REVOLUTION
13
REVOLUTION
the Assembly decreed tlic formation of a camp near
Paris of 20,000 volunteers to guard the king. At the
ministerial council Roland read an insulting letter
to Louis, in which he called upon him to sanction the
decrees of November and May against the non-juring
priests. He was dismissed, whereupon the populace
of Paris arose and invaded the Tuileries (20 June,
1792), and for several hours the king and his family
were the objects of all manner of outrages. After the
public manifesto of the Duke of Brunswick in the
name of the powers in coalition against France (25
July, 1792) and the Assembly's declaration of the
"Fatherland in danger" there came petitions for
the deposition of the king, who was accused of be-
ing in communication with foreign rulers. On 10
August, Santerre, Westermann, and Fournier I'Am^ri-
cain at the head of the national guard attacked the
Tuileries defended by 800 Swiss. Louis refused to
defend himself, and with his family sought refuge
in the Legislative Assembly. The Assembly passed a
decree which suspended the king's powers, drew up
a plan of education for the dauphin, and convoked a
national convention. Louis XVI was imprisoned
in the Temjile l)y order of the insurrectionary Com-
mune of Paris.
Madness spread through France caused by the threatened danger from without; arrests of non- juring priests nuiltiiilicd. In an effort to make them give way. The Assembly decided (15 August) that the oath should consist only in the promise "to up- hold with all one's might liberty, equality, and the execution of the law, or to die at one's post". But the non-juring priests remained firm and refused even this second oath. On 26 August the Assembly decreed that within fifteen days they should be ex- pelled from the kingdom, that those who remained or returned to France should be deported to Guiana, or .should be liable to ten years' imprisonment. It then extended this threat to the priests, who, having no publicly recognized priestly duties, had hitherto been dispemsed from the oath, declaring that they also might be expelled if they were convicted of having provoked disturbances. This was the signal for a real civil war. The peasants armed in La Vendee, Deux Hevnjs, Loire Inferieure, Maine and Loire, He and Vilaine. This news and that of the invasion of Champagne bj' the Prussian army caused hidden influences to arouse the Parisian populace; hence the September ma.ssacres. In the prisons of La Force, the Conciergerie, and the Abbaye Saint Germain, at least 1500 women, priests and soldiers fell under the axe or the club. The celebrated tribune, Danton, cannot be entirely acquitted of complicity in these massacres. The Legislative Assembly terminated its career by two new measures against the Church: it deprived priests of the right to register births, etc., and authorized divorce. Laicizing the civil state waa not in the minds of the Constituents, but was the result of the blocking of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. The Legislative Assembly was induced to enact it because the Catholics faithful to Rome would not have recour.se to Constitutional priests for the registering of births, baptisms, and deaths.
The Convention; the Repuhlic; the Reign of Terror. — The oi)ening of the National Convention (21 Sept., 1792) took place the day following Dumou- riez's victory at Valmy over the Prussian troops. The constitutional bishop, Gregoire, proclaimed the republic at the first session; he was surrounded in the assembly by fifteen constitutional bishops and twenty-eight constitutional priests. But the time was at hand when the constitutional clergy in turn was to be under suspicion, the majority of the Con- vention being hostile to Christianity itself. As early as 16 November, 1792, Cambon demanded that the salaries of the priests be suppressed and that hence- forth no religion should be subsidized by the State,
but the motion was rejected for the time being.
Henceforth the Convention enacted all manner of
arbitrary political measures: it undertook the trial
of Louis XVI, and on 2 January, 1793, "hurled a
king's head at Europe". But from a religious stand-
point it w;;as more timid; it feared to disturb the
people of Savoy and Belgium, which its armies were
annexing to France. From 10 to 15 March, 1793,
formidable insurrections broke out in La Vendee,
Anjou, and a part of Brittany. At the same time
Dumouriez, having been defeated at Neerwinden.
sought to turn his army against the Convention, and
he himself went over to the Austrians. The Con-
vention took fright; it instituted a Revolutionary
Tribunal on 9 March, and on 6 April the Committee
of Public Safety, with formidable powers, was estab-
lished.
Increasingly severe mea.sures were taken chiefly against the non-juring clergy. On 18 Feb., 1793, the Convention voted a prize of one hundred livres to w;homsoever should denounce a priest liable to deporta- tion and who remained in France despite the law. On 1 March the emigres were sentenced to perpetual banishment and their property confiscated. On 18 March it was decreed that any emigre or deported priest arrested on French soil should be executed within twenty-four hours. On 23 April it was enacted that all ecclesiastics, priests or monks, who had not taken the oath prescribed by the Decree of 15 August, 1792, should be transported to Guiana; even the priests who had taken the oath should be treated likewise if six citizens should denounce them for lack of citizenship. But despite all these measures the non-juring priests remained faithful to Rome. The pope had maintained in France an official internuncio, the Abb6 de Salamon, who kept himself in hiding and performed his duties at the risk of his life, gave information concerning current events, and trans- mitted orders. The proconsuls of the Convention, Freron and Barras at Marseilles and Toulon, Tallien at Bordeaux, Carrier at Nantes, perpetrated abomin- able ma.ssacres. In Paris the Revolutionary Tribunal, carrying out the proposals of the public accu.ser, Foucjuier-Tinville, inaugurated the Reign of Terror. The proscription of the Girondins by the Montagn- ards (2 June, 1793), marked a progress in demagogy. The assassination of the bloodthirsty demagogue, Marat, by Charlotte Corday (13 July, 1793) gave rise to extravagant manifestations in honour of Marat. But the provinces did not follow this policy. News came of insurrections in Caen, Marseilles, Lyons, and Toulon; at the same time the Spaniards were in Roussillon, the Piedmontese in Savoy, the Austriana in Valenciennes, and the Vendeans defeated Kleber at Torfou (Sept., 1793). The crazed Convention decreed a rising en masse; the heroic resistance of Valenciennes and Mainz gave Carnot time to organ- ize new armies. At the same time the Convention passed the Law of Suspects (17 Sept., 1793), which authorized the imprisonment of almost anyone and as a consequence of which 30,000 were imprisoned. Informing became a trade in France. Queen Marie Antoinette was beheaded 16 October, 1793. Fourteen Carmelites who were executed 17 July, 1794, were declared Venerable by Leo XIII in 1902.
From a religious point of view a new feature arose at this period — the constitutional clergy, accused of sympathy with the Girondins, came to be suspected almost as much as the non-juring priests. Numerous conflicts arose between the constitutional priests and the civil authorities with regard to the decree of the Convention which did not permit priests to ask those intending to marry if they were baptized, had been to confession, or were divorced. The constitutional bi.shops would not .submit to the Convention when it required them to give apostate priests the nuptial bles.sing. Despite the example of the constitutional
