Part 2 (1/2)
Sieyes, of powerful mind, a student of const.i.tutionalism, terse and logical in expression, had made a mark during the electoral period with his pamphlet, _Qu'est-ce que le Tiers Etat?_ What is the Third Estate?
His reply was: It is everything; it has been nothing; it should be something. This was a reasonable and forceful exposition of the views of the twenty-five millions. Mirabeau, of volcanic temperament and morals, with the instinct of a statesman and the conscience of an outlaw, greedy of power as of money, with thundering voice, ready rhetoric, and keen perception, turned from his own order to the people for his mandate. He saw clearly enough from the beginning that reform could not stop at financial changes, but must throw open the government of France to the large cla.s.s of intelligent citizens with which her developed civilization had endowed her.
The outstanding fact brought out by this infiltration of the n.o.blesse and clergy into the {51} Third Estate, was clear: the deputies to the States-General, whichever order they belonged to, were nearly all members of the educated middle and upper cla.s.s of France. Part of the deputies of the n.o.blesse stood for cla.s.s privilege, and so did a somewhat larger part of those of the clergy. But a great number in both these orders were of the same sentiment as the deputies of the Third Estate. They were intelligent and patriotic Frenchmen, full of the teaching of Voltaire, and Rousseau, and Montesquieu, convinced by their eyes as well as by their intellect that Bourbonism must be reformed for its own sake, for the sake of France, and for the sake of humanity.
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CHAPTER V
FRANCE COMES TO VERSAILLES
At the beginning of May, twelve hundred and fourteen representatives of France reached Versailles. Of these, six hundred and twenty-one, more than half, belonged to the Third Estate, and of the six hundred and twenty-one more than four hundred had some connection with the law, while less than forty belonged to the farming cla.s.s. Little preparation had been made for them; the King had continued to attend to his hounds and horses, the Queen to her b.a.l.l.s and dresses, and Necker to his columns of figures, his hopes, and his illusions. But the arrival of this formidable body of men of trained intellect in the royal city, now that it had occurred, at once caused a certain uneasiness. As they walked about the city in curious groups, it was as though France were surveying the phenomenon of Versailles with critical eye; at the very first occasion the courtiers, feeling this, set to work to teach the {53} deputies of the Third Estate a lesson, to put them in their place.
On the 4th and 5th of May the opening ceremonies took place, processions, ma.s.s, a sermon, speeches; and the Court's policy, if such it could be called, was revealed. The powerful engine known as etiquette was brought into play, to indicate to the deputies what position and what influence in the State the King intended they should have. This was perhaps the greatest revelation of the inherent weakness of Bourbonism; the system had, in its decline, become little more than etiquette, and Louis XVI seen hard at work in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves would have shattered the illusions of centuries. And so, by means of the myriad contrivances of masters of ceremonies and Court heralds the Third Estate was carefully made to feel its social inferiority, its political insignificance.
The Third Estate noted these manifestations of the Court with due sobriety, and met the attack squarely. But while on the part of the Court this way of approaching the great national problem never attained a higher dignity than a policy of pin p.r.i.c.ks, with the Third Estate it was at once converted into a const.i.tutional question of fundamental importance. Was the distinction between the three orders {54} to be maintained? was the n.o.ble or priest a person of social and political privilege? or were the deputies of all to meet in one a.s.sembly and have equal votes? That was the great question, as the Third Estate chose to state it, and, translated into historical terms, it meant no less than the pa.s.sing of the feudal arrangement of society in separate castes into the new system of what is known at our day as democracy.
Nearly all the cahiers of the Third Estate and many of those of the n.o.blesse, had demanded this measure, and the Third Estate on a.s.sembling to verify the mandates of its members immediately called on the other two orders to join it in this proceeding. The struggle over this point continued from the 5th of May to the 9th of June, before any decisive step was taken. But as the days went by, apparently in fruitless debate, there was in reality a constant displacement of influence going on in favor of the Third Estate. In the opening session the statement of affairs made by Necker had left a very poor impression. Since then the ministers had done nothing, save to attempt, by a feeble intervention, to keep the orders apart. And all the time the Third Estate was gradually becoming conscious of its own strength and of the feebleness {55} of the adversary. And so at last, on the 10th of June, Sieyes moved, Mirabeau supporting, that the n.o.blesse and the clergy should be formally summoned to join the Tiers, and that on the 12th, verification of powers for the whole of the States-General should take place.
Accordingly on the 12th, under the presidency of the astronomer Bailly, senior representative of the city of Paris, the Tiers began the verification of the deputies' mandates. On the 13th, three members of the clergy, three country priests, asked admission. They were received amid scenes of the greatest enthusiasm, and within a few days their example proved widely contagious. On the 14th, a new step was taken, and the deputies, belonging now to a body that was clearly no longer the Tiers Etat, voted themselves a _National a.s.sembly_. This was, in a sense, accomplis.h.i.+ng the Revolution.
So rapidly did the Tiers now draw the other parts of the a.s.sembly to itself that on the 19th, the Clergy formally voted for reunion. This brought the growing uneasiness and alarm of the Court to a head.
Necker's influence was now on the wane. The King's youngest brother, the Comte d'Artois, at this moment on good terms with the Queen, and Marie {56} Antoinette herself, were for putting an end to the mischief before it went further, and they prevailed. It was decided that the King should intervene, and should break up the States-General into its component parts once more by an exercise of the royal authority.
