about administration which had been so dear to me formed the basis of the
projects which were to be submitted to the Assembly of notables.  I
rendered homage to the beneficent views of his Majesty.  Content with the
contributions I had offered to the common weal, I was living happily and
in peace, when all at once I found myself attacked or rather assailed in
the most unjust and the strangest manner.  M. de Calonne, finding it
advisable to trace to a very remote period the causes of the present
condition of the finances, was not afraid, in pursuance of this end,
to have recourse to means with which he will, probably, sooner or later
reproach himself; he declared in a speech, now circulated throughout
Europe, that the Report to his Majesty, in 1781, was so extraordinarily
erroneous, that, instead of the surplus published in that Report, there
was, at that very time, an enormous deficit."

At the moment when M. Necker was publishing, as regarded the statements
of M. de Calonne, an able rectification which did not go to the bottom
of things any more than the Report had previously gone, the
comptroller-general was succumbing beneath his enemies' attacks and his
own errors.  Justly irritated at the perfidious manoeuvres practised
against him by the keeper of the seals in secretly heading at the
Assembly of notables the opposition of the magistracy, Calonne had
demanded and obtained from the king the recall of M. Miromesnil.  He was
immediately superseded by M. de Lamoignon, president of the parliament of
Paris and a relative of M. de Malesherbes.  The comptroller-general had
the imprudence to push his demands further; he required the dismissal of
M. de Breteuil.  "I consent," said Louis XVI. after some hesitation; "but
leave me time to forewarn the queen, she is much attached to M. de
Breteuil."  When the king quitted Marie Antoinette, the situation had
changed face; the disgrace of M. de Calonne was resolved upon.

The queen had represented the dissatisfaction and opposition of the
notables, which "proceeded solely," she said, "from the mistrust inspired
by the comptroller-general;" she had dwelt upon the merits and resources
of the Archbishop of Toulouse.  "I don't like priests who haven't the
virtues of their cloth," Louis XVI. had answered dryly.  He called to the
ministry M. Fourqueux, councillor of state, an old man, highly esteemed,
but incapable of sustaining the crushing weight of affairs.  The king
himself presented M. de Calonne's last projects to the Assembly of
notables; the rumor ran that the comptroller-general was about to
re-enter the cabinet.  Louis XVI. was informed of the illicit manoeuvres
which M. de Calonne had authorized in operations on 'Change: he exiled
him to his estate in Berry, and a few days afterwards to Lorraine.
M. Necker had just published without permission his reply to the attacks
of M. de Calonne the king was put out at it.  "The eye of the public
annoys those who manage affairs with carelessness," M. Necker had but
lately said in his work on financial administration, "but those who are
animated by a different spirit would be glad to multiply lights from
every quarter."  "I do not want to turn my kingdom into a republic
screeching over state affairs as the city of Geneva is, and as happened
during the administration of M. Necker," said Louis XVI.  He, banished
his late minister to a distance of twenty leagues from Paris.  Madame
Necker was ill, and the execution of the king's order was delayed for a
few days.

Meanwhile the notables were in possession of the financial accounts,
but the satisfaction caused them by the disgrace of M. de Calonne was of
short duration; they were awaiting a new comptroller-general, calculated
to enlighten them as to the position of affairs.  M. de Montmorin and M.
de Lamoignon were urgent for the recall of M. Necker.  The king's ill
feeling against his late minister still continued.  "As long as M. Necker
exists," said M. de Montmorin, "it is impossible that there should be any
other minister of finance, because the public will always be annoyed to
see that post occupied by any but by him."  "I did not know M. Necker
personally," adds M. de Montmorin in his notes left to Marmontel; "I had
nothing but doubts to oppose to what the king told me about his
character, his haughtiness, and his domineering spirit."  Louis XVI.
yielded, however.  "Well!" he said, snappishly, "if it must be, recall
him."  M. de Breteuil was present.  "Your Majesty," said he, "has but
just banished M. Necker he has scarcely arrived at Montargis; to recall
him now would have a deplorable effect."  He once more mentioned the name
of Leonie de Brienne, and the king again yielded.  Ambitious, intriguing,
debauched, unbelieving, the new minister, like his predecessor, was
agreeable, brilliant, capable even, and accustomed in his diocese to
important affairs.  He was received without disfavor by public opinion.
The notables and the chief of the council of finance undertook in concert
the disentanglement of the accounts submitted to them.

In this labyrinth of contradictory figures and statements, the deficit
alone came out clearly.  M. de Brienne promised important economies, the
Assembly voted a loan: they were not willing to accept the responsibility
of the important reforms demanded by the king.  The speeches were long
and vague, the objections endless.  All the schemes of imposts were
censured one after the other.  "We leave it to the king's wisdom," said
the notables at last; "he shall himself decide what taxes will offer the
least inconveniences, if the requirements of the state make it necessary
to impose new sacrifices upon the people."  "The notables have seen with
dismay the depth of the evil caused by an administration whereof your
parliament had more than once foreseen the consequence," said the premier
president of the parliament of Paris.  "The different plans proposed to
your Majesty deserve careful deliberation.  The most respectful silence
is at this moment our only course."

