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XIX.

1795.

CHAP. victory M. Lafond, one of the military chiefs of the revolt, obstinately resisting the means of evasion which were suggested to him by the court, was alone condemned, and died with a firmness worthy of the cause for which he suffered. Most of the accused persons were allowed time 1 Hist. Parl. to escape, and sentence of outlawry was merely recorded 72. Th. viii. against them; many returned shortly after to Paris, and 66. Lac. xii. resumed their place in public affairs. The clemency of ii.395. Hist. Buonaparte was early conspicuous; his counsels, after the iv. 387, 390. victory, were all on the side of mercy, and his intercession saved General Menou from a military commission. 1

xxxvii. 59,

441. Mig.

de la Conv.

64.

In the formation of the Councils of Five Hundred and Election of of the Ancients, the Convention made no attempt to conof Ancients strain the public wishes. The third of the legislature, and the Five who had been newly elected, were almost all on the side

the Council

Hundred.

of the insurgents, and even included several Royalists; and a proposal was in consequence made by Tallien, that the election of that third should be annulled, and another appeal made to the people. Thibaudeau, with equal firmness and eloquence, resisted the proposal, which was rejected by the Convention. They merely took the precaution, to prevent a return to royalty, to name for the Directors five persons who had voted for the death of the King-Laréveillère-Lepaux, Rewbell, Letourneur, Barras, and Carnot. Having thus settled the new government, they published a general amnesty, changed the name of the Mig. ii. 396. Place de la Révolution into that of Place de la Concorde, Thib. ii. 12, and declared their sittings terminated. The last days of 65,67. Hist. an Assembly stained with so much blood were gilded by an act of clemency, of which, Thibaudeau justly said, the annals of kings furnished few examples.2

2 Deux

Amis, xv.

399, 404

Lac.xii.444.

13. Th. viii.

de la Conv. iv. 389.

65.

The Convention sat for more than three years—from Reflections the 21st September 1791 to the 26th October 1795. tory of the During that long and terrible period, its precincts were Convention. rather the field on which faction strove for ascendency

on the his

than the theatre on which legislative wisdom exerted its influence. The destruction of human life which took place

XIX.

1795.

during its government, in civil dissension, was unparalleled: CHAP. it amounted to above A MILLION of human beings! All the parties which divided France there endeavoured to establish their power, and all perished in the attempt. The Girondists attempted it, and perished; the Mountain attempted it, and perished; the Municipality attempted it, and perished; Robespierre attempted it, and perished; the Royalists attempted it, and perished. In revolutions it is easy to destroy; the difficulty is to establish and secure. All the experience of years of suffering, fraught with centuries of instruction-all the wisdom of age, all the talent of youth, were unable to form one stable government. A few years, often a few months, were sufficient to overturn the most apparently stable institutions. A fabric, seemingly framed for permanent duration, disappeared almost before its authors had consummated their work. The gales of popular favour, ever fickle and changeable, deserted each successive faction as it rose into power; and the ardent part of the nation, impatient of control, deemed any approach to regular government insupportable tyranny. The lower classes, incapable of rational thought, gave their support to the different parties only as long as they con- 397. Prudtinued to inveigh against their superiors; when they Vict. de la became those superiors themselves, they passed over to Table 7. their enemies.1

1 Mig. ii.

homme,

Rév.vi. 522,

of all dur

able human

institutions.

Human institutions are not like the palace of the archi- 66. tect, framed according to fixed rules, capable of erection Slow growth in any situation, and certain in the effect to be produced. They resemble rather the trees of the forest, slow of growth, tardy of development, readily susceptible of destruction. An instant will destroy what it has taken centuries to produce; centuries must again elapse before, in the same situation, a similar production can be formed. Transplantation, difficult in the vegetable, is impossible in the moral world; the seedling must be nourished in the soil, inured to the climate, hardened by the winds. Many examples are to be found of institutions being suddenly imposed

XIX.

CHAP. upon a people-none of those so formed having any duration. To be adapted to their character and habits, they must have grown with their growth, and strengthened with their strength.

1795.

