Dumouriez saw at a glance that madame Roland was the soul and intellect of the Gironde party, and he paid all court to her. He affected to be the humble servant of the coterie; and, accustomed to compliment women, he endeavoured to win the full confidence of madame Roland; but there he failed. Her keen glance read his real character, and she felt at once that he was too able and too ambitious to remain long a subordinate. "Have an eye to that man," she said to her husband; "there is a master concealed under that smiling exterior." The Girondists had introduced Dumouriez to De Grave; De Grave introduced him to the king. When the assembly had accused De Lessart, and handed him over to the high national court, Louis offered Dumouriez the post of foreign affairs till De Lessart should prove his innocence and be restored. But Dumouriez was too experienced a diplomatist; he refused the office pro tempore. The king was pressed by circumstances, and conferred it upon him permanently.

Petion, Gensonné, and Brissot were consulted respecting the completion of the ministry. Louvet was strongly recommended by the Rolands as minister of justice; but Robespierre, whom he had totally opposed, immediately denounced him, and it was not deemed prudent to rouse still more the wrath of that man, now every day becoming more and more the idol of the people. Duranthon, advocate of Bourdeaux, but a weak man, was introduced into that post, and De Grave succeeded Narbonne as minister at war. Clavieres, a deaf stockbroker, from Geneva, and formerly an opponent of Necker, was made minister of finance, Lacoste of marine, and finally, Roland was selected as minister of the interior. Not one of the most brilliant men of the Gironde was included in this ministry, except Dumouriez. Roland was distinguished rather by his republican gravity than anything else; the rest were remarkable only for their insignificance. The courtiers dubbed them "The Sans-Culotte Cabinet." Roland, on presenting himself at court, appeared, as usual, in his round hat, and with strings in his shoes; for both he and the main part of the Girondists affected a sort of republican simplicity. The master of the ceremonies, who did not know who he was, refused to admit him, till it was explained that he was minister of the interior. The astonished master observed to Dumouriez, who entered next, "Ah, sir, no buckles in his shoes!" to which Dumouriez replied, with affected amazement, "Ah, sir, all is lost!"

Scarcely had these republicans seen and conversed with Louis, when they found him a different man to what party spirit had represented him, and, like Barnave, began to respect him. Madame Roland, who was not under the same influences, as she did not see the king daily, like the ministers, was alarmed lest they should all become royalists; and she had to labour hard to impress upon honest Roland that Louis was not to be trusted, and that the courtiers would impose on him, who was, she said, too virtuous for a courtier. Madame Roland, in fact, was the minister of the interior; Roland was her automaton. So completely did she keep at his elbow and regulate everything, that even Condorcet, one of their own party, observed, "When I wish

the petticoats of his wife." Notwithstanding all her caution, however, the feeling of the king's honest intentions spread amongst the members of the Gironde, and Guadet, Gensonné, and Vergniaud were soon in correspondence with him.

As for Dumouriez, he showed himself a courtier amongst the courtiers. He had none of the starch preciseness of his colleagues. His business was, after a long career of adventures with little profit or promotion, to make himself a name and a position; and when the courtiers laughed at the "sans-culotte " ministers, Dumouriez laughed too, and returned joke for joke. The king, like every one else who conversed with him, except madame Roland, was soon pleased with him, and, from his representations, the queen wished to see him. At first, she was very warm in denunciation of the continual encroachments on the royal prerogatives. Dumouriez reminded her of the necessity of the king observing the constitution. Marie Antoinette, not expecting this plain speaking, grew more angry. Dumouriez paid her some compliments on the nobility of her character, and declared that those traits of her nature had made him her firm friend. For that cause, he was anxious to maintain a good understanding betwixt the king and the people; but that, if he was in any way an obstacle to her plans, she had only to say so, and he would instantly resign. This candour appeased her, and she conversed calmly and freely on the affairs of the day. But the councils of those around, and the infamous papers continually issued by Marat and the jacobins, soon drove her into measures contrary to Dumouriez' advice.

