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address, until the arrival of the royal family at St. Menehould and Varennes. It is thought that Drouet might have been seized by the dragoons at St. Menehould, and prevented from raising the country; that the hussars at Varennes might have cleared the way for the carriages, and enabled them to proceed before the national guards were assembled in force. It is said that the officer who commanded them proposed this, but was prevented by the king. It is also believed by some, that if all the detachments on the road had joined that of the royal Allemand which appeared in the heights between Varennes and Clermont, and had made a brisk attack on the national guards, they might even then have rescued the royal family, and conducted them to Montmedi. A dread of endangering the lives of the king and queen, it is probable, prevented any of those attempts from being made.

What rendered the failure of M. de Bouille's plan more vexatious as well as more surprising is, that almost all the difficulties were fortunately surmounted, and it was on the point of succeeding when it was blasted. By much the greatest difficulty was to get the royal family clear out of the Tuilleries and Louvre, at a time when there was so great a suspicion of their intending to escape, and so many persons placed near them merely for the purpose of watching their conduct; and next to this it was most difficult to get them out of Paris. These, however, were happily accomplished; but still there was great reason to dread that some of the party would be known by the people at the post-houses near the capital. That also was happily avoided; and they arrived, without creating the least suspicion, not only to such a distance as infinitely diminished the chance of being known by the people at the post-houses, but also at a part of the country where such a number of troops were stationed for their protection as, it might have been thought, would have prevented them from being stopped, even although they should have been known. It seems likewise surprising, that a project so well combined, and the execution of which was intrust

ed to chosen men, mostly of the military profession, and whose interest, honour, and lives, were all strongly involv ed in its success, should have been frustrated by men unconnected with and unknown to each other, who had no particular interest in the matter. What renders this still more remarkable is, that the natural inclination of the heart is to assist those who are obliged to fly or conceal themselves to save their lives, and to consider those who betray them as worthless men. The supposed guilt of the fugitive will not save their betrayers from the imputation. They will be put on a footing with the odious and despicable class of spies and informers which certain governments employ a set of wretches who, despised even by those who hire them, attend coffeehouses and public meetings on purpose to catch unguarded expressions, to pervert, and to betray. In vain do such characters endeavour to skreen themselves from hatred, by pleading their utility, and the support they give to government. These pleas may be urged with more force in favour of hangmen, but cannot render the profession less disgraceful.

The bias of the human heart to assist the unfortunate who are flying to save their lives, is strongest when the fugitives are of a tender age, the weaker sex, or of royal rank. All those motives were combined on the present occasion.

Of the great number of persons of both sexes who were privy to the concealment and escape of Charles II after the battle of Worcester, several of whom discovered the king by accident, and without having been intrusted with the secret, it is probable that some were no great friends to royalty, yet every one was faithful and zealous to assist the unhappy prince in his escape, although death was denounced against all who concealed him, and a great reward proclaimed to those who should arrest him. Thirty thousand pounds of reward was offered by government to any one who should deliver up the prince pretender, or give information where he was concealed, when he was

lurking in the Highlands of Scotland, after the battle of Culloden. The wealth of the Indies would not have bribed the poorest Highlander in Scotland to have done what would have rendered him in the eyes of his countrymen, and in his own, for ever infamous. And many who were enemies to the cause of that unfortunate person, rejected the idea of stopping him in his flight, or betraying him into the hands of his pursuers.

It will be said that the cases are different, and it must be acknowledged they are so; in the two last mentioned certain death attended the fugitives if stopped, which was not to be apprehended in the other. Nobody could have stopped Charles II or the young pretender from a good motive; their armies were dispersed, and there was no reason for preventing their escape, except to have them put to death and to get the reward. Lewis, it will be said, was flying to raise a civil war, and to plunge the nation again into slavery. Yet, after every allowance of this kind, it will be thought that humane and well-disposed villagers would have been more affected by the affliction of the royal family than by such remote consequences. They saw the king and queen in an agony of dread at the thoughts of being detained, which it might have been expected would have damped the inclination to arrest and carry them back to Paris. The fact was, it did not; the whole country shewed eagerness and activity to both; which is a strong proof of the mistake of those who strenuously asserted, that however much the revolution might be liked by the Parisians, it was hated by the people at large. And the disposition of the inhabitants of this particular part of France might have indicated to the Prussians who invaded it by the same quarter soon after, in the hopes of being joined and assisted by the natives, what kind of junction and assistance they had reason to expect.

It was imagined that the preventing the escape of the royal family would have precluded many evils which otherwise were likely to happen. It is hardly possible, how

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ever, to conceive that more mischief and misery could have taken place in any supposable event than has actually happened. The person indeed to whom the most dreadful portion of those calamities is to be imputed, was a member of the constituent assembly; but his influence there was small, and there was little probability that such a pale emaciated weakly being as Robespierre was to become the giant of the revolution, and have it in his power to gratify a thirst for blood as insatiable as that attributed to any monster of the same race recorded in history or fable.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The Conduct of the National Assembly-Of the Parisian Popu lace-The King and Queen examined by Commissioners from the Assembly-Suspension of the King from his Public Functions-Universal Discussions-Le Républican-M. de Condorcet-M. Brissot-Robespierre.

ABOUT eight in the morning of the 21st June the flight of the royal family was known at Paris. The cannon placed near the statue of Henry IV were fired, the tocsin sounded, and the national guards were summoned to assemble under arms at the places of rendezvous of their sections. The news spread rapidly; the people hurried from all quarters to the gardens of the Tuilleries and of the Luxembourg; the first sensation was surprise; that was soon converted into indignation against the fugitives. All signs with the portraits of the king or queen, all emblems of royalty, were torn down and trampled under foot. The section of the Luxembourg ordered a banner, which they had received as a present from monsieur, to be publicly torn in pieces; a man was obliged to erase his name from above his shop because he was called Louis. The officer who commanded the guard at the Tuilleries was in danger of falling a victim to the first impulse of popular fury; which in France is more blind, precipitate,

and bloody, than in any other country. He was saved. by the interposition of the national guards; who at this time consisted of the most respectable tradespeople of Paris, and were more under the controul of discipline and reason than the mob of St. Antoine.

The steady and prudent conduct of the national assembly had great effect in preventing the disorders which were to be dreaded, in a turbulent city like Paris, from such an event as the king's withdrawing. They ordained that the decrees of the assembly should immediately have the force of law, and that the minister of justice should apply the seal of the state to them without farther sanction or ceremony. They decreed that the national guards should remain under arms immovable, until they received orders from those authorized by the assembly. They ordered the ministers of state to the bar, to receive instructions from the assembly. They dispatched couriers to all the departments with orders to the magistrates and commanding officers of the line and national guards to stop all travellers, to prevent any person from going out of the kingdom, and to preserve tranquillity. They prescribed a new oath of fidelity to all the military, by which they engaged to obey no orders but those given in consequence of decrees of the assembly; and that they would never permit an invasion of the French territory by foreigners.

M. de la Fayette, having been in some danger from the populace, was protected by the national guards; and when it was announced that he waited the orders of the assembly, some insinuations were thrown out to his disadvantage. These were repelled by M. Barnave, who shewed the danger and injustice of countenancing suspicions without good grounds; adding, that La Fayette had proved himself the friend of liberty from the beginning of the revolution, and merited the utmost confidence of the assembly. He was accordingly confirmed in the command of the national guards. This behaviour was the more ge

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