VERGNIAUD'S PROCLAMATION.

317

to obtain modifications in the constitution, or a mediation between France and the rebels."

At these words the Assembly rose as if by common consent. Every hand was raised in the attitude of men ready to take a solemn oath; the tribunes and the chamber confounded their applause, and the decree was passed.

M. de Lessart, whom the gesture and the allusion of Guadet seemed to have already designated as the victim to the suspicions of the people, could not remain silent under the weight of these terrible allusions. "Mention has been made," said he, "of the political agents of the executive power: I declare that I know nothing which can authorise us to suspect their fidelity. For my own part, I will repeat the declaration of my colleagues in the ministry, and adopt it for my own the constitution or death."

Whilst Gensonné and Guadet aroused the Assembly by this preconcerted scene, Vergniaud aroused the crowd by the copy of an address to the French people, which had been spread abroad for the last few days amongst the masses. The Girondists remembered the effect produced two years previously by the proposed address to the king to dismiss the troops.

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66

Frenchmen," said Vergniaud, war threatens your frontiers; conspiracies against liberty are rife. Your armies are assembling mighty movements agitate the empire. Seditious priests prepare in the confessional, and even in the pulpit, a rising against the constitution; martial law becomes essential. Thus it appeared to us just. But we only succeeded in brandishing the thunderbolts for a moment before the eyes of the rebels the king has refused to sanction our decrees; the German princes make their territories a stronghold for the conspirators against us. They favour the plots of the emigrés, and furnish them with an asylum, arms, horses, and provisions. Can patience endure this without becoming guilty of suicide? Doubtless you have renounced the desire of conquest; but you have not promised to suffer insolent provocation. You have shaken off the yoke of tyrants; surely, then, you will not bow the knee to foreign despots? Beware! you are surrounded by snares; traitors seek to reduce you through disgust or fatigue to a state of languor that enervates your courage; and soon perhaps they will strive to lead it astray. They seek to separate you from us; they pursue a system of

318

THE CONSTITUTIONALISTS FOR WAR.

calumny against the National Assembly to criminate the Revelution in your eyes. Oh, beware of these excessive terrors! Repulse indignantly these impostors, who, whilst they affect an hypocritical zeal for the constitution, yet unceasingly speak of the monarchy. The monarchy is to them the counter-revolution. The monarchy is the nobility; the counter-revolution that is taxation, the feudal system, the Bastille, chains, and executions, to punish the sublime impulses of liberty. Foreign satellites in the interior of the state bankruptcy, engulphing with your assignats your private fortunes and the national wealth the fury of fanaticism, of vengeance, murder, rapine, conflagration, despotism, and slaughter, contending, in rivers of blood and over the heaps of dead, for the mastery of your unhappy country Nobility; that is, two classes of men, one for greatness, the other for poverty; one for tyranny, the other for slavery. Nobility; ah! the very word is an insult to the human race.

"And yet it is to ensure the success of this conspiracy against you that all Europe is in arms. - You must annihilate these guilty hopes by a solemn declaration. Yes, the representatives of France, free, and deeply attached to the constitution, will be buried beneath her ruins, rather than suffer a capitulation unworthy of them to be wrung from them. Rally yourselves, take courage! In vain do they strive to excite the nations against you, they will only excite the princes, for the hearts of the people are with you, and you embrace their cause by defending your own. Hate war it is the greatest crime of mankind, and the most fearful scourge of humanity; but since it is forced on you, follow the course of your destiny. Who can foresee how far will extend the punishment of those tyrants who have forced you to take arms?" Thus, these three statesme joined their voices to impel the nation to war.

IV.

The last words of Vergniaud gave the people a tolerably clear prospect of an universal republic. Nor were the constitutionalists less eager in directing the ideas of the nation towards war. M. de Narbonne, on his return from his

NARBONNE'S REPORT.

319 hasty journey, presented a most encouraging report to the Assembly, of the state of the fortified towns. He praised every one. He presented to the country the young Mathieu de Montmorency, one of the most illustrious names of France, and whose character was even more noble than his name, as the representative of the aristocracy devoting itself to liberty. He declared that the army, in its attachment to its country did not separate the King from the Assembly. He praised the commanders of the troops, nominated Rochambeau general-in-chief of the army of the north, Berthier at Metz, Biron at Lisle, Luckner and La Fayette on the Rhine. He spoke of plans for the campaign, concerted between the king and these officers; he enumerated the national guards, ready to serve as a second line to the active army, and solicited that they should be promptly armed; he described these volunteers, as giving the army the most imposing of all characters - that of national feeling; he vouched for the officers, who had sworn fidelity to the constitution, and exonerated from the charge of treason those who had not done so; he encouraged the Assembly to mistrust those that hesitated. "Mistrust," said he, "is, in these stormy times, the most natural, but the most dangerous feeling; confidence wins mens' hearts, and it is important that the people should show they have friends only." He ended by announcing that the active force of the army was 110,000 foot, and 20,000 cavalry, ready to take the field.

