Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/519

Rh MIBABEAU 497 to foreign policy. He had been elected a member of the comite&quot; diplomatique of the Assembly in July 1790, and became its reporter at once, and in this capacity he was able to prevent the Assembly from doing much harm in regard to foreign affairs. He had long known Montmorin, the foreign secretary, and, as matters became more strained from the complications with the princes and counts of the empire, he entered into daily communication with the minister, advised him on every point, and, while dictating his policy, defended it in the Assembly. Thus in this parti cular instance of the foreign office, for the few months before Mirabeau s death, a harmony was established between the minister and the Assembly through Mirabeau, which checked for a time the threatened approach of foreign intervention, and maintained the honour of France abroad. Mirabeau s exertions in this respect are not his smallest title to the name of statesman; and how great a work he did is best proved by the confusion which ensued in this department of affairs upon his death. For indeed in the beginning of 1791 his death was very near ; and he knew it to be so. The wild excesses of his youth and their terrible punishment had weakened his strong constitution, and his parliamentary labours com pleted the work. So surely did he feel its approach that some time before the end he sent all his papers over to his old English friend and schoolfellow Sir Gilbert Elliot, who kept them under seal until claimed by Mirabeau s executors. In March his illness was evidently gaining on him, to his great grief, because he knew how much depended on his life, and felt that he alone could yet save France from the distrust of her monarch and the present reforms, and from the foreign interference, which would assuredly bring about catastrophes unparalleled in the history of the world. On his life hung the future course of the Revolution. Every care that science could afford was given by his friend and physician, the famous chemist Cabanis, to whose brochure on his last illness and death the reader may refer. The people, whose faith in him revived in spite of all suspicions, when they heard that he was on his death-bed, kept the street in which he lay quiet; but medical care, the loving solicitude of friends, and the respect of all the people could not save his life. His vanity appears in its most gigantic proportions in his last utterances during his illness; but many of them have something grand in their sound, as his last reported expression, when he looked upon the sun &quot; If he is not God, he is at least His cousin- german.&quot; When he could speak no more he wrote with a feeble hand the one word &quot; dormir,&quot; and on April 2, 1791, he died. With Mirabeau died, it has been said, the last hope of the mon archy; but, with Marie Antoinette supreme at court, can it be said that there could ever have been any real hope for the monarchy ? Had she been but less like her imperious mother, Louis would have made a constitutional monarch, but her will was as strong as Mirabeau s own, and the Bourbon monarchy had to meet its fate. The subse quent events of the Revolution justified Mirabeau s prognostications in his first memoire of October 15, 1789. The royal family fled towards the German frontier, and from that moment there sunk deep into the hearts of the people not only of Paris, but of the provinces, a conviction that the king and queen were traitors to France, which led inevitably to their execution. The noblesse and the foreign aid on which the queen relied proved but a source of weakness. The noblesse, Mirabeau had said, was no army which could fight ; and truly the army of the emigres could do nothing against revolutionary France in arms. The intervention of foreign aid only sealed the king s fate, and forwarded the progress of the Revolution, not in a course of natural development, but to the terrible resource of the Reign of Terror. With regard to the Assembly too, and its consti tution, Mirabeau had shown his foresight. &quot;The constitution of 1791, excellent as it was on paper, and well adapted to an ideal state, did not deal adequately with the great problems of the time in France, and by its ridiculous weakening of the executive was unsuited to a modern state. Surely if events ever proved a man s political sagacity, the history of the French Revolution proved Mirabeau s. A few words must be added on Mirabeau s manner of work and his character. No man ever so thoroughly used other men s work, and yet made it all seem his own. &quot; Je prends mon bien ou je le trouve &quot; is as true of him as of Moliere. His first literary work, except the bombastic but eloquent Essai sur le Dcspotisme, was a transla tion of Watson s Philip II., accomplished in Holland with the help of Durival ; his C oiisiderations sur Vordre de Cincinnatus was based on an American pamphlet, and the notes to it were con tributed by Target ; while his financial writings were all suggested by the Genevese exile Clavieres. During the Revolution he received yet more help ; men were proud to labour for him, and did not murmur because he absorbed all the credit and fame. Dumont, Clavieres, Duroveray, Pellenc, Lamourettc, and