The intense animosity that sprang up between Lafayette and Marat had its roots in a dispute over freedom of the press that began during the return to order following the October Days. Lafayette’s feelings on the subject were mixed. In 1787, he condemned as “seditious” the avertissement in which Calonne attempted to rouse the ire of the people against the landed classes, and at least one preliminary draft of Lafayette’s Declaration of the Rights of Man had allowed for limits on the press, insisting that “no man may be disturbed either for … his opinions, or the communication of his thoughts by speech, writing, or print unless he has disturbed the peace by slander.” The version he presented in public was far more liberal, though, listing “the communications of his thoughts by all possible means” among every man’s “inalienable and imprescriptible” rights. On October 8, the Châtelet—the criminal court of Paris, which was closely associated with both the city police and Lafayette’s National Guard—issued a warrant for Marat’s arrest. Officially, Marat was charged with having libeled one of the city’s leaders, but behind the accusation lay a series of venomous attacks against the municipal and national governments. In one, Marat had gone so far as to call for the head of Necker, whom Marat had denounced as a traitor. In the wake of the march to Versailles, Lafayette seems to have reconsidered the consequences of unfettered free speech, especially in cases where incitement to violence was concerned.
On January 9, 1790, the National Guard made the first of several unsuccessful attempts to take Marat into custody. He responded in his favorite venue, placing an open letter to Lafayette in L’ami du peuple. As Marat described it, forty or fifty armed grenadiers and chasseurs had stormed into his home at eleven-thirty in the evening to arrest him for the high crime of publishing insults and slander. Not only should these “brave warriors” have been embarrassed by such an outsized show of force, wrote Marat, but they “should never forget that, being soldiers of the nation, they must never take up arms to oppress its defenders.” He addressed Lafayette directly, insisting that “you, sir, on whom the confidence of the nation rests,” should instill sentiments of restraint in the troops. Observing that the soldiers who came “to violate my privacy, and to tear me from my hearth” had been technically sent by the Châtelet, Marat absolved Lafayette of complicity, largely for rhetorical effect: “If this tribunal can make soldiers oppress the people with impunity and without your consent, who will stop them from using the national forces against the public? What will happen to your functions as Commander General? And what will the nation, which regards you as its avenger, think of you?” He concluded with a personal challenge, daring Lafayette “to justify in the eyes of the nation the sincerity of the patriotic sentiments that you profess.” Lafayette did not respond to Marat directly, but before the year was out he would profess his patriotism more grandly than ever before.
Since November 29, 1789, cities and towns throughout France had been hosting picturesque “festivals of federation”—elaborately choreographed celebrations organized by local members of the National Guard, in which citizens witnessed their militiamen swearing allegiance to a reborn France and its new constitution. At each event, the local population constructed stage sets, designed costumes, and composed suites of music in an outpouring of creative fervor that swept the nation throughout the spring of 1790. The largest and most spectacular of these festivals was held on July 14, 1790, at the Champ de Mars in Paris—the parade ground for the École Militaire and, today, the home of the Eiffel Tower. The celebration was meant to mark the revolution’s culmination, and it was destined to be Lafayette’s day of triumph.
Preparations began in June, when Bailly, acting on behalf of the Parisian authorities, presented the city’s plan for a Festival of Federation to the National Assembly. “Messieurs,” he began, “a new order of things is emerging and will regenerate all the parts of the realm.” Divisions among the provinces and their people having been banished, he declared, “There is now only one duty, that of submission to the law and the king; there is now only one sentiment, that of love and fraternity.” Recognizing that the nation’s future peace and prosperity would rest on this unity, Bailly rallied all “our brothers to come, as deputies of districts and departments, to join with us within our walls, in our presence, and to add to the civic oath already sworn by all the French that of being indivisibly united, to love each other always and to help each other, as the need arises, from one end of the realm to the other.” By holding the event on July 14, the city intended to honor the fall of the Bastille, a date, Bailly concluded, that marked the beginning of “the epoch of liberty.”