Just at this crisis died Leopold of Austria, and was succeeded by his nephew, Francis II.; and war became more inevitable, for Francis had not the same pacific disposition as Leopold, and the Gironde was bent on war. The internal condition of France also seemed to indicate that there must soon be war abroad or civil war at home. The ministers were soon at variance; the jacobins and Girondists were coming to an open and desperate feud; the people, both in Paris and all over the country, were excited by the jacobin publications to the utmost pitch of fury against the royalists and the priests. The more they were menaced by the royalists on the frontiers, the more they became rabid against the royalists who remained at home. In Paris, Brissot insisted that every man should be armed with pikes, and that the bonnet-rouge, or red nightcap, on which the tricolour cockade was displayed, should be universally worn, as the true emblem of liberty. Members of assembly immediately assumed this badge; Dumouriez went to the jacobin club and put it on, and, when upbraided for this as a minister by the king and court, he replied that it was merely to keep the people in good humour. The dames de la Halle appeared at the assembly, announced that they had formed themselves into an amazonian brigade, and demanded pikes, that they might manœuvre in the Champ de Mars in their red nightcaps. The women of the Faubourg St. Antoine appeared, already armed with pikes, to assert their patriotism.

The king, alarmed at this universal arming of the people, sent for Petion, the mayor, and requested him to take measures for putting an end to this dangerous state of things. Petion promised, but contented himself with issuing an order

A.D. 1792.]

that the people should not appear in the streets armed, and of this order no notice was taken. Throughout all France similar demonstrations were making, and the people, in many places, did not content themselves with arming-they proceeded to frightful outrages. We have mentioned those at Avignon, under the leadership of the infamous Jourdan. Similar atrocities were reported from other quarters, and a deputation from Marseilles, headed by Charles Barbarouxwhose handsome person turned all the heads of the ladies, including that of madame Roland-declared that the people of Marseilles, armed with pikes, were ready to march to Paris, and assist the jacobin club in exterminating all internal tyrants. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, at this crisis, recommended to the assembly the instrument for cutting off by wholesale the heads of their enemies, which became known by his own name. This notorious machine was approved of by the assembly, and ordered, by a special decree of the 20th of March of this year, to be universally used. The Girondists, so many of whom fell under its axe, were as unanimous for the guillotine as the most ultra-jacobins, and thus all the revolutionists were already looking forward to the destruction of those who did not agree with them. Matters were fast ripening. After all, the guillotine was no original invention at this period. An instrument of precisely the same construction was in use in this country in the time of Edward III. It was of very ancient use on the continent, in Germany, Bohemia, and Italy, and was introduced into Scotland, under the name of "The Maiden," in 1578. The Halifax maiden was also well known. The tradition in Scotland is, that the regent Morton, who introduced the maiden, was the first to suffer by it; but Dr. Guillotin did not experience the same fate from his revival of this ancient machine. He died quietly in his bed, in 1814. He was proud of the engine, saying, that through it his name would live in history.

Work for the guillotine was fast preparing. The Gironde party, incensed at the constant opposition of Robespierre and his party, and at his evident increase of popularity, notwithstanding his opposition to the war, and his opposition to atheism for this sanguinary man dared to denounce war in the jacobin club, and in a journal which he had now established, called "The Defender of the Constitution," though in reality it laboured to destroy the constitution, and the Gironde now determined to denounce him. Brissot, Condorcet, and Guadet were to lead the attack; but Robespierre was soon apprised of the plot, and instantly took the initiative himself. He set on Collot D'Herbois to denounce Condorcet and Roederer, whilst he and Tallien denounced Brissot and Guadet. They declared that the jacobin society wanted purging; that these members were in league with Barnave, La Fayette, and the Lameths to betray the constitution to the court. Chabot joined in declaring that Narbonne, the exminister of war, was also scheming to play the Cromwell in France, and was actively supported by madame de Staël and madame Condorcet; that they had already seduced the bishop of Calvados, Fauchet, and were secretly supported by the Girondists. On the 25th of April Brissot and Guadet retaliated by a desperate attack on Robespierre and his friends, but they were signally defeated; Robespierre was triumphantly supported by the club, and his victory was

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proclaimed by the journals of Marat, Desmoulins, Collot D'Herbois, and the rest. The Girondists saw, to their consternation, that, though they were nominally in power, there was a still more terrible power possessed by this persevering man, who knew how at once to oppose the mob, and yet to flatter and fascinate them.

