The state of Italy was yet worse; for it was severed into pieces that, unlike the snake, were unable to reunite. Naples was under the severe sway of Spain, and the yoke of Austria pressed on Milan and Lombardy.
Rome was nought but the capital of an idea--her people had disappeared, and she had now become the modern Ephesus, at which each cabinet sought an oracle favourable to its own cause, and paid for this purpose the members of the sacred college. Although the centre of all diplomatic intrigue, and the spot where all worldly ambition humbled itself but to increase its power,--although this court could shake Europe to its foundations, it was yet unable to govern it. The elective aristocracy, cardinals chosen by powers at variance with each other; the elective monarchy, a pope whose qualifications were old age and feebleness, and who was only crowned on condition of a speedy decease: such was the _temporal_ government of the Roman States. This government combined in itself all the weakness of anarchy, and all the vices of despotism. It had produced its inevitable result, the servitude of the state, the poverty of the government and the misery of the population; Rome was no longer anything but the great Catholic munic.i.p.ality, and her government nought save a republic of diplomatists. Rome possessed a temple enriched with the offerings of the Christian world, a sovereign and amba.s.sadors, but neither population, treasure, nor army. It was the venerated shadow of that universal monarchy to which the popes had pretended in the golden age of Catholicism, and of which they had only preserved the capital and the court.
VII.
Venice drew near its fall, but the silence and mystery of its government concealed even from the Venetians the decrepitude of the state. The government was an aristocratic sovereignty, founded on the corruption of the people and treachery, for the master sinew of the government was _espionage_; its _prestige_, mystery; its power, the torture. It lived on terror and voluptuousness; its police was a system of secret confession, of each against the other. Its cells, termed the _Piombi_ or _Leads_, and which were entered at night by the _Bridge of Sighs_, were a h.e.l.l that closed on the captive never to re-open. The wealth of the East flowed in on Venice from the fall of the Lower Empire. She became the refuge of Greek civilisation, and the Constantinople of the Adriatic; and the arts had emigrated thither from Byzance, with commerce. Its marvellous palaces, washed by the waves, were crowded together on a narrow spot of ground, so that the city was like a vessel at anchor, on board which a people driven from the land have taken refuge with all their treasures. She was thus impregnable, but could not exercise the least influence over Italy.
VIII.
Genoa, a more popular and more turbulent republic, subsisted only by her fleet and her commerce. Hemmed in between barren mountains and a gulf without a sh.o.r.e, it was only a port peopled by sailors. The marble palaces, built one above the other on the rocky banks, looked down on the sea, their sole territory. The portraits of the doges and the statue of Andrea Doria constantly reminded the Genoese that from the waves had proceeded their riches and their renown, and that _there_ alone they could hope to look for them. Its ramparts were impregnable, its a.r.s.enals full; and thus Genoa formed the stronghold of armed commerce.
The immense country of Tuscany, governed and rendered ill.u.s.trious by the _Medici_, those Pericles of Italy, was learned, agricultural, industrious, but unwarlike. The house of Austria ruled it by its archdukes, and these princes of the north, transported to the palaces of the Pitti or the Como, contracted the mild and elegant manners of the Tuscans; and the climate and serenity of the hills of Florence softened there even tyranny, and these princes became voluptuaries or sages.
Florence, the city of Leo X., of philosophy, and the arts, had transformed even religion. Catholicism, so ascetic in Spain, so gloomy in the north, so austere and literal in France, so popular at Rome, had become at Florence, under the _Medici_ and the Grecian philosophers, a species of luminous and Platonic theory, whose dogmata were only sacred symbols, and whose pomps were only pleasures that overpowered the mind and the senses. The churches at Florence were more museums of Christ than his sanctuaries; the colonies of all the arts and trades of Greece had emigrated, on the entry of Mahomet II. into Constantinople, to Florence, and there they had prospered; and a new Athens, enriched like the ancient with temples, porticoes, and statues, beautified the banks of the Arno.
