Lectures on the French Revolution

as well as in her life, and we must turn our thoughts to her, who had so much influence and so much sorrow, and who beyond all women in European history, excepting one, has charmed and s

one the vengeance of the people. The terrific experience of October, when she saw death so near, and was made to feel so keenly the hatred she inspired, sobered in a moment the levity of her life, and brought out higher qualities. It was on that day that she began to remind those around her whose daughter she was. Ignorant as she was and passionate, she could never become a safe adviser. But she acquired decision, vigour, and self-command, and was able sometimes to strengthen the wavering mind of her husband. Too brave to be easily frightened, she refused at first the proffered aid of Mirabeau; and when, too late, she bent her pride to ask for it, she acted with her eyes open, without confidence or hope. For the surging forces of the day, for the idea that might have saved her, the idea of a government uniting the best properties

rable endeavour of Mirabeau to restore the constitutional

es had occurred while he presided, and he resigned his seat with indignation. He attempted to rouse his own province against the Assembly, which had betrayed its mandate, and renounced its constituents; but Dauphiné, the home and basis of his influ

istrusted the king as a malefactor, convicted of the unpardonable sin of absolutism, whom it was impossible to subject to too much limitation and control; and they were persuaded that the securities for individual freedom which are requisite under a personal government are superfluous in a popular community conducting its affairs by discussion and compromise and adjustment,

of the separation of powers. It was familiar to Mirabeau from his experience of England, where, in 1784, he had seen the country come to the support of the king against the parliament. Thence he gathered the conception of a patriot king, of a king the true delegate and mandatory of the nation, in fact of an incipient Emperor. If his schemes had come to anything, it is likely that his democratic monarch might have become as dangerous as any arbitrary potentate could be, and that his administration would have proved as great an obstacle to parliamentary government as French administration has always been since Napoleon. But his purpose at the time was sincerely politic and legitimate, and he undertook alone the defence of constitutional principles. During the month of September Mirabeau raised the question of a parliamentary Ministry, both in the press and in the

ended him for the part of a secret adviser. Just then an event occurred, which is mysterious to this day, but which had the effect of bringing Mirabeau into closer relations with the king's brother. At Christmas, the Marquis de Favras was arrested, and it was discovered that he was a confidential agent of the Prince, who had employed him to raise a loan for a purpose that was never divulged-some said, to carry off the king to a frontier fortress, others suspected a scheme of counter-revolution. For the el

nation, and found guilty. Favras asked whether, on a full and explicit confession, his life would be spared. He was told that nothing could save him. The judge exhorted him to die in silence, like a brave man. The priest who assisted him afterwards professed that he had saved the life of the Coun

s irresolute, indolent, and vain. If anything could be made of him, it was clear that the active partner would be Mirabeau. He was neither loved nor trusted by the king and queen, and with such a confederate at his elbow he might become formidable. Necker devised a plan by which his s

ead of the movement. It was an act, not of weakness, but of policy, not a wound received and acquiesced in, but a stroke delivered. The Assembly responded by at once taking the civic oath to maintain the Con

no right to screen their own responsibility behind the inviolate throne. He saw that his patron was ingeniously set aside and stranded, and he conceived that his own profound calculations were baffled. Yet the perspicacity that he seldom want

murder her. She declared that nothing would induce her to see him, and she wished for somebody who could undertake to manage him, and who would be responsible for his conduct. Mercy, regardless of her scruples, sent for La Marck, who was at his Belgian home, opposing the Emperor, and fostering a Federal republic, and who in consequence was not in favour with Marie Antoinette. La Marck was intimate with Mirabeau, and kept him in pocket money. He undertook the negotiation, with little hope of a profitable result; and at his house Mercy and Mirabeau had a secret meeting. They parted, well pleased with

em for men who could co-operate with Mirabeau; but he was resolved not to place himself at once irrevocably in the power of a man in whom he had no confidence, and who was only the subject of an experiment. Consequently, Mirabeau's first object of attack was the Ministry, and the king's forces were divided. The position was a false one from end to end; but this hostility to Necker served to disguise the reality. On the 10th of May, 1790, he drew up a paper which La Marck carried to th