Festival of Federation, celebrated on the Champ de Mars, July 14, 1790. (illustration credit 15.1)
Louis XVI preparing the ground for the Festival of Federation at the Champ de Mars. (illustration credit 15.2)
The assembly approved overwhelmingly. The president envisioned a “union of all the citizens, of all the soldiers of liberty, of all the military,” who would join with “the king of a free nation” in swearing “with him to maintain this constitution as long as the sentiment of liberty and the enlightenment of reason exist among men.” The curate of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois was even more effusive. He predicted a veritable paradise on earth, in which “citizens of all ages” would be transported by “the holy joy that will enflame their hearts.” As he saw it, July 14, 1790, would be a “beautiful day, which will never be erased from our memory.”
The plan approved by the assembly called for the Champ de Mars to undergo massive renovations. An enormous, oval amphitheater would be carved out of the training grounds, stretching the entire length of the field. At the northern end of the arena, near the Seine, a triumphal arch would permit three columns of soldiers to enter in the manner of victorious Romans. And at the center of it all, on a raised, circular platform atop a flight of steps, amid clouds of incense wafting from a ring of braziers, Lafayette would lead the crowd in swearing allegiance to the king, the nation, and the constitution, while Talleyrand—who, despite the various worldly roles he played, was a bona fide bishop—would consecrate the occasion with a Roman Catholic Mass. Louis XVI, who by this point had effectively become a bystander in his own realm, was to look on from a viewing platform covered with a canopy of blue and gold fabric to be erected just in front of the École Militaire. In the United States, Lafayette had been feted by every city he’d visited, but nothing in the young American republic could possibly compare with festivities that featured Lafayette upstaging his own monarch.
Souvenir of the Festival of Federation. (illustration credit 15.3)
To bring about this glorious spectacle, the citizens of Paris were unable to tame the heavens, but they were willing to move the earth. After pouring rains delayed construction for weeks, men, women, and children of all ages and classes—including Lafayette, members of the National Assembly, and no less a figure than the king himself—labored for days on end, swinging picks, shoveling dirt, and pushing wheelbarrows for the cause, while their voices joined together to sing “Le carillon national”—“Ah! Ça ira! Ça ira! Ça ira!” Louis-Sebastien Mercier waxed rhapsodic about the heartwarming scene of 150,000 citizens peacefully united and recalled witnesses coming away with “their eyes bathed in tears.” So picturesque was the sight that an anonymous society of artists took out a classified ad on July 12 offering hand-colored commemorative drawings depicting a “View of the Patriots’ Work on the Champ de Mars.” Each made-to-order drawing promised “gay scenes, unique tableaux, a striking mélange of varied costumes, an astonishing flurry of cheerful groups brought together by chance.” Together, these joyous vignettes would help to “perpetuate the memory of an event that posterity will find hard to believe.” Advance orders were welcome; any visitors from the provinces who might wish “to help their countrymen enjoy the view of a spectacle that they were not able to attend” were advised that pictures commissioned before the festival would be ready for pickup four days later.
Such enterprising dra
ftsmen were but a small part of the vast cottage industry that sprang up in Paris in July 1790 as individuals from all walks of life sought to cash in on the opportunities presented by the influx of tens of thousands of men from every corner of the nation. Advertisements for products and services ranging from commemorative souvenirs to ride-shares for the homeward journey vied for the attention of “Messieurs les Députés” in the pages of the daily Affiches, annonces, et avis divers. Capitalizing on a fortuitous view of the Champ de Mars, the owner of a “large and comfortable house” situated on the Chaillot hill offered all-inclusive tickets for twenty-four livres apiece, providing “refreshments of all variety,” an afternoon concert, “a good dinner” at nine p.m., and a grand ball to cap off the night. Another property owner sold no-frills seats with views of the procession at lower rates varying from three livres to one livre, sixteen sous, depending on proximity and line of sight. Performances and spectacles adopted patriotic themes, as the Comédie Française appended topical verses to its presentation of July 9—for instance, taking liberties with the geography of America’s heroes to produce the rhyme “Paris, like Boston / has in Bailly, in Lafayette / its Franklin and its Washington.” On July 11, a commercial pleasure ground in the Marais called the Vauxhall d’Été offered illuminations, fireworks, and a spectacular reenactment of “The Taking of the Bastille,” described as a “grand pyrotechnic Pantomime ending with The Temple of Liberty.” And on July 14, just hours after the national festival concluded, the circus at the Palais-Royal re-created it in a “musical drama,” with tickets priced at double the usual cost.
