The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Europe from 1789 to 1918. Charles Downer Hazen
Читать онлайн книгу.the Legislative Assembly. Only seven members voted against it. The supporters of the King wanted it, believing that it would enable him to recover power once more by rendering him popular as the leader in a victorious campaign and by putting at his disposal a strong military force. Girondists and Jacobins wanted it for precisely the opposite reason, as likely to prove that Louis was secretly a traitor, in intimate relations with the enemies of France. This once established, the monarchy could be swept aside and a republic installed. Only Robespierre and a few others opposed it on the ground that war always plays into the hands the rich and powerful, that the people, on the other hand, the poor, always pay for it and lose rather than gain, that war is never in the interest of a democracy. They were, however, voices crying in the wilderness. There was a widespread feeling that the war was an inevitable clash between democracy, represented by France under the new dispensation, and autocracy, represented by the House of Hapsburg, a conflict of two eras, the past and the future. The national exaltation was such that the people welcomed the opportunity to spread abroad, beyond the borders of France, the revolutionary ideas of liberty and equality which they had so recently acquired and which they so highly prized. The war had some of the characteristics of a religious war, the same mental exaltation, the same dogmatic belief in the universal applicability of its doctrines, the same sense of duty to preach them everywhere; by force, if necessary.
This war was a startling and momentous turning-point in the history of the Revolution. It had consequences, some of which were foreseen, most of which were not. It reacted profoundly upon the French and before it was over it compromised their own domestic liberty and generated a military despotism of greater efficiency than could be matched in the long history of the House of Bourbon.
First and foremost among the effects of the war was this: it swept the illustrious French monarchy away and put the monarchs to death. The war began disastrously. Instead of easily conquering Belgium, which belonged to Francis II, as they, the French, had confidently expected to, the French suffered severe reverses. One reason was that their army had been badly disorganized by the wholesale resignation or emigration of its officers, all noblemen. Another was the highly treasonable act of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who informed the Austrians of the French plan of campaign. This treason of their sovereigns was not known to the French, but it was suspected, and it was none the less efficacious. At the same time that French armies were being driven back, civil war, growing out of the religious dissensions, was threatening in France.
The Assembly, facing these troubles, indignantly passed two decrees, one ordering the deportation to penal colonies of all refractory or non-juring priests, the other providing for an army of 20,000 men for the protection of Paris.
Louis XVI vetoed both measures. Then the storm broke. The Jacobins inspired and organized a great popular demonstration against the King, the object being to force him to sign the decrees. Out from the crowded working men's quarters emerged, on June 20, 1792, several thousand men, wearing the bonnet rouge, armed with pikes and carrying standards with the Rights of Man printed on them. They went to the hall of the Assembly and were permitted to march through it, submitting a petition in which the pointed statement was made that the will of 25,000,000 people could not be balked by the will of one of one man. After leaving the hall the crowd went to the Tuileries, forced open the gates and penetrated to the King's own apartments. The King for three hours stood before them, in the recess of a window, protected by some of the deputies. The crowd shouted, "Sign the decrees!" "Down with the priests!" One of the ringleaders of the demonstration, a butcher called Legendre, gained a notoriety that has sufficed to preserve his name from oblivion to this day, by shouting at the King, "Sir, you are a traitor, you have always deceived us, you are deceiving us still. Beware, the cup is full." Louis XVI refused to make any promises. His will, for once, did not waver. But he received a bonnet rouge and donned it and drank a glass of wine presented him by one of the crowd. The crowd finally withdrew, having committed no violence, but having subjected the King of France to bitter humiliation.
Immediately a wave of indignation at this affront and scandal swept over France and it seemed likely that, after all, it might redound to the advantage of Louis, increasing his popularity by the sympathy it evoked. But shortly other events supervened and his position became more precarious than ever. Prussia joined Austria in the war and the Duke of Brunswick, commander of the coalition armies, as he crossed the frontiers of France, issued a manifesto which aroused the people to a fever pitch of wrath. This manifesto had really been written by an emigre and it was redolent of the concentrated rancor of his class. The manifesto ordered the French to restore Louis XVI to complete liberty of action. It went further and virtually commanded them to obey the orders of the monarchs of Austria and Prussia. It announced that any national guards who should resist the advance of the allies would be punished as rebels and it wound up with the terrific threat that if the least violence or outrage should be offered to their Majesties, the King, the Queen, and the royal family, if their preservation and their liberty should not be immediately provided for, they, the allied monarchs, would "exact an exemplary and ever-memorable vengeance," namely, the complete destruction of the city of Paris.
Such a threat could have but one reply from a self-respecting people. It nerved them to incredible exertions to resent and repay the insult. Patriotic anger swept everything before it.
The first to suffer was the person whom the manifesto had singled out for special care, Louis XVI, now suspected more than ever of being the accomplice of these invaders who were breathing fire and destruction upon the French for the insolence of managing their own affairs as they saw fit. On August 10, 1792, another more formidable, insurrection, occurred in Paris. At nine in the morning the crowd attacked the Tuileries. At ten the King and the royal family left the palace and sought safety in the Assembly. There they were kept in a little room, just behind the president' s chair, and there they remained for more than thirty hours. While the Assembly was debating, a furious combat was raging between the troops stationed to guard the Tuileries and the mob. Louis XVI, hearing the first shots, sent word to the guards to cease fire, but the officer who carried the command did not deliver it as long as he thought there was a chance of victory. The Swiss Guards were the heroes and the victims of that dreadful day. They defended the palace until their ammunition gave out and then, receiving the order to retire, they fell back slowly, but were soon overwhelmed by their assailants and 800 of them were shot down. The vengeance of the mob was frenzied. They themselves had lost hundreds of men. No quarter was given. More than 5,000 people were killed that day.
The Tuileries was sacked and gutted. A sallow-complexioned young artillery officer, out of service, named Napoleon Bonaparte, was a spectator of this scene, from which he learned a few lessons which were later of value to him.
The deeds of August 10 were the work of the Revolutionary Commune of Paris. The former municipal government had been illegally overthrown by the Jacobins who had then organised a new government which they entirely controlled. The Jacobins, the masters of Paris had carefully prepared the insurrection of August 10 for the definite purpose of overthrowing Louis XVI.
The menaces of the Duke of Brunswick had merely been the pretext. Now began that systematic dominance of Paris in the affairs of France which was to be brief but terrible. At the end of the insurrection the Commune forced the Legislative pension of Assembly to do its wishes. Under this imperious and entirely illegal dictation the Assembly voted that the King should be provisionally suspended. This necessitated the making of a new constitution as the Constitution of 1791 was monarchical. The present assembly was a merely legislative body, not competent to alter the fundamental law. Therefore the Legislative Assembly, although its term was only half expired, decided to call a Convention to take up the matter of the constitution. Under orders from the Paris Commune it issued the decree to that effect and it made a further important suffrage decision. For elections to the Convention it abolished the property suffrage, established by the Constitution of 1791, and proclaimed universal suffrage. France thus, on August 10, 1792, became a democracy.
The executive of France was thus overthrown. During the interval before the meeting of the Convention a provisional executive council, with Danton at the head, wielded the executive power, influenced by the Commune. The Assembly had merely voted the suspension of Louis XVI. The Commune, in complete disregard of law and in defiance of the Assembly, imprisoned the King and Queen in the Temple, an old fortress in Paris. The Commune also