￡40,000. The king could not cast him off without wasting the considerable sum paid to his creditors. The Archbishop of Toulouse u

uity, with one-fourth of the capital which was to fall due at the dissolution; but the intention was not carried out. The entire sum that Mirabeau received, up to his death, from the king amounted to about ￡12,000. In return, between June 1 and February 16 he wrote fifty-one notes for the Court discussing the events of the day, and exposing by degrees vast schemes o

over to him; he had changed nothing in his views to meet the wishes of the king. His purpose throughout had been the consolidation of representative monarchy on th

or two, the Spaniards came in force, and carried them off, with their ships and their cargoes; and claiming the entire Pacific seaboard from Cape Horn to Alaska, they called on the English Ministers to punish their intruding countrymen. They also equipped a fleet of forty sail of the line, assuring the British chargé d'affaires that it was only to protect themselves against the Revolution. Pitt was not lulled by these assurances, or by the delivery of the confiscated ships. He had authorised the proceedings of the traders with the intention of resisting the Spanish claim beyond the limits of effective occupation. He now demanded repa

executive. The democratic leaders repudiated the Family Compact, and resented an alliance which was not national but dynastic and of the essence of those things whi

. On May 22, in the most powerful constitutional argument he ever delivered, Mirabeau insisted that, if the ultimate decision rested with the Assembly, it could act only on the proposition of the Crown. In legislation, the king had no initiative. Mirabeau established the royal initiative in peace and war. It was the first-fruit of the secret compact. The new ally had proved not only that he was capable and strong, but that he was faithful. For by asking more

Pitt became defiant. Negotiations lasted till October. The Assembly appointed a Committee on Foreign Affairs, in which Mirabeau predominated, casting all

red with chivalrous fervour that the monarchy was saved. He spoke sincerely. The comedian and deceiver was not the wily and unscrupulous intriguer, but the inexperienced daughter of the Empress-queen. She never believed in his truth. When he continued to thunder against the Right, the king and queen shook their heads, and repeated that he was incorrigible. The last decision they came to in his lifetime was to reject his plans in favour of that which brought them to Varennes. But as the year wore on, they could not help seeing that the sophistical free-lance and giver of des

eived an ovation. Forty thousand National Guards assembled from all parts of France for the feast of Federation. At an altar erected in the Champ de Mars, Talleyrand celebrated his last Mass, and France sanctioned the doings of Paris. The king was present, but all the demonstration was for the hero of two hemispheres, on his

Machiavellian purpose guided him in Church questions. He was at heart a Liberal in matters of conscience, and thought toleration too weak a term for the rights inseparable from religion. But he wished the constitutional oath to be imposed with rigour, and that the priests should be encouraged to refuse it. He declined to give a pledge that the Assembly would not interfere with doctrine, and he prepared to raise the questions of celibacy and of divorce in order to aggravate the irritation. He proposed to restore authority by civil war; and the road to civil war was bankruptcy and persecution. Meantime, the court of inquiry vindicated him from aspersions connected with the attack on Versailles; as chairman of the Diplomat

f the Assembly, and might be able to disperse it, backed by the growing anger of the country. Meantime, opinion was to be worked and roused by every device. He set himself strenuously to form a central party out of the various groups of deput

se that a combination which reached from Barnave on the Left to Malouet on the Right would be

ult broke out in the Tuileries garden, which Mirabeau, summoned from table, at once appeased. He was confident in his strength, and when the Assembly discussed measures against emigration, he swore that he would never obey a body guilty of inquisitorial dictation. He quelled the murmurs of the Left by exclaiming, "Silence aux trente voix!" This was the date of his breach with the Democrats. It was February 28, and he was to dine with the Duke d'Aiguillon. When he came, the door was shut in his face. By La Marck's advice, he went that night to the Jacobins, hoping to

had several attacks of illness during that month of March. On the 26th he was brought in to Paris from his villa in an alarming condition. La Marck's interests were concerned in a debate on mineral property which was fixed for the following day. Fortified with a good deal of Tokay, Mirabeau spoke repeatedly. It was the last time. He came back to his friend and said, "Your cause is won, but I am lost." When his danger became known, it seemed that nothing had occurred to diminish public confidence, or tarnish the lustre of his fame. The crowd that gathered in the street made it almost impossible to approach his door. He was gratified to know that Barnave had called, and liked to hear how much feeling was shown by the people of Paris. After a co

s only prevented by the attack of which he died. Whether he supported England against Spain, or Russia against England, his support was paid for in gold. To his confederates, his illness was a season of terror. If an enemy disguised as a creditor caused seals to be set upon his papers, a discovery must have ensued that would ruin many reputations and imperil many lives. He clung to the secret documents on which he intended that his fame should res

take away from the executive government, and to give to local authorities. The executive could not govern, because it was obliged to transmit orders to agents not its own, whom it neither appointed nor dismissed nor controlled. The king was deprived of administrative power, as he had been deprived of legislative power. That distrust, reasonable in the old régime, ought to have ceased, when the Ministers appointed by th

ultimate policy was one vast intrigue, and he avowedly strove to do evil that good might come. The thing is hardly less infamous in the founder of the Left Centre th

is a term to be defined, but a friend of federalism, which both Montesquieu and Rousseau regarded as the condition of freedom. When he spoke confidentially, he said that there was no other