Whilst the Gironde was thus weakened by this implacable and incurable feud with the jacobins, Austria was making unmistakable signs of preparation for that war which Leopold had often threatened, but never commenced. Francis received deputations from the emigrant princes, ordered the concentration of troops in Flanders, and spoke in so firm a tone of restoring Louis and the old system of things, that the French ambassador at Vienna, M. De Noailles, sent in his resignation to Dumouriez, saying that he despaired of inducing the emperor to listen to the language which had been dictated to him. Two days after, however, Noailles recalled his resignation, saying he had obtained the categorical answer demanded of the court of Vienna. This was sent in a dispatch from baron Von Cobenzel, the foreign minister of Austria. In this document, which was tantamount to a declaration of war, the court of Vienna declared that it would listen to no terms on behalf of the king of France, except his entire restoration to all the ancient rights of his throne, according to the royal declaration of the 23rd of June, 1789; to the restoration of the domains in Alsace, with all their feudal rights, to the princes of the empire. Moreover, prince Kaunitz, the chief minister of Francis, announced his determination to hold no correspondence with the government which had usurped authority in France.

Dumouriez advised the king to communicate this note to the assembly without a moment's delay. There was an immediate dissension in the royal council; Clavieres and Roland took one view, and Dumouriez, De Grave, Lacoste, and Duranthon, another. This was the first commencement of the division in the Gironde ministry, which quickly destroyed it. Dumouriez proceeded with the king, followed by the rest of the ministers, and a number of courtiers, on the 20th of April to make that announcement which was to decide the fate of France and of Europe. Roland and the more determined Girondists had recommended that the king should himself make the declaration of war; but as the war itself was most repugnant to the king, Dumouriez had advised that he should only consult with the assembly on the necessity of this declaration, and thus throw the responsibility on that body. There had been the division of opinion amongst ministers, and now Dumouriez read a detailed account of the negotiations with Austria, and then Louis, who looked jaded and anxious, stated that he had followed the recommendations of the assembly, and of many of his subjects, in various parts of France, in these negotiations, and, as they had heard the results, he put it to the assembly whether they could any longer submit to see the dignity of the French people insulted, and the national security threatened. The speech was received with loud acclamations and cries of "Vive le Roi!" The president said they would deliberate, and the result was that a decree was passed resolving upon war. This resolve the assembly justified by the declaration that the emperor of Austria had concerted with

the emigrants and foreign princes to threaten the peace and the constitution of France; that he had refused to abandon these views and proceedings, and reduce his army to a peace establishment, as demanded of him by a vote of the 11th of March of this year; that he had declared his intention to restore the German princes by force to the possessions they had held in Alsace, although the French nation had never ceased to offer them compensation; and that, finally, he had closed the door to all accommodation by refusing to reply to the dispatches of the king.

The decree of the assembly was received by the galleries with loud cries of "Vive la Guerre!" "Vive la LibertéMort aux Tyrans!" and then Condorcet rose and read a long paper, endeavouring to prove that the French were not violating the article of their constitution which bound them not to become aggressors in war; that this war was forced on them by the acts of the foreign despots; and that they had no alternative—although it is a fact that Dumouriez had, at the very time that he and the king communicated the message from Austria, a subsequent message, in which Austria offered to depart from this apparent ultimatum, and had sent it by an agent empowered to treat on a different basis. Condorcet avowed the bold opinion that France had a right to do whatever it pleased with Alsace and Avignon; and he denied indignantly that Louis was a prisoner on the sophistical plea that he was only prisoner to the laws which to break was treason-as if these very laws had not been made in open violence to the king's free will and consent. Vergniaud recommended that this great event should be celebrated by a new oath and by a great national festival.

A festival, however, had been held only five days before in the Champ de Mars, calculated to stamp contempt and infamy on national festivals in any country except France. It had been a festival in honour of mutiny amongst the national troops, and of those members of citizens of a different political opinion—a festival calculated to destroy the last principles of order in the community. It was a part of that policy of the jacobins which had for its object the extirpation of every rank and class in the country but the mere mob, and to leave such men as Robespierre and Marat to rule over this savage and debased herd as dictators. During the last year the jacobins and the royalists, the sworn priests and the unsworn, the officers and their soldiers, had been in continual conflict. At Caen, the two parties attached to the old and new clergy fought in the very cathedral; the quarrel spread to the regular troops and the national guards, and they fought in the streets. There were similar bloody feuds all over La Vendée, amongst the mountains of the south, La Lozère, Herault, Ardeche, &c. At Mende, a village in La Vendée, there was a sanguinary battle in the square betwixt the national guards and a body of troops sent from Lyons. But the national guard, which was royalist, beat the troops of the assembly by aid of the people of the country round; insulted the emblems of the revolution; hooted the constitution; ransacked the hall of the jacobins, and burnt down the houses of the chief members of the club. At Brest, where jacobinism prevailed, the club exerted itself to raise insurrection amongst the sailors. They attacked M. Lajaile, a captain of a vessel ordered to San Domingo to reduce the negroes to order; nearly killed

