Germaine de Staël

A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

THE Commune or City Council of Paris illegally formed at the time of the fall of the Bastille, but made legal, before Necker’s return, by the Kings visit to the Hôtel de Ville, was becoming the formidable rival of both National Assembly and Throne.  The Commune owed its existence to Necker, in the sense that his propaganda had paved the way for its creation and his dismissal furnished the pretext.  It relied for strength on the National Guard, of which Lafayette was General, and on the mobs which could be summoned from the slums of the rue St. Antoine and other poor quarters by the ringing of bells.

Both Necker and Lafayette supposed, in these autumn days of 1789, that they remained masters of this new Parisian Government.  Both cherished the same fear, that the King might leave France.  If that happened, the Assembly would become the master ;  and Mirabeau had looked once or twice like becoming master of the Assembly.  There would be short work, if he succeeded, of Swiss bankers and city councils, and generals in command of amateur battalions.  “ Mirabeau,” said Necker, “is tribune by calculation, but aristocrat by choice.”¹

Worthy Jacques was haunted by visions of his foe, become Dictator, re-establishing the rule of Richelieu and Louis XIV.  The morning of October 5, the morning after the banquet of the bodyguard at Versailles, opened dull and lowering.  The King went hunting ;  the Assembly, in the tennis-court, put the finishing touches to the Rights of Man.  Suddenly an uneasy rumour ran about the benches.  The Parisian mob, it was whispered, which had destroyed the Bastille, was on the march to Versailles.

“ I was informed,” wrote Germaine,² “on the morning of October 5 that the people were marching to Versailles ;  my father and mother were living there.  I rushed off to join them, going by a way that was little used and on which I met nobody.  The only people I saw at all were some of the servants of the King’s hunt.  These I met near Versailles.  When I reached the palace I was told that a messenger had been sent off to beg the King to come back at once.  (Such is the force of habit in the life of a Court !  The King did the same thing in the same way at the same hours as he had been accustomed to do in the most peaceful times ;  evidence, no doubt, of a serenity of spirit which one might have admired if his circumstances had warranted the display of any other quality than the resignation of a victim.)

“ M. Necker came hurrying to the Chateau to attend the Council ;  and my mother, growing more frightened every moment by the reports which kept pouring in from Paris, entered the King’s ante-room so as to be at hand to share whatever fate might befall my father.  I followed her and found the room full of people who had come to it for all sorts of reasons.

“ While we waited, Mounier passed through.  He came, very much against his will, to demand, as President of the Assembly, the royal assent to the Declaration of the Rights of Man.  The King had consented to the principles enshrined in this declaration, but had let it be known that he wished to see how they were going to be applied before finally committing himself.  The Assembly was up in arms against this trifling obstacle to its wishes, for there is no feeling so violent among the French as the rage excited by opposition when those who oppose are defenceless.

“ Everybody in the room kept asking whether or not the King would leave Versailles.  Soon we learned that he had ordered his carriages but that the townsfolk had refused to let them pass ;  then it was stated that he had commanded the Flanders Regiment, which was in garrison in the town, to stand to arms.  The Regiment had refused to obey.  We heard afterwards that the Council debated the question whether or not the King should escape into the country ;  but as there was no money available, as the bread famine made any considerable mobilisation of troops impossible, and as no steps had been taken to organise such supplies as were still at disposal, the King hesitated to take the risk.  He was convinced, too, that if he fled, the Assembly would give his crown to the duc d’Orleans.  The Assembly, in point of fact, had never dreamed of doing anything of the kind.  M. Necker was opposed to the departure of the Court in circumstances which must preclude the success of such a move, but he offered nevertheless to follow the King if the decision to go away was taken.  M. Necker was ready to lay down his fortune and his life, although he understood very well what his own position would be among a crowd of courtiers who knew no rule of policy, as of religion, except intolerance.

“ Now that the King has fallen victim, in Paris, to the sword of the factions, it is but natural that those who, on this 5th of October, advised him to flee, should plume themselves on that advice, for it is always an easy matter to paint the advantages that would have followed a course of action which was not, in fact, adopted.  But, apart from the consideration that it was, possibly, already out of the King’s power to leave Versailles, one must remember that M. Necker, while arguing that it was necessary to go to Paris, urged that His Majesty should act strictly in accordance with, and put his whole trust in, the Constitution.  If that was not done, M. Necker said, the King, whatever he might decide, would expose himself to terrible misfortunes.

