The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Europe from 1789 to 1918. Charles Downer Hazen
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leader at this time was Robespierre, a radical democrat but at the same time a convinced monarchist, a vigorous opponent of the small republican party which had appeared momentarily at the time of the epoch-making flight to Varennes. The Jacobin Club grew steadily more radical as the Revolution progressed and as its more conservative members dropped out or were eliminated. It also rapidly extended its influence over all France. Jacobin clubs were founded in over 2,000 cities and villages. Affiliated with the mother club in Paris, they formed a vast network, virtually receiving orders from Paris, developing great talent for concerted action. The discipline that held this voluntary organization together was remarkable and rendered it capable of great and decisive action. It became a sort of state within the state and, moreover, within a state which was as decentralized and ineffective as it was itself highly centralized and rapid and thorough in its action. The Jacobin Club gradually became a rival of the Assembly itself and at times exerted a preponderant influence upon it, yet the Assembly was the legally constituted government of all France.
The Cordelier Club was still more radical. Its membership was derived from a lower social scale. It was more democratic. Moreover, since the flight to Varennes it was the hotbed of republicanism. Its chief influence was with the working classes of Paris, men who were enthusiastic supporters of the Revolution, anxious to have it carried further, easily inflamed against any one who was accused as an enemy, open or secret, of the Revolution. These men were crude and rude but tremendously energetic. They were the stuff of which mobs could be made, and they had in Danton, a lawyer, with a power of downright and epigrammatic speech, an able, astute, and ruthless leader. The Cordelier Club, unlike the Jacobin, was limited to Paris; it had no branches throughout the departments. Like the Jacobins, the Cordeliers contracted the habit of bringing physical pressure to bear upon the Government, of. seeking to impose their will upon that of the representatives of the nation, the King and the Assembly.
Here then were redoubtable machines for influencing the public. They would support the Assembly as long as its conduct met their wishes, but they were self-confident and self-willed enough to oppose it and to try to dominate it on occasion. Both were enthusiastic believers in the Revolution; both were lynx-eyed and keen-scented for any hostility to the Revolution, willing to go to any lengths to uncover and to crush those who should try to undo the reforms thus far accomplished. Both were suspicious of the King.
They had inflammable material enough to work upon in the masses of the great capital of France. And these masses were, as the months went by, becoming steadily more excitable and exalted in temper. They worshipped liberty frantically and they expressed their worship in picturesque and sinister ways. They considered themselves, among the called themselves the true 'patriots,' and like all fanatics, they were highly jealous and suspicious of their more moderate fellow-citizens. The new wine, which was decidedly heady, was fermenting dangerously in their brains.
They displayed the revolutionary colors, the tri-color cockade, everywhere and on all occasions. They adopted and wore the bonnet rouge or red-cap, which resembled the Phrygian cap of antiquity, the cap worn by slaves after their emancipation. This was now, as it had been then, the symbol of liberty.
This is the period, too, when we hear of the planting of liberty poles or trees everywhere amid popular acclamation and with festivities calculated to intensify the new-born democratic devotion. Even in dress the new era had its radical innovations and symbolism. The Sansculottes now set the style. They were the men who abandoned the old style short breeches, the culottes, and adopted the long trousers hitherto worn only by workingmen and therefore a badge of social inferiority.
Such then was the new quality in the atmosphere, such were the new players who were grouped around the margins of the scene. Their influence was felt all through its year of fevered history by the Legislative Assembly, the lawful government of France. These men were all aglow with the great news announced in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, that the people are sovereign here below and that no divinity doth hedge about a king - that was sheer claptrap which had imposed on mankind quite long enough. Now that France was delivered from this sorry hallucination, now that the darkness was dispelled, let the new principles be fearlessly applied!
The reaction of all this upon the Legislative Assembly was pronounced. One of the first actions of that Assembly was to abolish the terms, 'Sire' and 'Your Majesty,' used in addressing the King. Another evidence that the new doctrine of the sovereignty of the people was not merely a rosy, yet unsubstantial, figment of the imagination, but was a definite principle intended to be applied to daily politics, was the fact that when dissatisfied with the Assembly, the people crowded into its hall more frequently, expressing their disapproval, voicing in unambiguous manner their desires, and the Assembly, which believed in the doctrine too, did not dare resent its application, did not dare assert its inviolability, as the representative of France, of law and order.
The signs of the times, then, were certainly not propitious for those who would undo the work of the Revolution, who would restore the King and the nobles to the position they had once occupied and now lost. The pack would be upon them if they tried. The struggle would be with a rude and vigorous democracy in which reverence for the old had died, which was reckless of traditions, and was ready to suffer and more ready to inflict suffering, if attempts were made to thwart it. Anything that looked like treachery would mean a popular explosion. Yet this moment, so inopportune, was being used by the King and Queen in secret but suspected machinations with foreign rulers, with a view to securing their aid in the attempt to recover the ground lost by the monarchy; was being used by the emigrant nobles in Coblenz and Worms for counter-revolutionary intrigues and for warlike preparations. Their only safe policy was a candid and unmistakable recognition of the new regime, but this was precisely what they were intellectually and temperamentally incapable of appreciating. They were playing with fire. This was all the more risky as many of their enemies were equally willing to play with the same dangerous element.
There was in the Legislative Assembly a group of men called the Girondists, because many of their leaders, Vergniaud, Isnard, Buzot and others, came from that section of France known as the Gironde, in the southwest of France. The Girondists have enjoyed a poetic immortality ever since imaginative histories of the Revolution issued from the pensive pen of the poet Lamartine, who portrayed them as pure and high-minded patriots caught in the swirl of a wicked world. The description was inaccurate. They were not disinterested martyrs in the cause of good government. They were a group of politicians whose discretion was not as conspicuous as their ambition. They paid for that vaulting emotion the price which it frequently exacts. They knew how to make their tragic exit from life bravely and heroically. They did not know, what is more difficult, how to make their lives wise and profitable to the world. They were a group of eloquent young men, led by romantic young woman. For the real head of this group that had its hour upon the stage and then was heard no more in the deafening clamor of the later Revolution was Madame Roland, their bright particular star. Theirs was a bookish outlook upon the world. They fed upon Plutarch, and boundless was their admiration for the ancient Greeks and Romans. They were republicans because those glorious figures of the earlier time had been republicans; also because they imagined that, in a republic, they would themselves find a better chance to shine and to irradiate the world. Dazzled by these prototypes, they burned with the spirit of emulation. The reader must keep steadily in mind that the Girondists and the Jacobins were entirely distinct groups. They were, indeed, destined later to be deadly rivals and enemies.
Such were the personages who played their dissimilar parts in the hot drama of the times. The stage was set. The background was the whole fabric of the European state system, now shaking unawares. The action began with the declaration of war by France against Francis II, ruler of Austria, and nephew of Marie Antoinette, a declaration which opened a war which was to be European and world-wide, which was to last twenty-three long years, was to deform and twist the Revolution out of all resemblance to its early promise, was, as by-products, to give France a Republic, a Reign of Terror, a Napoleonic epic, a Bourbon overthrow and restoration, and was to end only with the catastrophic incident of Waterloo. That war was precipitated by the French, who sent an ultimatum to the Emperor concerning the emigres. Francis replied by demanding the restoration to the German princes in Alsace of their feudal rights, and in addition, the repression in France "of anything that might alarm other States." War was declared on April 20, 1792. It was desired by the parties