France by John Julius Norwich

Author:John Julius Norwich [John Julius Norwich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
Published: 2018-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

13

‘I am indeed your king’

1789–93

I carry away with me the last shreds of the monarchy.

Mirabeau, on his deathbed,

to Talleyrand, 4 April 1791

THE MEETING OF the Estates General was doomed to failure1 – doomed for a start by its location. The king was determined to continue his hunting in the local forests; it did not occur to him, or apparently to anyone else, that accommodation at Versailles for nearly a thousand deputies2 would be impossible to find, nor that the third estate would be shocked and scandalised by the court life around them. They were humiliated too: they had been instructed to dress in black, and were quite literally outshone by the church vestments and dazzling silks and velvets flaunted by the nobility. Moreover they found themselves penned up in a separate enclosure away from the king. Then there was the tedium. The king’s speech was turgid and spiritless; Necker’s, which followed, was a disaster. He had been expected to reveal an exciting new economic policy; instead he quoted facts and figures for a little over three hours and bored everybody rigid. Spirits revived only when a representative of the third estate from Provence, Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, rose to his feet.

Mirabeau should by rights have been representing the nobility, but had been rejected by his fellows by reason of what they considered his dissolute former life, violent disposition and innumerable love affairs. At first sight of him these last would have seemed improbable; he was villainously ugly, with a huge head and a face deeply pitted with the smallpox that he had contracted at the age of three. Typically, he used it as a weapon: ‘Ugliness is power,’ he was fond of saying. Undeterred by his rejection, he had then addressed the Provençal third estate: ‘Granted that I’m a mad dog; all the more reason for electing me. My fangs will make short work of despotism and privilege.’ He was elected on the spot, by both Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, and was to show himself by far the most brilliant speaker in the Estates General. It was soon proposed that the third estate should change its name as well as its nature; after a heated debate it was decided to call it the National Assembly – an assembly not of the estates but ‘of the people’. In order to broaden its membership the clergy were invited to join, and about a dozen did so.

It was a modest enough gesture; but it frightened the king – and even more so the queen. Left to himself, Louis would probably have acquiesced as he usually did, but his family persuaded him to take a stand. It was accordingly announced that the actions of the third estate had been illegal and that His Majesty had decided to hold a meeting of all three orders, a so-called séance royale. Until then, the meeting hall would be closed. Finding the doors locked the next morning, the deputies were for a moment undecided; then, at the

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