Leopold, the philosopher prince, awaited there, busied in learning the art of governing men and putting in practice new theories of political economy, the moment to mount the imperial throne of Austria, where his destiny was not to leave him long. He was the Germanicus of Germany, and philosophy could alone display him to the world, after having lent him for a few years to Italy.
Piedmont, whose frontiers reached to the heart of France by the Alpine valleys, and on the other side the walls of Genoa and the Austrian possessions on the Po, was governed by the house of Savoy, one of the most ancient of the royal lines in Europe. This military monarchy had its intrenched camp, rather than its capital, in Turin. The plains it occupied in Italy had been, and were destined to be, the field of battle for Austria and France; and her positions were the keys of Italy.
This population, accustomed to war, was necessarily constantly under arms to defend itself, or to unite with that one of the two powers whose rivalry could alone a.s.sure its independence. Thus, military disposition was its strength; its weakness lay in having half its possessions in Italy, half in France. The whole of Savoy is French in language, descent, and manners; and at any great commotion Savoy must detach itself from Italy, and fall on this side of its own accord. The Alps are too essential a frontier to two people to belong to only one; for if their south side looks to Italy, their north looks to France. The snow, the sun, and the torrents have thus willed this division of the Alps between two nations. Policy does not long prevail against nature, and the house of Savoy was not sufficiently powerful to preserve the neutrality of the valleys of the Alps and the roads of Italy; and though it increase in power in Italy, yet it must be worsted in a struggle against France. The court of Turin was doubly allied to the house of France by the marriage of the Comte d"Artois and the Comte de Provence, brothers of Louis XVI., with two princesses of the house of Savoy. The clergy had more influence at this court than at any other in Italy; and hated instinctively all revolutions, because they threatened its political influence. From religious feeling--from family feeling--from political feeling, Savoy was destined to become the first scene of conspiracy against the French Revolution.
IX.
There was yet another in the north, and that was Sweden; but there it was neither a superst.i.tious attachment to Catholicism, nor family feeling, nor even national interest, that excited the hostility of a king against the Revolution; it was a more n.o.ble sentiment--the disinterested glory of combating for the cause of kings; and, above all, for a queen whose beauty and whose misfortunes had won the heart of Gustavus III., in which blazed the last spark of that chivalrous feeling that vowed to avenge the cause of ladies, to a.s.sist the oppressed, and succour the right. Extinguished in the south, it burnt, for the last time, in the north, and in the breast of a king. Gustavus III. had in his policy something of the adventurous genius of Charles XII., for the Sweden of the race of Wasa is the land of heroes. Heroism, when disproportioned to genius and its resources, resembles folly: there was a mixture of heroism and folly in the projects of Gustavus against France; and yet this folly was n.o.ble, as its cause--and great, as his own courage. Fortune had accustomed Gustavus to desperate and bold enterprises; and success had taught him to believe nothing impossible.
Twice he had made a revolution in his kingdom, twice he had striven single-handed against the gigantic power of Russia, and had he been seconded by Prussia, Austria, and Turkey, Russia would have found a rampart against her in the north. The first time, abandoned by his troops, in his tent by his revolted generals, he had escaped, and alone, made an appeal to his brave Dalecarlians. His eloquence, and his magnanimous bearing had caused a new army to spring from the earth. He had punished traitors, rallied cowards, concluded the war, and returned triumphant to Stockholm, borne on the shoulders of his people, wrought up to a pitch of enthusiasm. The second time, seeing his country torn by the anarchical predominance of the n.o.bility, he had resolved, in the depths of his own palace, on the overthrow of the const.i.tution. United in feeling with the _bourgeoisie_ and the people, he had led on his troops, sword in hand; imprisoned the senate in its chamber; dethroned the n.o.bility, and acquired for royalty the prerogatives it required in order to defend and govern the country. In three days, and before one drop of blood had been shed, Sweden under his sword had become a monarchy. Gustavus"s confidence in his own boldness was confirmed. The monarchical feeling in him was strengthened by all the hatred which he bore to the privileges of the orders he had overturned. The cause of the king was identified with his own.