and then threw him into prison. At Cambresis, the soldiers rose against the officers, and imprisoned them. Blood flowed everywhere; the clubs seduced the regiments, denounced the generals, and filled the minds of the people with suspicion against the officers. "The officer," says Lamartine, "was a prey to terror; the soldier to mistrust. The premeditated plan of the jacobins and Girondists was to destroy, in concert, this body, that was yet attached to the king; deprive the nobility of their command; substitute plebeians for nobles as officers, and then give the army to the nation. In the meantime, they surrendered it to anarchy and sedition, but finding that the disorganisation was not sufficiently rapid, they wished to sum up in one act the systematic corruption of the army, the ruin of all military discipline, and the legal triumphs of insurrection." This was the secret of arming the whole people with pikes, and of the grand festival which they had just celebrated.

The reader will recollect the mutiny of troops at Nancy, their suppression by Bouillé, and the condemnation of fortyone Swiss soldiers to the galleys by a court-martial of the Swiss regiments. The amnesty proclaimed by the king, for crimes committed during the troubles of the revolution, could not apply to these Swiss; they were condemned by their own authorities, and could alone be released by them. Repeated applications had been made by the ministers to the Helvetian jurisdiction for their liberation in vain. The assembly, therefore, recently had taken upon itself to discharge them. The king had, for a little while, withheld his sanction from this decree, not to offend the Swiss confederation. This was immediately seized on by the jacobins as a crime in the ministers. "The moment is come," exclaimed Manuel, "when one must perish for the safety of all, and that man must be a minister; but they all appear to me nearly equally guilty." "All! all!" vociferated the tribunes. At this moment, Collot D'Herbois announced that the liberated Swiss were free, and advancing to Paris to thank their liberators, and that he would have the honour of presenting these heroes to the assembly. In fact, the jacobinised people all along the road were fêting these men, whose only merit was rebelling against their own officers, actually murdering captain Desilles, and proposing to hang the chief royalists.

The jacobins of Paris prepared to give these liberated mutineers a grand triumph. In vain did the Feuillants and constitutionalists protest against this insult to all order and government. André Chénier, the poet, Dupont de Nemours, and the poet Roucher, were vehement in condemnation of it; but Robespierre, Collot D'IIerbois, the player, and all the jacobins and cordeliers, were equally impatient for it, as a means of increasing the hatred to the higher classes, and of especially damaging La Fayette. Chénier, in his eloquent protest against this scandalous fête, declared them Swiss assassins, and asked, " Is the honour of Paris interested in fêting the murderers of our brothers? Is it necessary to invent extravagances capable of destroying every species of government-recognise rebellion against the laws

crown foreign satellites for having shot French citizens in an émeute?" The walls of the Palais Royale were covered with placards in honour of this fête, and any counterplacards were torn down by the jacobins. Petion, the

A.D. 1792.]

mayor, sanctioned the fête, whilst pretending, in his doublefaced way, to preach moderation to the mob. Dupont de Nemours, the friend and counsellor of Mirabeau, published a severe paper on Petion, declaring that Paris was receiving from twelve to fifteen hundred bandits every day ready to seize any occasion of pillage; that the mob of Avignon had broken open the prison of the monster, Jourdan Coupe-tête, who would be at the fête with Mainville and Pegtavin, and all the cold-blooded scoundrels, who, in one night, had killed sixty-eight defenceless persons, and violated females before they murdered them.

Petion published a miserable and contemptible apology for his conduct; but the audacious Robespierre mounted the tribune of the jacobins, and exclaimed, "Against whom think you that you have to strive? Against the aristocracy? -No. Against the court?-No: against a general who has long entertained great designs against the people. It is not the national guards that view these preparations with alarm. It is the genius of La Fayette that conspires in the staff. It is the genius of La Fayette that conspires in the municipality. It is the genius of La Fayette that perverts the minds of so many good citizens, who would otherwise be for us. La Fayette is the most dangerous of all the enemies of liberty, because he wears the mask of patriotism." He declared that he had only obtained the command of the French armies to turn them against the revolution. He declared that it was not Bouillé who had crushed these brave Swiss and their fellow-patriots at Nancy, but La Fayette by his hand. This was turning all the pikes and guns of the jacobin mob of France against the head of La Fayette. The monster was already anticipating blood.

