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French Revolution

{35} <h3> CHAPTER IV </h3> <h3> CONVOCATION OF THE STATES-GENERAL </h3> Louis XVI, grandson of Louis XV, came to the throne in 1774. He showed some, but not all, of the characteristics of his family. He was of sluggish intelligence, and extremely slow, not to say embarrassed, in speech. He was heavy in build and in features. His two great interests were locksmithing, which he had learned as a boy, and running the deer and the boar in the great royal forests, St. Germain, Fontainebleau, Rambouillet. He had all the Bourbon insouciance, and would break off an important discussion of the Council from indifference, incompetence, or impatience, to go off hunting. Worst of all, for an autocrat, he had not in his nature one particle of those qualities that go to make up the man of action, decision, energy, courage, whole-heartedness. In this he represented the decay of his race, surfeited with power, victim of the system it {36} had struggled so long and so hard to establish. At the best he had flashes of common sense, which, unfortunately for himself, he was never capable of translating into deeds. He was full of good intentions, of a certain underlying honesty and benevolence, all rather obscured by his boorish exterior and manners. Like his ancestors, he ate and drank voraciously, but, unlike them, he did not care for women. He even showed some indifference for his wife at first, but later, when she bore children, he appeared to the public in the character of a good father of the family. In that and some of his other traits he had elements of popularity, and he remained in a way popular almost to the moment of his trial in 1792. Marie Antoinette of Austria, his wife, was of very different mould; and in her everything made for unpopularity. She had begun under the worst auspices. The French public detested the Austrian alliance into which Madame de Pompadour had dragged France, and had felt the smart of national disgrace during the Seven Years' War, so that a marriage into the Hapsburg-Lorraine family after the conclusion of that war, was very ill received. To make the matter worse a catastrophe marked the wedding ceremonies, and at a great {37} illumination given by the city of Paris, a stampede occurred, in which hundreds of lives were lost. The Austrian princess, l'Autrichienne, as she was called from the first, did not mend matters by her conduct. Until misfortune sobered her and brought out her stronger and better side, she was incurably light-headed and frivolous. She was always on the very edge of a faux pas, and her enemies did not fail to accuse her of frequent slips beyond the edge. The titled riffraff that had adorned the Louis XV-du Barry court was swept out on the accession of the young Queen, but only to be replaced by a new clique as greedy as the old, and not vastly more edifying. Richelieu and d'Aiguillon only made way for Lauzun, the Polignacs, and Vaudreuil. And if it was an improvement to have a high-born queen rule Versailles instead of a low-born courtesan, the difference was not great in the matter of outward dignity, and especially of the expenditure of public money. Millions that cannot be computed for lack of proper accounts were poured out for the Queen's amusements and for the Queen's favourites, men and women. It was the Controleur whose function was to fill the Court's bottomless purse. Under this strain and that of the American war, a man of {38} humble origin but of good repute as an economist and accountant was called to the office, the Geneva banker, Jacques Necker. For three years he attempted to carry the burden of the war by small economies effected at many points, which produced the minimum of result with the maximum of friction. Finally, in 1781, the Queen drove him from office. Necker himself provided the excuse by the publication of his Compte rendu, a pamphlet which first put the financial crisis fairly before the public. All that the public knew up to this time was that while the Court maintained its splendour and extravagance, the economic and financial situation was rapidly getting worse. There was no systematic audit, there was no budget, there was no annual account published, so that the finances remained a sealed book, a private matter concerning the King of France only. But here, in Necker's pamphlet, was an account of those finances, that revealed to a certain extent the state of affairs, and, which was even more important, that constituted an appeal to the public to judge the King's administration. Louis was furious at his minister's step, and not only dismissed him, but banished him from Paris. {39} From 1783 to 1787 the finances were in the hands of Calonne, whose management proved decisive and fatal. His dominant idea was that of a courtier,—always to honour any demand made on the treasury by the King or Queen. To do less would be unworthy of a gentilhomme and a devoted servant of their Majesties. So Calonne, bowing gracefully, smiling reassuringly, embarked on a fatal course, borrowing where he could, anticipating in one direction, defaulting in another, but always, and somehow, producing the louis necessary to the enjoyment of the present moment. He reached the end of his tether towards the close of 1786. It was during Calonne's administration that occurred the famous affair of the diamond necklace. It was a vulgar swindle worked on the Cardinal de Rohan by an adventuress, Mme. de La Motte Valois. Trading on his credulity and court ambitions, she persuaded him to purchase a diamond necklace, which the Queen, so he was told, greatly wished but could not afford. Marie Antoinette was personated in a secret interview given to Rohan, and Mme. de La Motte got possession of the diamonds. Presently the jewellers began to press Rohan for payment, and the secret came out. The {40} King was furious, and sent Rohan to the royal prison of the Bastille, while Mme. de La Motte was handed over to the legal procedure of the Parlement of Paris. This incident created great excitement, and was much distorted by public report. It left two lasting impressions, one relating to Mme. de La Motte, the other to the Queen. The adventuress was too obvious a scapegoat to be spared. While Rohan was allowed