Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/637

CHANGES IN FRANCE.] FRANCE G01 tu- 1(1 the expenses of public worship, and resume its ownership of the lands of the church. In spite of the vigorous resist ance of the clergy, and their offer to make a gratuitous gift of part of their lands, the Assembly adopted the proposal, and ordered the sale of the ecclesiastical domains. The argument that these lands were part of the absolute pro perty of the Church Catholic in general, and not of the French clergy in particular, was too unpatriotic to be listened to. The sale, however, was a failure ; men were too much frightened by the rapid movement of affairs to feel much confidence, and things again seemed to be at a stand-still. Then the Paris commune hit on a plan which succeeded. The municipalities throughout France were authorized to buy these lands from the state, and to sell them again to private purchasers ; and the municipalities might pay for them in bonds, or assif/nats as they were called, based on the actual value of the land. It was ordered that the issue of assignats should be limited, and that they should be extinguished as the lands passed into private hands, and hard money was given for them. The measure brought instant relief to the Government, and the assignats, as has been said, "saved the Revolution." Then followed the "civil constitution of the clergy," in which the state made a great step in the direction often since taken with more or less success, -the direction of controlling the spiritual powers. The Assembly began by affirming the constitution to be based on Christianity, while it refused to admit a state-religion, abolished monastic vows, religious orders, and confraternities, with exception of some useful ones. It then, following the impulse of uniformity given by the new partition of the soil into departments, rearranged the ecclesiastical divisions on the same basis, a bishop to each department, and so on. The influence of the Jan- senists among the clergy in the Assembly was felt in all this ; it is their last appearance in French history ; after 1790 their name hardly ever occurs again. It was clear that the upper clergy and the bulk of the lower would resist this proposal. If the state severed the ancient re lations between the church and itself, it must, to a large extent, leave the church to manage its own affairs. As it was, the state had laid hands on church lands, had de clared against the connexion, and yet was determined to rearrange the spiritual domain. Finding strong opposition, the Assembly next ordered the clergy to take an oath of obedience to the civil constitution. This, however moder ate as it was in itself, involved an acknowledgment of the authority of the state, which in fact prejudged the whole question ; consequently, fully five-sixths of the clergy re fused the oath, and they with their flocks were still a very considerable power in France. The result was that the in terference of the Assembly in church matters broke up parties very much, and threw the power almost entirely into the hands of the non-religious sections of the body. The sight of the church in rebellion, the contempt and aversion with which the priests who took the oath were regarded, put religion into definite opposition to the Revolution ; though Jansenists and Huguenots were warmly attached to the new order of things, their influence was weak. Hence forward, in the mind of France, Christianity was regarded as identical with reaction. The lawyers and the clergymen had thus been dealt with ; it remained to abolish nobility. " The lawyers had caused agitation in the country ; the clergy had kindled civil war ; the nobles were now about to produce foreign wars." The decree of June 19, 1790, swept away the last distinctions of feudal origin, and the nobles and bishops deemed them selves no longer bound by any ties to the new order of things. They did all they could to push matters to excess, with terrible results to themselves. As the nobles alone officered all the regiments of the army, they had great power in their hands. The gulf between them and the 1790. privates, the scandals of mismanagement, the spread of re- Officer* volutionary opinions in the ranks, after a time rectified the an(l P- evil, and the army before long became the chief support of vates - the new republic. In August 1790 a kind of struggle went on ; in many places the regiments chose officers from among themselves, and turned out their noble masters ; in other places they accused the officers of plundering the military chests, an accusation in some cases only too well founded. At Nancy, under Bouille s orders, a revolt of three regiments on this ground led to a terrible battle in the streets, in which the regiments and citizens were mercilessly crushed by the garrison and national guards of Metz. It was done by command of the Assembly ; Paris, however, and the revolutionists generally, sided with the defeated regiments, and the king, the Assembly, and Lafayette all lost ground through it. Up to this time Louis XVI. had The po- shown himself willing to go with the Assembly. For a while sit 011 of he seemed really to wish to be a constitutional monarch, ku is and, till after the fete of July 14, at which he, the Assem bly, the national guard, and a crowd of spectators from all France, renewed, in the midst of boundless enthusiasm, the civic oath, all seemed to promise well. The Assembly had voted a liberal civil list; they had treated him with courte ous respect ; he seemed thoroughly popular. Had ho been a man of any real vigour of character, he might have held the movement entirely in his own hands, and have shaped the future constitution of his country, saving it from extreme measures, great excesses, savage civil war, and tremendous efforts to keep off the foreigner. This, however, was not in him ; his amiable disposition drew him one way, the tradi tional belief in his irresponsible and divine right drew him the other; he became undecided; people grew suspicious. Necker, not a strong man, had hitherto been his guide ; ho had now lost all his popularity, for public opinion had goiio far beyond him, and he was not statesman enough either to direct or to assist it. He sent in his resignation (4th September 1790), and was followed by the rest of the minis ters, who were suspected of underhand communications with the emigres at Coblentz. The king was deeply moved at finding a new ministry not of his own choosing ; and finally, when the Assembly made its attack on the clergy, he ceased to feel a wish to keep terms with the Revolution. It must be stopped, cither by combining against it all the moderates with the dissatisfied and alienated classes and their supporters, or by calling in thg refugees from abroad with foreign help at their back. Between these two plans The two the king stupidly oscillated, in the end ruining both his courses friends and himself. Bouille, Lafayette, the royalist depu- 1 ties, the moderates in and out of the Assembly, desired the xvi former course ; the Austrian queen, the count of Artois, the emigrant nobles, who all lacked real patriotism and were half foreign, desired to be replaced by German bayonets. Louis, before the end of 1790, was in negotiation with almost all the kings of Europe ; at the same time the queen, who hated Lafayette, kept the constitutional party at home at arm s length. She hoped to neutralize the movement at home, while she intrigued abroad, by winning Mirabeau, Mira- the terrible orator of the Assembly, in its earliest days the l>pa fearless champion who did not quail before the king or the 1>os king s servant, the revolutionary nobleman whom his own order had cast out; he might retain all his opinions, which were not republican, should be subsidized by the court, and should uphold the throne. The suspicion and watchfulness of the Jacobins Club, and of the extremer party in the Assembly, did not hinder Mirabeau from openly doing his utmost to preserve portions of the royal authority ; and when, early in 1791, he felt that he had some hold on the court, he advised the king to escape to Lyons, and there to establish himself as a mediator between the emigrants IX. 76