As fate would have it, the festival itself turned out to be a sodden affair, as a cold wind and frequent downpours arrived before dawn on July 14, drenching the crowds camped out on the Champ de Mars. The dreadful weather continued for most of the day, but no item was omitted from the agenda, as the fédérés, as members of the National Guard from each of the nation’s eighty-three departments were known, started gathering at six in the morning and celebrated through the morning and afternoon, with events culminating in a dinner held in their honor at the nearby Château de la Muette at six in the evening. The opening procession alone lasted hours: representatives from scores of civil and military groups filed through the triumphal arches in fits and starts. The army sent detachments of cavalry, grenadiers, artillerymen, chasseurs, and hussars. Paris was represented by its electors and mayor as well as the presidents of each district, a battalion of veterans, a group of children, and a corps of musicians. The National Assembly was out in full force, joining the Paris National Guard and the fédérés. It was not until three-thirty in the afternoon that Talleyrand took his place at the altar to bless the white flags held aloft by the eldest member of every departmental deputation. Following a full Latin Mass, Lafayette’s moment finally arrived. Five hundred drums beat as one as he climbed the steps to the altar. Miraculously, the rain abated as Lafayette led the assembled crowd, some 350,000 strong, in swearing allegiance to the nation, the law, and the king.
Helen Maria Williams, an English author who attended the Festival of Federation, surely exaggerated when she called the spectacle “the triumph of human kind,” but it was indisputably the triumph of Lafayette. The Révolutions de Paris, whose editors had grown wary of Lafayette’s overweening success, parodied the day’s outsized displays of affection in a tongue-in-cheek report on the fédérés’ fondness for their hero: “Ten thousand of them dashed towards him, some kissing his face, others his hands, others his uniform: it was only with great difficulty that he managed to remount his horse.” Referring to Suetonius’s account of the notoriously depraved emperor Caligula, who appointed his horse consul, the authors predicted that “if there had been an election, popular folly might have lavished on M. de la Fayette’s horse … the honors that a Roman emperor bestowed upon his own in a fit of despotic frenzy.”
In contrast to Lafayette’s white horse, Louis XVI was barely noticed. Declining to join the grand procession due to the rain, the king entered the royal pavilion through a rear door. He bore no scepter and wore neither crown nor ceremonial robe. Put out by this grandiose display of his own insignificance, the king did not so much as “bother to leave his throne for the altar to give the people who had loaned him twenty-five million [livres] … the satisfaction of seeing him take the oath,” in the words of the Révolutions de Paris.
In the hours and days that followed the oath taking, Lafayette continued to reign triumphant. William Short, Jefferson’s private secretary who succeeded Jefferson as the American ambassador to France, wrote to Morris, then sojourning in London, to say that Lafayette “seemed to have taken full possession of the fédérés—his popular manner pleased them beyond measure.” Writing to Jefferson, Short noted that Lafayette had opened the ground floor of his home to the fédérés, feeding at first one hundred, then a hundred and fifty, then two or three hundred men every day at tables set up wherever space permitted. According to the Englishwoman Helen Maria Williams, Lafayette, “who is so justly the idol of the French nation,” was nearly smothered at the feast at La Muette. Writing to a friend in England, she related that Lafayette had cried out, “But, my friends, you stifle me!” before being whisked away in the interest of his own safety. For the rest of the week, as dances and festivals enlivened the streets of Paris and visiting soldiers filled the arcades of the Palais-Royal with “the air of the general rendez vous of all the votaries of Mars, Bacchus, and Venus,” the Révolutions de Paris observed that Lafayette “was everywhere, and everywhere he received the honors of an apotheosis.” An illuminated transparency of his likeness and a corresponding image of Bailly were erected on the Pont Neuf, placed on either side of the equestrian statue of the still-beloved Bourbon monarch Henri IV, while a vast outpouring of prints, paintings, poems, and songs celebrated Lafayette as the man who brought liberty to France. According to the Révolutions de Paris, as the fédérés began to pack their bags full of souvenirs to share with friends and family at home, “all the editions of the portrait of this hero sold out.”
