Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 6.djvu/18

4 Lieutaud, was also employed to send people into the tribunes, the coffee-houses, and public places, to speak in favour of the king. It was proposed to call together the constitutional guard, which, though disbanded, had always received its pay. But all endeavours to protect the royal family would not blind the king's friends to the awful perils menacing him, and there were various proposals to him for flight or abdication. M. Malsherbes and others advised abdication; but the majority advised flight. It was proposed that the king and royal family should escape into Normandy. The duke of Liancourt, who was in the full confidence of the king, and who commanded that province, offered to put his whole fortune at the king's service, and to conduct the royal family to Gaillon, or to meet La Fayette, who should escort him to the army. It was contended that from the castle of Gaillon the king, if necessary, could easily escape to the coast, and so to England. The count de Narbonue and madame de Stael had another plan; which was to carry the king to Compiegue, and thence, through the forest of Ardennes, to the Rhine. But, with his usual indecision, Louis could not be induced to accept any one plan, but waited, like a fascinated creature, to be destroyed by his enemies.

At this crisis, the Girondists, hating and dreading the jacobins, who were every day becoming more formidable, and fearing also the approach of the allies, were disposed to enter into a negotiation with the court for restoration to power. A painter to the king, named Boze, and Thierry, the valet-de-chambre of Louis, were the mediums. Boze desired Guadet, Vergniand, and Gensonne, the leading Girondists, to state their conditions in writing, that they might be laid before the king. These conditions were:—that the king should insist on the retreat of the foreign armies, dismiss La Fayette, choose a Gironde ministry, issue a law for the constitutional education of the dauphin, and some other minor changes. This would, in fact, have been to put the king into the hands of the Girondists, only the more to incense the jacobins, by far the most powerful party. When these conditions were laid before the king by Thierry, he pushed them away, saying it was not he, but the patriotic party who had provoked the war. There was an end of the Girondist hopes, but not of the jacobin incessant action. Robespierre drew up an address, and had it presented by a deputation of federates, containing his eternal cry for the death of La Fayette, for whose blood he thirsted with an unappeasable thirst. The assembly rejected the proposition; and this was seized on to exasperate the people still more. On Sunday, the 22nd of July, the tocsin was sounded, placards were displayed announcing that the country was in danger. Petion, as mayor, and attended by the whole municipality and by the national guards, went through the city with beat of drum and firing of cannon, bearing a black flag, inscribed "Citizens! the country is in danger!" The flag, after the procession, was planted before the Hotel de Ville, and lists were opened for the enrollment of volunteers for the defence of the country; these said volunteers to remain in Paris till the federates arrived in larger numbers. In a word, it was an open declaration of taking entire possession of Paris by the jacobin mob, and putting down the monarchy. In this moment of effervescence appeared the proclamation of the duke of Brunswick as commander of the allied armies, and in the name of the allied monarchs.

This proclamation arrived in Paris on the 28th of July, though it was dated Coblentz, July 25th. It was far from being of the reasonable nature which the king had recommended, and was calculated to do the most fatal injury to his interests. It stated that: "The emperor and the king of Prussia, having seen the manner in which the authority of the king of France had been overturned by a factious people, how his sacred person and those of his family had been subjected to violence and restraint, in which those who had usurped his government had, besides destroying the internal order and peace of France, invaded the Germanic empire, and seized the possessions of the princes of Alsace and Lorraine, had determined to march to his assistance, and had authorised himself, a member of the Germanic body, to march to the aid of their friend and ally; that he came to restore the king to all his rights, and to put an end to anarchy in France; that he was not about to make war on France, but on its internal enemies, and he called on all the well-disposed to co-operate in this object, that all cities, towns, villages, persons, and property would be respected and protected, provided that they immediately concurred in the restoration of order. He summoned all officers of the army and the state to return to their allegiance; all ministers of departments, districts, and municipalities, were likewise summoned, and were to be held responsible, by their lives and properties, for all outrages and misdemeanors committed before the restoration of order; and all who resisted the royal authority, and fired on the royal troops or the allies, should be instantly punished with all rigour, and their houses demolished or burned. Paris, in case of any injury done to the royal family, was to be delivered up to an exemplary and ever-memorable vengeance; that no laws were to be acknowledged as valid but such as proceeded from the king when in a state of perfect liberty!"

This was an announcement of the utter overthrow of the revolution, and the restoration of the ancient condition of France, with its aristocracy and all its slaves. The sensation which it produced was intense. The king was immediately accused of secretly favouring this language, though it was far from being the case. It was in vain that he disavowed the sentiments of this haughty and impolitic proclamation to the assembly; he was not believed, and the exasperation against him was dreadfully aggravated. On the 30th of July the Marseillais arrived. They were met, at a distance from Paris, by Barbaroux, Santerre, and Merlin, with great tokens of rejoicing, and were conducted into the city and to the Hotel de Ville, their band playing, and themselves singing a new martial hymn, since become of world-wide fame, as the Marseillais hymn; a strain which never fails to rouse the blood of Frenchmen to the highest pitch of enthusiasm and daring. The origin of this martial song was extraordinary. Lamartine thus relates it in his "History of the Girondists:"—"Rouget de Lisle, born amid the mountains of the Jura, was a young officer at Strasburg. There he used to visit Dietrich, the mayor of Strasburg, and there, with Dietrich, his wife and daughters, indulged his taste for music. He was desired by Dietrich to write a