The notables had themselves recognized their own impotence and given in
their resignation.  A formal closing session took place on the 25th of
May, 1787.  The keeper of the seals, enumerating the results of the
labors of the Assembly, enregistered the royal promises as accomplished
facts: "All will be set right without any shock, without any ruin of
fortunes, without any alteration in the principles of government, without
any of those breaches of faith which should never be so much as mentioned
in the presence of the monarch of France.

"The resolved or projected reform of various abuses, and the permanent
good for which the way is being paved by new laws concerted with you,
gentlemen, are about to co-operate successfully for the present relief of
the people.

"Forced labor is proscribed, the gabel (or salt-tax) is revised
(_juyee_), the obstacles which hamper home trade are destroyed, and
agriculture, encouraged by the free exportation of grain, will become day
by day more flourishing.

"The king has solemnly promised that disorder shall not appear again in
his finances, and his Majesty is about to take the most effective
measures for fulfilling this sacred engagement, of which you are the
depositaries.

"The administration of the state will approach nearer and nearer to the
government and vigilance of a private family, and a more equitable
assessment, which personal interest will incessantly watch over, will
lighten the burden of impositions."

Only the provincial administrations were constituted; the hopes which had
been conceived of the Assembly of notables remained more vague than
before its convocation: it had failed, like all the attempts at reform
made in succession by Louis XVI.'s advisers, whether earnest or
frivolous, whether proved patriots or ambitious intriguers.  It had,
however, revealed to the whole country the deplorable disorder of the
finances; it had taught the third estate and even the populace how deep
was the repugnance among the privileged classes towards reforms which
touched their interests.  Whilst spreading, as a letter written to
America by M. de La Fayette put it, "the salutary habit of thinking about
public affairs," it had at the same time betrayed the impotence of the
government, and the feebleness of its means of action.  It was a stride,
and an immense stride, towards the Revolution.




CHAPTER LX.----LOUIS XVI.--CONVOCATION OF THE STATES-GENERAL. 1787-1789.

Thirteen years had rolled by since King Louis XV. had descended to a
dishonored grave, and on the mighty current which was bearing France
towards reform, whilst dragging her into the Revolution, King Louis XVI.,
honest and sincere, was still blindly seeking to clutch the helm which
was slipping from his feeble hands.  Every day his efforts were becoming
weaker and more inconsistent, every day the pilot placed at the tiller
was less and less deserving of public confidence.  From M. Turgot to M.
Necker, from Calonne to Lomenie de Brienne, the fall had been rapid and
deep.  Amongst the two parties which unequally divided the nation,
between those who defended the past in its entirety, its abuses as well
as its grandeurs, and those who were marching on bewildered towards a
reform of which they did not foresee the scope, the struggle underwent
certain moments of stoppage and of abrupt reaction towards the old state
of things.  In 1781, the day after M. Necker's fall, an ordinance of the
minister of war, published against the will of that minister himself, had
restored to the verified and qualified noblesse (who could show four
quarterings) the exclusive privilege of military grades.  Without any
ordinance, the same regulation had been applied to the clergy.  In 1787,
the Assembly of notables and its opposition to the king's projects
presented by M. de Calonne were the last triumph of the enthusiastic
partisans of the past.  The privileged classes had still too much
influence to be attacked with success by M. de Calonne, who appeared to
be in himself an assemblage of all the abuses whereof he desired to be
the reformer.  A plan so vast, however ably conceived, was sure to go to
pieces in the hands of a man who did not enjoy public esteem and
confidence; but the triumph of the notables in their own cause was a
fresh warning to the people that they would have to defend theirs with
more vigor." [_Memoires de Malouet,_ t. i.  p. 253].  We have seen how
monarchy, in concert with the nation, fought feudality, to reign
thenceforth as sovereign mistress over the great lords and over the
nation; we have seen how it slowly fell in public respect and veneration,
and how it attempted unsuccessfully to respond to the confused wishes of
a people that did not yet know its own desires or its own strength; we
shall henceforth see it, panting and without sure guidance, painfully
striving to govern and then to live.  "I saw," says M. Malouet in his
_Memoires,_ "under the ministry of the archbishop (of Toulouse, and
afterwards of Sens), all the _avant-couriers_ of a revolution in the
government.  Three parties were already pronounced: the first wanted to
take to itself all the influence of which it despoiled the king, whilst
withstanding the pretensions of the third estate; the second proclaimed
open war against the two upper orders, and already laid down the bases of
a democratic government; the third, which was at that time the most
numerous, although it was that of the wisest men, dreaded the ebullience
of the other two, wanted compromises, reforms, and not revolution."  By
their conflicts the two extreme parties were to stifle for a while the
party of the wise men, the true exponent of the national aspirations and
hopes, which was destined, through a course of cruel vicissitudes and
long trials, to yet save and govern the country.

