Forty-two-year-old Jacques-Fran?ois de Menou
Thus, at the urging of Comte de Mirabeau, Menou resolved to enter politics. He attended the Estates-General as a member of the nobility, and thereafter followed Mirabeau in supporting political reform, transforming himself into a deputy of the National Assembly. But when the Constituent Assembly dissolved of its own accord, Menou also lost his interest in dirty politics and began to think of returning to the army.
In September 1791, Menou accepted a new appointment: he became the deputy to General Lafayette, serving as the deputy commander of the Paris National Guard. By November, when Lafayette resigned and left Paris, Menou, together with Mandat and Kléber and others, became one of the rotating commanders of the Paris National Guard—an arrangement akin to a general staff that collectively assumed the commander’s duties—and in the following year he was formally promoted to the rank of General of brigade. It should be noted that Menou’s promotion order came from a proposal made by the Legislative Assembly’s deputy André to the Minister of War, Comte de Narbonne.
Now, in the residence of General Menou, André—dressed in plain clothes—stood before him. The master of the house looked tense, constantly wiping the sweat from his forehead with a white handkerchief. It was not merely that André’s rank was higher than his; it was far more that the Plenipotentiary who had served consecutively with the Army of Moselle (the central army group) and the Army of the North had a reputation too formidable. Wherever André went, chaos followed, and the place was left in ruins.
Acting as though he were the host, André casually handed Menou a glass of chilled champagne and said, unhurriedly, “General, my request is simple. For the next period of time, no matter what happens in Paris, you and your men are not to intervene. Continue to maintain the neutrality a French soldier ought to keep. But I can assure you there will not be much bloodshed.”
With a feinting motion of his hand in the air, André cut off Menou’s attempt to argue, and said with clear impatience, “I know what you are worried about—other people. For example, that General Mandat, who has already secretly gone over to the court. Rest assured: his wife has had the misfortune to fall ill, and she is on the road to Reims to seek treatment. As for General Kléber, he and his infantry division will not come within a single step of the gates of Paris. And as for you, General—whatever happens next, the Army of the North welcomes you. So make your decision before I turn around.”
By the final sentence, André’s tone had become a naked threat. Even if the other man refused, he had already resolved to use a second and a third set of alternatives. Since 1791, André had continuously assigned Javert and others—indeed, had even acted in person—to win over and corrupt the mid- and senior-level officers of the Paris National Guard, both openly and in secret. The leverage in his hand was far more than Menou alone.
“Sir… you… you are certain you can guarantee Paris will not see much blood?” Menou asked, his voice trembling. Just as in another world, this General could not bear the sight of blood; in the best light, it was kindness and softness of heart, but in the worst light it was sheer squeamish weakness.
A wolfish smile immediately spread across André’s face, and he replied, “Yes. That is my guarantee.” As he spoke, he drew a thick stack of assignats from his coat and laid them on the table; the fingertips of his right hand began to tap lightly in a steady rhythm on the oak surface.
“I have heard the allowances for your officers have been delayed again by the Paris City Hall. That is fine. Take this money first to get by. As for the rest—once Mayor Pétion returns to office, it will be paid out at the first moment.”
…
Almost at the very moment André persuaded General Menou, in Versailles, General Kléber had just walked out of his barracks for a stroll—his customary daily ritual after dinner. Since the day he enlisted at sixteen, for almost twenty years he had done so nearly every day. As always, Kléber’s route took him around the large garden basin of the Palace of Versailles: he would walk a short distance, and then turn back toward the barracks.
Like Lafayette, this stern-featured, dutiful General also came from a noble family. But as a younger son, he had no right of inheritance, and thus had no choice but to choose the army. Sixteen years earlier, Kléber had followed Lafayette to North America, joining the Continental Army commanded by General Washington to fight the British colonial forces. It was there that Kléber absorbed the ideas of the Enlightenment, and was stirred by ideals of democracy, equality, and liberty.
In 1790, when Lafayette began reforming the Paris National Guard, Kléber—then Lafayette’s aide-de-camp and a Colonel—was appointed commander of a volunteer infantry brigade, with the rank of General of brigade. Two years later, Kléber was promoted again, becoming the commander of an infantry division. Yet his garrison was placed twenty kilometers away, at the Versailles camp on the southwestern outskirts of Paris.
This was in accordance with the latest rule of the National Legislative Assembly: within the city of Paris (inside the walls), no professional army could be stationed. Of course, as King, Louis XVI was permitted to keep a small private armed force in the Tuileries—Swiss mercenaries in red uniforms—whose numbers could not exceed one thousand (in reality, about eight hundred).
