THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/1902frenchrevolu02carluoft (^ointf rr o /lirn/r< /n;„ njj„.>/r/ THE FRENCH REVOLUTION A HISTORY BY THOMAS CARLYLE WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES AND APPENDICES BY JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, M.A. AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I," "THE REVOLUTIONARY AND NAPOLEONIC ERA," ETC. IN THREE VOLUMES WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND PLANS VOL. II ^ h THE CONSTITUTION l-^-^U "^^ ^h\ 1 LONDON GEORGE BELL AND SONS 1902 Mauern seh' ich gestiirzt, und Mauern seh' ich errichtet, Hier Gefangene, dort auch der Gefangenen viel. 1st vielleicht nur die Welt ein grosser Kerker ? Und frei ist Wohl der Tolle, der sich Ketten zu Kranzen erkiest ? Goethe. CHISWICK press: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO. TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. CONTENTS Book I. The Feast of Pikes. CHAPTER PAGE I. In the Tuileries i II. In the Salle de Manage ..... 7 III. The Muster 23 IV. Journalism 32 V. Clubbism 38 VI. JE le jure 44 VII. Prodigies 49 VIII. Solemn League and Covenant .... 53 IX. Symbolic 60 X. Mankind 62 XI. As IN the Age of Gold 69 XII. Sound and Smoke 76 Book II. Nanci. I. BOUILLE 85 II. Arrears and Aristocrats 88 III. BouiLL^ at Metz ....... 96 IV. Arrears at Nanci loi V. Inspector Malseigne 107 VI. Bouille at Nanci 112 Book III. The Tuileries. I. Epimenides 123 II. The Wakeful 129 III. Sword in Hand 136 IV. To fly or not to fly 143- V. The Day of Poniards 153 VI. Mirabeau 161 VII. Death of Mirabeau 166 V vi CONTENTS Book IV. Varennes. CHAPTER I'AGE I. Easter at Saint-Cloud 176 II. Easter at Paris 181 III. Count Fersen 185 IV. Attitude 194 V. The New Berline 199 VI. Old-Dragoon Drouet 204 VII. The Night of Spurs 208 VIII. The Return 218 IX. Sharp Shot 222 Book V. Parliament First. I. Grande Acceptation 229 II. The Book of the Law 239 III. Avignon 249 IV. No Sugar 258 V. Kings and Emigrants 262 VI. Brigands and Jales 274 VII. Constitution will not march .... 278 VIII. The Jacobins 284 IX. Minister Roland 289 X. Petion-National-Pique 295 XI. The Hereditary Representative . , 298 XII. Procession of the Black Breeches . 303 Book VI. The Marseillese. I. Executive that does not act . .310 II. Let us march 319 III. Some Consolation to Mankind .... 322 IV. Subterranean 328 V. At Dinner 332 VI. The Steeples at Midnight 337 VII. The Swiss 347 VIII. Constitution burst in Pieces . -355 Appendix I : Mirabeau's Plans for Louis XVI 363 Appendix II: The Declaration of Pilnitz . 368 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO FACE PAGE Marquis de Mirabeau .... Frojitispiece Madame Roland 58, Anacharsis Clootz 64 The People working at the Champ de Mars . 74 The Federation Festival, July 14th, 1790 ... 80 Water-Tournament, July i8th, 1790 82 The Hotel Castries sacked 142 The Riot at Vincennes 154 The Funeral of Mirabeau in St.-Eustache . .172 Return of the Royal Family from Varennes . 220 Publication of Martial Law 228 The Camp at Jales dispersed 276 J. M. Roland 289 Fete of Liberty on the Return of the Forty Swiss 296 J. POTION . 322 Proclamation of "La Patrie en Danger" . 324 Attack on the Tuileries, August 10th, 1792 . 352 Plan of Central Paris page viii ^' § 5 t^ ^ -5 33 S " -5 "2 -S -5 -S S S I J ^.-H I'> a i: S cj S O i I -H S "S ^ ortiiw oS = 0-3 -goo J: 2 o-^ rt S=S«J; o^"rt rt^=^J2-^-::-C g S O Afc< c>5 J: Pi 0^ z o &< > ^' •si a o Q « fa d ^ d &; d* OS ^ H ;5 X > N THE FRENCH REVOLUTION THE CONSTITUTION BOOK FIRST THE FEAST OF PIKES CHAPTER I IN THE TUILERIES THE victim having once got his stroke-of-grace, the catastrophe can be considered as almost come. There is small interest now in watching his long low moans : notable only are his sharper agonies, what con- vulsive struggles he may make to cast the torture off from him ; and then finally the last departure of life itself, and how he lies extinct and ended, either wrapt like Caesar in decorous mantle-folds, or unseemly sunk together, like one that had not the force even to die. Was French Royalty, when wrenched forth from its tapestries in that fashion, on that Sixth of October 1789, such a victim ? Universal France, and Royal Proclama- tion to all the Provinces, answers anxiously. No} Never- [If Louis had \ been an able man and had had a competent chief Minister, he might have saved the monarchy. Most people were alike disgusted and alarmed by the orgies of October 5th and 6th, and would have rallied around a qonstituiional monarchy, had the II. B — — 2 THE FEAST OF PIKES [bk. i, CH. i theless one may fear the worst. Royalty was beforehand so decrepit, moribund, there is little life in it to heal an injury. How much of its strength, which was of the imagination merely, has fled ; Rascality having looked plainly in the King's face, and not died ! When the assembled crows can pluck up their scarecrow, and say to it, Here shalt thou stand and not there ; and can