This report, praised by Brissot in his journal, and by the Girondists in the Assembly, afforded no longer any pretext for delaying the war. France felt that her strength was equal to her indignation, and she could be restrained no longer. The increasing unpopularity of the king augmented the popular excitement. Twice had he already arrested, by his royal veto, the energetic measures of the Assemblythe decree against the emigrés, and the decree against the priests who had not taken the oath. These two vetos, the one dictated by his honour, the other by his conscience, were two terrible weapons, placed in his hand by the constitution, yet which he could not wield without wounding himself. The Girondists revenged themselves for this resistance by compelling him to make war on the princes, who were his

brothers, and the emperor, whom they believed to be his accomplice.

The pamphleteers and the Jacobin journalists constantly spoke of these two vetos as acts of treason. The disturbances in Vendee were attributed to a secret understanding between the king and the rebellious clergy. In vain did the department of Paris, composed of men who respected the conscience of others, such as M. de Talleyrand, M. de la Rochefoucauld, and M. de Beaumetz, present to the king a petition in which the true principles of liberty protested against the revolutionary inquisition: counter-petitions poured in from the departments.

V.

Camille Desmoulins, the Voltaire of the clubs, lent to the petition of the citizens of Paris that insolent raillery, which made the success of his talent.

"Worthy representatives," ran the petition*, "applauses are the civil list of the people, therefore do not reject ours. To collect the homages of good citizens, and the insults of the bad, is, to a National Assembly, to have combined all suffrages. The king has put his veto to your decree against the emigrants, a decree equally worthy of the majesty of the Roman people and the clemency of the French people. We do not complain of this act of the king, because we remember the maxim of the great politician Machiavel, which we beg of you to meditate upon profoundly-It is against nature to fall voluntarily from such a height. Penetrated with this truth, we do not then require from the king an impossible love for the constitution, nor do we find fault that he is opposed to your best decisions. But let public functionaries foresee the royal veto, and declare their rebellion against your decree, against the priests; let them carry off public opinion; let these men be precisely the same who caused to be shot in the Champ-de-Mars the citizens who were signing a petition against a decree which was not yet decided upon; let them inundate the empire with copies of this petition, which is nothing more than the first leaf of a great counterrevolutionary register and a subscription for civil war sent for signature to all the fanatics, all the idiots, all permanent

*This extract has been given before at P. 247. — Translator.

UNPOPULARITY OF THE VETO.

321

slaves. Fathers of the country! there is here such complicated ingratitude and abuse of confidence, of contradiction and chicanery, of prevarication and treason, that profoundly indignant at so much wickedness concealed beneath the cloak of philosophy and hypocritical civism, we say to you - Your decree has saved the country, and if they are obstinate in refusing you permission to save the country, well, the nation will save itself, for, after all, the power of a veto has a termination-a veto does not prevent the taking of the Bastille.

"You are told that the salary of the priests was a national debt. But when you only request the priests to declare that they will not be seditious-are not they who refuse this declaration already seditious in their hearts? And these seditious priests, who have never lent anything to the statewho are only creditors of the state in the name of benevolence-have they not a thousand times forfeited the donation through their ingratitude? Away, then, with these miserable sophisms, fathers of the country, and have no more doubt of the omnipotence of a free people. If liberty slumbers, how can the arm act? Do not raise this arm again, do not again lift the national club to crush insects. Did Cato and Cicero proceed against Cethegus or Catiline? It is the chiefs we should assail: strike at the head."

A scornful laugh echoed from the tribunes of the Assembly to the populace. The procès-verbal of this sitting was ordered to be sent to the eighty-three departments. Next day the Assembly reconsidered this, and negatived its vote of the previous evening; but publicity was still given to it, and it echoed through the provinces, carrying with it the disquietude, derision, and hatred attached to the Royal Veto. The constitution, handed over to ridicule and hooted in full assembly, had now become the plaything of the populace.

For many months the state of the kingdom resembled the state of Paris. All was uproar, confusion, denunciation, disturbance in the departments. Each courier brought his riots, seditions, petitions, outbreaks, and assassinations. The clubs established as many points of resistance to the consti tution as there were communes in the empire. The civil war hatching in La Vendée burst out by massacres ut Avignon.

VOL. L