room there where Lafayette and Bailly had come urging that force should be used to clear a passage for the King. Their faces fell when Danton entered, but, as they persisted in their demand, he said, 'I have already subjected myself to arrest in my country's service, but if I should be sent to the High Court for it I tell you plainly I am going to denounce you to the people. They are clearly right. You want to massacre them for obeying the supreme law of the people's good. Well, you must massacre me too, for if I cannot thwart your mad proclamation of martial law here I will run and resist it at the people's side.' On Lafayette offering his resignation Danton said, 'Only a coward quits his post in a time of peril. Besides, the Department did not appoint you. You must give in your resignation to the forty-eight Sections which elected you General.' Kersaint seconded him equally hotly, and Mottié' went off in a towering rage. Danton then ran to the Caserne de l'Observance, the headquarters of the Cordeliers battalion, and brought the force to the Carrousel. It was a rough shock to Lafayette's vanity to find that the National Guard, his children, as he called them, his worshippers, as he believed them to be, menaced him when he spoke of martial law, and cheered him when he threatened to throw up his command. At last the King gave way. Then Danton went to the Departmental Office at the Palais de Justice, and a remonstrance to the King was drawn up, which he and Kersaint inspired and Sieyes and Talleyrand may have toned down. To Bertrand de Molevile it seemed the language of cannibals,' to Camille Desmoulins the words of a paladin of romance, the first perhaps ever addressed to a king in the style of a free people. In it WEAKNESS OF THE DEPARTMENT 41 the King was told that enemies of liberty were shedding hypocritical tears over religion and working upon his conscience for their own ends; that he should cease to favour the refractory, assure foreign nations he was king of a free people, dismiss evil counsellors, and choose a new Ministry. The Department also passed a resolution for the convocation of the Sections, that they might vote Aye or No to these two questions: Ought the King to be asked to go, as he had intended?" 'Ought he to be thanked for abstaining from going in order to avoid a riot?' This truly astonishing resolution-made more astonishing by the fact that the exduke and Laodicean revolutionist, Larochefoucauld, was Departmental President-was followed by a longwinded proclamation, in which we may be sure Danton had no share, exhorting the citizens after this fashion: 'People attribute to the King a design of severing himself from the nation, and so breaking his royal oath. Citizens, can you forget his probity? He is said to encourage the refractory priests. Have you forgotten he has sworn to maintain the Constitution?' &c. The inanity of such platitudes, long drawn out like the lullaby of a loquacious nurse to a fractious baby, at first suggests irony; but it was clearly hoped that they would tranquillise Paris. One sentence, however, is memorable for something besides its absurdity, The citizens of Paris, who form only one section of the French people, can as such only act by addresses and petitions. Considering that the people had just acted to much purpose by quite other agencies we can imagine their titters as they read; but this belittlement of Paris did not, we may be sure, provoke smiles. Like the Department, the Municipality was eager to have its say, and, like the Department, warned the King against evil counsellors whose loyalty meant trickery, whose power was abuse of power, and whose fidelity was that of lazy drones to the hive's honey. If we wonder at a Department blowing hot and cold, and a Municipal Bailly backing Lafayette one day and signing such an address the next, we must remember what historians have sometimes forgottenfirst, that there must have been acute divisions in each body likely to account for much inconsistency; secondly, that men like Bailly, who dearly loved preaching, would like to lecture Louis, though disinclined to interfere with his liberty; and thirdly, that ex officio both Larochefoucauld and Bailly were bound often to appear to countenance what they really disapproved of. What is certain is that such men disapproved of Danton even more than of the King. Danton published his defiance of Lafayette and Lafayette's wish to fire on the people. The Department contradicted him, saying it had held two meetings on April 18, that Lafayette had made no such proposal at the first, which took place during the mob's meeting, and at which Danton was not present, and that he could not have proposed it at the second, when Danton was present, because the mob had already dispersed. But the words assumed to have been used by Danton at the Palais de Justice seem to have been really uttered in the room at the National Assembly. Camille Desmoulins, it is true, adds to a confusion of places not unnatural in such feverish moments by making Danton say he had spoken dans la tribune du département,' but there can be no real doubt of the part played by his friend on this memorable day. Lafayette ludicrously pretends that he was in the Court's pay, and provoked the riot in order to give the King a pretext for posing before Europe as a prisoner. But though Lafayette might rage and the Department imagine a vain thing, those hours during which the King sat waiting in his carriage added a cubit to Danton's reputation in the eyes of the Parisians. Mirabeau had died on the 2nd. On the 18th Lafayette was shown to be a shadow. His resignation and subsequent withdrawal of it were equally useless, and Danton, from that day forward, was the foremost man of action in Paris-that is to say, in France. He triumphed, in fact, all along the line. The feeble attempt of the Department to throw responsibility on the Sections was defeated by his inducing them to vote that it was not a subject for their deliberations. And the King, who on the 19th indignantly told the Assembly he was still determined to go to St. Cloud, stayed at home, fearing for our good priests.' He even issued a manifesto to Europe, which he induced M. de Montmorin, in spite of his disgust and his proffered resignation, to sign, protesting that he was perfectly free when he was in fact a prisoner, and praising a Constitution which had robbed him of his throne. CHAPTER VI 1791-continued KING'S PLOTS DENUNCIATIONS OF SIEYES AND CHARGES OF VENALITY-LAFAYETTE'S STORY LAFAYETTE ABOUT MONT COWARDLY though the King's proclamation seemed to De Montmorin, it was not prompted by cowardice. It was a deliberate attempt to throw dust in the people's eyes. At the very moment it was written the King's chief embarrassment was which to choose of plots for the overthrow of his lauded Constitution and for the reenslavement of his free people. Should he escape to Montmédy? Should he listen to De Breteuil, De Montmorin, or De Calonne ? Or should he be guided to less irredeemable issues by the Lameths? He himself hankered after Montmédy. And had he manœuvred and dissimulated only to get out of Paris much might have been forgiven him. But the Montmorin plan was of more far-reaching villany. It was to induce the Emperor, Prussia, Spain, Naples, and Sardinia to declare war on France in order to create a pretext for the King putting himself at the head of the army. The Queen, by a refinement of treachery, was to stay in Paris and make herself popular by sham appeals to the Emperor and the King of Naples to withdraw from the coalition. The National Guard was to be dissolved. A new Constitution was to be voted. The King was to re-enter Paris once more indeed a king. |