunswick, generalissimo of the armies of the coalition, issued, in the name of the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Austria, and the Germanic Confederation, a manifesto against France.
The plans of the court were that the Duke of Brunswick, at the head of the Prussians, should cross the Rhine at Coblenz, ascend the left bank of the Moselle, attack that point, and march upon Paris by way of Longwy, Verdun and Chalons. The Prince of Hohenlohe, commanding the troops of the duchy of Hesse and a body of Emigrants, was to march on Thionville and Metz. General Clairfayt, at the head of the troops of the Emperor of Austria and another corps of Emigrants, was to cross the Meuse and make his way to Paris by Rheims and Soissons. Other bodies of the hostile army, placed on the northern frontier and along the Rhine, were to attack the French troops and assist the convergent march of the coalition upon the capital, which they were to seize.
The publication of the manifesto of the tyrants, so far from crushing the energy of the Revolution, exalted it to the pitch of heroism. The journal The Revolutions of Paris renders in glowing terms its account of the spirit in Paris and the departments:
“The National Assembly has at last pronounced the terrible formula, the signal of peril, the appeal to the courage of the people: The nation is in danger! The danger is, in fact, immense. The Directorate of the department of Paris is the most potent instrument the court has served itself with to beat down liberty. The majority of the other Directorates of departments, all the administrators, all the tribunals of justice, all the constituted authorities, are also either openly or covertly the accomplices of Louis XVI, of Marie Antoinette the Austrian, and of the courts of Berlin and Vienna. Louis XVI affords striking protection to all the fanatics, the artificers of civil war. This enemy, disguised under the name of the Constitutional King of France, does more harm of himself than all the other despots of Europe ever could. France is fallen into a state of convulsion, which will precipitate her into either slavery or anarchy. The country is in danger; the people is in insurrection! Frenchmen, you have at last become free!
“France has but two dangerous enemies: Lafayette and Louis XVI; and if the latter were stricken down, Lafayette would no longer exist.
“Then let Louis XVI be driven forever from the throne, and the nation is saved! People, to arms!”
Indeed, an insurrection alone could save public affairs. On August 4 Danton said at the Cordeliers: “The people must be appealed to, they must be shown that the Assembly can not save them. There is no safety save in a general rebellion.”
“There is but one question to solve,” said Robespierre on the 9th of the same month, at the Jacobins; “That question is the deposition of Louis XVI.”
From the beginning of the month of August, the ferment in Paris was on the increase. Every patriot instinctively felt the approach of grave public danger, and vied with his comrades in the effort to overcome it.
The Sections of Paris met nightly to deliberate on public matters. The Section of the Blind Asylum, or “Quinze-Vingts,” in the suburb of St. Antoine which was the most influential of all, took the initiative in the measures for insurrection, with this manifesto:
MINUTES OF THE SECTION OF THE BLIND ASYLUM, AUGUST, 9, 1792.
The Section received the commissioners of the following Sections: Fish-Wife, Good-News, Carpet-Shop, Montreuil, Gravillieurs, Beaubourg, Red-Cross, Culvert, Lombards, Ill-Counsel, Popincourt, the Arsenal, the Tuileries, etc., etc. All have adopted the decisions of the Section of the Blind Asylum, recognizing that they were armed solely for the safety of public affairs and the regeneration of France.
An address was read from the federates of the eighty-two departments, asking the Sections of Paris to assemble in arms.
On the motion of its members, the Section decided that each of the Sections of Paris shall name three committee-men, the same to meet at the City Hall of Paris, replace the present Municipal Council, and consider the means necessary for the public weal.
The Sections shall receive no orders other than those coming from a majority of their committee-men, forming the Commune of Paris.
The committee-men named to represent at the Commune the Section of the Blind Asylum are Huguenin, Rossignol, and Balin.
Each Section formulated the powers given by it to its committee-men in the new council of the Commune of Paris. Thus, the formula of the Blind Asylum Section read: “The Section gives to its committee-men unlimited power to do everything to save the country.” Prominent among the committee-men elected by the Sections to the new council were Robespierre, Billaud-Varenne, Fabre D’Eglantine, Chaumette, and Fouquier-Tinville.
The first act of the members of this revolutionary Commune was to march to the City Hall on the night of the 9th of August, and in the name of the sovereign people, whose representatives they were, to depose the old Municipal Council from its functions, with the following decree:
The Assembly of the Committee-men of the Sections, assembled with full power to save the common weal, considering that the first measure of safety is to seize all the powers that have been delegated to the Commune of Paris, and to remove from the staff of the National Guard the evil influence that it has upon the public liberty, decree:
1.º The staff is suspended from its functions.
2.º The Municipal Council is suspended. Citizen Petion, Mayor, and Citizen Roederer, attorney for the Commune, shall continue their duties.
These measures taken in the name of the majority of the citizens of Paris, according to the powers conferred upon it, the new Commune of Paris organized and established itself in permanence in the City Hall, ready to conduct itself in line with the Revolution; while the people loaded their muskets and cannon and prepared to march on the palace of the Tuileries.
CHAPTER VII.
TRIUMPHANT INSURRECTION.
CALLED TO MY place in the battalion of my Section, the Section of the Pikes, I found myself on guard at the National Assembly on this night of the 9th of August. About half after eleven, just as I finished my watch, I heard the assembly beat, and the bells ringing. Soon there arrived in haste, some alone, some in groups, a large number of the popular Representatives. Awakened by the tocsin and the drum, they were repairing to their meeting place, laboring under the presentiment of some untoward event. Otherwise the greatest quiet reigned about the quarter of the Tuileries. Being now off duty, I hastened to one of the public galleries of the Assembly, which, despite the lateness of the hour, were no
t long in filling with an eager, restless crowd, composed, for the most part, of women, young girls, and old men. The male constituency which usually attended the sessions was this time occupied elsewhere; that is to say, they had scattered to the ends of Paris where they were preparing the revolt. All the working men were under arms.
In the center of the semicircle formed by the great hall of the Riding Academy, in which the Assembly was sitting, rose the rostrum, with the arm-chair of the president. Behind the chair opened a sort of recess, enclosed by a grating. It was the place assigned to the short-hand writers, or logotachygraphes as they were called, persons skilled in the art of writing with the speed of speech, who were charged with transcribing the discourses of the speakers.
It was the common word in the galleries that all the Sections of Paris were assembling in arms in their respective quarters, and that their committee-men had gone to the City Hall to exercise the powers of the Commune of Paris. It was also said that the federates of Marseilles, gathered at the Cordeliers, had sent a patrol into the neighborhood of the Tuileries, and arrested, near the Carousel, a counter-patrol of royalists, among whom were the journalist Suleau, Abbot Bourgon, and an ex-bodyguard named Beau-Viguier. Further it was declared that two thousand former nobles had been called together at the Tuileries, as well as a large number of veteran officers or body-guardsmen, to defend the palace. Some said that the Swiss regiments, re-enforced by those from the barracks of Courbevoie, were at the palace, supported by a formidable battery of artillery, and that Mandat, commander of the National Guard, had announced that he would crush the insurrection. The approaches to the palace were guarded by gendarmes afoot and on horse. Everything pointed to a desperate resistance should a struggle be engaged between the people and the defenders of the Tuileries.