The King and Queen were driven to the Hôtel de Ville, where they were obliged to listen to several speeches, and then to the Tuileries. The comfortless, sparsely furnished rooms echoed to the sound of their footsteps. Half asleep the Dauphin murmured, ‘It’s very ugly here, mother.’
4
THE DAYS OF THE FÉDÉRÉS AND THE FLIGHT TO VARENNES
14–17 July 1790 and 19–26 June 1791
‘I would rather be King of Metz than continue to be King of France at such a time as this’
Once established in the Manège where the debates were less disorderly and rowdy than they had been at Versailles, the Assembly settled down to face the problems of reform. The radicals sat on the President’s left, the less numerous conservatives on his right, this disposition providing thereafter, in other countries as well as France, a useful addition to the terminology of politics. Between the Left and the Right there were not many less partisan voices to be heard, for many moderates, protesting against their colleagues’ attitude towards the violent intervention of the mob, decided to withdraw. Mounier, their leader, went home to Dauphiné and, having failed to rouse the people there to support the policies of the monarchiens, took refuge in Switzerland. Lally-Tollendal, unsuccessful on a similar mission, emigrated to England. Those monarchiens who remained in the Assembly, such as the Duc de Clermont-Tonnerre, no longer exercised much influence there, and many conservatives attended the debates irregularly, leaving their benches almost empty after five o’clock when they went away for their evening meal. So, unhampered by powerful conservative protest and encouraged by the excellent harvest of 1789 which, safely gathered in, silenced the disturbing shouts for bread, the reformists in the Assembly were able to push through a variety of measures which would formerly have met with the most steadfast opposition. The title of the King, who was now to rule under the law and not by divine right, was changed from King of France to King of the French; the parlements were declared to be henceforth in abeyance. In sweeping reforms of the judicial system, judges were to be elected by the people and paid by the state, local government was transformed following upon the creation of new provincial assemblies and the abolition of intendants, the landed estates of the Church were nationalized and were offered for sale in exchange for assignats–the celebrated bonds which were to become the currency of the Revolution. This last measure did provoke strong objections both within the Assembly and outside it. It was pointed out that the properties which were to be appropriated had not been given to the Church as a whole but to particular abbeys, colleges, parishes and hospitals for specific purposes; that the country would have to assume the extremely expensive responsibility for both charitable work and education; that it was economically inadvisable to break up large holdings into so great a number of smaller plots; that there would be a huge depreciation in their value, since the market was to be flooded with them at a time of such uncertainty. But the advocates of the measure were undeterred. ‘The assignats will soon be dispersed all over the country,’ argued one of the most persuasive of the radical clergy, Thomas Lindet, a curé soon to be rewarded with a bishopric, ‘and, in spite of himself, every man who holds them will become a defender of the Revolution.’ So, by a very small majority, the annexation of the estates of the Church was approved by the Assembly.
Although he approved of this particular enactment, Mirabeau rose again and again to condemn the flood of revolutionary measures which, before being debated in the Assembly, were often discussed at meetings of the Society of the Friends of the Constitution. This Society, which met at the convent of the Jacobins in the Rue Saint-Honoré and was to become famous as the Jacobin Club, was already profoundly influential. The more advanced Breton deputies had been among the first to join, and soon nearly all the deputies of the Left attended their meetings. In the formulation of radical opinion its influence spread all over France where the number of similar clubs in the provinces grew month by month until there were over four hundred of them.
Mirabeau came to some of the meetings in the Rue Saint-Honoré but he was concerned now to contain the Revolution rather than to promote it. ‘When you undertake to run a revolution,’ he said, ‘the difficulty is not to make it go; it is to hold it in check.’ Appalled by the rapidity of its progress, he used all his powers of persuasion and oratory to stem the tide – to release the King from virtual captivity, to reduce the increasing powers of the Assembly and above all to reverse the decree which forbade any deputy from becoming a Minister of the Crown. But, since it was well known that he longed to be a Minister himself, his condemnation of this last decree was naturally supposed to be dictated by self-interest. His great powers were recognized in the Assembly but his motives were suspect there; and, while his usefulness was acknowledged at the Tuileries, he was never fully trusted there either. It was accepted that he was a royalist at heart, but it was a matter of concern that he believed so strongly that the authority of the Crown should rest on the sovereignty of the people. The King, who abhorred Mirabeau’s reputation as an adulterer, nevertheless undertook to settle his enormous debts and to pay him a generous salary in addition to a very large capital sum if his efforts on the monarchy’s behalf proved successful. These sums were not entirely wasted: by persuasive advocacy in the Assembly, Mirabeau was able to prevent the erosion of certain of the King’s prerogatives and to ensure that he continued to enjoy his limited freedom of movement in spite of calls for his closer confinement. Yet Mirabeau’s championship of the monarchy was more frequently derided than respected, while his advice to the King and Queen, conveyed to the Tuileries in numerous secret messages, was rarely adopted. In the end, the King, disregarding Mirabeau’s urgent warnings, took a step which was to place him beyond the help of his most formidable adviser or, indeed, of anyone else.
The King was persuaded to take this step largely by the Assembly’s policies towards the Church. The most contentious of these policies had been drafted by one of the specialist committees to which the Assembly delegated certain of its proposed legislation. They were contained in a document misleadingly called the Civil Constitution of the Clergy and involved not only a considerable reduction in the number of bishoprics but also the popular election of both bishops and priests and the severance of those ties which had traditionally bound them to Rome.
In the hope of averting this schism, the clergy appealed to the Pope to authorize them to accept the Civil Constitution which was passed by the Assembly on 12 July 1790. The Pope hesitated before replying to their request. So the Assembly required them all to take an oath of loyalty to the new Constitution, its own clerical members being ordered to show their brethren a good example. Some of them, led by the radical Abbé Grégoire, did so; but most, including all the bishops who were present, declined to follow their example. Outside the Assembly about half of the lower clergy also refused to take the oath; and only seven bishops accepted it. The Church was thus split into two opposing camps, one aghast at the schism, the other inclined to support the Jansenist lawyer, Armand Gaston Camus, in his answer to the question, ‘What is the Pope?’ ‘The Pope is a bishop, the minister of Jesus Christ, just like any other, whose functions are circumscribed within the limits of the diocese of Rome. It is high time that the Church of France, which has always been jealous of her liberties, should be freed from this servitude.’