to leave the Bastille after a short imprisonment, the woman was brought to trial, and was sentenced to public whipping and branding. Her execution was carried out in bungling fashion, and at the foot of the steps leading to the law courts, whence Danton's voice was to reverberate so loudly in his struggle with so-called Justice ten years later, a disgraceful scene occurred. The crowd saw La Motte struggling in the hands of the executioners and rolling with them in the gutter, heard her uttering loud shrieks as the branding iron was at last applied to her shoulders. The impression produced by this revolting spectacle was profound, and was heightened by the universal belief that Marie Antoinette was not less guilty in one direction than Madame de La Motte had been in another. The outbreak of slander and {41} of libel against the Queen goes on accumulating from this moment with ever-increasing force until her death, eight years later. A legend comes into existence, becomes blacker and blacker, and culminates in the atrocious accusations made against her by Hébert before the Revolutionary Tribunal; Messalina and Semiramis are rolled into one to supply a fit basis of comparison. And the population of Paris broods over this legend, and when revolution comes, makes of Marie Antoinette the symbol of all that is monstrous, infamous and cruel in the system of the Bourbons; makes of her the marked victim of the vengeance of the people. Meanwhile Calonne was struggling to keep his head above water, and in the process had come into conflict with the Parlements, or corporations of judges. At last, in 1786, he went to the King, admitted that he had no money, that he could borrow no more, and that the only hope lay in fundamental reform. He proposed, therefore, a number of measures, of which the most important were that money should be raised by a stamp tax, that a land tax should be the foundation of the revenue, and that it should apply to all proprietors, noble, cleric, and of the Third Estate, with no {42} exceptions. There was no chance, however, as matters stood, of persuading the Parlements to register decrees for these purposes, so Calonne proposed that the King should summon an assembly of the notables of France to give their support to these reforms. Here again, although Calonne and Louis did not realize it, was an appeal to public opinion; the monarchy was unconsciously following the lead of the philosophers, of the dramatists, and of Necker. In January, 1788, the Notables assembled, "to learn the King's intentions," one hundred and fifty of them, mostly nobles and official persons. In February Calonne put his scheme before them, and then discovered, to his great astonishment, that they declined to give him the support, which was all he wanted of them, and that, on the contrary, they wished to discuss his project, and, in fact, held a very adverse opinion of it. In this the Notables were not factious; they merely had enough sense of the gravity of the situation to perceive that a real remedy was needed, and that Calonne's proposal did not supply it. His idea was good enough in the abstract, but in practice there was at least one insurmountable objection, which was that the land tax could not be established until a cadastral survey of France had {43} been undertaken—a complicated and lengthy operation. Very soon Calonne and the Notables had embarked on a contest that gradually became heated, until finally Calonne appealed from the Notables to the public by printing and circulating his proposals. The Notables replied by a protest, and declared that the real reform was economy and that the Controleur should place before them proper accounts. This proved the end of Calonne, his position had long been weak, he now toppled over, and was replaced by Loménie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse. Loménie was an agreeable courtier, and well liked by the Queen, but he was also a liberal, an encyclopedist, and a member of the Assembly of Notables. He succeeded in getting the approval of that body for a loan of 60,000,000 francs, and then, on the 1st of May, 1787, dissolved it. The new minister had, however, come to the opinion that his predecessor's programme was the only possible one, and as soon as he had got rid of the Notables, his late colleagues, he attempted to get the Parlement of Paris to register the new laws. The Parlement resisted; and popular discontent became a serious feature of the situation. The Chancellor, Lamoignon, was burnt {44} in effigy by the mob. In July, 1787, the Parlement of Paris demanded that the States-General of the kingdom should be assembled. For a whole year the struggle between the judges and the ministers grew hotter and hotter. The arrest of d'Éspréménil, one of the leaders of the Parlement, in May, 1788, led to severe rioting in Paris, and only the energetic use of police and troops saved the situation. Not only did the provincial Parlements support that of Paris in its resistance to the Court, but the provinces themselves began to stir, and finally, a month after d'Éspréménil's arrest, a large meeting at Grenoble decided to call together the old Estates of the province, the province of Dauphiné. This was almost civil war, and threatened to plunge France back into the conditions of two centuries earlier. The Government ordered troops to Grenoble to put down the movement. The commanding general, however, on arriving near the city, found the situation so alarming that he agreed to a compromise, whereby the Estates were to hold a meeting, but not in the capital of the province. Accordingly, at the village of Vizille, on the 21st of July, several hundred persons assembled, representing the three orders, nobility, clergy, and {45} Third Estate of the province; and of these it had been previously agreed that the Third Estate should be allowed double representation. The leading figure of the assembly of Vizille was Jean Joseph Mounier. He was a middle class man, a lawyer, upright, intelligent, yet moderate, who felt the need of reform, and who was prepared to labour for it. He inspired all the proceedings at Vizille, and as secretary of the Estates, had the chief part in drawing up its resolutions. These demanded the convocation of the States-General of