As a professional soldier, Kléber consistently held to the belief that obedience to orders was a soldier’s first duty. Yet because his political sympathies leaned toward the Constitutionalists, he obeyed only the commands that came from his former commander, General Lafayette. Kléber despised the émigré nobles who betrayed the nation, but he also detested the Jacobin radicals who incited urban riots.
When Lafayette returned to Paris because of the events of June 20, Kléber—his morale greatly lifted—wrote to his former commander, hoping that General Lafayette would move his troops into Paris, intimidate the Legislative Assembly, and wash the Jacobins in blood. Plainly, the indecisive General of the White Horse rejected a plan so extreme.
At the thought, Kléber could not help but sigh inwardly. He lifted his eyes to the Palace of Versailles before him—overrun with weeds, battered and ruined everywhere—and found it difficult to imagine that this had once been famed for its opulence and for architecture of such imaginative design, a splendid palace that represented the peak of France’s might.
Kléber shook his head. He had drifted again. By his usual habit, he should have turned back upon reaching the great garden basin, rather than continuing on among the trees and flowerbeds. True, at times he would walk a little farther, but then the two guards behind him would come to remind him.
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“Hm—no. Something’s wrong.” The soldier in Kléber became alert at once.
He whirled around, and the two close guards were gone. Then, from the grove and from among the flowerbeds, seven or eight powerful strangers appeared. They advanced step by step, closing in on Kléber, and soon blocked every line of escape. From their posture and the way they moved, Kléber could tell at once that they were professional soldiers, men who had been tested by fire and blood.
General Kléber let out a long breath. With no pistol on him and no sword at his side, he could only submit and abandon pointless resistance. Calmly, he asked a single question: “Who are you? What do you want?”
No one answered this Constitutionalists General. The men bound him swiftly, stuffed cloth into his mouth, blindfolded him, and finally forced him into a black four-wheeled carriage.
Inside the carriage sat an officer—André’s intelligence adjutant. Captain Grisel said to Kléber, “My apologies, General Kléber. I am only acting under the orders of Sir André, to invite you to the National Assembly for a hearing organized by the Military Committee. As for your Versailles infantry division, there is no need to worry. Your deputy, General Truguet, is performing the duties of divisional commander.”
…
The coming revolution was not being driven only by “the André faction.” After Brissot had reunited with Robespierre and Danton beneath the Jacobin banner, they too moved into action.
Brissot and his friends were absorbed, day after day, in speeches at the Jacobin Club, straining to preach the next great revolution. Condorcet mounted the rostrum, and as a deputy he denounced Lafayette as “a great deceiver.” Brissot called the General of the White Horse “the most evil enemy of the French fatherland,” piling up insult after insult upon the hero of two worlds.
Since the incident in which the Feuillants Club was set on fire, many Jacobins had also come to believe that publicly burning a portrait of Lafayette was a pleasing kind of entertainment. Moreover, spitting on the doll in a blue uniform, trampling it, and then beating it with a crackling barrage of blows likewise did wonders for one’s health.
Vergniaud and the Gironde deputies, acting separately, incited the fédéré troops arriving from the provinces. They encouraged those “armies of pikes”—their weapons crude, as standard muskets had grown scarce—and demanded that by July 14 they must enter Paris in order to strengthen the Jacobins’ military power.
On July 8, with Jacobin support, Vergniaud delivered an oration in the Assembly hall in an ancient Roman manner, and hurled verbal threats at the Tuileries. He declared openly:
“The émigré nobles of France have stirred the feudal courts of Europe against France, and they do so in the name of the King; the military alliance between Prussia and the Austrian Empire, concluded under the so-called Declaration of Pillnitz, likewise plots revenge in the name of the King’s dignity; the rebellious officers and soldiers who have fled to Coblenz and attached themselves to the Comte d’Artois are said to be going to defend the King; those desperadoes beg foreign powers, dreaming of using the force of intervention to harm the fatherland, and this too is for the sake of rescuing the King; …and now, even the attack upon liberty is carried out in the name of the King.
“…Now let us turn to the Constitution, Title II, Chapter I, Article VI: ‘If the King places himself at the head of an army, directs it, or appoints other commanders to employ force against the nation, he shall be deemed to have abdicated the throne.’”