The Assembly of notables had abdicated; contenting itself with a negative
triumph, it had left to the royal wisdom and responsibility the burden of
decisions which Louis XVI. had hoped to get sanctioned by an old and
respected authority.  The public were expecting to see all the edicts,
successively presented to the notables as integral portions of a vast
system, forthwith assume force of law by simultaneous registration of
Parliament.  The feebleness and inconsistency of governors often stultify
the most sensible foresight.  M. de Brienne had come into office as a
support to the king's desires and intentions, for the purpose of
obtaining from the notables what was refused through their aversion for
M. de Calonne; as soon as he was free of the notables as well as of M. de
Calonne, he hesitated, drew back, waited, leaving time for a fresh
opposition to form and take its measures.  "He had nothing but bad moves
to make," says M. Mignet.  Three edicts touching the trade in grain,
forced labor, and the provincial assemblies, were first sent up to the
Parliament and enregistered without any difficulty; the two edicts
touching the stamp-tax and equal assessment of the impost were to meet
with more hinderance; the latter at any rate united the sympathies of all
the partisans of genuine reforms; the edict touching the stamp-tax was by
itself and first submitted for the approval of the magistrates: they
rejected it, asking, like the notables, for a communication as to the
state of finance.  "It is not states of finance we want," exclaimed a
councillor, Sabatier de Cabre, "it is States-general."  This bold sally
became a theme for deliberation in the Parliament.  "The nation
represented by the States-general," the court declared, "is alone
entitled to grant the king subsidies of which the need is clearly
demonstrated."  At the same time the Parliament demanded the impeachment
of M. de Calonne; he took fright and sought refuge in England.  The mob
rose in Paris, imputing to the court the prodigalities with which the
Parliament reproached the late comptroller-general.  Sad symptom of the
fatal progress of public opinion!  The cries heretofore raised against
the queen under the name of Austrian were now uttered against Madame
Deficit, pending the time when the fearful title of Madame Veto would
give place in its turn to the sad name of the woman Capet given to the
victim of October 16, 1793.

The king summoned the Parliament to Versailles, and on the 6th of August,
1787, the edicts touching the stamp-tax and territorial subvention were
enregistered in bed of justice.  The Parliament had protested in advance
against this act of royal authority, which it called "a phantom of
deliberation."  On the 13th of August, the court declared "the
registration of the edicts null and without effect, incompetent to
authorize the collection of imposts, opposed to all principles;" this
resolution was sent to all the seneschalties and bailiwicks in the
district.  It was in the name of the privilege of the two upper orders
that the Parliament of Paris contested the royal edicts and made appeal
to the supreme jurisdiction of the States-general; the people did not see
it, they took out the horses of M. d'Espremesnil, whose fiery eloquence
had won over a great number of his colleagues, and he was carried in
triumph.  On the 15th of August the Parliament was sent away to Troyes.

Banishment far away from the capital, from the ferment of spirits, and
from the noisy centre of their admirers, had more than once brought down
the pride of the members of Parliament; they were now sustained by the
sympathy ardently manifested by nearly all the sovereign courts.
"Incessantly repeated stretches of authority," said the Parliament of
Besanccon, "forced registrations, banishments, constraint and severity
instead of justice, are astounding in an enlightened age, wound a nation
that idolizes its kings, but is free and proud, freeze the heart and
might break the ties which unite sovereign to subjects and subjects to
sovereign."  The Parliament of Paris declared that it needed no authority
for its sittings, considering that it rendered justice wherever it
happened to be assembled.  "The monarchy would be transfigured into a
despotic form," said the decree, "if ministers could dispose of persons
by sealed letters (_lettres de cachet_), property by beds of justice,
criminal matters by change of venue (_evocation_) or cassation, and
suspend the course of justice by special banishments or arbitrary
removals."

Negotiations were going on, however; the government agreed to withdraw
the new imposts which it had declared to be indispensable; the
Parliament, which had declared itself incompetent as to the establishment
of taxes, prorogued for two years the second twentieth.  "We left Paris
with glory upon us, we shall return with mud," protested M. d'Espremesnil
in vain; more moderate, but not less resolute, Duport, Robert de St.
Vincent, and Freteau sought to sustain by their speeches the wavering
resolution of their colleagues.  The Parliament was recalled to Paris on
the 19th of September, 1787.

The state of Europe inclined men's minds to reciprocal concessions; a
disquieting good understanding appeared to be growing up between Russia
and Austria.  The Emperor Joseph II. had just paid a visit to the Crimea
with the czarina.  "I fancy I am still dreaming," wrote the Prince of
Ligne, who had the honor of being in the trip, "when in a carriage with
six places, which is a real triumphal car adorned with ciphers in
precious stones, I find myself seated between two persons on whose
shoulders the heat often sets me dozing, and I hear, as I wake up, one of
my comrades say to the other 'I have thirty' millions of subjects, they
say, counting males only.'  'And I twenty-two,' replies the other, 'all
included.'  'I require,' adds the former, 'an army of at least six
hundred thousand men between Kamtchatka and Riga.'  'With half that,'
replies the other, 'I have just what I require.'  God knows how we settle
all the states and great personages.  'Rather than sign the separation of
thirteen provinces, like my brother George,' says Catherine II. sweetly,
'I would have put a bullet through my head.' 'And rather than give in my
resignation like my brother and brother-in-law, by convoking and
assembling the nation to talk over abuses, I don't know what I wouldn't
have done,' says Joseph II."  Before the two allies could carry out their
designs against Turkey, that ancient power, enfeebled as it was, had
taken the offensive at the instigation of England; the King of Sweden,
on his side, invaded Russia; war burst out in all directions.  The
traditional influence of France remained powerless in the East to
maintain peace; the long weakness of the government was everywhere
bearing fruit.