He had embraced with enthusiasm that of Louis XVI. Peace, which he had concluded with Russia, allowed him to direct his attention and his forces towards France. His military genius dreamed of a triumphant expedition to the banks of the Seine. It was there that he desired to acquire glory. He had visited Paris in his youth; under the name of the Count de Haga he had partaken of the hospitalities of Versailles. Marie Antoinette, then in the brilliancy of her youth and beauty, now appeared humiliated, and a captive in the hands of a pitiless people. To deliver this woman, restore the throne, to make himself at once feared and blessed by this capital, seemed to him one of those adventures formerly sought by crowned chevaliers. His finances alone opposed the execution of this bold design. He negotiated a loan with the court of Spain, attached to him the French emigrants renowned for their military talents, requested plans from the Marquis de Bouille, solicited the courts of St. Petersburg and Berlin to unite with him in this crusade of kings. He asked of England nothing but neutrality. Russia encouraged him; Austria temporised; Spain trembled; England looked on. Each new shock of the Revolution at Paris found Europe undecided and always behind-hand in counsels and resolutions. Monarchical Europe, hesitating and divided, did not know what it had to fear, nor what it ought to do.
Such was the political situation of cabinets with respect to France.
But as to ideas, the feelings of the people were different.
The movement of intelligence and philosophy at Paris was responded to by the agitation of the rest of Europe, and especially in America. Spain, under M. d"Aranda, was become alive to the general feeling; the Jesuits had disappeared; the Inquisition had extinguished its fires; the Spanish n.o.bility blushed for the sacred theocracy of its monks. Voltaire had correspondents at Cadiz and at Madrid. The forbidden produce of our ideas was favoured even by those whose charge was to exclude it. Our books crossed the snows of the Pyrenees. Fanaticism, tracked by the light to its last den, felt Spain escaping from it. The excess of a tyranny long undergone, prepared ardent minds for the excess of liberty.
In Italy, and even at Rome, the sombre Catholicism of the middle age was lighted up by the reflections of time. It played even with the dangerous arms which philosophy was about to turn against it. It seemed to consider itself as a weakened inst.i.tution, which ought to have its long duration pardoned in consequence of its complaisance towards princes and the age. Benedict XIV. (Lambertini) received from Voltaire the dedication of "Mahomet." The Cardinals _Pa.s.sionei_ and _Quirini_, in their correspondence with Ferney[6],--Rome, in its bulls, preached tolerance for dissenters, and obedience to princes. The pope disavowed and reformed the company of Jesus: he soothed the spirit of the age.
Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) shortly after secularised the Jesuits, confiscated their possessions, and imprisoned their superior, Ricci, in the castle of Saint Angelo, the Bastille of papacy. Severe only towards exaggerated zealots, he enchanted the Christian world by the evangelical sweetness, the grace of his understanding, and the poignancy of his wit; but pleasantry is the first step to the profanation of dogmata. The crowd of strangers and English whom his affability attracted to Italy and retained at Rome, caused, with the circulation of gold and science, the inflowing of scepticism and indifference, which destroy creeds before they sap inst.i.tutions.
Naples, under a corrupt court, left fanaticism to the populace.
Florence, under a philosophical prince, was an experimental colony of modern doctrines. The poet Alfieri, that Tyrtaeus of Italian liberty, produced there his revolutionary dramas, and there sowed his maxims against the two-fold tyranny of popes and kings in every theatre in Italy.
Milan, beneath the Austrian flag, had within its walls a republic of poets and philosophers. Beccaria wrote there more daringly than Montesquieu. His work on "Crimes and Punishments" was a bill of accusation of all the laws of his native country. _Parini Monte, Cesarotti, Pindemonte, Ugo Foscolo_ gay, serious, and heroic poets, then satirised the absurdities of their tyrants, the baseness of their fellow-countrymen, or sang, in patriotic odes, the virtues of their ancestors, and the approaching deliverance of their country.
