The History of French Revolution. John Stevens Cabot Abbott

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The History of French Revolution - John Stevens Cabot  Abbott


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frowning before the door of their hall, the exultant looks and defiant bearing of their foes, all were portents of some decisive act.121

      Military detachments patrolled the streets and were posted around the hall. Four thousand guards were under arms, and there were besides several regiments in the vicinity of Versailles, within an hour's call. A tumultuous mass of people from Paris and Versailles surged around the building and flooded all the adjoining avenues. As the carriage of the king and queen, surrounded by its military retinue, approached, no voice of greeting was heard. The multitude looked on silent and gloomy. The king was exceedingly dejected, for his judgment and heart alike condemned the measures he had been constrained to adopt. The queen was appalled by the ominous silence, and began to fear that they had indeed gone too far. When a few voices shouted "Vive le Duc d'Orleans!" she correctly interpreted this greeting of her implacable foes as an intended insult, and was observed to turn pale and almost to faint.

      The king entered the hall with the queen, his two brothers, and his ministers, excepting Necker. The absence of Necker so exclusively arrested all thoughts, that the royal pageant was disregarded. Here again the monarch was received in silence, interrupted only by faint applause from the nobles.

      Such were the prohibitions. Then came the benefits. The king promised to sanction equality of taxation, whenever the clergy and the nobles should consent to such taxation. The king promised to adopt any measures of finance and expenditure which the States-General should recommend, if he judged such measures compatible with the kingly dignity. He invited the States—which, be it remembered, were to be assembled in three chambers, the clergy and the nobility being thus able to outvote the Commons by two votes to one—to propose measures for abolishing lettres de cachet, measures which should not interfere with the power of repressing sedition, and of secretly punishing those whose relatives would be dishonored by their being brought to trial. They were also invited to seek the means of reconciling liberty of the press with the respect due to religion and to the honor of the citizens. In conclusion, the king threatened that if the Commons refused obedience to these declarations he would immediately dissolve the States, and again take the reins of government entirely into his own hands. This address was closed with the following words:

      The king then, with his attendant court, left the hall. A large part of the nobility and nearly all the bishops followed him. Exultation beamed upon their faces, for they supposed that the National Assembly was now effectually crushed.

      FOOTNOTES:

      111. Michelet, vol. i., p. 105.

      112. "The party which professed to be the defender of the throne spoke with infinite disdain of the authority of the King of England. To reduce a King of France to the miserable condition of the British monarch was, in the bare conception, heinous and treasonable."—Considerations on the French Revolution, by Madame de Staël.

      The Marquis of Ferrières, a deputy of the nobles and an earnest advocate of aristocratic assumption, writes in his Mémoires: "The court, unable any longer to hide from themselves the real truth that all their petty expedients to separate the orders served only to bring on their union, resolved to dissolve the States-General. It was necessary to remove the king from Versailles, to get Necker and the ministers attached to him out of the way. A journey to Marly was arranged. The pretext was the death of the dauphin. The mind of the king was successfully worked upon. He was told it was high time to stop the unheard-of enterprises of the Third Estate; that he would soon have only the name of a king. The Cardinal Rochefoucault and the Archbishop of Paris threw themselves at the feet of the king and supplicated him to save the clergy and protect religion. The Parliament sent a secret deputation proposing a scheme for getting rid of the States-General. The keeper of the seals, the Count d'Artois, the queen, all united. All was therefore settled, and an order from the king announced a royal sitting and suspended the States under the pretense of making arrangements in the hall."

      "Is it decent," writes M. Bailly in his Memoirs, "that the members of the National Assembly, or even the deputies of the Commons, as you may still please to consider them, should thus be apprised of the intentions of the king, of the suspension of their own sittings, only by the public criers and by notices posted on the wall, as the inhabitants of a town would be made acquainted with the shutting up of a theatre?"


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