Nowhere was this grievous impotence more painfully striking than in
Holland.  Supported by England, whose slavish instrument he had been for
so long, the stadtholder William V. was struggling, with the help of the
mob, against the patriotic, independent, and proud patricians.  For the
last sixty years the position of Holland had been constantly declining in
Europe.  "She is afraid of everything," said Count de Broglie in 1773;
"she puts up with everything, grumbles at everything, and secures herself
against nothing."  "Holland might pay all the armies of Europe," people
said in 1787, "she couldn't manage to hold her own against any one of
them."  The civil war imminent in her midst and fomented by England had
aroused the solicitude of M. de Calonne; he had prepared the resources
necessary for forming a camp near Givet; his successor diverted the funds
to another object.  When the Prussians entered Dutch territory, being
summoned to the stadtholder's aid by his wife, sister of the young King
Frederick William II., the French government afforded no assistance to
its ally; it confined itself to offering an asylum to the Dutch patriots,
long encouraged by its diplomatists, and now vanquished in their own
country, which was henceforth under the yoke of England.  "France has
fallen, I doubt whether she will get up again," said the Emperor Joseph
II.  "We have been caught napping," wrote M. de La Fayette to Washington;
"the King of Prussia has been ill advised, the Dutch are ruined, and
England finds herself the only power which has gained in the bargain."

The echo of humiliations abroad came to swell the dull murmur of public
discontent.  Disturbance was arising everywhere.  "From stagnant chaos
France has passed to tumultuous chaos," wrote Mirabeau, already an
influential publicist, despite the irregularity of his morals and the
small esteem excited by his life; "there may, there should come a
creation out of it."  The Parliament had soon resumed its defiant
attitude; like M. de La Fayette at the Assembly of notables, it demanded
the convocation of the States-general at a fixed epoch, in 1792; it was
the date fixed by M. de Brienne in a vast financial scheme which he had
boldly proposed for registration by the court.  By means of a series of
loans which were to reach the enormous total of four hundred and twenty
millions, the States-general, assembled on the conclusion of this vast
operation, and relieved from all pecuniary embarrassment, would be able
to concentrate their thoughts on the important interests of the future.
At the same time with the loan-edict, Brienne presented to the Parliament
the law-scheme, for so long a time under discussion, on behalf of
Protestants.

The king had repaired in person to the palace in royal session; the
keeper of the seals, Lamoignon, expounded the necessity of the edicts.
"To the monarch alone," he repeated, "belongs the legislative power,
without dependence and without partition."  This was throwing down the
gauntlet to the whole assembly as well as to public opinion.  Abbe
Sabatier and Councillor Freteau had already spoken, when Robert de St.
Vincent rose, an old Jansenist and an old member of Parliament,
accustomed to express his thoughts roughly.  "Who, without dismay, can
hear loans still talked of?" he exclaimed "and for what sum? four hundred
and twenty millions!  A plan is being formed for five years?  But, since
your Majesty's reign began, have the same views ever directed the
administration of finance for five years in succession?  Can you be
ignorant, sir (here he addressed himself to the comptroller-general),
that each minister, as he steps into his place, rejects the system of his
predecessor in order to substitute that which he has devised?  Within
only eight months, you are the fourth minister of finance, and yet you
are forming a plan which cannot be accomplished in less than five years!
The remedy, sir, for the wounds of the state has been pointed out by your
Parliament: it is the convocation of the Statesgeneral.  Their
convocation, to be salutary, must be prompt.  Your ministers would like
to avoid this assembly whose surveillance they dread.  Their hope is
vain.  Before two years are over, the necessities of the state will force
you to convoke the States-general."

M. d'Espremesnil was overcome; less violent than usual, he had, appealed
to the king's heart; for a moment Louis XVI. appeared to be moved, and so
was the assembly with him; the edicts were about to be enregistered
despite the efforts of the opposition; already the premier president was
collecting the votes; the keeper of the seals would not, at this grave
moment, renounce any kingly prerogative.  "When the king is at the
Parliament, there is no deliberation; his will makes law," said the legal
rule and the custom of the magistracy.  Lamoignon went up to the throne;
he said a few words in a low voice.  "Mr. Keeper of the seals, have the
edicts enregistered," said Louis XVI.  The minister immediately repeated
the formula used at beds of justice.  A murmur ran through the assembly;
the Duke of Orleans rose; he had recently become the head of his house
through his father's death, and found himself more than ever involved in
intrigues hostile to the court.  "Sir," said he in a broken voice, "this
registration appears to me illegal.  .  .  .  It should be distinctly
stated that the registration is done by the express command of your
Majesty."  The king was as much moved as the prince.  "It is all the same
to me," he replied.  "You are master, of course."  "Yes,--it is legal,
because I so will."  The edict relative to non-Catholics was read, and
Louis XVI. withdrew.