Turin alone, attached to the house of Saxony, was silent, and proscribed Alfieri.
In England, the mind, a long time free, had produced sound morals. The aristocracy felt itself sufficiently strong never to become persecuting.
Worship was there as independent as conscience. The dominant religion was a political inst.i.tution, which, whilst it bound the citizen, left the believer to his free will. The government itself was popular, only the people consisted of none but its leading citizens. The House of Commons more resembled a senate of n.o.bles than a democratic forum; but this parliament was an open and resounding chamber, where they discussed openly in face of the throne, as in the face of all Europe, the most comprehensive measures of the government. Royalty, honoured in form, whilst in fact it is excluded and powerless, merely presides over these debates, and adds order to victory; it was, in reality, nothing more than a perpetual consulate of this Britannic senate. The voices of the leading orators, who contested the rule of the nation, echoed thence, through and out of Europe. Liberty finds its level in the social world, like the waves in the common bed of the ocean. One nation is not free with impunity--one people is not in bondage with impunity--all finally compares and equalises itself.
X.
England had been intellectually the model of nations, and the envy of the reflecting universe. Nature and its inst.i.tutions had conferred upon it men worthy of its laws. Lord Chatham, sometimes leading the opposition, sometimes at the head of the government, had expanded the s.p.a.ce of parliament to the proportions of his own character and his own language. Never did the manly liberty of a citizen before a throne--never did the legal authority of a prime minister before a people display themselves in such a voice to a.s.sembled citizens. He was a public man in all the greatness of the phrase--the soul of a nation personified in an individual--the inspiration of the nation in the heart of a patrician. His oratory had something as grand as action--it was the heroic in language. The echo of Lord Chatham"s discourses were heard--felt on the Continent. The stormy scenes of the Westminster elections[7] shook to the very depths the feelings of the people, and that love of turbulence which slumbers in every mult.i.tude, and which it so often mistakes for the symptoms of true liberty. These words of counterpoise to royal power, to ministerial responsibility, to laws in operation, to the power of the people, explained at the present by a const.i.tution--explained in the past by the accusation of Strafford, the tomb of Sidney, on the scaffold of a king, had resounded like old recollections and strange novelties.
The English drama had the whole world for audience. The great actors for the moment were Pitt, the controller of these storms, the intrepid organ of the throne, of order, and the laws of his country; Fox, the precursory tribune of the French Revolution, who propagated the doctrines by connecting them with the revolutions of England, in order to sanctify them in the eyes of the English; Burke, the philosophical orator, every one of whose orations was a treatise; then the Cicero of the opposition party, and who was so speedily to turn against the excesses of the French Revolution, and curse the new faith in the first victim immolated by the people; and lastly, Sheridan, an eloquent debauchee, liked by the populace for his levity and his vices, seducing his country, instead of elevating it. The warmth of the debates on the American war, and the Indian war, gave a more powerful interest to the storms of the English parliament.
The independence of America, effected by a newly-born people, the republican maxims on which this new continent founded its government, the reputation attached to the fresh names, which distance increased more than their victories,--Washington, Franklin, La Fayette, the heroes of public imagination; those dreams of ancient simplicity, of primitive manners, of liberty at once heroic and pastoral, which the fashion and illusion of the moment had transported from the other side of the Atlantic,--all contributed to fascinate the spirit of the Continent, and nourish in the mind of the people contempt for their own inst.i.tutions, and fanaticism for a social renovation.
Holland was the workshop of innovators; it was there that, sheltered by a complete toleration of religious dogmata, by an almost republican liberty, and by an authorised system of contraband, all that could not be uttered in Paris, in Italy, in Spain, in Germany, was printed. Since Descartes, independent philosophy had selected Holland for its asylum: Boyle had there rendered scepticism popular: it was the land sacred to insurrection against all the abuses of power, and had subsequently become the seat of conspiracy against kings. Every one who had a suspicious idea to promulgate, an attack to make, a name to conceal, went to borrow the presses of Holland. Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, Mirabeau himself--had gone there to naturalise their writings in this land of publicity. The mask of concealment which these writers a.s.sumed in Amsterdam deceived no one, but it effected their security. All the crimes of thought were there inviolable; it was at the same time the asylum and the a.r.s.enal of new ideas. An active and vast trade in books made a speculation of the overthrow of religion and thrones. The prodigious demand for prohibited works which were thus circulated in the world, proved sufficiently the increasing alteration of ancient beliefs in the mind of the people.
