NECKER had made only one miscalculation, but that proved to be serious . He had reckoned without a man ; Providence sent Mirabeau . Mirabeau was the second son of a doctrinaire father, who had lived, all his life, in violent opposition to that father, to his relations, to his King, to his fellows . Gabriel Riquetti, Comte de Mirabeau, was steeped in debaucheries, but had carried out of a wasted youth a heart very easily moved and a brain swift in action and vast in its powers of understanding . Mirabeau was huge, his face possessed a great broadness which supported handsomely his wide, high forehead . Hair, like Samson's, rioted on his head so that, when he was angry, he looked like a lion . But he was not often angry . On the contrary, his big, hooked nose surmounted lips of a singular proudness of expression . The man had noble stamped on his face; he possessed all the vices which have been imputed to his caste; but he was great, nevertheless, of spirit, deep of wisdom, generous of enthusiasm, and reckless wholly where personal interests were concerned . Such a man was bound to hate Necker ; actually the smug manner of the banker produced a kind of madness in the tribune's mind . The two men choked in each other's company .
Necker addressed the States General after the King, but failed to enlighten them . Within a few days his calculations were justified; the Commons had opened an attack on the Clergy and the Nobles and had demanded voting by head . King Louis tried to keep out of the quarrel, and might have succeeded had not the citizens of Paris taken a hand in the dispute . Necker's Press in the capital had begun to demand that the King should compel the Clergy and Nobles to sit and vote with the representatives of the people . There were riots . The Commons became nervous and then defiant . They declared themselves a National Assembly and denied the King's right to dissolve them . Louis summoned the three estates to a Royal Sitting and again addressed them . He unfolded his own plans -- namely, the complete abolition of all privileges, equal justice for all Frenchmen, equal opportunity, equal service . He bade the estates continue to sit separately as before . It is possible that he would have been obeyed in spite of Mirabeau's dramatic outburst that the Commons sat by the will of the people, had not Necker chosen the occasion to tender his resignation .
The banker had foreseen this move of the King to carry his policy and re-establish relations with his people . He had provided against it . The moment his resignation became known Versailles and Paris too were in uproar . Angry crowds demonstrated before the palace, and the King heard expressed by them the view that he was about to dismiss the States General and institute again his despotic methods . The excitement became so great and the crowds grew so menacing that Louis feared a riot . He sent for Necker, agreed to the condition that the three Estates should sit together and vote together, and restored the banker to his office . Necker was borne from the palace shoulder-high by his supporters, who became delirious in praising his wisdom, his courage, his patriotism, and his moderation .
Mirabeau observed the scene with growing uneasiness . He saw Necker's game and he detested it . The hero who arrived by means of famine, we one of the curses which he hurled at the banker . He wrote secretly to the King offering help and advice . But Louis shrank from a man possessed of so evil a reputation . The tribune therefore used his eloquence to attack and discredit the minister in the Assembly . Necker's reputation waned in Versailles .
It remained as high as everhigher than everin Paris . Paris began to complain that the Parliament at Versailles was going to sleep . It was falling under the influence of the Court . It was learning manners and forgetting the people . Mirabeau saw the hand of Necker in this propaganda . But he had no weapons with which to defeat it . He wrote again to the King, but received no answer . He began to absent himself from the Assembly, where the chief subject of discussion was the Declaration of the Rights of Man .
“What is wanted,” cried Mirabeau, “is a declaration of duties .” The King held the same opinion . Necker had foiled his attempt to establish relations with his Parliament; Necker was exciting the Parisian mob against him . He resolved to fight with such weapons as remained to him . Troops were ordered to approach Paris and Versailles . On July 12, 1789, the King dismissed Necker and ordered him to leave France instantly . The banker departed from Versailles the same night, with Madame de Staël and her husband in pursuit as soon as they learned the news . Next morning Paris went mad . Everyone wore green, and even the trees in the Tuileries gardens were stripped of their leaves to supply Necker cockades . The mob attacked the Great State prison, the Bastille, entered it by a ruse, and on July 14 razed it to the ground . The Town Council of Paris turned itself into a kind of Government, and as the Commune enlisted a National Guard with Lafayette the hero of the American War, as its General . This was revolution . Louis despatched messengers after Necker bidding him come back . Meanwhile, at Lafayette's order, he came himself to Paris of the day after the riot, gave his approval to the Commune and the National Guard, and actually pinned on his breast the new cockade which Lafayette had made .
By this bitter humiliation was the King of France taught the power and resource of Money . His brother of England had already undergone a punishment which, if less severe, was not less difficult to endure . In 1780 Dunning had carried, by 233 votes to 215 in the House of Common, a motion : “ That the power of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished .” Since then, as has been said, George III had tasted the bitterness of defeat at the hands of Washington and later at the hands of the Whigs and the City of London . His Civil List had been drastically overhauled and he himself had, temporarily, lost his reason and been placed under restraint .