[13] De Tocqueville considers the feudal system in France in many points more oppressive than that of Germany.-Ancien Regime, p. 43.
[14] Silence des grenouilles. Arthur Young, "Travels in France during 1787, '88, '89," p. 537. It is singular proof how entirely research into the condition of the country and the people of France had been neglected both by its philosophers and its statesmen, that there does not seem to have been any publication in the language which gave information on these subjects. And this work of Mr. Young's is the one to which modern French writers, such as M. Alexis de Tocqueville, chiefly refer.
[15] "The lettres de cachet were carried to an excess hardly credible; to the length of being sold, with blanks, to be filled up with names at the pleasure of the purchaser, who was thus able, in the gratification of private revenge, to tear a man from the bosom of his family, and bury him in a dungeon, where he would exist forgotten and die unknown."-A. Young, p. 532. And in a note he gives an instance of an Englishman, named Gordon, who was imprisoned in the Bastile for thirty years without even knowing the reason of his arrest.
[16] Arthur Young, writing January 10th, 1790, identifies Les Enrages with the club afterward so infamous as the Jacobins. "The ardent democrats who have the reputation of being so much republican in principle that they do not admit any political necessity for having even the name of the king, are called the Enrages. They have a meeting at the Jacobins', the Revolution Club which assembles every night in the very room in which the famous League was formed in the reign of Henry III." (p. 267).
[17] M. Droz asserts that a collector of such publications bought two thousand five hundred in the last three months of 1788, and that his collection was far from complete.-Histoire de Louis XVI., ii., p. 180.
[18] "Tout auteur s'erige en legislateur."-Memorial of the Princes to the King, quoted in a note to the last chapter of Sismondi's History, p. 551, Brussels ed., 1849.
[19] In reality the numbers were even more in favor of the Commons: the representatives of the clergy were three hundred and eight, and those of the nobles two hundred and eighty-five, making only five hundred and ninety-three of the two superior orders, while the deputies of the Tiers- Etat were six hundred and twenty-one.-Souvenirs de la Marquise de Crequy, vii., p. 58.
[20] "Se levant alors, 'Non,' dit le roi, 'ce ne peut etre qu'a Versailles, a cause des chasses.'"-LOUIS BLANC, ii., p. 212, quoting Barante.
[21] "La reine adopta ce dernier avis [that the States should meet forty or sixty leagues from the capital], et elle insista aupres du roi que l'on s'eloignat de l'immense population de Paris. Elle craignait des lors que le peuple n'influencat les deliberations des deputes."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch 83.
[22] Chambrier, i., p. 562.
CHAPTER XXIII. [1] It was called "L'insurrection du Faubourg St. Antoine."
[2] The best account of this riot is to be found in Dr. Moore's "Views of the Causes and Progress of the French Revolution," i., p. 189.
[3] Madame de Campan specially remarks that the disloyal cry of "Vive le Duc d'Orleans" came from "les femmes du peuple" (ch. xiii.).
[4] Afterward Louis Philippe, King of the French.
[5] "View of the Causes and Progress of the French Revolution," by Dr. Moore, i., p. 144.
[6] The dauphin was too ill to be present. The children were Madame Royale and the Duc de Normandie, who became dauphin the next month by the death of his elder brother.
[7] "Aucun nom propre, excepte le sien, n'etait encore celebre dans les six cents deputes du Tiers."-Considerations sur la Revolution Francaise, pp. 186, 187
[8] In the first weeks of the session he told the Count de la Marck, "On ne sortira plus de la sans un gouvernement plus ou moins semblable a celui d'Angleterre."-Correspondance entre le comte de la Marck, i., p. 67.
[9] He employed M. Malouet, a very influential member of the Assembly, as his agent to open his views to Necker, saying to him, "Je m'adresse donc a votre probite. Vous etes lie avec MM. Necker et de Montmorin, vous devez savoir ce qu'ils veulent, et s'ils ont un plan; si ce plan est raisonnable je le defendrai."-Correspondance de Mirabeau et La Marck, i., p. 219.
[10] There is some uncertainty about Mirabeau's motives and connections at this time. M. de Bacourt, the very diligent and judicious editor of that correspondence with De la Marck which has been already quoted, denies that Mirabeau ever received money from the Duc d'Orleans, or that he had any connection with his party or his views. The evidence on the other side seems much stronger, and some of the statements of the Comte de la Marck contained in that volume go to exculpate Mirabeau from all complicity in the attack on Versailles on the 9th of October, which seems established by abundant testimony.
CHAPTER XXIV. [1] A letter of Madame Roland dated the 26th of this very month, July, 1789, declares that the people "are undone if the National Assembly does not proceed seriously and regularly to the trial of the illustrious heads [the king and queen], or if some generous Decius does not risk his life to take theirs."
[2] This story reached even distant province. On the 24th of July Arthur Young, being at Colmar, was assured at the table-d'hote "That the queen had a plot, nearly on the point of execution, to blow up the National Assembly by a mine, and to march the army instantly to massacre all Paris." A French officer presumed but to doubt of the truth of it, and was immediately overpowered with numbers of tongues. A deputy had written it; they had seen the letter. And at Dijon, a week later, he tells us that "the current report at present, to which all possible credit is given, is that the queen has been convicted of a plot to poison the king and monsieur, and give the regency to the Count d'Artois, to set fire to Paris, and blow up the Palais Royal by a mine."-ARTHUR YOUNG'S Travels, etc., in France, pp. 143, 151.
[3] "Car des ce moment on menacait Versailles d'une incursion de gens armes de Paris."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.
[4] Lacretelle, vol. vii., p. 105.
[5] She meant to say, "Messieurs, je viens remettre entre vos mains l'epouse et la famille de votre souverain. Ne souffrez pas que l'on desunisse sur la terre ce qui a ete uni dans le ciel."-MADAME DE CAMPAN, ch. xiv.
[6] Napoleon seems to have formed this opinion of his political views: "Selon M. Gourgaud, Buonaparte, causant a Ste. Helene le traitait avec plus de mepris [que Madame de Stael]. 'La Fayette etait encore un autre niais. Il etait nullement taille pour le role qu'il avait a jouer.... C'etait un homme sans talents, ni civils, ni militaires; esprit borne, caractere dissimule, domine par des idees vagues de liberte mal digerees chez lui; mal concues.'"-Biographie Universelle.
[7] In his Memoirs he boasts of the "gaucherie de ses manieres qui ne se plierent jamais aux graces de la Cour," p. 7.
[8] See her letter to Mercy, without date, but, apparently written a day or two after the king's journey to Paris, Feuillet de Conches, i., p. 238.