XI.
In Germany, the country of phlegm and patience, minds apparently so slow shared with serious and concentrated ardour in the general movement of mind in Europe. Free thought there a.s.sumed the form of an universal conspiracy. It was enveloped in mystery. Learned and formal Germany liked to give even to its insurrection the appearances of science and tradition. The Egyptian initiations, mystic ceremonies of the middle age, were imitated by the adepts of new ideas. Men thought as they conspired. Philosophy moved veiled in symbols; and that veil was torn away only in secret societies, from which the profane were excluded. The _prestiges_ of the imagination, so powerful in the ideal and dreamy nature of Germany, served as a bait to the newly arisen truths.
The great Frederic had made his court the centre of religious incredulity. Sheltered by his power altogether military, contempt for Christianity and of monarchical inst.i.tutions was freely propagated.
Moral force was nothing to this materialist prince. Bayonets were in his eyes the right of princes; insurrection the right of the people; victories or defeats the public right. His constant run of good fortune was the accomplice of his immorality. He had received the recompence of every one of his vices, because his vices were great. Dying he had bequeathed his perverse genius to Berlin. It was the corrupting city of Germany. Military men educated in the school of Frederic, academies modelled after the genius of Voltaire, colonies of Jews enriched by war, and the French refugees, peopled Berlin and formed the public mind. This mind, full of levity, sceptic, impertinent and sneering, intimidated the rest of Germany. The weakened spirit of that land may be dated from the period of Frederic II. He was the corrupter of the empire--he conquered Germany in the French spirit--he was a hero of a falling destiny.
Berlin continued it after his death; great men always bequeath the impulse of their spirit to their country. The reign of Frederic had at least one happy result: religious tolerance arose in Germany from the very contempt in which Frederic had held religious creeds. Under the wing of this toleration the spirit of philosophy had organised occult a.s.sociations, after the image of freemasonry. The German princes were initiated. It was thought an act of superior mind to penetrate into those shadows, which, in reality, included nothing beyond some general principles of humanity and virtue, with no direct application to civil inst.i.tutions. Frederic in his youth had been initiated himself, at Brunswick, by Major Bielfeld; the emperor Joseph II., the most bold innovator of his time, had also desired to undergo these proofs at Vienna, under the tutelage of the baron de Born, the chief of the freemasons in Austria. These societies, which had no religious tendency in England, because there liberty conspired openly in parliament and in the press, had a wholly different sense on the Continent. They were the secret council-chambers of independent thought: the thought, escaping from books, pa.s.sed into action. Between the initiated and established inst.i.tutions, the war was concealed, but the more deadly.
The hidden agents of these societies had evidently for aim the creation of a government of the opinion of the human race, in opposition to the governments of prejudice. They desired to reform religious, political, and civil society, beginning by the most refined cla.s.ses. These lodges were the catacombs of a new worship. The sect of _illumines_, founded and guided by Weishaupt, was spreading in Germany in conjunction with the _freemasons_ and the _rosicrucians_. The _theosophists_ in their turn produced the symbols of supernatural perfection, and enrolled all susceptible minds and ardent imaginations around dogmata full of love and infinity. The theosophists, the Swedenborgians, disciples of the sublime but obscure Swedenborg, the Saint Martin of Germany, pretended to complete the Gospel, and to transform humanity by overcoming death and the senses. All these dogmata were mingled in an equal contempt for existing inst.i.tutions in one same aspiration for the renewal of the mind and things. All were democratic in their last conclusion, for all were inspired by a love of mankind without distinction of cla.s.ses.
