The History of French Revolution. John Stevens Cabot Abbott
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the unlimited power of the crown. A deputation of twelve was sent from the Parliament of Breton, with a remonstrance, to Versailles. They were all consigned to the Bastille. A second deputation, much larger, was sent. Agents of the king met them, and, by menaces, drove them back. A third, still more numerous, was appointed, to approach Versailles by different roads. The king refused to receive them. They held a meeting in Paris, and invited La Fayette and all patriotic Bretons in Paris to advise with them.74 This was the origin of the Jacobin Club.
Eight parliaments were exiled. But at Grenoble they refused to surrender themselves to the lettres de cachet. The tocsin pealed forth the alarm, and booming cannon roused the masses in the city and upon the mountains to rush, with such weapons as they could seize, to protect the Parliament. The royal general was compelled to capitulate and to retire, leaving his commission unexecuted. The nobles had appealed to the masses, and armed them to aid in resisting the king, and thus had taught them their power. It seems as though supernatural intelligence was guiding events toward the crisis of a terrible revolution. Four of the parliaments were thus enabled to bid defiance to the kingly power.
The attempt to establish the new courts was a total failure. The clergy, the nobility, and the people were all against it. A universal storm of hatred and contempt fell upon all who accepted offices in those courts. The Plenary Court held but one session, and then expired amid the hisses of all classes. The king seemed suddenly bereft of authority.
"Let a commissioner of the king," says Weber, "enter one of these parliaments to have an edict registered, the whole tribunal will disappear, leaving the commissioner alone with the clerk and president. The edict registered and the commissioner gone, the whole tribunal hastens back to declare such registration null. The highways are covered with deputations of the parliaments, proceeding to Versailles to have their registers expunged by the king's hand, or returning home to cover a new page with new resolutions still more audacious."75
Still there was no money, and Brienne was in despair. Wistfully he looked to his embowered chateau at Brienne, with its silent groves and verdant lawn. There, while these scenes were transpiring, had sat, almost beneath the shadow of his castle, "a dusky-complexioned, taciturn boy, under the name of Napoleon Bonaparte." This boy, forgetful of the sports of childhood, was gazing with intensest interest upon the conflict, and by untiring study, night and day, was girding himself with strength to come forth into the arena. He had already taken his side as the inexorable foe of feudal privilege and the friend of popular rights. He had already incurred the frown of his teachers for the energy with which he advocated in his themes the doctrine of equality. "The themes of Napoleon," said one of his teachers, "are like flaming missiles ejected from a volcano."
In these fearful scenes, ominous of approaching floods and earthquakes, God, in the awful mystery of his providence, took an energetic part. On the 13th of July of this year, 1788, the whole country, for one hundred and twenty miles around Paris, was laid waste by one of the most frightful hail-storms which ever beat down a harvest. Not a green blade was left. Gaunt famine was inevitably to stride over distracted, impoverished France. Consternation oppressed all hearts. It was now hastily decided that the States-General should be assembled in the following month of May. The queen was that day standing at one of the windows of Versailles, pallid, trembling, and lost in gloomy thought. She held in her hand a cup of coffee, which, mechanically, she seemed to sip. Beckoning to Madame Campan, she said to her,
"Great God! what a piece of news will be made public to-day. The king grants States-General. 'Tis a first beat of the drum of ill omen for France. This noblesse will ruin us."76
Brienne, who now occupied the post of prime minister, wrote to M. Necker entreating him to return to the post of Controller of the Finance. Necker refused. He was not willing to take charge of the finances with Brienne prime minister. Bankruptcy, with its national disgrace and wide-spreading misery, was at hand. On the 16th of August an edict was issued that all payments at the royal treasury should be made three fifths in cash, and the remaining two fifths in promissory notes bearing interest. As the treasury was without credit the notes were comparatively valueless. This was virtual bankruptcy, in which the state offered to pay sixty cents on the dollar. The announcement of this edict rolled another surge of excitement and consternation over the kingdom.
Count d'Artois called upon the queen and informed her of the terrible agitation pervading the public mind. She sat down in silence and wept. Brienne, pale, haggard, and trembling, frightened by the storm now raging, having contrived to secure for himself property to the amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year, gave in his resignation, entered his carriage and drove off to Italy, leaving the king to struggle alone against the Revolution.77
During these conflicts for power between the king and the nobles the moan of twenty-five millions crushed beneath the chariot-wheels of feudal aristocracy ascended, not unheeded, to the ear of Heaven. The hour of retribution if not of recompense approached. For weary ages the people had waited for its coming with hope ever deferred. Generation after generation had come and gone, and still fathers and mothers, sons and daughters were toiling in the furrows and in the shop, exclaiming, "O God, how long!" The dawn after the apparently interminable night was now at hand, but it was the dawn not of a bright but of a lurid day. France at this time presented the spectacle of millions in misery, of some thousands obtaining by the severest toil the bare necessaries of life, and of a few hundred rioting in wealth and luxury.
FOOTNOTES:
58. Histoire Philosophique de la Revolution de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, t. i., p. 58.
59. "Calonne has published a work on the French Revolution. At the end of it he gives an outline of his plan. Nothing can be more reasonable; and it remains an eternal indictment on the people of consequence then in France, more particularly on that part of them that composed the Assembly of Notables."—Lectures on the French Revolution, by Wm. Smyth, vol. i., p. 122.
60. Montgaillard, vol. i., p. 300.
61. There was at this time a nominal tax of two twentieths upon all incomes, which the clergy and the nobility were to pay as the rest. They contrived, however, in a great measure to evade this tax. "The princes of the blood, for example," says Bouillé, in his Memoirs, "who enjoyed among them from twenty-four to twenty-five millions yearly ($5,000,000), paid for their two twentieths only 188,000 livres ($37,600) instead of 2,400,000 ($480,000). The Duke of Orleans, who presided over the committee to which I belonged in the Assembly of the Notables, said to me, one day, after a deliberation in which we had considered and approved the establishment of provincial administrations, 'Are you aware, sir, that this pleasantry will cost me at least 300,000 livres ($60,000) a year?' 'How is that, my lord?' I asked. 'At present,' he replied, 'I arrange with the intendants, and pay pretty nearly what I like. The provincial administrations, on the contrary, will make me pay what is strictly due.'"—Bouillé's Memoirs, p. 41.
62. "This body at first courageously sustained the blow which had fallen upon them. But soon men accustomed to the pleasures of Paris threw aside the mask of stoicism which they had assumed, and redeemed themselves from exile by promising to adopt the views of the court, provided that no new taxation was proposed."—Desodoards, vol. i., p. 68.
63. The Marquis of Ferrières, a noble of high rank, was a deputy of the nobles. He was a warm patron of the old opinions and customs,