“ The King, in deciding to stay at his post, still had it in his power to put himself at the head of his bodyguard and meet force with force.  But Louis XVI made it a strict rule of conduct in no circumstances to put the life of any Frenchman in danger for his personal safety ;  his courage, too, about which the spectacle of his death has removed all doubts, never enabled him, of his own accord, to take any decisive course of action.  It must be admitted, on the other hand, that at that time of day, a success against the mob could not have saved him ;  the public mind was bent upon revolution.  When we study the course of events carefully, happenings, which vulgar minds love to impute to chance or to human frailty, are seen to have been inevitable from the beginning.

“ The King, then, made up his mind to await the coming of the army, or rather the mob, from Paris, which was now approaching.  Every eye was fixed on the road by which it must come.  We thought that guns would be trained on us, and that was terrifying enough ;  but not one of the women had an idea of running away.

“ When the multitude began to draw near, the arrival of M. de Lafayette at the head of the National Guard was announced, a reassuring piece of news.  M. de Lafayette had, in fact, held back until the last moment from marching to Versailles and had only been induced to do so by the express order of the Commune of Paris which had bidden him go and prevent the misfortunes that threatened.  Night approached, and the general uneasiness increased with the darkness.  We saw M. de Chinon, who has since, as duc de Richelieu, achieved such well-merited distinction, come to the palace.  He was pale and exhausted ;  he wore the clothes of a common man (un homme du peuple).  It was the first time that such a dress had ever been brought into the King’s house or that so great a noble as M. de Chinon had ever been reduced to wearing it.  He had, he stated, marched some distance with the crowd to overhear what was being said, and had then left it in order to reach Versailles in time to warn the Royal family.  What a story he told !  Women and children armed with pikes and scythes gathered from all parts.  The dregs of the population brutalised by drink rather than rage.  In this hellish crowd, men nicknamed coupe-tétes and swearing to deserve this title.  The National Guard had marched in orderly fashion, obedient to its chief ;  its only wish was to bring the King and the Assembly back with it to Paris.

“ At last M. de Lafayette arrived and crossed the room to go to the King.  Everyone crowded round him eagerly, as if he was master of the situation.  Already the popular party had gone one better than its chief ;  principle was being sacrificed to party, or rather being used as a pretext for party allegiance.  M. de Lafayette looked very calm ;  nobody has ever seen him look otherwise.  But his tact was fully equal to the importance of the part he was playing.  He asked that as a matter of precaution the duty of posting guards inside the Chateau might be entrusted to him, but was only allowed to post the outside guards.  It was easy enough to refuse him, because the rule was that the bodyguard must occupy these inside posts ;  nevertheless, terrible calamities were to result from refusal.  M. de Lafayette came out from the King’s closet and reassured us all.  Everybody, he urged, ought to go home after midnight.  It seemed to us all that we had reached the crisis of the day, and we all felt quite safe—the usual experience when people have been afraid but have found their fears unjustified.  M. de Lafayette, at five o’clock in the morning, thought that danger was over and left matters to the bodyguard which had taken the inside posts.  An entrance they had forgotten to close gave admission to the assassins.  The same chance, as we have seen, has brought about the success of two plots in Russia³ at moments when, apparently, watch was being kept with the most scrupulous care and when calm seemed to prevail everywhere.  It is ridiculous, therefore, to blame M. de Lafayette for an event so difficult to foresee.  No sooner did he hear about it, than he rushed to the help of those in danger with an eagerness which at that moment, and before calumny had begun its poisonous work, was freely recognised.

“ On the 6th of October, in the morning, a very old woman, mother of the Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier . . . rushed into my bedroom ;  she came in terror seeking refuge, although I did not enjoy the honour of her acquaintance.  She told me that assassins had made their way into the Queen’s anteroom, that they had massacred some of the guards at the door, and that, wakened by their cries, the Queen had only succeeded in saving her life by fleeing into the King’s bedroom by a secret passage.  I knew that my father had already left to go to the Chateau and that my mother was getting ready to follow him.  I rushed to accompany my mother.

