Chapter II: Mirabeau

At the end of that same year of 1789, the National Assembly decreed the abolition of tithes, without redemption, and the immediate sale of the properties of the clergy. The value of these properties amounted to more than four thousand million francs. At the beginning of the year 1790, the Assembly decreed itself the Convention. In that memorable session, Mirabeau took the floor, concluding a magnificent speech with this peroration:

"They ask since when the Deputies of the people have become a National Convention? I reply, The day when, finding the entrance to their seats blocked with soldiers, they adjourned to the Tennis Court, where they swore to die rather than abandon the rights of the people! That day our powers changed their nature, and those that we have exercised have been legitimatized, sanctified, by the adherence of the people! I would recall to you the words of that grand man of antiquity, who disregarded the formal laws to save his country. Summoned before a factious tribunal to answer, Whether he had observed the laws, he said, 'I swear that I have saved the country!'" And turning toward the deputies, Mirabeau concluded, "I swear that you have saved France!"

The entire Assembly rose to its feet with enthusiasm, and vowed that it would disband only after the completion of its work.

In spite of this energetic attitude of the Assembly, the court continued its intrigues against the Revolution. Louis XVI planned a new flight, for the purpose of seeking aid from the foreign rulers. It was at this moment that the great scandal occasioned by the discovery of the Red Book electrified the city.

Deputy Camus had found among the papers whose surrender had been demanded by the Committee on Finance, a certain ledger bound in red morocco, containing the account of the secret expenses of Louis XV and Louis XVI. In the items on this ledger figured princes, grand seigneurs, and all the royal coterie. The Count of Artois, brother to the King, was recorded as having, under the ministry of Calonne, put his fingers on 14,050,050 livres, merely for "extra expenses." Monsieur the Count of Provence, another brother of the King, had gone through, for his part, 13,880,000 livres. Among the courtiers, the Polignac family was down for 700,000 livres pension: a Marquis of Autichamp for four several pensions: the first for services of his late father; the second, for the same object; the third, same reason; and the fourth--for the same cause. A German prince was also the beneficiary of four pensions: first, for his services as a colonel; the second, the same; the third, the same; and the fourth, as a _non-colonel_. A certain Desgalois of La Tour was drawing 22,720 livres as the total of his four pensions: the first, as first president and intendant; the second as intendant and first president; the third for the same considerations as above, etc., etc..

"At last we have it, the Red Book," wrote Camille Desmoulins with his brilliant imagery and pitiless incisiveness. "The Committee on Finance has broken all the seven seals which locked its fatal pages. Here is fulfilled the terrible threat of the prophet, here it is accomplished before the last judgment: _Revelabo pudentia tua_--I shall uncover your shame!"

All the while inflaming the inhabitants in whatever provinces it could, the clergy but awaited the opportune instant to blow into a blaze the carefully sown sparks of civil war. The court and Louis XVI thought themselves at the moment of triumph in having gained Mirabeau over to their cause by the power of gold--Mirabeau, the mettlesome tribune, the mighty orator, who had so far served the cause of liberty. Alas, it was but too true. Consumed with a thirst for luxury and pleasures, that great spirit had sold himself to the court for a million down and a pension of a hundred thousand livres monthly.

But death did not permit him to enjoy the fruits of his treason. On the 2nd of April, 1791, he died. Some hours before his death he heard the boom of cannon, and said, in his gigantic self-conceit, "Do they already sound the knell of Achilles?" His last words, in which his treason stands revealed, were: "I am in mourning for the monarchy; its remains will be the prey of the malcontents."

The people, trusting and credulous, and ignorant as yet of the renegading of their tribune, learned of his death with profound consternation. I traveled over Paris that day. Everywhere the mourning was deep. One would have thought a public calamity had fallen upon France; people accosted one another with the words, impressed with mournful despair: "Mirabeau is dead!" Tears flowed from all eyes. The weeping multitude religiously followed the ashes of the great orator, which were deposited in the Pantheon. Nevertheless two voices, two prophetic voices, rose alone above this concert of civic commiseration, protesting against the pious homage rendered to the memory of a traitor.

"As for me," wrote Camille Desmoulins in his journal, "when they raised the mortuary cloth that covered the body of Mirabeau, and I saw the man I had idolized, I vow I felt not a tear--I looked at him with an eye as dry as Cicero's regarding the body of Caesar pierced with twenty-three dagger-thrusts. It was the remains of a traitor."

And Marat, guided by a sort of intuition, wrote in _The Friend of the People_ the day after Mirabeau's funeral: "Give thanks to the gods, people! Your most redoubtable enemy is no more! He died the victim of his many treasons, by the farsighted barbarism of his accomplices.[9] The life of Mirabeau was stained with crimes. May a veil forever hide that hideous picture. Mirabeau in the Pantheon! What man of integrity would desire to repose beside him? The ashes of Rousseau, of Montesquieu, would shudder to find themselves in company with the traitor! Ah, if ever liberty is established in France, if ever some legislator, according to what I may have done for the country, should attempt to decree me the honors of the Pantheon, I here vigorously protest against the black affront! Rather would I never die! Curses on the name of Mirabeau."

Strange prophecy! Mirabeau's secret papers, discovered on August 10, 1792, in the King's secret Iron Cupboard in the Tuileries, laid bare irrefutable proofs of his treason, and the National Convention on November 27 of the following year, issued the following memorable order:[10]

"The National Convention, considering that there is no greatness in
man without honor, decrees that the body of Honore Gabriel Riquetti
Mirabeau be withdrawn from the Pantheon. The body of Marat shall be
transferred thither."

Ah, sons of Joel! Never forget those sacred words, _There is no greatness in man without honor_. For none was ever more exalted in genius than Mirabeau! And nevertheless, the National Assembly, responsive to a sentiment of justice and impartiality that reflects honor on it, expelled from the Pantheon the body of the man of genius, of the grand orator, of the fiery tribune who sold himself to the court, and replaced it by that of Marat, the humble journalist, the man of probity and disinterestedness, the friend of the people, the incorruptible citizen.

The death of Mirabeau disconcerted the court of Louis XVI, and shattered its hope of dominating, disarming, and vanquishing the Revolution by means of the National Assembly; the court then resolved to execute a project it had long been revolving, and had already vainly attempted at Versailles, on the days of the 5th and 6th of October. That project was:

"The King shall fly to some fortified place on the frontiers. There, surrounded by devoted troops under the command of a royalist general (the Marquis of Bouille), Louis XVI shall protest solemnly to all Europe against the usurpatory acts of the National Assembly, shall strongly invoke against the French Revolution the spirit of solidarity which ought to bind all sovereigns, and stamp out the revolt under the heel of the foreign armies."

This criminal project Louis XVI was on the point of carrying out. But Marat, always watchful, always prophetic, had, several days before the flight of the King, denounced the fact in these terms in _The Friend of the People_ (June 16, 1791):

"They are working might and main to get the King into the Netherlands, on the pretext that his cause is that of all the Kings of Europe! You will be brainless enough not to prevent the flight of the royal family. Parisians--senseless people of Paris! I am tired of repeating it to you: Hold fast the King and the Dauphin within our walls; watch them with care; shut up the Queen, her brother-in-law, and her family. The loss of one day may prove fatal to the nation and dig the graves of three million Frenchmen."

Here I, John Lebrenn, begin the extracts from my journal.