The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Europe from 1789 to 1918. Charles Downer Hazen
Читать онлайн книгу.
being an enemy of the Revolution, if he hesitated in his support of measures which he could not and did not approve. Another was that it provoked in various sections, notably in Vendee, the most passionate civil war France had ever known. Multitudes of the lower clergy, who had favored and greatly helped the Revolution so far, now turned against it for conscience' sake. We cannot trace in detail this lamentable chapter of history. Suffice it to say that the Constituent Assembly made no greater or more pernicious mistake. The Church had, as the issue proved, immense spiritual influence over the peasants, the vast bulk of the population. Henceforth there was a divided allegiance - allegiance to the State, allegiance to the Church. Men had to make an agonizing choice. The small counter-revolutionary party of the nobles, hitherto a staff of officers without an army, was now reinforced by thousands and millions of recruits, prepared to face any revolutionary sacrifices. And worldly intriguers could draw on this fund of piety for purposes which were anything but pious. The heat generated by politics is sufficient. There was no need of increasing the temperature by adding the heat of religious controversy. French Revolution or eternal damnation, such was the hard choice placed before the devout.
"I would rather be King of Metz than remain King of France in such a position," said Louis XVI, as he signed the decree requiring an oath to Civil Constitution of the Clergy, "but this will end soon." The meaning of which remark was that the King was now through with his scruples, that he was resolved to call the monarchs of Europe to his aid, that he was determined to escape from this coil of untoward events which was binding him tighter and tighter, threatening soon to strangle him completely. The idea of a royal flight was not new. Marie Antoinette had thought of it long before. Mirabeau had counseled it under certain conditions which, however, were no longer possible. The nobles who had fled from France, some of them after the fall of the Bastille, more of them after the war upon the chateaux, hung upon the fringes of the kingdom, in Belgium, in Piedmont, and particularly in the petty German states that lined the fabled banks of the Rhine, eager to have the King come to them, eager to embroil Europe with France, that thus they might return to Paris with the armies that would surely be easily victorious, and set back the clock to where it stood in 1789, incidentally celebrating that happy occurrence by miscellaneous punishment of all the notable revolutionists, so that henceforth imaginative spirits would hesitate before again laying impious hands upon the Lord's anointed, upon kings by divine right, upon nobles reposing upon rights no less sacred, upon the holy clergy. The Count of Artois, the proud and empty-headed brother of the King, one of the first to emigrate, had said: "We shall return within three months." As a matter of fact he was to return only after twenty-three years, a considerable miscalculation, pardonable, no doubt, in that extraordinary age in which every one miscalculated.
Louis XVI, wounded in his conscience, now planned to escape from Paris, to go to the eastern part of France, where there were French troops on which he thought he could rely. Then, surrounded by faithful adherents, he could reassume the kingly role and come back to Paris, master of the situation.
Disguised as a valet the King, accompanied by the Queen, disguised as a Russian lady, escaped from the Tuileries in the night of June 20, 1791, in a clumsy coach. All the next day they rolled over the white highways of Champagne under a terrible sun, reaching at about midnight the little village of Varennes, not far from the frontier. There they were recognized and arrested. The National Assembly sent three commissioners to bring them back. The return was for these two descendants of long lines of kings a veritable ascent of Calvary. Outrages, insults, jokes, ignominies of every kind were hurled at them by the crowds that thronged about them in the villages through which they passed a journey without rest, uninterrupted, under the annihilating heat, the suffocating dust of June. Reaching Paris they were no longer overwhelmed with insults, but were received in glacial silence by enormous throngs who stood with hats on, as the royal coach passed by. The King was impassive but "our poor Queen," so wrote a friend, " bowed her head almost to her knees." Rows of National Guards stood, arms grounded, as at funerals. At seven o'clock that night they were in the Tuileries once more. Marie Antoinette had in these few days of horror grown twenty years older. Her hair had turned quite white, "like the hair of a woman of seventy."
The consequences of this woeful misadventure were extremely grave. Louis XVI had shown his real feelings. The fidelity of his people to him was not entirely destroyed but was irremediably shaken. They no longer believed in the sincerity of his utterances, his oaths to support the Constitution. The Queen was visited with the King's contumely, being regarded as the arch-conspirator. The flight throne was undermined. A republican party appeared. Before this no one had considered a republic possible in so large a country as France. Republics were for small states like those of ancient Greece or medieval Italy. Even the most violent revolutionists, Robespierre, Danton, Marat, were, up to this time, monarchists. Now, however, France had a little object lesson. During the absence of the King, the government of the Assembly continued to work normally. In the period following, during which Louis XVI was suspended from the exercise of his powers, government went on without damage to the republican state. A king was evidently not indispensable. It has been correctly stated that the flight to Varennes created the republican party in France, a party that has had an eventful history since then, and has finally, after many vicissitudes, established its regime.
But this republican party was very small. The very idea of a republic frightened the Constituent Assembly, even after the revelation of the faithlessness of the King. Consequently, in a revulsion of feeling, the Assembly, after a little, restored Louis XVI to his position, finished the Constitution, accepted his oath to support it, and on September 30, 1791, this memorable body declared its mission fulfilled and its career at an end.
The National Assembly before adjournment committed a final and unnecessary mistake. In a mood of fatal disinterestedness it voted that none of its members should be eligible to the next legislature or to the ministry. Thus the experience of the past two years was thrown away and the new constitution was intrusted to hands entirely different from those that had fashioned it.
Chapter V
The Legislative Assembly
The Constitution was now to be put into force. France was to make the experiment of a constitutional monarchy in place of the old absolute monarchy, gone forever. In accordance with the provisions of the document a legislature was now chosen. Its first session was held October 1, 1791. Elected for a two-year term, it served for less than a single year. Expected to inaugurate an era of prosperity and happiness by applying the new principles of government in a time of peace, to consolidate the monarchy on its new basis, it was destined to a stormy life and to witness the fall of the monarchy in irreparable ruin. A few days before it met Paris, adept, as always, in the art of observing fittingly great national occasions, had celebrated 'the end of the Revolution.' The Old Regime was buried. The new one was now to be installed.
But the Revolution had not ended. Instead, it shortly entered upon a far more critical state. The reasons for this unhappy turn were grave and numerous. They were inherent in the situation, both in France and in Europe. Would the King frankly accept his new position, with no mental reservations, with no secret determinations, honestly, entirely? If so, and if he would by his conduct convince his people of his loyalty to his word, of his intention to rule as a constitutional monarch, to abide by the reforms thus far accomplished, with no thought of upsetting the new system, then there was an excellent chance that the future would be one of peaceful development, for France was thoroughly monarchical in tradition, in feeling, and in conviction. The Legislative Assembly was as monarchical in its sentiments as the Constituent had been. But if the King's conduct should arouse the suspicion that he was intriguing to restore the Old Regime, that his oaths were insincere, then the people would turn against him and the experiment of a constitutional monarchy would be hazarded. France had no desire to be a republic, but it had a fixed and resolute aversion to the Old Regime.
Inevitably, since the flight to Varennes, suspicion of Louis XVI was widespread. The suspicion was not dissipated by wise conduct on his part, but was increased in the following months to such a pitch that the revolutionary fever had no chance to subside but necessarily distrust of mounted steadily. The King's views