There was violent commotion in the assembly; the protest of the Duke of
Orleans was drawn up in a more explicit form.  "The difference between a
bed of justice and a royal session is, that one exhibits the frankness of
despotism and the other its duplicity," cried d'Espremesnil.
Notwithstanding the efforts of M. de Malesherbes and the Duke of
Nivernais, the Parliament inscribed on the registers that it was not to
be understood to take any part in the transcription here ordered of
gradual and progressive loans for the years 1788, 1789, 1790, 1791, and
1792.  In reply, the Duke of Orleans was banished to Villers-Cotterets,
whilst Councillors Freteau and Sabatier were arrested and taken to a
state-prison.

By the scandalousness of his life, as well as by his obstructive
buildings in the Palais-Royal, the Duke of Orleans had lost favor with
the public; his protest and his banishment restored him at once to his
popularity.  The Parliament piled remonstrance upon remonstrance, every
day more and more haughty in form as well as in substance.  Dipping into
the archives in search of antiquated laws, the magistrates appealed to
the liberties of olden France, mingling therewith the novel principles of
the modern philosophy.  "Several pretty well-known facts," they said,
"prove that the nation, more enlightened as to its true interests, even
in the least elevated classes, is disposed to accept from the hands of
your Majesty the greatest blessing a king can bestow upon his subjects
--liberty.  It is this blessing, Sir, which your Parliament come to ask
you to restore, in the name of a generous and faithful people.  It is no
longer a prince of your blood, it is no longer two magistrates whom your
Parliament ask you to restore in the name of the laws and of reason, but
three Frenchmen, three men."

To peremptory demands were added perfidious insinuations.

"Such ways, Sir," said one of these remonstrances, "have no place in your
heart, such samples of proceeding are not the principles of your Majesty,
they come from another source."  For the first time the queen was thus
held up to public odium by the Parliament which had dealt her a fatal
blow by acquitting Cardinal Rohan; she was often present at the king's
conferences with his ministers, reluctantly and by the advice of M. de
Brienne, for and in whom Louis XVI. never felt any liking or confidence.
"There is no more happiness for me since they have made me an intriguer,"
she said sadly to Madame Campan.  And when the latter objected: "Yes,"
replied the queen, "it is the proper word: every woman who meddles in
matters above her lights and beyond the limits of her duty, is nothing
but an intriguer; you will remember, however, that I do not spare myself,
and that it is with regret I give myself such a title.  The other day,
as I was crossing the Bull's Eye (_Eil de Boeuf_), to go to a private
committee at the king's, I heard one of the chapel-band say out loud,
'A queen who does her duty remains in her rooms at her needlework.'
I said to myself: 'Thou'rt quite right, wretch; but thou know'st not my
position; I yield to necessity and my evil destiny.'"  A true daughter of
Maria Theresa in her imprisonment and on the scaffold, Marie Antoinette
had neither the indomitable perseverance nor the simple grandeur in
political views which had restored the imperial throne in the case of her
illustrious mother.  She weakened beneath a burden too heavy for a mind
so long accustomed to the facile pleasures of youth.  "The queen
certainly has wits and firmness which might suffice for great things,"
wrote her friend, the Count of La Marck, to M. de Mercy Argenteau, her
mother's faithful agent in France; "but it must be confessed that,
whether in business or in mere conversation, she does not always exhibit
that degree of attention and that persistence which are indispensable for
getting at the bottom of what one ought to know, in order to prevent
errors and to insure success."

The same want of purpose and persistence of which the Count of La Marck
complained was strikingly apparent everywhere and in all matters; the
Duke of Orleans was soon tired of banishment; he wrote to the queen, who
obtained his recall.  The ministers were making mysterious preparations
for a grand stroke.  The Parliament, still agitated and anxious, had at
last enregistered the edict relating to non-Catholics.  Public opinion,
like the government, supported it eagerly; the principles of tolerance
which had prompted it were henceforth accepted by all; certain bishops
and certain bigots were still trying to hinder this first step towards a
legal status for a long while refused to Protestants.  M. d'Espremesnil,
an earnest disciple of the _philosophe inconnu,_ the mystic St. Martin,
just as he had been the dupe of Mesmer and of Cagliostro, was almost
single-handed in the Parliament in his opposition to the registration of
the edict.  Extending his hand towards the crucifix, he exclaimed with
violence: "Would you crucify him a second time?"  The court was a better
judge of Christian principles, and Protestants were permitted to be born,
to marry, and to die on French territory.  The edict did not as yet
concede to them any other right.

The contest extended as it grew hotter; everywhere the parliaments took
up the quarrel of the court of Paris; the formation of the provincial
assemblies furnished new centres of opposition; the petty noblesse made
alliance with the magistracy; the antagonism of principles became every
day more evident; after the five months elapsed since the royal session,
the Parliament was still protesting against the violence done to it.
"I had no need to take or count the votes," said the king's reply; "being
present at the deliberation, I judged for myself without taking any
account of plurality.  If plurality in my courts were to force my will,
the monarchy would be nothing but an aristocracy of magistrates."  "No,
sir, no aristocracy in France, but no despotism either," replied the
members of parliament.