“ A long passage led from the house of the Controller-General, where we were living, into the Chateau.  As we approached the Chateau we heard shots being fired in the courts, and when we reached the gallery we saw splashes of blood on the floor.  In the room at the end of the gallery, soldiers of the bodyguard were embracing members of the National Guard with the lack of restraint which vast calamity always brings ;  they had exchanged their distinguishing marks ;  for example, the National Guardsmen had the bandoliers of the bodyguard and the bodyguard the tricolour cockade.  All kept shouting ‘Vive Lafayette’ in tones of delight, for Lafayette had saved the bodyguard from annihilation at the hands of the mob.  We passed among these brave fellows who had just seen their comrades killed and who had expected to share their fate.  One could guess what they were feeling, but they allowed themselves no tears.  Then, farther on, what a spectacle !

“ The mob had demanded, with bawlings, that the King and his family should come to Paris.  It had been told that its demand would be granted.  The cries and the shots we had heard were the expression of its joy.  The Queen entered the room where we were.  Her hair was in disorder, her face was pale, but she looked so dignified that everyone was impressed.  The mob called for her to come out on the balcony.  The whole court below (called the Marble Court) was crammed with men armed with guns.  We saw from her expression what she feared.  But she went forward, unhesitatingly, with her two children, who served as a protection.  This spectacle of Queen and mother softened the hearts of the mob and stilled its fury.  The very people who had, perhaps, wanted to kill her during the night now cried her name to the skies. . . .

“ When she left the balcony, the Queen went up to my mother and said to her, with choking sobs :

“ ‘ They want to compel the King and me to go to Paris with the heads of our bodyguard carried before us on the ends of poles.’

“ That was what happened.  Thus were the King and Queen fetched their Capital.  We (the Neckers) returned to Paris by another way, which took us far from this terrible spectacle.  Our way led us through the Bois de Boulogne.  It was a lovely afternoon, with scarcely a leaf stirring.  The sunlight filled the whole land with glory, mocking our distress. ...

“ The King went to the Hôtel de Ville, where the Queen displayed an extraordinary self-possession.  The King said to the Mayor :

“ ‘ I come with pleasure to live in my good town of Paris.’

“ The Queen added :

“ ‘ And with confidence.’ ...

“ Next day the Queen received the Diplomatic Corps and the Court functionaries.  Every time she tried to speak sobs choked her ;  we couldn’t answer her.  What a sight was this old palace of the Tuileries, abandoned by its august owners for more than a century ! . . . As nobody had foreseen the coming of the Royal family, very few of the rooms had been fit for occupation, and the Queen had had to have camp beds got ready for her children in the room where she received us.  She excused them, saying :

“ ‘ You know that I didn’t expect to come here.’ ”

It remains to ask :  By whom was this drunken rabble despatched out of Paris ?  Most of its members were women ;  many were whores ;  all shouted for bread, but all appear to have been liberally supplied with wine.  Lafayette told the Assembly that he had come to protect the King ;  in fact, he took the King prisoner.  Necker professed himself ready to go anywhere that his master willed.  But long before the mob from Paris reached Versailles, the people of Versailles, the same who had carried the banker in triumph out of the palace three months before, refused to let the carriages, which might have taken King and Queen to safety, leave their stables.  It was not the King only who went hunting on that 5th day of October.  As soon as the royal family reached Paris the price of bread fell, a circumstance which convinced the Parisians that they had judged shrewdly in nicknaming the King and Queen and their children :  “ The Baker, the Baker’s wife and the Baker’s brats.”  Mirabeau snarled that Necker had “marched to glory” on the “crutch of famine,” a suggestion big with menace by reason of the banker’s contacts with the grain trade.

