CHAPTER XXI
The French Revolution in Horace Walpole’s
Letters
1
103.
1789
2
July 9. The crisis in France is advanced far beyond orations,
and wears all the aspect of civil war. For can one imagine that
the whole nation is converted at once, and in some measure without
provocation from the king, who, far from enforcing the
prerogative like Charles I, canceled the despotism obtained for
his grandfather by Chancellor Maupeou, has exercised no tyranny,
and has shown a disposition to let the constitution be
amended. It did want it indeed; but I fear the present want
of temper grasps at so much, that they defeat their own purposes;
and where loyalty has for ages been the predominant
characteristic of a nation, it cannot be eradicated at once. Pity
will soften the tone of the moment; and the nobility and clergy
have more interest in wearing a royal than a popular yoke; for
great lords and high-priests think the rights of mankind a defalcation
of their privileges. No man living is more devoted to
liberty than I am; yet blood is a terrible price to pay for it!
A martyr to liberty is the noblest of characters; but to sacrifice
the lives of others, though for the benefit of all, is a strain of
heroism that I could never ambition.
July 15. I write a few lines only to confirm the truth of much
of what you will read in the papers from Paris. Worse may
already be come, or is expected every hour. . . . I may fancy
I shall hear of the king and queen leaving Versailles, like Charles
I, and then skips imagination six-and-forty years lower, and
figures their fugitive Majesties taking refuge in this country.
I have besides another idea. If the Bastile conquers, still is it
impossible, considering the general spirit in the country, and the
numerous fortified places in France, but some may be seized by
the dissidents, and whole provinces be torn from the Crown?
On the other hand, if the king prevails, what heavy despotism
will the états1, by their want of temper and moderation, have
drawn on their country! They might have obtained many
capital points, and removed great oppression. No French
monarch will ever summon états again, if this moment has been
thrown away.
July 29. Of French news I can give you no fresher or more
authentic account, than you can collect in general from the
newspapers; but my present visitants and everybody else
confirm the veracity of Paris being in that anarchy that speaks
the populace domineering in the most cruel and savage manner,
and which a servile multitude broken loose calls liberty; and
which in all probability will end . . . in their being more abject
slaves than ever; and chiefly by the crime of their états, who,
had they acted with temper and prudence, might have obtained
from their poor and undesigning king a good and permanent
constitution. Who may prove their tyrant, if reviving loyalty
does not in a new frenzy force him to be so, it is impossible to
foresee; but much may happen first. The rage seems to gain
the provinces, and threatens to exhibit the horrors of those times
when the peasants massacred the gentlemen.
Aug. 23. In the midst of the horrors one reads from France
I could but smile at one paragraph. An abbé de Sieyès excuses
himself to the états from accepting the post of speaker, as he is
busy in forming a Bill of Rights and a new Constitution. One
would think he was writing a prologue to a new play!
Sept. 10. I congratulate you on the demolition of the Bastile;
I mean as you do, of its functions. For the poor soul itself, I
had no ill will to it: on the contrary, it was a curious sample of
ancient castellar dungeons, which the good folks the founders
took for palaces: yet I always hated to drive by it, knowing the
miseries it contained. Of itself it did not gobble up prisoners
to glut its maw, but received them by command. The destruction
of it was silly, and agreeable to the ideas of a mob, who do
not know stones and bars and bolts from a lettre de cachet. If
the country remains free, the Bastile would be as tame as a
ducking-stool, now that there is no such thing as a scold. If
despotism recovers, the Bastile will rise from its ashes! — recover,
I fear, it will. The états cannot remain a mob of kings,
and will prefer a single one to a larger mob of kings and greater
tyrants. The nobility, the clergy, and people of property will
wait, till by address and money they can divide the people; or,
whoever gets the larger or more victorious army into his hands,
will be a Cromwell or a Monk.1 In short, a revolution
procured by a national vertigo does not promise a crop of legislators.
It is time that composes a good constitution: it
formed ours.
Sept. 26. Is the whole kingdom of France to remain always
in such blessed liberty, that every individual is to murder,
plunder, and trample on every law? Or out of this lawless and
savage scene is order, justice, and temper to arise? Nay, when
some constitution is voted, will it take place? and if it does, how
long will be its duration? Will a new Assembly of états, elected
every two years, corroborate the ordinances of their predecessors?
Will they not think themselves as wise, and prove as foolish?
What an absurdity is it not to strip the king of all his power,
and yet maintain that it is necessary by the laws that he should
assent to every act of violence they pass against him? And
compelled, will he think himself bound by that forced assent? . . .
I think they have lost a glorious moment for obtaining a considerable
amendment of their constitution, and perhaps a lasting
one, by their intemperance; and that they have either entailed
endless civil wars on, perhaps, a division of their country, or will
sink under worse despotism than what they have shaken off. To
turn a whole nation loose from all restraint, and tell them that
every man has a right to be his own king, is not a very sage way
for preparing them to receive a new code, which must curtail
that boundless prerogative of free will, and probably was not the
first lesson given on the original institution of government.
The present host of lawgivers must, I doubt, cut the throats of
half their pupils, before they persuade the other half to go to
school again to any regular system.
1 , edited by Peter Cunningham.
9 vols. London, 1880. Bickers and Son.
2 , vol. ix, pp. 189–191, 192–193, 200, 211, 219, 223–224.
1i.e., the Estates-General.
1 General Monk, who brought about the restoration of Charles II in 1660.