Affiliations were multiplied _ad infinitum_. Prejudice, as it always occurs when zeal is ardent, was added fraudulently to truth, as if error or falsehood were the inevitable alloy of truth, and even the virtues of the human mind: they called up past ages, summoned spectres, and the dead were heard to speak. They played upon the plastic imagination of princes, by rapid transition from terror to enthusiasm. The knowledge of the phantasmagoria, then but little known, served as an auxiliary in these deceptions. On the death of Frederic II., his successor submitted to such tests, and was worked upon by wonders. Kings conspired against thrones. The princes of Gotha gave Weishaupt an asylum. Augustus of Saxony, prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, the prince of Neuvied, even the coadjutor of the ecclesiastical princ.i.p.alities on the banks of the Rhine, those of Mayence, Worms, and Constance, signalised themselves by their ardour for the mystic doctrines of freemasonry or the illuminati.
Cagliostro was astounding Strasburgh--Cardinal de Rohan ruined himself, and bent before his voice. Like at the fall of great empires--like at the cradle of great things--these signs appeared every where. The most infallible was the general convulsion of human ideas. When a creed is crumbling to atoms, all mankind trembles.
The lofty geniuses of Germany and Italy were already singing the new era to their offspring; Goethe the sceptic poet, Schiller the republican poet, Klopstock the sacred poet, intoxicated with their strophes the universities and theatres; each shock of the events of Paris had its _contre coup_ and sonorous echo, multiplied by these writers on the borders of the Rhine. Poetry is the remembrance and antic.i.p.ation of things: what it celebrates is not yet dead, and what it sings already hath existence. Poetry sang everywhere the unformed but impa.s.sioned hopes of the people. It is a sure augury--it is full of enthusiasm, for its voice is heard on all sides; science, poetry, history, philosophy, the stage, mysticism, the arts, the genius of Europe under every form, had pa.s.sed over to the Revolution: not one name of a man of reputation in all Europe could be cited who remained attached to the party of the past. The past was overcome, because the mind of the human race had withdrawn from it--when the spirit hath flown life is extinct. None but mediocrities remain under the shelter of old forms and inst.i.tutions: There was a general mirage in the horizon of the future; and, whether the small saw therein their safety, or the great an abyss, all went headlong towards the novelty.
XII.
Such was the tendency of minds in Europe, when the princes, brothers of Louis XVI., and the emigrant gentlemen, spread themselves over Savoy, Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, to demand succour and vengeance from powers and princ.i.p.alities against the Revolution. Never, from the first great emigrations of ancient people, fleeing from the Roman invasions, had been seen such a movement of terror and perturbation as this, which cast forth from the territory all the clergy and all the aristocracy of a nation. An immense vacuum was created in France: first, in the steps of the throne itself; next, in the court, in chateaux, in ecclesiastical dignities; and finally in the ranks of the army. Officers, all n.o.ble, emigrated in ma.s.ses; the navy followed somewhat later, the example of the army, which also abandoned the flag. It was not that the clergy, the n.o.bility, the land and sea officers were more pressed upon by the stir of revolutionary ideas which had agitated the nation in 1789; on the contrary, the movement commenced by them. Philosophy had in the first place enlightened the apex of the nation. The thought of the age was especially in the higher cla.s.ses; but those cla.s.ses who sought a reform by no means desired a disorganisation. When they had seen the moral agitation of ideas transform itself into an insurrection of the people, they had trembled. The reins of government violently s.n.a.t.c.hed from the king by Mirabeau and La Fayette, at the Tennis court; the attempts of the 5th and 6th of October; privileges suppressed without compensation, t.i.tles abolished, the aristocracy handed over to execration, to pillage, to fire, and even to murder, in the provinces; religion deposed, and compelled to nationalise itself by a const.i.tutional oath; and; finally the king"s flight, his imprisonment in his palace, the threats of death vomited forth by the patriotic press, or the tribunes of popular clubs, against all aristocracy, the triumphant riots in the provinces, the defection of the French guards in Paris, the revolt of the Swiss of Chateauvieux at Nancy, the excesses of the soldiery, mutinous and unpunished, at Caen, Brest, and everywhere, had changed into horror and hatred the favourable feeling of the n.o.blesse for the progress of opinion. It saw that the first act of the people was to degrade superior authority. The _esprit de caste_ impelled the n.o.bility to emigrate, the _esprit de corps_ similarly influenced the officers, and the _esprit de cour_ made it shameful to remain on a soil stained with so many outrages to royalty. The women, who then formed public opinion in France, and whose tender and easily excited imagination is soon transferred to the side of their victims, all sided with the throne and the aristocracy.