Mirabeau was watching, waiting.  Not for him the twenty-course dinners at the Swedish Embassy in gracious company of Talleyrand and Narbonne, Robespierre and Tallien.  A little woman, for preference, to add her eyes’ sparkle to the joy of wine and prattle mischief or millinery without benefit of wit.  And then to the Assembly in its new home in the Royal Riding School under the black shadow of the King’s house.  Sombre, feathers ruffled, like some great, sleepy owl, the Tribune scanned the benches, calculating, counting.  There were King’s men, Necker’s men, People’s men, Right, Centre, Left, and, up yonder, on the high benches, soon to be called “ The mountain,” mobs’ men.  Not a friend now in the bunch since Necker’s star had risen high.  The fierce, predatory nostrils expanded with rage.  His eyes sought the public gallery where the townsfolk crowded to see and hear.  There was the real mistress, Paris, newly tricked out with her Commune and her Citizen Guard, her Jacques and her mobs, she who had widowed France of King and Commons to make debauch of them.  His mouth grew hard suddenly.  France would claim her own again from this bawd.  He wrote to his friend La Marck :  “ I always have thought that the monarchy is the State’s only sheet-anchor.”

He wooed the Royalists, humbling himself to plead for a post at the King’s side, where, he promised, he would know how to arm the King with the people’s will, so that the Assembly and Paris too would be restored to their natural allegiance.  No “Royal Democracy” for them.  He turned to the Centre, to Germaine’s nobles and churchmen, the financiers, the lawyers, the writers, the wits ;  but the mice ran squeaking from his blandishments.  The Left then, even the Mountain.  He warned them to kick up their heels before Necker saddled them with the English Constitution and galled them with his loans.  Mirabeau’s passion put the Radicals in a lather, but they cooled again and were afraid.

A few days after the King’s coming to Paris, Necker announced that, having liquidated Versailles, the Government would be able to save £2,000,000 a year.  He confessed, in the same breath, that his budget would show a deficit of nearly £7,000,000, since Liberty and Equality had run away with the taxes.  A new loan, bright with benefits, and freighted with £56,000 more of Necker’s honest gold, was launched, staggered on the slips and went to the bottom.  Government was bankrupt.  On October 10, the Bishop of Autun, Germaine’s lover, limped to the tribune of the Assembly to suggest that the nation might assume stewardship of the land (a third of France) belonging to Holy Church.  Talleyrand was a nobleman and displayed his Aladdin’s cave with such excellent detachment as he might have used in showing his garden.  But the deputies gasped.  The glittering of the episcopal ring, as he informed his discourse, could not blind their greedy eyes.  He saw their tongues come to their lips while they denounced him ;  Necker, it was clear, had better seize the booty quickly, before someone else made off with it.  So thought Jacques.  While the Assembly gazed at the treasure, he made ready to issue notes against it as soon as it should be taken.  Meanwhile, on the witness of Germaine, the lamentations of the faithful wrung the good Protestant’s heart.  Talleyrand was similarly afflicted.  Two days after making his proposal, he addressed a pastoral letter to his flock in which he ordered prayers for a period of forty hours, “for peace in this time of national unrest.”

“ Thine anger, O my God,” he wrote, “is kindled against Thy flock.  Will Thy hand reject us ?”

On October 30 Mirabeau called for a speedy issue.  France was perishing ;  how should the Church abide in fatness ?  He unleashed his tongue against the obdurate, the reluctant, the doubters, pursuing them with strong words.  His eyes were set on the gallery, on Paris, which roared its approval.  The motion was put on November 3 and carried with tumult.  Talleyrand sowed :  Mirabeau had reaped.  The Parisians flung themselves at the Tribune’s feet, crying that here was the man to rule them.  Both Necker and Assembly shuddered ;  if Mirabeau became the King’s minister now, with the spoils of the Church bulging his pockets, there would be short shrift for them.  “Back to Richelieu,” foamed he ;  “Man must be free to be good,” they warbled.  On November 7 a young Breton deputy named Lanjuinais, one of Necker’s men, proposed that no member of the Assembly should be allowed to become a minister of the King until three years had elapsed from his ceasing to be member.

“ An eloquent genius,” he urged, “is carrying you with him and subjecting you to his will ;  to what would he not aspire as a minister ?”

