But would the Crown so accept all this? That was the question agitating all minds, begetting a certain measure of suspense. Men look backwards at each step taken since that first gathering of the States General in the Hall of the Menus Plaisirs at Versailles two years ago, and, seeing how often faith had been broken, doubted with reason that it would now be kept. It was because of these doubts and mistrusts—which centred particularly upon the Queen and those immediately about her—that suspense persisted. There was a sense—an intuition almost—that much still remained to be done before France could rest secure in the enjoyment of this legal equality she had so laboriously created for her children. How many obstacles were yet to be overcome, what horrors were yet to be traversed, no man in that Spring of 1791—not even the extremists of the Cordeliers and similar societies—could even remotely conceive.
Meanwhile this epoch of prosperity and false peace endured until the King’s flight to Varennes in the following June—the fruition of all that secret coming and going between Paris and Coblentz. That flight, dispelling by the bad faith it evinced the last illusion, put an end to peaceful conditions and introduced a reign of turbulence. The manner of His Majesty’s ignominious return under guard, like a runaway schoolboy brought home to be birched, and the subsequent events of that year down to the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, are all described elsewhere, and are so little concerned with the story that is our principal consideration, that I spare you their repetition from the point of view of André-Louis.
The dissolution of the Assembly followed in September. Its work was accomplished. The King came to the Manège to receive and pronounce his acceptance of the Constitution. The revolution was indeed accomplished.
There followed the election of the Legislative Assembly, in which André-Louis once more represented Ancenis. Because in the Constituent he had been no more than a deputy-suppléant, he was not under the decree passed on the motion of Robespierre that no member of the Constituent should be a member of the Legislative. Had he observed the spirit as well as the letter of the law he would have refrained from reelection. But so warmly was he desired by Ancenis and urged by Le Chapelier, who himself was going into enforced retirement, that he submitted. It was a matter that offended no one. His exploits as the Paladin of the Third Estate had rendered him popular with all parties, even the members of the old Côté Droit, and in the Jacobins, where he had spoken once or twice, he had been well received and was well regarded. It was expected of him in those days that he would do great things. Almost, I think, he expected it of himself, for he confesses frankly that he shared at the time the fairly widespread error that the revolution was a thing accomplished. France had now but to govern herself upon the lines laid down by the Constitution which had been given to her.
He left—as did those who shared that view—two factors out of his calculations: the fact that the Court could not bring itself to accept the altered state of things, and the fact that the new Assembly had not the experience necessary to master the intrigues and factions of the Court. The Legislative was an Assembly of young men, few of them being much above the age limit of twenty-five. Lawyers predominated, and among these that group of lawyers from the Gironde inspired by so lofty republicanism; but they were young lawyers without experience of affairs, and during critical early days they were to flounder helplessly, and by their floundering and displays of weakness encourage the Court party to deliver battle once again.
At first it was a battle but of words, a battle of newspapers, conducted between such organs as L’Ami du Roy and L’Ami du Peuple—a sheet that had lately made its appearance furiously edited by the Philanthropist Marat.
Public irritation began to manifest itself once more, public nerves at perpetual strain by revolution and counterrevolution were beginning to threaten crises. And now half Europe was aiming to hurl herself upon France, and her quarrel with France was the quarrel of the French King. That was the horror at the root of all the horrors that were to come. That was what gave their opportunity to the Marats, the Dantons, the Héberts, and all the rest of the extremists who stirred up the populace.
And whilst the Court prosecuted its intrigues, whilst the Jacobins, led by Robespierre, waged war against the Girondins who, under the great leadership of Vergniaud and Brissot, were gradually finding themselves, whilst the Feuillants waged war equally against both, and whilst the torch of foreign war was alight on the frontier and that of civil war was being secretly kindled at home, André-Louis was removed from the hub itself.
Of the counterrevolutionary troubles that were everywhere being stirred up by the clergy, none were more acute than those of Brittany, and in view of his antecedents and the influence which