On the morning of the 20th of June, in a driving rain, the deputies arriving at their hall found the doors closed and workmen in possession. This was the contemptuous manner in which the Court chose to intimate to them that preparations were being made for a royal session which was to take place two days later. Alarmed and indignant, the deputies proceeded to the palace tennis court close by,--the _Jeu de Paume_,--and there heated discussion followed. Sieyes, for once in his career imprudent, proposed that the a.s.sembly should remove to Paris. Mounier, conservative at heart, realizing that this meant civil war, temporized, and carried the a.s.sembly with him by proposing a solemn oath whereby those present would pledge themselves not to separate until they had endowed France with a const.i.tution.
On the 23rd, the royal session was held. A great display of troops and of ceremony was made. The deputies a.s.sembled in the hall, and {57} the King's speech was read. It was a carefully prepared doc.u.ment, announcing noteworthy concessions as well as noteworthy reservations, but vitiated by two things: the concessions came just too late; the reservations were not promptly and effectively enforced. The King declared that for two months past the States-General had accomplished nothing save wrangling, that the time had therefore arrived for recalling them to their duties. His royal will was that the distinction between the three orders should be maintained, and after announcing a number of financial and other reforms, he ordered the deputies to separate at once. The King then left the hall supported by his attendants, and by the greater part of the n.o.bles and high clergy.
There followed a memorable scene, to understand which it is necessary to go back a little.
On the arrival of the deputies at Versailles, they had at once tended to form themselves into groups, messes, or clubs, for eating, social and political purposes. An a.s.sociation of this kind, the Club Breton, so called from the province of its founders, soon a.s.sumed considerable importance. Here the forward men of the a.s.sembly met and discussed; and here, filtering through innumerable channels, came {58} the news of the palace, the t.i.ttle tattle of Trianon and the Oeuil de Boeuf, the decisions of the King's council. At every crisis during the struggle at Versailles, the leaders of the a.s.sembly knew beforehand what the King and his ministers thought, and what measures they had decided on.
All that was necessary therefore was to concert secretly the step most likely to thwart the royal policy, and by eloquence, by persuasion, by entreaty, to cajole the great floating ma.s.s of members to follow the lead of the more active minds. The King's speech on the 23rd of June was no surprise to the a.s.sembly, and the leaders were prepared with an effective rejoinder.
So when Louis XVI left the hall after commanding the deputies to disperse, the greater part of them kept their seats, and when Dreux Breze, Master of Ceremonies, noting this, called on the president to withdraw, Bailly replied that the a.s.sembly was in session and could not adjourn without a motion. The discussion between Dreux Breze and Bailly continuing, Mirabeau turned on the King's representative and in his thundering voice declaimed the famous speech, which he had doubtless prepared the night before. ”We are here,” he concluded, ”by the will of the people, and we {59} will only quit at the point of the bayonet.” At this de Breze withdrew and reported to the King for orders. But Louis had done enough for one day, and the only conclusion he could come to was that if the deputies refused to leave the hall, the best course would be for them to remain there. And there in fact they stayed.
Immediately after this scene Necker sent in his resignation. On the morning of the 24th, this was known in Paris, and produced consternation and a run on the banks. To rea.s.sure the public, Necker was immediately reinstated, on the basis that Louis should accept, as now seemed inevitable, the fusion of the orders. On the 25th, a large group of n.o.bles headed by the Duc d'Orleans and the Comte de Clermont Tonnerre joined the a.s.sembly, and a week later the a.s.semblee Nationale was fully const.i.tuted, the three orders merged into one.
During the two months through which this great const.i.tutional struggle had lasted, the a.s.sembly had had a great moral force behind it, a moral force that was fast tending to become something more. The winter of 1788-89 had been one of the most severe of the century. There had been not only the almost chronic shortage of bread, but weather of {60} extraordinary rigour. In the city of Paris the Seine is reported to have been frozen solid, while the suffering among its inhabitants was unparalleled. As an inevitable consequence of this riots broke out.
In January there had been food riots in many parts of France that taxed severely the military resources of the Government. They continued during the electoral period, and were occasionally accompanied by great violence. And when the deputies a.s.sembled at Versailles there was behind them a great popular force, already half unloosed, that looked to the States-General for appeas.e.m.e.nt or for guidance.
The procedure which the Third Estate and National a.s.sembly stumbled into, gave this popular force an opportunity for expressing itself.
The public was admitted to the opening session, and it continued to come to those that followed. From the public galleries came the loudest sounds of applause that greeted the patriotic orator. The Parisian public quickly fell into the way of making the journey to Versailles to join in these demonstrations, and soon transferred them from the hall of the a.s.sembly to the street outside. Mirabeau, Sieyes, Mounier, and other popular members were constantly receiving ovations--and soon learnt to {61} convert them into political weapons; while members who were suspected of reactionary tendencies, especially the higher clergy, met with hostile receptions. And all this, well known both to Court and a.s.sembly, was but a faint echo of the great force rumbling steadily twelve miles away in the city of Paris.
The leaders of the a.s.sembly did not scruple to use this pressure of public opinion, of popular violence, for all it was worth. And placed as they were it was not surprising that they should have done so. The deputies were only a small group of men in the great royal city garrisoned with all the traditions of the French royalty and 5,000 sabres and bayonets besides. It was natural that they should seek support then, even if that support meant violence, lawlessness or insurrection.
Thus Paris encouraged the a.s.sembly, and the a.s.sembly Paris. The ferment in the capital was reaching fever-heat just at the moment that the a.s.sembly had won its victory over the orders. The working cla.s.ses were raging for food, the bankers, capitalists and merchants saw in the States-General the only hope of avoiding bankruptcy, the intellectual and professional cla.s.s was more agitated than any other. The cafes and pamphlet shops of the {62} Palais Royal were daily more crowded, more excited. And on the 30th of June the army itself began to show symptoms of following the general movement.
The regiment of French guards was a body of soldiers kept permanently quartered in the capital. The men were, therefore, in closer touch with the population than would be the case in ordinary regiments.