The indiscretion of a printer made M. d'Espremesnil acquainted with
the great designs which were in preparation; at his instigation the
Parliament issued a declaration as to the reciprocal rights and duties
of the monarch and the nation.  "France," said the resolution, "is a
monarchy hereditary from male to male, governed by the king following the
laws; it has for fundamental laws the nation's right to freely grant
subsidies by means of the States-general convoked and composed according
to regulation, the customs and capitulations of the provinces, the
irremovability of the magistrates, the right of the courts to enregister
edicts, and that of each citizen to be judged only by his natural judges,
without liability ever to be arrested arbitrarily."  "The magistrates
must cease to exist before the nation ceases to be free," said a second
protest.

Bold and defiant in its grotesque mixture of the ancient principles of
the magistracy with the novel theories of philosophy, the resolution of
the Parliament was quashed by the king.  Orders were given to arrest
M. d'Espremesnil and a young councillor, Goislard de Montsabert, who had
proposed an inquiry into the conduct of the comptrollers commissioned to
collect the second twentieth.  The police of the Parliament was perfect
and vigilant; the two magistrates were warned and took refuge in the
Palace of Justice; all the chambers were assembled and the peers
convoked.  Ten or a dozen appeared, notwithstanding the king's express
prohibition.

The Parliament had placed the two threatened members "under the
protection of the king and of the law;" the premier president, at the
head of a deputation, had set out for Versailles to demand immunity for
the accused; the court was in session awaiting his return.

The mob thronged the precincts of the Palace, some persons had even
penetrated into the grand chamber; no deliberations went on.  Towards
midnight, several companies of the French guards entered the hall of the
Pas-Perdus; all the exits were guarded.  The court was in commotion, the
young councillors demanded that the deliberations should go on publicly.
"Gentlemen," said President de Gourgues, "would you derogate from the
ancient forms?"  The spectators withdrew.  The Marquis d'Agoult,
aide-major of the French guards, demanded admission; he had orders from
the king.  The ushers opened the doors; at sight of the magistrates in
scarlet robes, motionless upon their seats, the officer was for a moment
abashed; he cast his eye from bench to bench, his voice faltered when he
read the order signed by the king to arrest "MM. d'Espremesnil and De
Montsabert, in the grand chamber or elsewhere."  "The court will proceed
to deliberate thereon, sir," replied the president.  "Your forms are to
deliberate," hotly replied M. d'Agoult, who had recovered himself; "I
know nothing of those forms, the king's orders must be executed without
delay; point out to me those whom I have to arrest."  Silence reigned
throughout the hall; not a word, not a gesture indicated the accused.
Only the dukes and peers made merry aloud over the nobleman charged with
so disagreeable a mission: he repeated his demand: "We are all
d'Espremesnil and Montsabert," exclaimed the magistrates.  M. d'Agoult
left the room.

He soon returned, accompanied by an exon of the short robe, named
Larchier.  "Show me whom I have to arrest," was the officer's order.
The exon looked all round the room; he knew every one of the magistrates;
the accused were sitting right in front of him.  "I do not see
MM. d'Espremesnil and Montsabert anywhere," he at last said, tremulously.
M. d'Agoult's threats could not get any other answer out of him.

The officer had gone to ask for fresh orders; the deputation sent to
Versailles had returned, without having been received by Louis XVI., of
whom an audience had not been requested.  The court wanted to send some
of the king's people at once to notify a fresh request; the troops
guarded all the doors, nobody could leave the Palace.

"Gentlemen," said d'Espr4mesnil at last, "it would be contrary to our
honor as well as to the dignity of the Parliament to prolong this scene
any further; and, besides, we cannot be the ruin of Larchier; let
M. d'Agoult be shown in again."  The officer was recalled, the
magistrates were seated and covered.  "Sir," said M. d'Espremesnil,
"I am one of those you are in search of.  The law forbids me to obey
orders irregularly obtained (_surpris_) of the sovereign, and it is to
be faithful to him that I have not mentioned who I am until this moment.
I call upon you to state whether, in case I should not go with you
voluntarily, you have orders to drag me from this building."  "Certainly,
sir."  D'Agoult was already striding towards the door to order in his
troops.  "Enough," said M. d'Espremesnil; "I yield to force;" and,
turning to his colleagues, "Gentlemen," he said, "to you I protest
against the violence of which I am the object; forget me and think
henceforth of nothing but the common weal; I commend to you my family;
whatever may be my fate, I shall never cease to glory in professing to
the last hour the principles which do honor to this court."  He made a
deep obeisance, and followed the major, going out by the secret
staircases in order to avoid the crowd whose shouts could be heard even
within the palace buildings.  Goislard de Montsabert followed his
colleague's example: he was confined at Pierre-Encise; M. d'Espremesnil
had been taken to the Isle of St. Marguerite.