67.

on the his

and the

causes of its

The progress of improvement is irresistible. Feudal Reflections tyranny must give way in an age of increasing opulence, tory of the and the human mind cannot be for ever enchained by the Revolution, fetters of superstition. No efforts of power could have disasters. prevented a change in the government of France; but they might have altered its character and checked its horrors. Nature has ordained that mankind should, when they are fit for it, be free; but she has not ordained that they should reach this freedom steeped in blood. Although, therefore, the overthrow of the despotic government and modification of the power of the privileged orders of France was inevitable, yet the dreadful atrocities with which their fall was attended might have been averted by human wisdom. The life of the monarch might have been saved instead of sacrificed; the constitution modified, without being subverted; the aristocracy purified, without being destroyed. Timely concession from the crown, perhaps, might have altered the character of the French Revolution. Had Louis, in the commencement of the troubles, yielded the great and reasonable demands of the people, and the nobility permitted him to carry his intentions into effect--had he been allowed to grant them equality of taxation, the power of voting subsidies, freedom from arrest, and periodical parliaments the agitation of the moment might have been allayed, and an immediate collision between the throne and the people prevented. At a subsequent period, indeed, increasing demands, and the want of more extended privileges, might have arisen; but these discontents, being turned into a regular and legal channel, would probably have found vent without destroying the state. When the floods are out, safety is to be found only in providing early and effectual means for letting off the superfluous waters, and, at the same

time, strengthening the barriers against their further CHAP. encroachment.

XIX.

1795.

68.

Necker's

of the Tiers

But although the gradual concession of power, and the redress of all real grievances before the Revolution, would Ruinous have been not less politic than just, nothing can be clearer effect of than that the sudden and vast accession of importance con- duplication ferred by M. Necker on the Tiers Etat, by the duplication Etat. of their numbers, without any decision as to the voting by head or by order, was to the last degree prejudicial, and was, in fact, the immediate cause of the Revolution. Such a sudden addition, like the instantaneous emancipation of slaves, cannot but prove destructive, not only to the higher classes but to the lower. The powers of freedom can only be borne by those who have gradually become habituated to them; those who acquire them suddenly, by their intemperate use speedily fall under a worse despotism than that from which they revolted. By the consequences of this sudden and uncalled-for innovation, the commons of France threw off the beneficent reign of a reforming monarch, fell under the iron grasp of the Committee of Public Salvation, were constrained to tremble under the bloody sway of Robespierre, and fawn upon the military sceptre of Napoleon.

69.

effect of the

blesse.

No lesson is more strongly impressed upon the mind, by the progress of the French Revolution, than the Dreadful disastrous consequences which followed the desertion of emigration their country by the higher orders, and the wonderful of the noeffects which might have resulted from a determined resistance on their part to the first actual outrages of the people. Nearly a hundred thousand emigrants fled from France, at a time when a few hundred resolute men might have saved the monarchy from destruction. Lafayette, with five battalions of the national guard, vanquished the Jacobins in the Champ-de-Mars in the most fervent period of the Revolution: had he marched against their club, and been vigorously supported, the Reign of Terror would have been prevented. Five

XIX.

1795.

CHAP. hundred horse would have enabled the Swiss Guard to have saved the throne on the 10th August, and subdue an insurrection which deluged the kingdom with blood. Three thousand of the troops of the sections overthrew Robespierre at the zenith of his power; a body of undisciplined young men chased the Jacobins from the streets, and rooted them out of their den of wickedness; Buonaparte, with six thousand regular soldiers, vanquished the national guard of Paris, and crushed an insurrection headed by the whole moral strength of France. These examples may convince us what can be accomplished by a small body of resolute men in civil convulsions: their physical power is almost irresistible; their moral influence commands success. One-tenth part of the emigrants who fled from France, if properly headed and disciplined, and directed by a courageous monarch on the throne, would have been sufficient to have curbed the fury of the populace in Paris, crushed the ambition of the reckless, and prevented the Reign of Terror.1

1 Burke,

vi. 237.

70. Effects of

interference.

No doubt can now exist that the interference of the Allies augmented the horrors and added to the duration the Allied of the Revolution. All its bloodiest excesses were committed during, or after, an alarming but unsuccessful invasion of the Allied forces. The massacres of September 2d were perpetrated when the public mind was excited to the highest degree, by the near approach of the Duke of Brunswick; and the worst days of the government of Robespierre were immediately after the defection of Dumourier; and the battle of Nerwinde threatened the rule of the Jacobins with destruction. Nothing but a sense of public danger could have united the factions who then strove with so much exasperation against each other; the peril of France alone could have induced the people to submit to the sanguinary rule which so long desolated its plains. The Jacobins maintained their ascendency by constantly representing their cause as that of national independence, by stigmatising their enemies

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