They despised those who would not go and seek their avengers in foreign lands. Young men departed at their desire; those who did not, dared not show themselves. They sent them distaffs, as a token of their cowardice!
But it was not shame alone that led the officers and the n.o.bles to join the ranks of the army, it was also the appearance of a duty; for the last virtue that was left to the French n.o.bility was a religious fidelity to the throne: their honour, their second and almost only religion, was to die for their king; and any design against the throne, in their belief, was a design against heaven. Chivalry, that code of aristocratic feeling, had preserved and disseminated this n.o.ble prejudice throughout Europe; and, to the n.o.bility, the king represented their country. This feeling, eclipsed for a while by the debaucheries of the regency, the scandalous vices of Louis XV., and the bold maxims of Rousseau"s philosophy, was awakened in the heart of the gentlemen at the spectacle of the degradation and danger of the king and queen. In their eyes, the a.s.sembly was nothing but a band of revolutionary subjects, who detained their sovereign a prisoner. The most voluntary acts of the king were suspected by them, and beneath his const.i.tutional speeches, they imagined they discovered another and a contrary meaning; and the very ministers of Louis XVI. were believed to be nothing but his gaolers. A secret understanding existed between these gentlemen and the king, and counsels were held in secluded apartments of the Tuileries, at which the king alternately encouraged and forbade his friends to emigrate. And his orders, varied at each day and each fresh occurrence, were sometimes const.i.tutional and patriotic when he hoped to re-establish and moderate the const.i.tution at home; at other times, despairing and blameable when it seemed to him that the security of the queen and his children could only proceed from another country. Whilst he addressed official letters through his minister for foreign affairs to his brothers, and the Prince de Conde, to recall them, and point out to them their duty as citizens, the Baron de Breteuil, his confidential agent to the Foreign Powers, transmitted to the king of Prussia letters that revealed the secret thoughts of the king. The following letter to the king of Prussia, found in the archives of the chancellorship of Berlin, dated December 3rd, 1790, leaves no doubt of this double diplomacy of the unfortunate monarch. Louis XVI. wrote:--
"Monsieur mon Frere,
"I have learnt from M. de Moustier how great an interest your majesty has displayed, not only for my person but for the welfare of my kingdom, and your majesty"s determination to prove this interest, whenever it can be for the good of my people, has deeply touched me; and I confidently claim the fulfilment of it, at this moment, when, in spite of my having accepted the new const.i.tution, the factious portion of my subjects openly manifest their intention of destroying the remainder of the monarchy. I have addressed the emperor, the empress of Russia, and the kings of Spain and Sweden, and I have suggested to them the idea of a congress of the princ.i.p.al powers of Europe, _supported by an armed force_, as the best measure to check the progress of faction here, to afford the means of establishing a better order of things, and preventing the evil that devours this country from seizing on the other states of Europe. I trust that your majesty will approve my ideas, _and maintain the strictest secrecy respecting the step I have taken in this matter_, as you will feel that the critical position in which I am placed at present compels me to use the greatest circ.u.mspection. It is for this reason that the Baron de Breteuil is alone acquainted with my secret, and through him your majesty can transmit me whatever you may think fit."
XIII.