treat with it, and make it, from an infinite, a quite finite Con- stitutional scarecrow,—what is to be looked for? Not in the finite Constitutional scarecrow, but in what still unmeasured, infinite-seeming force may rally round it, is there thenceforth any hope. For it is most true that all available Authority is mystic in its conditions, and comes " by the grace of God." Cheerfuller than watching the death-struggles of Roy- alism will it be to watch the growth and gambollings of Sansculottism ; for, in human things, especially in human society, all death is but a death-birth : thus if the sceptre is departing from Louis, it is only that, in other forms, other sceptres, were it even pike-sceptres, may bear sway. In a prurient element, rich with nutritive influences, we shall find that Sansculottism grows lustily, and even frisks in not ungraceful sport : as indeed most young creatures are sportful ; nay, may it not be noted further, that as the grown cat, and cat species generally, is the crudest thing known, so the merriest is precisely the kitten, or growing cat ? But fancy the Royal Family risen from its truckle-beds on the morrow of that mad day : fancy the Municipal " inquiry, " How would your Majesty please to lodge ? and then that the King's rough answer, " Each may lodge King frankly declared for it. But Paris was the danger. Mirabeau, always royalist at heart, besought his friend La Marck, a very influential officer, to get the King and Queen away from Paris to Rouen, whither the Assembly must then have followed. La Marck took a Memorandum to this etf( ct, drawn up by Mirabeau, to the Comte de Provence, who replied that the King's resolves had no more cohesion than a pile of oiled billiard balls. (For Mirabeau's relations to the Court see Appendi.x to this volume.) Ed ] OCT. 1789] IN THE TUILERIES 3 as he can, I am well enough," is congeed and bowed away, in expressive grins, by the Townhall Functionaries, how the with obsequious upholsterers at their back ; and Chateau of the Tuileries is repainted, regarnished into a his blue golden Royal Residence ; and Lafayette with National Guards lies encompassing it, as blue Neptune (in the language of poets) does an island, wooingly. Thither may the wrecks of rehabilitated Loyalty gather, Constitutionalism if it will become Constitutional ; for in King's thinks no evil ; Sansculottism itself rejoices the countenance. The rubbish of a Menadic Insurrection, as in this ever-kindly world all rubbish can and must be, is swept aside ; and so again, on clear arena, under new conditions, with something even of a new stateliness, we begin a new course of action. Arthur Young has witnessed the strangest scene: Majesty walking unattended in the Tuileries Gardens ; and miscellaneus tricolor crowds, who cheer it, and re- at verently make way for it : the very Queen commands lowest respectful silence, regretful avoidance.^ Simple ducks, in those royal waters, quackle for crumbs from little railed young royal fingers : the little Dauphin has a garden, where he is seen delving, with ruddy cheeks and little hutch to put his tools in, flaxen curled hair ; also a and screen himself against showers. VVhat peaceable simplicity! Is it peace of a Father restored to his children? Or of a Taskmaster who has lost his whip ? Lafayette and the Municipality and universal Constitutionalism assert the former, and do what is in them to realise it. Such Patriotism as snarls dangerously and shows teeth, shall Patrollotism shall suppress ; or far better, Royalty pattings soothe down the angry hair of it, by gentle ; and, most effectual of all, by fuller diet. Yes, not only shall Paris be fed, but the King's hand be seen in that work. The household goods of the Poor shall, up to a certain amount, by royal bounty, be disengaged from disgorge pawn, and that insatiable Mont de Piete shall ; ^ " Arthur Young's Travels," i. 264-2S0. — 4 THE FEAST OF PIKES [bk. l, CH. I rides in the city with their Vive-le-Rot n&ed not fail : and so, by substance and show, shall Royalty, if man's art can popularise it, be popularised/ Or, alas, is it neither restored Father nor diswhipped Taskmaster that walks there ; but an anomalous complex of both these, and of innumerable other heterogeneities : reducible to no rubric, if not to this newly-devised one : King Louis Restorer of Frejtch Liberty ? Man indeed, and King Louis like other men, lives in this world to make rule out of the ruleless ; by his living energy, he shall force the absurd itself to become less absurd.' But then if there be no living energy living passivity ? ; only King Serpent, hurled into its unexpected watery dominion, did at least bite, and assert credibly that he was' there : but as for the poor King Log, tumbled hither and thither as thousandfold chance and other will than his might direct, how happy for him that he was indeed wooden ; and, doing nothing, could also see and suffer nothing ! It is a distracted business.