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CHAPTER V
1791

STRUGGLES WITH LAFAYETTE-LAFAYETTE'S CHARACTER-ADMINISTRATOR TO THE DEPARTMENT-LETTER ACCEPTING APPOINTMENT FIRST RECORDED APPEARANCE AT THE JACOBINSTHWARTS KING'S JOURNEY TO ST. CLOUD

He

LAFAYETTE was contemptuously called by Mirabeau Grandison-Cromwell. Some modern writers have forgotten that Cromwell had not been rehabilitated in Mirabeau's time, and that hypocrisy and cant were then recognised as parts of his character. Mirabeau meant to sneer at Lafayette, but meant something more. certainly did not mean to attribute to him such qualities as to-day would be associated with Cromwell's name. What excited Mirabeau's scorn excited the Queen's hatred. Those who think that because Lafayette said a thing of Danton therefore it must be true, and that because Danton may have said to Lafayette, 'I am more Monarchist than you,' therefore Danton was a cynical hypocrite, should note what Mirabeau thought of Lafayette in 1790. His policy, he said,

will always be to fear and flatter the people, to partake in its errors from hypocrisy and self-interest; to support, whether right or wrong, the most numerous party; to terrify the Court by popular riots, which he himself has planned or has inspired the fear of, in order to render himself necessary; to prefer the public opinion of Paris to that of the rest of the kingdom,

because his strength does not come from the provinces. The man, though no demagogue, will always be dangerous to the royal power so long as the public opinion of Paris, of which he can be but the instrument, continues to be a law to him.

Mirabeau, in short, thought Lafayette to be a weak and vain hypocrite fundamentally actuated by selfish motives. Danton was of much the same opinion. Napoleon called him a 'noodle.' Jefferson said he had a 'canine appetite' for popularity and fame. Though we may discount somewhat Mirabeau's estimate as that of an enemy of wholly opposite temperament, it is plain that he was a vainglorious man, from boyhood bent on playing a showy part in the world, and returning from his petty though genuine success on the stage of American affairs with the conviction that he was to be the leading actor in the drama of the French Revolution. As experience disillusioned him he seems to have become spiteful as well as vain, and it is easy to conceive his disgust at finding that he, an aristocrat, a soldier with scars, a handsome cavalier, was outfaced and overborne by an ugly gowned civilian. He is said to have had something to do with-he certainly must have welcomed-Danton's exclusion from the municipality. But his satisfaction was to be brief. In February 1791 Danton was appointed Administrator to the Department of Paris, i.e. he became one of the thirtysix members of its Council-General, an honourable it not lucrative position, and superior in dignity to that refused to him five months before. The party of Bailly and Lafayette groaned over his election, though in the Council his minority was almost a minority of one ; but in the Jacobins it was hailed as a heavy blow to municipal despotism.

ELECTION TO DEPARTMENT

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It has been alleged that he owed his appointment to Mirabeau-Mirabeau, the supporter of the Veto and the King's right to declare war; Mirabeau suspect'; Mirabeau, whom Desmoulins's journal, in the next number but one to that which announced the appointment, reproached for ingratitude to Danton! The supposition is preposterous. Danton Danton might have helped Mirabeau, but could only have weakened himself by intrigue with a declining, discredited man.

This is the letter which Danton wrote to M. Cérutti, president of the Electoral Assembly, on his election :

I beg you, Sir, to announce to the Electoral Assembly that I accept the duties to which it has been pleased to call me. The votes with which Liberty's true friends honour me cannot strengthen my sense of what I owe my country. To serve it is a debt renewed day by day and ever increasing with increased means of paying it. I may deceive myself, but I feel, by anticipation, confident that I shall not disappoint the hopes of those who have credited me with that fervour of enthusiastic patriotism without which one can have no share either in winning or securing freedom, and with that moderation necessary for reaping the harvest of our happy Revolution. Eager always to have as my enemies the last partisans of overthrown despotism, I care not for calumny. I have only one ambition-to add to the esteem of my fellow-citizens who have done me justice. that of those well-meaning men who cannot be for ever blinded by baseless prejudice. But however opinion as to my public life may fluctuate, as I am convinced that it is for the interest of all that the people's supervision of its agents should be free from all restriction. and all danger, even in the case of men who may not shrink from accusations as false as they are grave, I pledge myself to reply to detraction only by my acts, and to revenge myself only by giving stronger and stronger proofs of my attachment to the Nation, the

Law, and the King, and of my undying devotion to the maintenance of the Constitution.

Danton had now two footholds for resistance to the Bailly-Lafayette party. As member of the Departmental Council he had a hand in assessment of taxes, poor relief, hospitals, charities, education, agriculture, trade, sanitation, public security, and, finally, the service and employment of the National Guard. As commandant of the Cordeliers battalion of the National Guard he had armed friends on whom he could rely. There was an anti-Dantonist minority in it which tried to change its name, but the failure of the attempt only strengthened his position. It was not long before he had need of all his resources. Meanwhile his first recorded appearance at the Jacobins is to be noted as having taken place on March 31, when he put Collot d'Herbois into a great rage by sharply criticising his praise of a certain M. Bonne-Carrère.

The occasion of the collision between Lafayette and Danton was the King's attempt to leave Paris in order to perform the ceremonies of Easter at St. Cloud. Stories were in circulation of his slights to the clergy who had taken the constitutional oath, and he was suspected of hoping to receive the sacraments at St. Cloud from the cleaner hands of nonjurors. As a matter of fact he was afflicted by sore qualms of conscience. In assenting to the civil constitution of the clergy he felt he had committed heinous sin. He quite meant to set himself right with Heaven by breaking his oath as soon as possible; but meanwhile, as long as he kept it, was he fit to receive the sacraments? A curious but characteristic dilemma of this most unkingly of kings! So he consulted the Bishop

THE KING'S CONSCIENCE

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of Clermont, confessing his scruples, and pleading in attenuation his purpose, as soon as he should fully recover his power, to restore the rights of the Church. The Bishop's answer, reeking though it did with episcopal unction, was not altogether such as bishops are wont to make to kings. It was eminently unconsoling. In plain though dulcet terms he told Louis that he ought to have braved martyrdom and that he ought not to receive the sacraments; and though beginning with an invocation of wisdom from above' he ended more practically by a candid exposition of the mundane reasons which dictated his advice. To avoid communicating in the parish church, and thereby rendering the scandal more scandalous, the King would have to communicate in his own chapel. But by this 'you will expose yourself to what you so prudently have at heart to avoid.'

The wretched King, unassisted by such cold comfort, thought he could turn the position by going to St. Cloud. Probably, too, he had other than spiritual tricks in his mind. The Parisian populace did not believe his purpose to be purely devotional, though as such they decidedly disapproved of it. They thought, not without good reason, that he meant to show them a clean pair of heels. Every morning since the autumn of 1789 some of them had visited the Tuileries to make sure with their own eyes that he was not gone. And now, on April 18, he was going. When the royal carriage appeared in the Place du Carrousel it was

mobbed. Lafayette was sent for. He was determined that the King should go; the people were determined he should not. Bailly's entreaties were as futile as his.

Danton was at the National Assembly when Talleyrand called his colleagues of the Department into a

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