The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Europe from 1789 to 1918. Charles Downer Hazen
Читать онлайн книгу.
the assembly hall. And many even of those who had shared the fine enthusiasm of that stirring session might feel differently on the morrow.
This proved to be the case, and soon two parties appeared, sharply differentiated, the upholders of the revolution thus far accomplished and those who wished to undo it and to recover their lost advantages. The latter were called counter-revolutionaries. From this time on they were a factor, frequently highly significant, in the history of modern France. Although after the Fourteenth of July the more stiff-necked and angry of the courtiers, led by the Count of Artois, brother of the King, had left the country and had begun that 'emigration' which was to do much to embroil France with Europe, yet many courtiers still remained and, with the powerful aid of Marie Antoinette, played upon the feeble monarch. The Queen, victim of slanders and insults, was temperamentally and intellectually incapable of understanding or sympathizing with the reform movement. She stiffened under the attacks, her pride was fired, and she did what she could to turn back the tide, with results highly disastrous to herself and to the monarchy. Another feature of the situation was the subterranean intriguing, none the less real because difficult accurately to describe, of certain individuals who thought they had much to gain by troubling the waters, such as the Duke of Orleans, cousin of the King, immensely wealthy and equally unscrupulous, who nourished the scurvy ambition of overthrowing Louis XVI and of putting the House of Orleans in place of the House of Bourbon. All through the Revolution we find such elements of personal ambition or malevolence, anxious to profit by fomenting the general unrest. At every stage in this strange, eventful history we observe the mixture of the mean with the generous, the insincere with the candid, the hypocritical and the oblique with the honest and the patriotic. It was a web woven of mingled yarn.
Such were some of the possible seeds of future trouble. In addition, increasing the general sense of anxiety and insecurity, was the fact that two months went by and yet the King did not ratify or accept the decrees of August 4, which, without his acceptance, lacked legal force. Certain articles of the constitution had been already drafted, and these, too, had not yet received the royal sanction. Was the King plotting something, or were the plotters about him getting control of him once more? The people lived in an atmosphere of suspicion; also thousands and thousands of them were on the point of starvation, and the terror of famine reinforced the terror of suspicion.
Out of this wretched condition of discontent and alarm was born another of the famous incidents of the Revolution. Early in October rumors reached Paris that at a banquet offered at Versailles to some of the crack regiments which had been summoned there the tricolor had been stamped upon, that threats had been made against the Assembly, and that the Queen, by her presence, had sanctioned these outrages.
On October 5 several thousand women of the people, set in motion in some obscure way, started to march to Versailles, drawing cannon with them. It was said they were going to demand the reduction of the price of bread and at the same time to see that those, who had insulted the national flag should be punished. They were followed by thousands of men, out of work, and by many doubtful characters. Lafayette, hastily gathering, some of the Guards, started after them. That evening the motley and sinister crowd reached Versailles and bivouacked in the streets and in the vast court of the royal palace. All night long obscure preparations as for a battle went on. On the morning of the 6th the crowd forced the gates, killed several of the guards, and invaded the palace, even reaching; the entrance to the Queen's apartments. The Queen fled to the apartments of the King for safety. The King finally appeared on a balcony surrounded by members of his family, addressed the crowd, and promised them food. The outcome of this extraordinary and humiliating day was that the King was persuaded to leave the proud palace of Versailles and go to Paris to live in the midst of his so-called subjects. At two o'clock the grim procession began.
The entire royal family, eight persons, packed into a single carriage, started for Paris, drawn at a walk, surrounded by the women, and by bandits who carried on pikes the heads of the guards who had been killed at the entrance to the palace. "We are bringing back the baker, and the baker's wife, and the baker's son!" shouted the women. At eleven o'clock that night Louis XVI was in the Tuileries.
Ten days later the Assembly followed. The King and the Assembly were now under the daily supervision of the people of Paris. In reality they were prisoners. Versailles was definitely abandoned. From this moment dates the great influence of the capital.
A single city was henceforth always in position to dominate the Assembly. The people could easily bring their pressure to bear for they were admitted to the thousand or more seats in the gallery of the Assembly's hall of meeting and they considered that they had the freedom of the place, hissing unpopular speakers, vociferating their wishes. Those who could not get in congregated outside, arguing violently the measures that were being discussed within. Now and then some one would announce to them from the windows how matters were proceeding in the hall. Shouts of approval or disapproval thus reached the members from the vehement audience outside.
Chapter IV
The Making of the Constitution
The States-General which met in May, 1789, had in June adopted the name National Assembly. This body is also known as the Constituent Assembly, as its chief work was the making of the constitution. It had begun work upon the constitution while still in Versailles and the first fruit of its labors was the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a statement of the rights which belong to men because they are human beings, which are not the gift of any government. The Declaration was drawn up in imitation of American usage. Lafayette, a hero of the American Revolution, and now a prominent figure in the French, brought forward a draft of a declaration just before the storming of the Bastille. He urged two chief reasons for its adoption; first it would present the people with a clear conception of the elements of liberty, which, once understanding, they would insist upon possessing; and, secondly, it would be an invaluable guide for the Assembly in its work of elaborating the constitution. All propositions could be tested by comparison with its carefully defined principles. It would be a guarantee against mistakes or errors by the Assembly itself. Another orator paid a tribute to America, explaining why "the noble idea of this declaration, conceived in another hemisphere" ought to be transplanted to France. Opponents of the proposal declared it useless and harmful because the Declaration bound to distract the members from important labors, as tending to waste time on doubtful generalizations, as leading to hair splitting and endless debate, when the Assembly's attention ought to be focused on the pressing problems of legislation and administration. The Assembly took the side of Lafayette and, after intermittent discussion, composed the notable document in August, 1789. As a result of the events of October 5, described above, the King accepted it. The Declaration, which has been called "the most remarkable fact in the history of the growth of democratic and republican ideas" in France, as "the gospel of modern times," was not the work of any single mind nor of any committee or group of leaders. Its collaborators were very numerous. The political discussions of the eighteenth century furnished many of the ideas and even some of the phrases. English and American example counted for much. The necessities of the national situation were factors of importance.
The National Assembly has often been severely criticised for devoting time, in a period of crisis, to a Declaration which the critics in the same breath pronounce a tissue of abstractions, of doubtful philosophical theories, topics for everlasting discussion. "A tourney of metaphysical speculations" is what one writer calls it. But a study of the situation shows that the idea of a declaration and the idea of a constitution were indissolubly connected. The one was essential to the other in a country which had no historic principles of freedom. French liberty could not from the nature of the case, like English liberty, slowly broaden down from precedent to precedent. It must begin abruptly and with a distinct formulation. After the enunciation of the principles would naturally come their conversion into fact.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man laid down the principles of modern governments. The men who drew up that document believed these principles to be universally true and everywhere applicable. They did not establish rights - they merely declared them. Frenchmen well knew that they were composing a purely dogmatic text. But that