Lafayette at the altar of the Festival of Federation, July 14, 1790. (illustration credit 15.4)
Among the thousands of pieces of revolutionary memorabilia held in the remarkable collections of the Musée Carnavalet (the museum of Paris history), one oil painting epitomizes the week’s veneration of Lafayette. The artist, whose identity is unknown, offers a close-up view of the patriotic altar erected on the Champ de Mars just as Lafayette begins to read the oath to the expectant crowd. Dressed in his blue-and-white National Guard uniform, Lafayette stands proudly atop the circular platform, his upright posture echoed by the columnar altar in front of him and the triumphal arch in the distance. Talleyrand, in his bishop’s miter, stands a few steps down, in a position so marginal that his robes seem to flow past the picture’s rightmost edge. At the left, two fédérés—perhaps the men who commissioned the painting—gaze directly at the viewer as their companions tilt their heads upward, mouths parted in anticipation of the coming pledge. Lafayette’s raised left hand holds a piece of paper, presumably the text of the oath, while he points with his sword, using his right hand, at the base of a small crucifix. Although dark clouds occlude much of the sky, three diagonal beams of light streak down through a clear blue patch at the upper left, pointing directly at Lafayette, as though the very forces of nature had conspired to heighten the drama. A gust of wind threatens to topple the red, white, and blue figure of a patriotic altar boy, who struggles to remain upright as his tricolor flag, caught in the wind, pulls him back. Lafayette alone stands effortlessly erect, commanding our admiration.
CHAPTER 16
UNFLATTERING PORTRAITS
William Short had been in politics long enough to recognize a missed opportunity when he saw it. Like the vast majority of observers, Short believed that the Festival of Federation had marked “the zenith” of Lafayette’s “influence,” as he wrote to Gouverneur Morris two weeks after the event. But he was one of the few to express a
prescient regret that Lafayette did not capitalize more fully on that triumph. Short lamented that Lafayette had “made no use of it, except to prevent ill.” Looking ahead, he worried that “the time will come, perhaps when [Lafayette] will repent having not seized that opportunity of giving such a complexion as every good citizen ought to desire.”
In fact, the time was already at hand, as challenges were springing up daily on a national level. Insurrections roiling the army in the far reaches of France were a particularly vexing development, as Lafayette noted in correspondence with his cousin the Marquis de Bouillé, a former governor of Martinique who was stationed in Metz as commander of a portion of the Army of the East. An ardent defender of the monarchy, Bouillé had sworn allegiance to the new constitution only at the king’s behest and was now contemplating the various options that lay before him. Uncertain of how much support he should lend, he wrote to sound out Lafayette, who responded, “If I love liberty and the principles of our constitution above all, my second wish, my very ardent wish, is for the return of order, calm and for the establishment of the public force.” Lafayette understood as well as anyone that the success of a revolution depended on its army, and he took the opportunity to try to win Bouillé fully to the side of the constitution: “let us serve it, my dear cousin, with all of our power,” vanquishing “all that might disturb the happiness and peace of our fellow citizens, from whatever side the attacks might come.” Lafayette was being candid; he had no grand plans to hide and no personal agenda beyond ensuring liberty in the best way he knew how.
Three months later, as dissent in the army worsened, Lafayette confessed his deepening troubles to Washington, who was then serving his first term as president. Lafayette was worried not only about the king’s émigré brothers, who talked of raising foreign armies to retake France, but also about threats from Orléans and others on the left who had donned the populist mantle. Writing from Paris on August 23, he reported to Washington on “Revolts among the Regiments,” explaining that “as I am Constantly Attacked on Both Sides … I don’t know to which of the two we owe these insurrections.” Yet he correctly surmised that the more immediate danger to his own authority came from the left. As he put it, “I Have lately lost Some of My favour with the Mob, and displeased the frantic lovers of licentiousness, as I am Bent on Establishing a legal Subordination.”
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