The hands were the hands of Lanjuinais, but the voice was the voice of Jacques.  Mirabeau, snarling like a trapped beast, scared his enemies so well that they huddled together, Royalists, Liberals, Radicals, in quickening fear of him, and passed Lanjuinais’ motion by a big majority.  He laughed and mocked to extinguish the sound of the bolting and barring in his face of the King’s gate ;  but his heart was sick.  It was Necker’s game ;  at the rue du Bac they celebrated the victory and prepared to exploit it.  On November 14, the banker suggested, blandly, that the Caisse d’Escomptes⁴ be allowed to increase its issue of notes on the strength of the Church lands.  The bank, he promised, would thus be enabled to lend more money to the Government.  “ What,” Mirabeau sneered, “the Government is to lend to itself ?”  That night saw the first production of Chenier’s play, Charles IX, at the Théâtre Français.  All the world went with Germaine to feast upon the spectacle of worthy Jacques, from whom the character of the Chancellor of the Hôpital had been drawn, crossing his legs on Olympus.

A few days later, at Necker’s instance, Commissioners were appointed by the Assembly to report on the best way of spending the Church’s treasure.  They closeted themselves with the banker for many days, and his face and address informed the initiated that he was getting his own way.  Jacques, when that was happening, grew boastful and dictatorial and used to shout down people who differed from him.  On December 5, 1789, Gouverneur Morris noted :⁵

“ Our conversation is loud.  He (Necker) makes it so purposely.  And at this point Madame de Staël, with the good-natured intention of avoiding ill-humour, desires me to send her father to sit next to her.  I tell her, smiling, that it is a dangerous task to send away M. Necker and that those who tried it once had sufficient cause to repent of it.  This little observation brings back good humour and he seems inclined to talk further with me, but I take no further notice of him, and, after chatting a little with different people, I take my leave.”

The Commissioners reported on December 19.  They recommended that £10,000,000 worth of Church land should be sold outright to pay debts, that the Government should obtain a loan of £3,000,000 from the Caisse d’Escomptes by depositing with the bank assignats (that is, paper based on the Church lands) to a value of £7,000,000 and annuities to the value of £2,500,000.  The Commissioners expressed themselves as opposed to the idea that the Government should pay its debts directly in assignats, for if that was done the assignats would become, at once, a paper currency.  Everyone glanced at Mirabeau.  His anger flashed from his eyes.  So they were to give this precious bank more than £9,000,000 worth of security for £3,000,000 worth of loan ?  No only that ;  a huge slice of the body of France was to be sacrificed to pay the Government’s debts to bankers and their kind.  Why, he demanded, bother about the banks ?  The Assembly had the land, the good soil of the Fatherland ;  why not, themselves, turn it into money, without parting with a rood of it ?  If they could issue assignats, they could pay their debts with them.  The assignats were “circulating land.”

So he argued, pleaded, adjured, with his gaze fixed on England, the enemy with whom, he warned them, the final reckoning was yet to come.  How should France struggle with England if she had delivered herself into the hands, for example, of Messrs.  Thelusson and Necker of London and Paris ?  But the Assembly was deaf to that voice.  On this same 19th of December it decreed that the Government must give the bank assignats as security for its issue of notes and that these must bear interest and be redeemable in five years.  It decreed further that the assignats, of which £16,000,000 worth were to be printed, should not be legal tender.  Necker had his banker’s bargain.  Government was tied to thrift as every wastrel ought to be.  Would it spend, it must come to the counting-houses and listen to the voice of discretion.  No adventures, wars, wild-cat schemes, window-dressings-gifts of the printing-press to bellicose statesmen.  The Swiss rubbed his white hands together.  He had the English financial system now :  could the English Constitution be long deferred ?⁶

He had come up, warily, to the high places of his ambition.  It remained to dig himself in.  He counted there on Germaine’s influence with the deputies, so strikingly shown in the vote to exclude Mirabeau from the Ministry and in the vote on the Church lands.

¹ Considerations, Part II, p. 259.

² Considerations, Part II, pp. 338 et seq.

³ The most important of these was the murder of the Emperor Paul I, in which his son, afterwards the Emperor Alexander, was implicated.

⁴ For a full account of these transactions, see The Assignats, by S.E. Harris (Harvard University Press).

⁵ The Life of Gouverneur Morris by Jared Sparks.

⁶ Madame de Staël believed that had her father’s financial policy been followed the Revolution must have been saved from its worst excesses.  She refused, obstinately, to see that these excesses were reactions to the fear occasioned by foreign invasion.  See Considerations, Part II, p. 389.