Reybaz were but a few of the most distinguished of his collaborators. Dumont was a Genevese exile, and an old friend of Romilly s, who willingly prepared for him those famous addresses which Mirabeau used to make the Assembly pass by sudden bursts of eloquent declamation ; Clavieres and Duroveray helped him in finance, and not only worked out his figures, but even wrote his financial discourses. Pellenc was his secretary, and wrote the speeches on the goods of the clergy and the right of making peace, and even the Abbe Lamourettc wrote the speeches on the civil constitution of the clergy. Reybaz, whose per sonality has only been revealed within these last ten years, not only wrote for him his famous speeches on the assignats, the organization of the national guard, &c., which Mirabeau read word for word at the tribune, but even the posthumous speech on succession to estates of intestates, which Talleyrand read in the Assembly as the last work of his dead friend. Yet neither the gold of the court nor another man s conviction would make Mirabeau say what he did not himself believe, or do what he did not himself think right. He took other men s labour as his due, and impressed their words, of which he had suggested the underlying ideas, with the stamp of his own individuality ; his collaborators themselves did not com plain, they were but too glad to be of help in the great work of controlling and forwarding the French Revolution through its greatest thinker and orator. True is that remark of Goethe s to Eckermann, after reading Dumont s Souvenirs : &quot;At last the wonderful Mirabeau becomes natural to us, while at the same time the hero loses nothing of his greatness. Some French journalists think differently The French look upon Mirabeau as their Hercules, and they are perfectly right. But they forget that even the Colossus consists of individual parts, and that the Hercules of antiquity is a collective being a gigantic personification of deeds done by himself and by others.&quot; There was something gigantic about all Mirabeau s thoughts and deeds. The excesses of his youth were beyond all bounds, and severely were they punished ; his vanity was immense, but never spoilt his judgment ; his talents were enormous, but could yet make use of those of others. As a statesman his wisdom is indubit able, but by no means universally recognized in his own country. Lovers of the ancicn regime abuse its most formidable and logical opponent ; believers in the Constituent Assembly cannot be expected to care for the most redoubtable adversary of their favourite theorists, while admirers of the republic of every description agree in calling him from his connexion with the court the traitor Mirabeau. As an orator more justice has been done him : his eloquence has been likened to that of both Bossuet and Vergniaud, but it had neither the polish of the old 17th-century bishop nor the flashes of genius of the young Girondin. It was rather parliamentary oratory in which he excelled, and his true compeers are rather Burke and Fox than any French speakers. Personally he had that which is the truest mark of nobility of mind, a power of attracting love, and winning faithful friends. &quot;I always loved him,&quot; writes Sir Gilbert Elliot to his brother Hugh ; and Romilly, who was not given to lavish praise, says, &quot; I have no doubt that in his public conduct, as in his writings, he was desirous of doing good, that his ambition was of the noblest kind, and that he proposed to himself the noblest ends.&quot; What more favourable judgment could be passed on an ambitious man ! What finer epitaph could a states man desire ! The best edition of Mirabeau s works is that published by Blanchard in 1822, in 10 vols., of which two contain his CEmres Oratoire.i; from this collection, how ever, many of his less important works, and the Monatchie frussienne, in 4 vols., 1788, are omitted. For his life consult Mirabeau : Memoires sur sa vie littfraire etprive e,4 vols., 1824, and, what is of most importance, Memoires biographiques, litterairef, et politiques de Mirabeau Merits par liii-infme. par ton pere, son oncfe, et sonfils adoptif, which was issued by M. Lucas de Montiffny in 8 vols., Paris, 1834. See also Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, 1832 ; Duval, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, 1832; Victor Hugo, Ktude sur Mirabeau, 1834 ; Mirabfau s Juyendleben, Breslau, 1832 Schneidcwin, Mirabeau undteine Zeit, Leipsic, 1831 ; Mirabeau, a Lift Ilit- tory, London, 1848. The publication of the Corretpondance entre Mirabeau et le Comte de la Marck, by Ail. Hacoutt, 2 vols., 1851, marks ;m epoch in our exact knowledge of Mirabeau and his career. The most useful modem books are Louis de Lomdnie, Les. Mirabrau, 1878, which, however, chiefly treats of his father and uncle; Ph. Plan, Un Collaborateur de Mirabeau. 1874, treating of Reybaz, and throwing infinite light on Mirabeau s mode of work ; and, lastly, H. Reynald, Mirabeau et la Conttituante, 1873. On his eloquence and the share his collabora tors had in his speeches, see Aulard, L Assemble e Constituante, 1882. For his death see the curious brochure of his physician Cabanis, Journal de la maladie et de la mart de Mirabeau, Paris, 1791. (H. M. S.) XVI. 61