de Cincinnatus which Romilly translated was the only important
work Mirabeau wrote in the year 1785, and it is a good specimen
of his method. He had read a pamphlet published in America
attacking the proposed order, which was to form a bond of association
between the officers who had fought in the American War
of Independence against England; the arguments struck him as
true and valuable, so he re-arranged them in his own fashion,
and rewrote them in his own oratorical style. He soon found
such work not sufficiently remunerative to keep his petite
horde in comfort, and then turned his thoughts to employment
from the French foreign office, either in writing or in diplomacy.
He first sent Mme de Nehra to Paris to make peace with the
authorities, and then returned himself, hoping to get employment
through an old literary collaborateur of his, Durival, who was
at this time director of the finances of the department of foreign
affairs. One of the functions of this official was to subsidize
political pamphleteers, and Mirabeau had hoped to be so
employed, but he ruined his chances by a series of writings on
financial questions. On his return to Paris he had become
acquainted with Étienne Clavière, the Genevese exile, and a
banker named Panchaud. From them he heard plenty of abuse
of stock-jobbing, and seizing their ideas he began to regard
stock-jobbing, or agiotage, as the source of all evil, and to attack
in his usual vehement style the Banque de St Charles and the
Compagnie des Eaux. This last pamphlet brought him into
a controversy with Caron de Beaumarchais, who certainly did
not get the best of it, but it lost him any chance of literary
employment from the government. However, his ability was
too great to be neglected by a great minister such as Charles
Gravier, Comte de Vergennes undoubtedly was, and after a
preliminary tour to Berlin at the beginning of 1786 he was despatched
in July 1786 on a secret mission to the court of Prussia,
from which he returned in January 1787, and of which he gave
a full account in his Histoire secrète de la cour de Berlin (1789).
The months he spent at Berlin were important in the history
of Prussia, for while he was there Frederick the Great died.
The letters just mentioned show clearly what Mirabeau did and
what he saw, and equally clearly how unfit he was to be a diplomatist.
He certainly failed to conciliate the new king Frederick
William; and thus ended Mirabeau’s one attempt at diplomacy.
During his journey he had made the acquaintance of
Jakob Mauvillon (1743–1794), whom he found possessed of a
great number of facts and statistics with regard to Prussia;
these he made use of in a great work on Prussia published in
1788. But, though his De la monarchie prussienne sous Frédéric
le Grand (London, 1788) gave him a general reputation for
historical learning, he had in the same year lost a chance of
political employment. He had offered himself as a candidate
for the office of secretary to the Assembly of Notables which
the king had just convened, and to bring his name before the
public published another financial work, the Dénonciation de
l’agiotage, which abounded in such violent diatribes that he
not only lost his election, but was obliged to retire to Tongres;
and he further injured his prospects by publishing the reports
he had sent in during his secret mission at Berlin. But 1789 was
at hand; the states-general was summoned; Mirabeau’s period
of probation was over.
On hearing of the king’s determination to summon the states-general, Mirabeau started for Provence, and offered to assist at the preliminary conference of the noblesse of his district. They rejected him; he appealed to the tiers état, and was returned both for Aix and for Marseilles. He elected to sit for the former city, and was present at the opening of the states-general on the 4th of May 1789. From this time the record of Mirabeau’s life forms the best history of the first two years of the Constituent Assembly, for at every important crisis his voice is to be heard, though his advice was not always followed. He possessed at the same time great logical acuteness and the most passionate enthusiasm. From the beginning he recognized that government exists in order that the bulk of the population may pursue their daily work in peace and quiet, and that for a government to be successful it must be strong. At the same time he thoroughly comprehended that for a government to be strong it must be in harmony with the wishes of the majority of the people. He had carefully studied the English constitution in England, and he hoped to establish in France a system similar in principle but without any slavish imitation of the details of the English constitution. In the first stage of the history of the states-general Mirabeau’s part was very great. He was soon recognized as a leader, to the chagrin of Jean Joseph Mounier, because he always knew his own mind, and was prompt in emergencies. To him is to be attributed the successful consolidation of the National Assembly. When the taking of the Bastille had assured the success of the Revolution, he warned the Assembly of the futility of passing fine-sounding decrees and urged the necessity for acting. He declared that the famous night of the 4th of August was but an orgy, giving the people an immense theoretical liberty while not assisting them to practical freedom, and overthrowing the old régime before a new one could be constituted. His failure to control the theorizers showed Mirabeau, after the removal of the king and the Assembly to Paris, that his eloquence would not enable him to guide the Assembly by himself, and that he must therefore try to get some support. He wished to establish a strong ministry, which should be responsible like an English ministry, but to an assembly chosen to represent the people of France better than the English House of Commons at that time represented England. He first thought of becoming a minister at a very early date, if we may believe a story contained in the Mémoires of the duchesse d’Abrantes, to the effect that in May 1789 the queen tried to bribe him, but that he refused this and expressed his wish to be a minister. The indignation with which the queen repelled the idea may have made him think of the duke of Orleans as a possible constitutional king, because his title would of necessity be parliamentary. But the weakness of Orleans was too palpable, and in a famous remark Mirabeau expressed his utter contempt for him. He also attempted to form an alliance with Lafayette, but the general was as vain and as obstinate as Mirabeau himself, and had his own theories about a new French constitution. Mirabeau tried for a time, too, to act with Necker, and obtained the sanction of the Assembly to Necker’s financial scheme, not because it was good, but because, as he said, “no other plan was before them, and something must be done.”
Hitherto weight has been laid on the practical side of Mirabeau’s political genius; his ideas with regard to the Revolution after the 5th and 6th of October must now be examined, and this can be done at length, thanks to the publication of Mirabeau’s correspondence with the Comte de la Marck, a study of which is indispensable for any correct knowledge of the history of the Revolution between 1789 and 1791. Auguste Marie Raymond, prince d’Arenberg, known as the Comte de la Marck, was a Flemish nobleman who had been proprietary colonel of a German regiment in the service of France; he was a close friend of the queen, and had been elected a member of the states-general. His acquaintance with Mirabeau, begun in 1788, ripened during the following year into a friendship, which La Marck hoped to turn to the advantage of the court. After the events of the 5th and 6th of October he consulted Mirabeau as to what measures the king ought to take, and Mirabeau, delighted at the opportunity, drew up an admirable state paper, which was presented to the king by Monsieur, afterwards Louis XVIII. The whole of this Mémoire should be read to get an adequate idea of Mirabeau’s genius for politics; here it must be summarized.
The main position is that the king is not free in Paris; he must therefore leave Paris and appeal to France. “Paris n’en veut que l’argent; les provinces demandent des lois.’ But where must the king go? “Se retirer à Metz ou sur toute autre frontière serait déclarer la guerre à la nation et abdiquer le trône. Un roi qui est la seule sauvegarde de son peuple ne fuit point devant son peuple; il le prend pour juge de sa conduite et de ses principes.” He must then go towards the interior of France to a provincial capital, best of all to Rouen, and there he must appeal to the people and summon a great convention. It would be ruin to appeal to the noblesse, as the queen advised: “un corps de noblesse n’est point une armée,
qui puisse combattre.” When this great convention met the
