The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane
exasperated men flocked to the city to remonstrate against the menace to their liberties in the degradation of all the parliaments by the King's action in regard to that of Paris. Those from Brittany formed an association, which soon admitted other members, and developed into the notorious Jacobin Club, so called from its meeting-place, a convent on the Rue St. Honoré, once occupied by Dominican monks who had moved thither from the Rue St. Jacques.
To summon the Estates was a virtual confession that absolutism in France was at an end. In the seventeenth century the three estates deliberated separately. Such matters came before them as were submitted by the crown, chiefly demands for revenue. A decision was reached by the agreement of any two of the three, and whatever proposition the crown submitted was either accepted or rejected. There was no real legislation. Louis no doubt hoped that the eighteenth-century assembly would be like that of the seventeenth. He could then, by the coalition of the nobles and the clergy against the burghers, or by any other arrangement of two to one, secure authorization either for his loans or for his reforms, as the case might be, and so carry both. But the France of 1789 was not the France of 1614. As soon as the call for the meeting was issued, and the decisive steps were taken, the whole country was flooded with pamphlets. Most of them were ephemeral; one was epochal. In it the Abbé Sieyès asked the question, "What is the third estate?" and answered so as to strengthen the already spreading conviction that the people of France were really the nation. The King was so far convinced as to agree that the third estate should be represented by delegates equal in number to those of the clergy and nobles combined. The elections passed quietly, and on May fifth, 1789, the Estates met at Versailles, under the shadow of the court. It was immediately evident that the hands of the clock could not be put back two centuries, and that here was gathered an assembly unlike any that had ever met in the country, determined to express the sentiments, and to be the executive, of the masses who in their opinion constituted the nation. On June seventeenth, therefore, after long talk and much hesitation, the representatives of the third estate declared themselves the representatives of the whole nation, and invited their colleagues of the clergy and nobles to join them. Their meeting-place having been closed in consequence of this decision, they gathered without authorization in the royal tennis-court on June twentieth, and bound themselves by oath not to disperse until they had introduced a new order. Louis was nevertheless nearly successful in his plan of keeping the sittings of the three estates separate. He was thwarted by the eloquence and courage of Mirabeau. On June twenty-seventh a majority of the delegates from the two upper estates joined those of the third estate in constituting a national assembly.
At this juncture the court party began the disastrous policy which in the end was responsible for most of the terrible excesses of the French Revolution, by insisting that troops should be called to restrain the Assembly, and that Necker should be banished. Louis showed the same vacillating spirit now that he had displayed in yielding to the Assembly, and assented. The noble officers had lately shown themselves untrustworthy, and the men in the ranks refused to obey when called to fight against the people. The baser social elements of the whole country had long since swarmed to the capital. Their leaders now fanned the flame of popular discontent until at last resort was had to violence. On July twelfth the barriers of Paris were burned, and the regular troops were defeated by the mob in the Place Vendôme; on July fourteenth the Bastille, in itself a harmless anachronism, but considered by the masses to typify all the tyrannical shifts and inhuman oppressions known to despotism, was razed to the ground. As if to crown their baseness, the extreme conservatives among the nobles, the very men who had brought the King to such straits, now abandoned him and fled.
Louis finally bowed to the storm, and came to reside among his people in Paris, as a sign of submission. Bailly, an excellent and judicious man, was made mayor of the city, and Lafayette, with his American laurels still unfaded, was made commander of a newly organized force, to be known as the National Guard. On July seventeenth the King accepted the red, white, and blue—the recognized colors of liberty—as national. The insignia of a dynasty were exchanged for the badge of a principle. A similar transformation took place throughout the land, and administration everywhere passed quietly into the hands of the popular representatives. The flying nobles found their châteaux hotter than Paris. Not only must the old feudal privileges go, but with them the old feudal grants, the charters of oppression in the muniment chests. These charters the peasants insisted must be destroyed. If they could not otherwise gain possession of them, they resorted to violence, and sometimes in the intoxication of the hour they exceeded the bounds of reason, abusing both the persons and the legitimate property of their enemies. Death or surrender was often the alternative. So it was that there was no refuge on their estates, not even a temporary one, for those who had so long possessed them. Many had already passed into foreign lands; the emigration increased, and continued in a steady stream. The moderate nobles, honest patriots to whom life in exile was not life at all, now clearly saw that their order must yield: in the night session of August fourth, sometimes called the "St. Bartholomew of privilege," they surrendered their privileges in a mass. Every vestige, not only of feudal, but also of chartered privilege, was to be swept away; even the King's hunting-grounds were to be reduced to the dimensions permitted to a private gentleman. All men alike, it was agreed, were to renounce the conventional and arbitrary distinctions which had created inequality in civil and political life, and accept the absolute equality of citizenship. Liberty and fraternity were the two springers of the new arch; its keystone was to be equality. On August twenty-third the Assembly decreed freedom of religious opinion; on the next day freedom of the press.
CHAPTER IX.
Buonaparte and Revolution in Corsica.
Napoleon's Studies Continued at Auxonne—Another Illness and a Furlough—His Scheme of Corsican Liberation—His Appearance at Twenty—His Attainments and Character—His Shifty Conduct—The Homeward Journey—New Parties in Corsica—Salicetti and the Nationalists—Napoleon Becomes a Political Agitator and Leader of the Radicals—The National Assembly Incorporates Corsica with France and Grants Amnesty to Paoli—Momentary Joy of the Corsican Patriots—The French Assembly Ridicules Genoa's Protest—Napoleon's Plan for Corsican Administration.
1789–90.
Such were the events taking place in the great world while Buonaparte was at Auxonne. That town, as had been expected, was most uneasy, and on July nineteenth, 1789, there was an actual outbreak of violence, directed there, as elsewhere, against the tax-receivers. The riot was easily suppressed, and for some weeks yet, the regular round of studious monotony in the young lieutenant's life was not disturbed except as his poverty made his asceticism more rigorous. "I have no other resource but work," he wrote to his mother; "I dress but once in eight days [Sunday parade?]; I sleep but little since my illness; it is incredible. I retire at ten, and rise at four in the morning. I take but one meal a day, at three; that is good for my health."
More bad news came from Corsica. The starving patriot fell seriously ill, and for a time his life hung in the balance. On August eighth he was at last sufficiently restored to travel, and applied for a six-months' furlough, to begin immediately. Under the regulations, in spite of his previous leaves and irregularities, he was this year entitled to such a vacation, but not before October. His plea that the winter was unfavorable for the voyage to Corsica was characteristic, for it was neither altogether true nor altogether false. He was feverish and ill, excited by news of turmoils at home, and wished to be on the scene of action; this would have been a true and sufficient ground for his request. It was likewise true, however, that his chance for a smooth passage was better in August than in October, and this evident fact, though probably irrelevant, might move the authorities. Their answer was favorable, and on September sixteenth he left Auxonne.
In the interval occurred a mutiny in the regiment. The pay of the men was far in arrears, and they demanded a division of the surplus which had accumulated from the various regimental grants, and which was managed by the officers for the benefit of their own mess. The officers were compelled to yield, so far had revolutionary license supplanted royal and military authority. Of course a general orgy followed. It seems to have been during these days that the scheme of Corsican