de la Revolution de France, par Ant. Fantin Desodoards, Citoyen Français.
105. "What a spectacle for France! Six hundred inorganic individuals, essential for its regeneration and salvation, sit there on their elliptic benches longing passionately toward life, in painful durance, like souls waiting to be born. Speeches are spoken, eloquent, audible within doors and without. Mind agitates itself against mind; the nation looks on with ever deeper interest. Thus do the Commons deputies sit incubating."—Carlyle, vol. i., p. 148.
106. Bailly's Mémoires, t. i., p. 114.—Dumont, Souvenirs, etc., vol. i., p. 59.
107. "A month lost! One month in open famine. Observe that in this long expectation the rich kept themselves motionless, and postponed every kind of expenditure. Work had ceased. He who had but his hands, his daily labor to supply the day, went to look for work, found none—begged—got nothing—robbed. Starving gangs overran the country."—Michelet, vol. i., p. 93.
108. The Abbé Sièyes was one of the deputies sent by the Third Estate from Paris, and the only clergyman in their delegation.
109. Sièyes' motion was to summon the privileged. By vote of the Assembly the word was changed to invite.—France and its Revolutions, by G. Long, Esq., p. 12.
"The Assembly," writes M. Bailly, its president, "deliberating after the verification of its powers, perceives that it is already composed of representatives sent directly by ninety-six hundredths, at least, of the whole nation. Nothing can be more exact than this assertion. The four hundredths that are absent, but duly summoned, can not impede the ninety-six hundredths that are present.
"The Assembly will never lose the hope of uniting in its bosom all the deputies that are now absent; will never cease to call upon them to fulfill the obligation that has been imposed upon them of concurring with the sitting of the States-General. At whatever moment the absent deputies may present themselves in the session about to open, the Assembly declares beforehand that it will hasten to receive them, to share with them, after the verification of their powers, the continuance of the great labors which can not but procure the regeneration of France."
110. Necker estimated the Third Estate at ninety-eight hundredths of the population.
Chapter X.
The National Assembly
First Acts of the Assembly.—Confusion of the Court.—Hall of the Assembly closed.—Adjournment to the Tennis-court.—Cabinet Councils.—Despotic Measures.—The Tennis-court closed.—Exultation of the Court.—Union with the Clergy.—Peril of the Assembly.—The Royal Sitting.—Speech of the King.
The first measure adopted by the National Assembly was worthy of itself. It was voted that the taxes already decreed, though not legally assessed by the consent of the nation, should be punctiliously paid. Instead of repudiating the enormous public debt, they appropriated it as their own and placed it under the safeguard of the nation. They then appointed a committee immediately to attend to the distresses of the people, and to devise measures for their relief. How vast the contrast between this magnanimity of the people and the selfishness and corruption of the court, as developed through ages! Thus terminated the eventful 17th of June, 1789, which may almost be considered the birthday of the nation of France. Before this event the people had hardly a recognized existence. Though the cradle of its infancy has been rocked with storms, and though in its advancing manhood it has encountered fearful perils and the sternest conflicts, yet its progress is surely onward to dignity and repose.
At an early hour the Assembly adjourned. Couriers from the hall hastened to expectant Paris with the glad tidings. The most fervid imagination can not conceive the joyful enthusiasm which the intelligence excited in the metropolis and throughout France. The king and his court were at this time a few miles from Versailles, in the Palace of Marly. The clergy and the nobles, in consternation, sent a committee of their most prominent members to implore the interposition of the royal power.111 But the king had not sufficient nerve for so decisive an act. It was urged that the nobility and the clergy should immediately combine in forming a united body which should constitute an upper house; and thus naturally the kingdom would have fallen into a monarchy like that of England, with its House of Lords and its House of Commons. This would have been a most salutary reform, and would have prepared the way for the gradual and safe advance of the nation from servitude to freedom. But, with madness almost inconceivable, the high nobility with contempt repelled all idea of union.112 They deemed it a degradation to form a permanent association with the lower clergy and with men who had been within a few centuries ennobled by a decree of the king. Thus the formation of two separate chambers was rendered impossible by the folly of those very men whose existence depended upon it. Thus all was confusion and dismay with the nobles and the clergy, while unanimity and vigor pervaded every movement of the Assembly.113
In this state of affairs a large proportion of the clergy, composing nearly all the parish ministers, were in favor of uniting with the Assembly. The Duke of Orleans also, among the nobility, led a small minority of the nobles in advocacy of the same measure. But the court generally entreated the king immediately to dissolve the Assembly, by violence if needful. The popular excitement in Paris and in Versailles became intense. The only hope of the people was in the Assembly. Its dissolution left them hopeless and in despair. The king was vacillating, intensely anxious to crush the popular movement, now become so formidable, but still fearing to adopt those energetic measures by which alone it could be accomplished. He at length decided, in accordance with that system of folly with which the court seems to have been inspired, to resort to the very worst measure which could have been adopted. On Friday the 17th of June the majority of the clergy, consisting of a few prelates and about one hundred and forty curates, resolved to withdraw from the dignitaries of the Church and unite with the people, in the Assembly, the next day. The prospect of such an accession to the popular branch struck consternation into the ranks of the privileged classes. A delegation of bishops and nobles in the night hastened to the king at Marly, and persuaded him to interfere to prevent the junction.
Yielding to their importunities he consented to shut up the hall of Assembly the next day, and to guard the entrance with soldiers, so that there might be no meeting. As an excuse for this act of violence it was to be alleged that the hall was needed for workmen to put up decorations, in preparation for a royal sitting which was to be held on Monday. The king thus gained time to decide upon the measures which he would announce at the royal sitting.114
At six o'clock in the morning of Saturday, placards were posted through the streets of Versailles announcing this decree. At seven o'clock, M. Bailly, president of the Assembly, received a note from one of the officers of the king's household, informing him of the decision. The Assembly had adjourned the evening before to meet at eight o'clock in the morning. It was, of course, proper that such a communication should have been made, not to the president at his lodgings, but to the assembled body. It was a stormy morning; sheets of rain, driven by a fierce wind, flooded the streets. At the appointed hour the president,
