or later, been accepted by all civilized nations as “the gospel of modern times,” was inspired by all the philosophy of the 18th century in France and by the Contrat Social. It comprised various rational and humane ideas, no longer theological, but profoundly and deliberately thought out: ideas as to the sovereign-right of the nation, law by general consent, man superior to the pretensions of caste and the fetters of dogma, the vindication of the ideal and of human dignity. Unable to rest on historic precedent like England, the Constituent Assembly took as the basis for its labours the tradition of the thinkers.
Upon the principles proclaimed in this Declaration the constitution of 1791 was founded. Its provisions are discussed elsewhere (see the section below on Law and Institutions); here it will suffice to say that it established under the sovereign people, for the king was to survive merely The constitution. as the supreme executive official, a wholly new model of government in France, both in Church and State. The historic divisions of the realm were wiped out; for the old provinces were substituted eighty-three departments; and with the provinces vanished the whole organization, territorial, administrative and ecclesiastical, of the ancien régime. In one respect, indeed, the system of the old monarchy remained intact; the tradition of centralization established by Louis XIV. was too strong to be overthrown, and the destruction of the historic privileges and immunities with which this had been ever in conflict only served to strengthen this tendency. In 1791 France was pulverized into innumerable administrative atoms incapable of cohesion; and the result was that Paris became more than ever the brain and nerve-centre of France. This fact was soon to be fatal to the new constitution, though the administrative system established by it still survives. Paris was in effect dominated by the armed and organized proletariat, and this proletariat could never be satisfied with a settlement which, while proclaiming the sovereignty of the people, had, by means of the property qualification for the franchise, established the political ascendancy of the middle classes. The settlement had, in fact, settled nothing; it had, indeed, merely intensified the profound cleavage between the opposing tendencies; for if the democrats were alienated by the narrow franchise, the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which cut at the very roots of the Catholic system, drove into opposition to the Revolution not only the clergy themselves but a vast number of their flocks.
The policy of the Assembly, moreover, hopelessly aggravated its misunderstanding with the king. Louis, indeed, accepted the constitution and attended the great Feast of Federation (July 14, 1790), when representatives from all the new departments assembled in the Champ de Mars to ratify the work of the Assembly; but the king either could not or would not say the expected word that would have dissipated mistrust. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy, too, seemed to him not only to violate his rights as a king, but his faith as a Christian also; and when the emigration of the nobility and the death of Mirabeau (April 2, 1791) had deprived him of his natural supporters and his only adviser, resuming the old plan of withdrawing to the army of the marquis de Bouillé at Metz, he made his ill-fated attempt to escape from Paris (June 20, 1791). The flight to Varennes was an irreparable error; for during the king’s absence and until his return the insignificance of the royal power became apparent. La Fayette’s fusillade of the republicans, who demanded the deposition of the king (July 17, 1791), led to a definite split between the democratic party and the bourgeois party. Vainly did Louis, brought back a captive to Paris, swear on the 14th of September 1791 solemnly mere lip-service to the constitution; the mistrustful party of revolution abandoned the constitution they had only just obtained, and to guard against the sovereign’s mental reservations and the selfish policy of the middle classes, appealed to the main force of the people. The conflict between the ancien régime and the National Assembly ended in the defeat of the royalists.
Through lassitude or disinterestedness the men of 1791, on Robespierre’s suggestion, had committed one last mistake, by leaving the task of putting the constitution into practice to new men even more inexperienced than themselves. Thus the new Assembly’s time was The Legislative Assembly (Oct. 1, 1791–Sept 20, 1792). occupied in a conflict between the Legislative Assembly and the king, who plotted against it; and, as a result, the monarchy, insulted by the proceedings of the 20th of June, was eliminated altogether by those of the 10th of August 1792.
The new Assembly which had met on the 1st of October 1791 had a majority favourable to the constitutional monarchy and to the bourgeois franchise. But, among these bourgeois those who were called Feuillants, from the name of their club (see Feuillants, Club of the), desired the The parties. strict and loyal application of the constitution without encroaching upon the authority of the king; the triumvirate, Duport, Barnave and Lameth, were at the head of this party. The Jacobins, on the contrary, considered that the king should merely be hereditary president of the Republic, to be deposed if he attempted to violate the constitution, and that universal suffrage should be established. The dominant group among these was that of the Girondins or Girondists, so called because its most brilliant members had been elected in the Gironde (see Girondists). But the republican party was more powerful without than within. Their chief was not so much Robespierre, president of the parliamentary and bourgeois club of the Jacobins (q.v.), which had acquired by means of its two thousand affiliated branches great power in the provinces, as the advocate Danton, president of the popular and Parisian club of the Cordeliers (q.v.). Between the Feuillants and the Jacobins, the independents, incapable of keeping to any fixed programme, vacillated sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left.
But the best allies of the republicans against the Feuillants
were the royalists pure and simple, who cared nothing about
the constitution, and claimed to “extract good from
the excess of evil.” The election of a Jacobin, Pétion,
instead of Bailly, the resigning mayor, and La Fayette,
Royalist intrigues.
The émigrés.
the candidate for office, was their first achievement. The court,
on its side, showed little sign of a conciliatory spirit, though,
realizing its danger, it attempted to restrain the foolish violence
of the émigrés, i.e. the nobles who after the suppression
of titles of nobility in 1790 and the arrest
of the king at Varennes, had fled in a body to Coblenz
and joined Louis XVI.’s brothers, the counts of Provence and
Artois. They it was who set in motion the national and European
conflict. Under the prince of Condé they had collected a little
army round Trier; and in concert with the “Austrian Committee”
of Paris they solicited the armed intervention of monarchical
Europe. The declaration of Pilnitz, which was but an excuse
Declaration of Pilnitz.
for non-interference on the part of the emperor and the
king of Prussia, interested in the prolongation of these
internal troubles, was put forward by them as an
assurance of forthcoming support (August 27, 1791).
At the same time the application of the Civil Constitution of
the Clergy roused the whole of western La Vendée; and in face
of the danger threatened by the refractory clergy and by the
army of the émigrés, the Girondins set about confounding the
court with the Feuillants in the minds of the public, and compromising
Louis XVI. by a national agitation, denouncing him
as an accomplice of the foreigner. Owing to the decrees against
The decrees.
The war.
the comte de Provence, the emigrants, and the
refractory priests, voted by the Legislative Assembly
in November 1791, they forced Louis XVI. to show
his hand by using his veto, so that his complicity should be
plainly declared, to replace his Feuillant ministry—disparate
in birth, opinions and ambitions—by the Girondin ministry of
Dumouriez-Roland (March 10), no more united than the other,
but believers in a republican crusade for the overthrow
of thrones, that of Louis XVI. first of all; and finally
to declare war against the king of Bohemia and Hungary, a step
also desired by the court in the hope of ridding itself of the
Assembly at the first note of victory (April 20, 1792).
