As the divisions deepened, the laity, too, took sides, friends and families quarrelling bitterly, peasants in many areas enthusiastically supporting the priests who refused the oath, condemning those who had taken it, and thereby giving popular support to the forces of counter-revolution. The Assembly endeavoured to pacify the unrest by giving pensions to priests opposed to the Civil Constitution and by allowing them to continue in their parishes until they were replaced. But the breach was not healed and remained a source of angry dispute until Napoleon’s Concordat with the Papacy in 1801.
Before the Civil Constitution of the Clergy caused such upheaval in France, attempts to raise the provinces against the Assembly in Paris had met with little success as Mounier and Lally-Tollendal had discovered. In some areas enthusiasm for the Revolution was not marked and there were occasional outbreaks of violence against it; but most people welcomed it, and in many districts towns and villages had come together in fraternal friendship, forming themselves into fédérations in commemoration and celebration of the country’s rebirth. In February 1790, in one typical, moving ceremony at Pontivy, delegates from Anjou and Brittany joined hands to swear that they were ‘neither Angevins nor Bretons, but citizens of one and the same community’. On the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille thousands of National Guardsmen and soldiers from all over France converged upon Paris for a splendid Fête de la Fédération. The celebrations centred upon the Champ de Mars, a large open space between the École Militaire and the Seine. It had been planned to dig out the earth from the centre and to pile it up around the sides to create a vast amphitheatre capable of containing tens of thousands of spectators. But, although twelve thousand workmen were employed on this ambitious undertaking, it was realized as the day of the festival approached that it would never be ready in time. So, ‘in an instant the whole population was transformed into labourers’. Priests and prostitutes, watchmakers and watermen, sempstresses, shopkeepers and soldiers, men and women of every age and class, marched to the site to the sound of drums and under banners of different colours emblazoned with patriotic emblems. Lafayette came to lend a hand. So did several ladies who, fainting after their unaccustomed exertions, were cheerfully pushed away in wheelbarrows by sturdy fishwives.
Rich people, poor people, well-dressed people, people in rags, old men, boys, comedians, clerks, actors, scholars, nuns, Carthusians grown old in solitude…exhibited to the astonished eye a scene full of life and bustle [recorded the Marquis de Ferrières]. There were songs and shouts of joy, the sound of drums and military instruments, the voices of labourers calling to each other…As the clock struck nine the groups separated, each citizen returned to his family and friends. They all marched off to the sound of drums, preceded by torches, singing from time to time the famous Ça ira [which had become a kind of theme song of the Revolution]…Meanwhile the fédérés were arriving from every part of the country. They were lodged in private houses where they were happily supplied with beds and sheets, wood and food, everything, in fact, that would help to make their stay in Paris agreeable.
At length the great day came…The fédérés set out from the site of the Bastille under the eighty-three banners of the departments of France…They were greeted on their way with the acclamations of an immense concourse of people who filled the streets, the quays and the windows of the houses on either side. A heavy rain was falling but it neither upset nor slackened the march. Dripping with sweat and rain, the fédérés danced farandoles, shouting ‘Long live our brothers, the Parisians!’ Wine, ham, fruit, sausages were let down from the windows for them, and they were loaded with blessings. The National Assembly joined the procession at the Place Louis XV…The rain continued to fall. No one seemed to notice it…M. de Lafayette, mounted on a superb horse, and surrounded by his aides-de-camp, gave orders and received the homage of the people and the fédérés…A man whom nobody knew, pushed through the crowd and advanced, holding a bottle in one hand and a glass in the other. ‘General,’ he said. ‘You are hot. Have a glass.’ Raising his bottle he filled a large glass and handed it to M. de Lafayette. The General took the glass, eyed the stranger for a moment and drank off the wine at a draught. The people applauded while M. de Lafayette, with a complacent smile, cast a benevolent and confiding look upon them…
Meanwhile more than three hundred thousand people, assembled since six in the morning, were sitting on turf seats in the Champ de Mars, drenched, bedraggled, sheltering under umbrellas; then, when the rain stopped, they adjusted their dresses as they waited, laughing and chatting, for the fédérés and the National Assembly to arrive.
At last the procession entered the Champ de Mars. The deputies took up their positions and the fédérés assembled under their respective banners while Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand Périgord, the Bishop of Autun, attended by 300 priests in white surplices with tricolour scarves, prepared to say Mass at an altar in the middle of the amphitheatre. After Mass, the Bishop blessed the oriflamme and the eighty-three banners of the fédérés; then he led the singing of the Te Deum to the accompaniment of an orchestra of 1,200 musicians.
The staff of the Parisian National Guard, with Lafayette at their head, followed by representatives of the army, the navy and the fédérés, marched up to the altar to swear to be faithful to the nation, the law and the King. Cannon thundered, banners were waved, sabres glistened and the hundreds of musicians played their instruments more loudly than ever as the President of the National Assembly repeated the same oath and the deputies and spectators, answered with shouts of ‘I swear it!’
The King then stood up and declared in the sudden silence, ‘I, King of the French, swear to employ the power delegated to me in maintaining the constitution decreed by the National Assembly and accepted by me.’ The Queen then, too, stood up; and, lifting the Dauphin in her arms, said, ‘Here is my son! He and I both join in those sentiments.’
Vociferous cheers greeted these remarks. Thousands of voices shouted, ‘Vive le Roi! Vive la Reine! Vive M. le Dauphin!’ The rain had stopped; the sun had come out.
The festivities continued the next day and the day after that. There were celebrations and parades in the Champ de Mars; there were reviews of the army and the National Guard; there were firework displays and banquets. A ball was held in the Halle au Blé, another on the site of the Bastille. Crowds of fédérés converged upon the Palais Royal, many of them equipped with a useful pamphlet entitled Lists of Emoluments for the ladies of the Palais Royal, and for the other regions of Paris, comprising names and addresses, which an enterprising publisher had brought out to help simple young men from the provinces in their dealings with such women as Madame Duperon and her four lady friends at 33, Palais Royal, who charged twenty-five livres, or with the less exotic Victorine who charged only six. In the Champs Elysées, beneath trees festooned with coloured lights, crowds of young people danced and sang, while sailors clambered up the masts greased with soap in attempts to win the prizes offered to those who could bring down the tricolour flags flying from their summits. ‘You should have heard the bursts of laughter which greeted those who were forced to relinquish the attempt, and the encouragement given to those who, more lucky or more adroit, appeared likely to reach the top,’ wrote one observer of this ‘charming and brilliant festival’. ‘A sentimental joy was diffused over every face and beamed in every eye. It reminded me of the happy pleasures of the Elysian fields of the ancients. The white dresses of the crowds of women strolling under the trees in those beautiful alleys served to heighten the illusion.’