At the opening of the sitting of the assembly, a member demanded that the soldiers of Châteauvieux, these Swiss, should be admitted to pay their respects to the legislative body. M. de Jaucourt resisted this with indignation; he declared that it was the way to create universal insurrection. M. Gouvion, who had a brother in the national guards at Nancy, pierced with twenty-five bayonet wounds by these mutineers, demanded whether he was to be condemned to behold the assassins of his brother? In vain; the Swiss were admitted, and Collot D'Herbois presented them, and made an harangue in their honour. Gouvion, scarlet with indignation, quitted the assembly at one door as the Swiss entered by the other, vowing that he would never again enter a place where the murderers of his brother had been welcomed. He applied to the minister of war for a commission in the army of the north, and fell there.

The Swiss entered, attended by the national guard, and filed through the hall, with drums beating and cries of "Vive la nation!" After them marched crowds of people, with tricolour flags and pikes on their shoulders, men and women; then came all the clubs of Paris, displaying before the president the flags of honour given to the Swiss by the departments through which they had just passed; then Gouchon, the agitator of the faubourg St. Antoine, with a red cap on a pike, announced that that faubourg had manufactured ten thousand pikes to defend the liberties of their country. This scene in the parliament of the nation was strange enough, but it was far surpassed on the following

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This is Lamartine's summary of this unparalleled procession and fête :

"It was no longer the people of liberty but the people of anarchy in high Bevel-revolt armed against the laws. For instance :- Mutinous soldiers as conquerors; a colossal galley, an instrument of punishment and shame, crowned with flowers, as an emblem; abandoned women and girls, collected from the lowest haunts of infamy, carrying and kissing the broken fetters of these galley-slaves; forty trophies, bearing the forty names of these Swiss; civic crowns on the names of these murderers of citizens; busts of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, Sidney-the greatest philosophers and most virtuous patriots mingled with the ignoble busts of these malefactors, and sullied by the contact; these soldiers themselves, astonished, if not ashamed of their glory, advancing in the midst of a group of rebellious French guards, in all the glorification of the abandonment of their banners, and the want of discipline. The march closed by a car, imitating in its form the prow of a galley; in this car the statue of Liberty, armed, in anticipation, with the bludgeon of September, and wearing the bonnet rouge-an emblem borrowed from Phrygia by some, from the galleys by others. The book of the constitution, carried processionally in this fête, as if the constitution must be present at the homage decreed to those who were armed against the laws; bands of male and female citizens, the pikes of the fabourg, the absence of the civic bayonets, fierce threats, theatrical music, demagogue hymns, derisive halts at the Bastille, the Hôtel de Ville, the Champ de Mars; at the altar of the country vast and multitudinous rounds danced several times by chains of men and women round the triumphal galley, amid the foul chorus of the air of the 'Carmagnole;' embraces more obscene than patriotic between these women and the soldiers, who threw themselves into each other's arms; and, in order to put the copestone on this debasement of the laws, Petion, the mayor of Paris, the magistrates of the people, assisting personally at this fête, and sanctioning this insolent triumph over the laws by the weakness of their complicity. Such was this fête, a humiliating copy of the 14th of July-an infamous parody of an insurrection, which parodied a revolution. France blushed, good citizens were alarmed, the national guard began to be afraid of pikes, the city to fear the faubourgs, and the army herein received the signal of the most perfect disorganisation."

The effect of these diabolical lupercalia was instant all over the kingdom. The rabble and the national guards, awed by the rabble, were in frightful disunion. Whilst the people of Paris were still fêting the rebel Swiss, the people of Marseilles rose on a Swiss regiment, on the plea that it was aristocratic in its feelings, compelled them to lay down their arms, and expelled them from Aix, where they were quartered. Every where emissaries were sent from town to town to rouse the people to fall on the sellers of corn and flour, which were scarce. The mayor of Estampes, Simoneau, a bold man, endeavoured to convince the rioters there that this conduct, by terrifying the sellers of grain from the market, would make flour still dearer; but, finding it vain, hoisted the red flag, proclaimed martial law, and advanced against the insurgents at the head of the municipality, but was speedily attacked with pitchforks and guns, and murdered. The