France, pledged the province to refuse to pay all taxes not voted by the States-General, and called for the abolition of arbitrary imprisonment on the King's order by the warrant known as the lettre de cachet. The effect of the resolutions of the assembly of Vizille through France was immediate. They were simple, direct, and voiced the general feeling; they also indicated that the moment had come for interfering in the chronic mismanagement of affairs. So irresistible was their force that Loménie de Brienne and the King accepted them with hardly a struggle. The minister was now at the end of his borrowing powers and in the month of August his tenure of power came to a close. Before {46} leaving office he suspended payments, and issued a decree convoking the States-General for the 1st of May, 1789. He was succeeded by Necker. It was unfortunate for the Bourbon monarchy that at this great crisis a king and a minister should have come together, both lacking initiative, both lacking courage, and yet not even sympathetic, but, on the contrary, lacking mutual confidence and refusing one another mutual support. And while Louis lacked executive vigour, so Necker tended always to lose himself in figures, in details, in words, in fine sentiments, and to neglect the essential for the unimportant. He was well intentioned but narrow, and merely followed the current of events. From all parts of France advice and representations reached him as to the conditions under which the States-General should be convoked. Their last meeting had been held as far back as 1614, so that there was naturally much uncertainty on questions of procedure. Partly to clear this, partly to find some support for his own timidity, Necker called the Notables together again. They met in November and helped to settle the conditions under which the elections {47} to the States-General and their convocation should take place. The old constitutional theory of the States-General was that it was an assembly of the whole French nation, represented by delegates, and divided into three classes. Thus it was tribal in that it comprised every Frenchman within its scope, and feudal in that it formed the caste distinctions, noble, clergy, people. In other words it afforded little ground for comparison with the English Parliament; the point at which it approached it nearest being in the matter of the power to vote the taxation levied by the Crown; but this power the States-General had lost so far back as the 15th century. This fundamental conception entailed another, which was that the delegates of the nation were not members of a parliament or debating assembly, but were mere mandatories charged by the electors with a specific commission, which was to place certain representations before the King. This meant that in the stage previous to the election of these delegates, the electors should draw up a statement of their complaints and a mandate or instructions for their representatives. This was in fact done, {48} and many thousands of cahiers, as they were called, were drawn up all over France, in which the demands of as many individuals, or corporations, or bodies of electors were stated. These were summarized into three cahiers for each province, and eventually into three, one from each order, for all France, and these last three were in due course presented to Louis XVI. As a source of information on the economic and social condition of a country, the cahiers are the most wonderful collection of documents available for the historian. Many of them have been more or less faithfully published, and at the present day the French government is liberally helping on the work of making them public. But in a work of this scope it is impossible to go at length into the state of affairs which they depict; only the most salient features can be dealt with. First, then, it must be said that the cahiers present at the same time remarkable uniformity and wide divergence. The agreement lies partly in their general spirit, and partly in the repetition of certain formulas preached throughout the country by eager pamphleteers and budding political leaders. The divergence can be placed under three chief heads: the markedly different character of a great part {49} of the cahiers of the clergy from those of the other two orders; provincial divergence and peculiarities of local customs; demands for the maintenance of local privileges. Of the last class, Marseilles, a port with many commercial and political privileges, affords perhaps the most extreme example. The uniformity is to be seen especially in the general spirit of these complaints to the King. One feels, while reading the cahiers, the unanimity of a long-suffering people anxious for a release from intolerable misgovernment,—more than that, anxious to have their institutions modernized, but all in a spirit of complete loyalty and devotion to the King and to all that was wise, and good, and glorious, and beneficent, that he still seemed to represent. The illusion of Bourbonism was at that moment, so far as surface appearances went, practically untouched. The noblesse and the clergy conducted their elections by means of small meetings and chose their delegates from among themselves. The Tiers Etat elected as its representatives men of the upper middle class and professional class; the lower classes, ignorant and politically untutored, were unrepresented and accepted tutelage with more or less alacrity—more in the provinces, less in Paris. But in addition, a {50} small number of men belonging to the privileged orders sought and obtained mandates from the lower. Sieyès and a few other priests, Mirabeau and a few other nobles, were elected to the States-General by the Third Estate. Sieyès, of powerful mind, a student of constitutionalism, 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 class of intelligent citizens with which her developed civilization had endowed her. The outstanding fact brought out by this infiltration of the noblesse 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 class of France. Part of the deputies of the noblesse stood for class 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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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