This letter, added to that addressed by Louis XVI. to M. de Bouille, informing him that his brother-in-law the emperor Leopold was about to march a body of troops on Longwi, in order to afford a pretext for the concentration of the French troops on that frontier, and thus favour his flight from Paris, are irrefragable proofs of the counter-revolutionary understanding existing between the king and the foreign powers, no less than between the king and the leaders of the emigres. The memoirs of the emigres are full of proofs of this fact; and nature even attests them, for the cause of the king, the aristocracy, and the religious inst.i.tutions was identical. The emperor Leopold was the brother of the queen of France; the dangers of the king were the dangers of all the other princes; for the example of the triumph of one people was contagious to all nations. The emigres were the friends of the monarchy, and the defenders of kings; had they not exchanged a word more on the subject, they would have been united by the same feelings, the same interests. But in addition to this, they had preconcerted communication with each other, and the suspicions of the people were no empty chimeras, but the presentiment of the plots of their enemies.
The conspiracy of the court with all the courts and aristocracies abroad, with all the aristocracies of the emigres, with their relations, of the king with his brothers, had no need of being carried on in writing. Louis XVI. himself, the most really revolutionary of all the monarchs who have occupied the throne, had no thought of treachery to the people or to the revolution, when he implored the armed succour of the other powers. This idea of an appeal to foreign forces, or even the emigrated forces, was not his real desire; for he dreaded the intervention of the enemies of France, he disapproved of emigration, and he was not without a feeling of offence at his brothers intriguing abroad, sometimes in his name, but often against his wishes. He shrank from the idea of pa.s.sing in the eyes of Europe for a prince in leading-strings, whose ambitious brothers seized upon his rights in adopting his cause, and stipulated for his interests without his intervention. At Coblentz a regency was openly spoken of, and bestowed on the Comte de Provence, the brother of Louis XVI.; and this regency, that had devolved on a prince of the blood by emigration, whilst the king maintained a struggle at Paris, greatly humiliated Louis XVI. and the queen. This usurpation of their rights, although clothed in the dress of devotion and tenderness, was even more bitter to them than the outrages of the a.s.sembly and the people. We always dread most that which is nearest to us, and the triumph of the emigration only promised them a throne, disputed by the regent who had restored it. This grat.i.tude appeared to them a disgrace, and they knew not whether they had most to hope or to apprehend from the emigres.
The queen, in her conversations with her friends, spoke of them with more bitterness than confidence. The king loudly complained of the disobedience of his brothers, and dissuaded from flight all those who demanded his advice; but his advice was as changeable as events; like all men balancing between hope and fear, he alternately bent and stood erect beneath the pressure of circ.u.mstances. His acts were culpable, but not his intentions; it was not the king who conspired, but the man, the husband, the father, who sought by foreign aid to ensure the safety of his wife and children; and he alone became criminal when all seemed desperate. The "tangled thread" of negotiation was incessantly broken off and renewed: that which was resolved yesterday was to-morrow disavowed; and the secret negotiators of these plots, armed with credentials and powers which had been recalled, yet continued to employ them, in spite of the king"s orders, to carry on in his name those plans of which he disapproved. The prince de Conde, the Comte de Provence, and the Comte d"Artois had each his separate line of policy and court, and abused the king"s name in order to increase his own credit and interest.
Hence arises the difficulty, to those who write the history of that period, of tracing the hand of the king in all these conspiracies, carried on in his name, and to p.r.o.nounce either his entire innocence or his palpable treachery. He did not betray his country, or sell his subjects; but he did not observe his oaths to the const.i.tution or his country. An upright man, but a persecuted king, he believed that oaths, extorted by violence and eluded through fear, were no perjuries; and he broke each day some of those to which he had bound himself, under the belief, doubtless, that the excesses of the people freed him from his oath. Educated with all the prejudices of personal sovereignty, he sought with sincerity amidst this chaos of parties, who disputed with each other the empire, to find the nation; and failing to discover the object of his search, he fancied he had the right to find it in his own person. His crime, if there be any in his actions, was less the crime of his heart than the crime of his birth, his situation, and his misfortunes.
XIV.