Useless and ill-judged violence, which excited the passions of the public
without intimidating opponents!  The day after the scene of May 6th, at
the moment when the whole magistracy of France was growing hot over the
thrilling account of the arrest of the two councillors, the Parliament of
Paris was sent for to Versailles (May 8, 1788).

[Illustration: Arrest of the Members----502]

The magistrates knew beforehand what fate awaited them.  The king uttered
a few severe words.  After a pompous preamble, the keeper of the seals
read out six fresh edicts intended to ruin forever the power of the
sovereign courts.

Forty-seven great baillie-courts, as a necessary intermediary between the
parliaments and the inferior tribunals, were henceforth charged with all
civil cases not involving sums of more than twenty thousand livres, as
well as all criminal cases of the third order (estate).  The
representations of the provincial assembly of Dauphiny severely
criticised the impropriety of this measure.  "The ministers," they said,
"have not been afraid to flout the third estate, whose life, honor, and
property no longer appear to be objects worthy of the sovereign courts,
for which are reserved only the causes of the rich and the crimes of the
privileged."  The number of members of the Parliament of Paris was
reduced to sixty-nine.  The registration of edicts, the only real
political power left in the hands of the magistrates, was transferred to
a plenary court, an old title without stability and without tradition,
composed, under the king's presidency, of the great functionaries of
state, assisted by a small number of councillors.  The absolute power was
thus preparing a rampart against encroachments of authority on the part
of the sovereign courts; it had fortified itself beforehand against the
pretensions of the States-general, "which cannot pretend to be anything
but a more extended council on behalf of the sovereign, the latter still
remaining supreme arbiter of their representations and their grievances."

Certain useful ameliorations in the criminal legislation, amongst others
total abolition of torture, completed the sum of edicts.  A decree of the
council declared all the parliarnents prorogued until the formation of
the great bailliecourts.  The plenary court was to assemble forthwith at
Versailles.  It only sat once; in presence of the opposition amongst the
majority of the men summoned to compose it, the ministers, unforeseeing
and fickle even with all their ability and their boldness, found
themselves obliged to adjourn the sittings indefinitely.  All the members
of the Parliament of Paris had bound themselves by a solemn oath not to
take a place in any other assembly.  "In case of dispersal of the
magistracy," said the resolution entered upon the registers of the court,
"the Parliament places the present act as a deposit in the hands of the
king, of his august family, of the peers of the realm, of the States-
general, and of each of the orders, united or separate, representing the
nation."

At sight of this limitation, less absolute and less cleverly calculated,
of the attempts made by Chancellor Maupeou, after seventeen years' rapid
marching towards a state of things so novel and unheard of, the commotion
was great in Paris; the disturbance, however, did not reach to the
masses, and the disorder in the streets was owing less to the Parisian
populace than to mendicants, rascals of sinister mien, flocking in, none
knew why, from the four points of the compass.  The provinces were more
seriously disturbed.  All the sovereign courts rose up with one accord;
the Parliament of Rouen declared "traitors to the king, to the nation, to
the province, perjured and branded with infamy, all officers and judges"
who should proceed in virtue of the ordinances of May 8.  "The authority
of the king is unlimited for doing good to his subjects," said one of the
presidents, "but everybody should put limits to it when it turns towards
oppression."  It was the very commandant of the royal troops whom the
magistrates thus reproached with their passive obedience.

Normandy confined herself to declarations and speeches; other provinces
went beyond those bounds: Brittany claimed performance "of the marriage
contract between Louis XII. and the Duchess Anne."  Notwithstanding the
king's prohibition, the Parliament met at Rennes.  A detachment of
soldiers having been ordered to disperse the magistrates, a band of
gentlemen, supported by an armed mob, went to protect the deliberations
of the court.  Fifteen officers fought duels with fifteen gentlemen.  The
court issued a decree of arrest against the holders of the king's
commission.  The youth of Nantes hurried to the aid of the youth of
Rennes.  The intermediary commission of the states ordered the bishops to
have the prayers said which were customary in times of public calamity,
and a hundred and thirty gentlemen carried to the governor a declaration
signed by the noblesse of almost the whole province.  "We, members of the
noblesse of Brittany, do declare infamous those who may accept any place,
whether in the new administration of justice or in the administration of
the states, which is not recognized by the laws and constitutions of the
province."  A dozen of them set off for Versailles to go and denounce the
ministers to Louis XVI.  Being put in the Bastille, eighteen of their
friends went to demand then back; they were followed by fifty others.
The officers of the Bassigny regiment had taken sides with the
opposition, and discussed the orders sent to them.  Among the great lords
of the province, attached to the king's own person, MM. de La Tremoille,
de Rieux, and de Guichen left the court to join their protests to those
of their friends; the superintendent, Bertrand de Molleville, was hanged-
in effigy and had to fly.

In Bearn, the peasantry had descended from the mountains; hereditary
proprietors of their little holdings, they joined the noblesse to march
out and meet the Duke of Guiche, sent by the king to restore order.
Already the commandant of the province had been obliged to authorize the
meeting of the Parliament.  The Bearnese bore in front of their ranks the
cradle of Henry IV., carefully preserved in the Castle of Pau.  "We are
no rebels," they said: "we claim our contract and fidelity to the oaths
of a king whom we love.  The Bearnese is free-born, he will not die a
slave.  Let the king have all from us in love and not by force; our blood
is his and our country's.  Let none come to take our lives when we are
defending our liberty."

