Entitled by Chris Bryant

Author:Chris Bryant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2017-09-07T04:00:00+00:00

The twin revolutions in America and France caused consternation among the British aristocracy, who feared democracy as much as the guillotine. They waged unnecessary wars abroad and introduced harsh laws at home solely to defend their wealth, power and prestige.

CHAPTER 11

THE INFLUENCE OF PROPERTY FAIRLY EXERCISED

ON SATURDAY, 4 JULY 1789 Gouverneur Morris chatted after dinner in Paris with Gilbert du Motier. They were an intriguing pair. Gouverneur had been brought up in a wealthy family in New York and was now thirty-seven. He was a close friend of George Washington, and although he did not fight in the War of Independence, thanks to a coaching accident which left him with a wooden leg, he was a loquacious delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and was one of five members appointed to draft the new American Constitution. He was in Paris doing business, womanizing and watching events unfold. As for the 31-year-old Gilbert, few Frenchmen had such a noble pedigree. His maternal great-grandfather was the comte de la Rivière and had apartments in the Palais de Luxembourg, his father held one of France’s oldest titles as marquis de Lafayette, and his wife Marie was the daughter of the duc d’Ayen. By the age of thirteen he had inherited his father’s title and lands which brought in 150,000 livres a year. Inspired by talk of liberty – or by hatred of the British, who had killed his father in battle at Minden – he sailed for America in 1777 in search of military glory and fought at Brandywine, Albany, Rhode Island and Yorktown. Back in France, he was appointed to the Assembly of Notables by Louis XVI in 1786 and elected to the Estates General as a noble in 1789.

Recent events were on both men’s minds. Lafayette had supported the transformation of the Estates General into the National Assembly on 17 May and was drafting a new constitution with the long-distance advice of Thomas Jefferson. Morris urged Lafayette to ‘preserve if possible some constitutional Authority to the Body of Nobles as the only means of preserving any Liberty for the People. The current is setting so strong against the Noblesse that I apprehend their Destruction, in which will I fear be invoked consequences most pernicious, tho’ little attended to in the present Moment.’1 A week later Lafayette published his declaration of rights. It was an unmistakably egalitarian tract; but, as Morris had urged, there was no mention of the evils of hereditary power and offices, of primogeniture and entails, which had so infuriated the elected deputies earlier in the year. This was merely a stay of execution, though. When the National Assembly debated on 19 June 1790 how to commemorate the fall of the Bastille, Joseph-Marie Lambel demanded that ‘today [should be] the graveyard of vanity’ and that ‘it should be forbidden for any person to assume the qualities of Count, Baron, Marquis etc.’.2 Even those with aristocratic connections condemned the nobility. Charles de Lameth, a former retainer of the comte

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