In the end, Vergniaud put to the Legislative Assembly, in the form of a question, whether Louis XVI ought to be punished under this constitutional article. Through the efforts of Brissot and others, the Legislative Assembly ultimately passed a resolution to spread the Jacobin position of deposing the King; soon, Vergniaud’s speech, which produced enormous influence, was distributed to the provinces.
It was also in this period that the relationship between Robespierre and Danton became closer than before. Many times, André’s informants reported that Danton, with Desmoulins, could be seen appearing at Robespierre’s rented room—the second-floor apartment in the carpenter-landlord Duplay’s house. From time to time, Couthon, Carnot, and Augustin—Robespierre’s younger brother—would also join their discussions.
In ordinary circumstances, Robespierre chiefly handled the thinking and design of the plan of action; Desmoulins was responsible for writing articles for publication; Danton focused on putting matters into practice. To coordinate with the actions of André and of Brissot and the rest, Robespierre drafted a petition to the Legislative Assembly, demanding that Louis XVI be deposed (note: it demanded only a change of monarch), that the counterrevolutionary Lafayette be arrested, and that officials at every level be replaced. Danton, for his part, led the members of his Cordeliers Club in agitation and propaganda throughout the districts of Paris, in every National Guard battalion, and in the streets and alleys, issuing the same calls. At this time, Marat, Chaumette, and Hébert had ended their brief exile and had returned to Paris, throwing themselves once more into agitation among the sans-culottes.
On July 10, the Army of the Rhine commanded by Marshal Luckner suffered another setback in battle: an infantry division was driven from the east bank of the Rhine back to the west bank (within France) by an Austrian force plainly smaller than itself. Though the losses were not great, the failure once again stirred panic and anger among the people of Paris.
Two days later, the National Assembly declared a state of emergency across the city. The alarm bells rang from the towers of Notre-Dame, and Vergniaud cried out in the Assembly, “Citizens, the fatherland is in danger!” He declared again that the disobedient Generals must be punished, and that the Paris City Hall must take strong measures.
At the same time, amid the city’s cries of “Down with the tyrant,” the King abandoned Lafayette, chose compromise, and declared that he supported the fédérés. He also announced that he would personally attend the gathering on the Champ de Mars.
Soon, the entire capital became a vast military camp. Countless recruiting tents were planted with little tricolour flags. It was said that thirty thousand Parisians wished to enlist as volunteers. But as André learned afterward, the so-called thirty thousand were in truth fewer than twenty thousand, and many of them were merely there to pad the numbers—men from the fédérés who had arrived earlier.
This was the result of Danton and the Cordeliers Club’s propaganda. It even frightened the National Guard officers who leaned toward the Constitutionalists, forcing them either to resign and leave, or to support the next great revolution.
When confronted with the Jacobins’ frenzied counterattack, the politically inept Lafayette still fought alone, and did not first unite his own Constitutionalists (the Feuillants). Barnave and Lameth both hoped that Lafayette would take the initiative to conduct secret talks with André, with Brissot, and the others, and to mend the differences between the factions; but the proud General of the White Horse chose to ignore it.
Thus, the Constitutionalists could only watch, day by day, as the situation in Paris worsened, while they themselves were powerless. In the end, Lameth and other ministers in the cabinet chose to resign. From mid-July onward, the cabinet was incomplete and crippled, and the central government in Paris was nearly half-paralyzed.
Lafayette kept his efforts focused on the royal family. Once again he entered the Tuileries alone, hoping to persuade the King’s family to accept the protection of the Constitutionalists (chiefly Lafayette himself and Marshal Luckner). Yet, due to Queen Marie’s unrelenting efforts, Louis XVI refused the General of the White Horse’s final attempt.
On the day he was rejected by the court, Lafayette returned to his residence with his head bowed in discouragement. But before he could even catch his breath or drink a glass of water, one of the General’s attendants ran in again with another piece of bad news.
That morning, André, in his capacity as a deputy of the nation, had brought a suit before the Palais de Justice on the ?le de la Cité. He accused Judge Larive of the High Criminal Court of ignoring the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the provisions of the sacred Constitution, and of issuing arrest warrants for more than fifty Jacobin members—among them three deputies of the Legislative Assembly.
After two hours of fierce argument within the Palais de Justice, Judge Duranthon, speaking for the Committee of Twelve, found that Judge Larive’s various unconstitutional acts were established. With immediate effect, Larive was removed from his post as a judge of the High Criminal Court, and was detained in the Palais de Justice holding cells for further review.