Legal in Normandy, violent in Brittany, tumultuous in Bearn, the
parliamentary protests took a politic and methodical form in Dauphiny.
An insurrection amongst the populace of Grenoble, soon supported by the
villagers from the mountains, had at first flown to arms at the sound of
the tocsin.  The members of the Parliament, on the point of leaving the
city, had been detained by force, and their carriages had been smashed.
The troops offered little resistance; an entry was effected into the
house of the governor, the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre, and, with an axe
above his head, the insurgents threatened to hang him to the chandelier
in his drawing-room if he did not convoke the Parliament.  Ragged
ruffians ran to the magistrates, and compelled them to meet in the
sessions-hall.  The members of Parliament succeeded with great difficulty
in pacifying the mob.  As soon as they found themselves free, they
hastened away into exile.  Other hands had taken up their quarrel.  A
certain number of members of the three orders met at the town hall, and,
on their private authority, convoked for the 21st of July the special
states of Dauphiny, suppressed a while before by Cardinal Richelieu.

The Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre had been superseded by old Marshal Vaux,
rough and ready.  He had at his disposal twenty thousand men.  Scarcely
had he arrived at Grenoble, when he wrote to Versailles.  "It is too
late," he said.  The prerogatives of royal authority were maintained,
however.  The marshal granted a meeting of the states-provincial, but he
required permission to be asked of him.  He forbade the assembly to be
held at Grenoble.  It was in the Castle of Vizille, a former residence
of the dauphins, that the three orders of Dauphiny met, closely united
together in wise and patriotic accord.  The Archbishop of Vienne, Lefranc
de Pompignan, brother of the poet, lately the inveterate foe of Voltaire,
an ardently and sincerely pious man, led his clergy along the most
liberal path; the noblesse of the sword, mingled with the noblesse of the
robe, voted blindly all the resolutions of the third estate; these were
suggested by the real head of the assembly, M. Mounier, judge-royal of
Grenoble, a friend of M. Necker's, an enlightened, loyal, honorable man,
destined ere long to make his name known over the whole of France by his
courageous resistance to the outbursts of the National Assembly.
Unanimously the three orders presented to the king their claims to the
olden liberties of the province; they loudly declared, however, that they
were prepared for all sacrifices and aspired to nothing but the common
rights of all Frenchmen.  The double representation of the third in the
estates of Dauphiny was voted without contest, as well as equal
assessment of the impost intended to replace forced labor.  Throughout
the whole province the most perfect order had succeeded the first
manifestations of popular irritation.

It was now more than a year since Brienne had become chief minister.
MM. de Segur and de Castries had retired, refusing to serve under a man
whom they did not esteem.  Alone, shut up in his closet, the archbishop
listened without emotion to the low murmur of legal protests, the noisy
tumult of insurrections.  "I have foreseen all, even civil war.  The king
shall be obeyed, the king knows how to make himself obeyed," he kept
repeating in the assured tones of an oracle.  Resolved not to share the
responsibility of the reverse he foresaw, Baron de Breteuil sent in his
resignation.

Meanwhile the treasury was found to be empty; Brienne appealed to the
clergy, hoping to obtain from ecclesiastical wealth one of those
gratuitous gifts which had often come in aid of the State's necessities.
The Church herself was feeling the influence of the times.  Without
relaxing in her pretensions to the maintenance of privileges, the
ecclesiastical assembly thought itself bound to plead the cause of that
magistracy which it had so, often fought.  "Our silence," said the
remonstrances, "would be a crime, of which the nation and posterity would
never absolve us.  Your Majesty has just effected at the bed of justice
of May 8, a great movement as regards things and persons.  Such ought to
be a consequence rather than a preliminary of the States-general; the
will of a prince which has not been enlightened by his courts may be
regarded as a momentary will.  Your Majesty has issued an edict carrying
the restoration of the plenary court, but that court has recalled an
ancient reign without recalling ancient ideas.  Even if it had been once
the supreme tribunal of our kings, it now presents no longer that
numerous assemblage of prelates, barons, and lieges united together.  The
nation sees nothing in it but a court-tribunal whose complaisance it
would be afraid of, and whose movements and intrigues it would dread in
times of minority and regency.  .  .  .  Our functions are sacred, when,
from the height of the altars, we pray heaven to send down blessings on
kings and on their subjects; they are still so, when, after teaching
people their duties, we represent their rights and make solicitations on
behalf of the afflicted, on behalf of the absent despoiled of their
position and their liberty.  The clergy of France, Sir, stretch forth to
you their suppliant hands; it is so beautiful to see might and puissance
yielding to prayer!  The glory of your Majesty is not in being King of
France, but in being King of the French, and the heart of your subjects
in the fairest of your domains."  The assembly of the clergy granted to
the treasury only a poor gift of eighteen hundred thousand livres.