was, at this time, so moderate as to have executed but three persons -and those after some semblance of a trial-in the first month. But admitting, as we are ready to do, that Roederer was terribly frightened, what can we think of such a defence as this-that, in his own prospective terror of the tribunal, he published a falsehood which could not fail to be injurious to other parties whose fate was actually in issue? But we really do not believe M. Roederer to have been altogether so bad as he represents himself. His use of the word 'hostage was rather an ambiguity than a falsehood. He undoubtedly was desirous of saving the King's life,—partly, we hope, from humanity, and partly, we believe, for the purpose of making him an instrument in the hands of his party. On the main point, as to his having really betrayed the King, our difficulty is as to the precise sense in which the word 'betray' may be employed. We do not believe that M. Roederer was guilty of anything which can be called personal treachery-he had no private ties to the King-he enjoyed no special confidence he did not appear at the palace as the King's friend—he had been placed by his party in a prominent office, and he was probably disposed as much by personal conviction as by political connexion to forward the secret intentions of that party. But, on the other hand, we cannot acquit him of having from whatever motive-given the king false impressions and insidious advice, and of having notoriously betrayed his ostensible public trust. It was his duty to keep the peace, to vindicate the law, to maintain the King's authority, as well as to defend his palace and his person-it was his duty not merely to repel force by force, but to anticipate and arrest, while yet scattered and at a distance, the hostile movement: and when at last the insurgents came within reach, and their intentious admitted of no doubt, he ought to have attacked and dispersed them. This duty he assuredly betrayed. He paralyzed the resistance which but for him would certainly have been made, and would probably have been successful; and, what is worse, we believe he went to and remained at the palace for the sole purpose of paralyzing that resistance. After this general view of the question, we proceed to M. Roederer's explanation, which is more meagre and inconclusive, and possesses much less of novelty than we expected. Twothirds of the volume are extracts from the Moniteur and Journal des Débats of speeches and reports, already familiar to every one who has looked into any of the details of the French Revolution; nor do we discover one new fact, and hardly a new view in the whole of his Chronicle;' but we must add that his extracts are made with tolerable impartiality, and his narrative produces, very clearly and intelligibly, the series of events which led from the indecisive indecisive outrages of the 20th of June on to the crowning atrocities of the 10th of August. It is not our intention to follow M. Roederer through the details of his work which, as we have said, afford little noveltyand of which he is certainly not the best evidence; but we shall extract, or rather translate in extenso, the whole chapter which contains that information which is nowhere else to be found, and which constitutes the chief value, such as it is, of the book-we mean his own personal narrative of what passed during his stay at the Tuileries, from the night of the 9th to the morning of the 10th August. We shall introduce this chapter by a few words on the antecedent state of affairs, and also intersperse such observations as may the better enable our readers to judge how far M. Roederer's facts corroborate his defence. Our readers recollect that on the 20th June the Palace of the Tuileries (always at this period called Le Château) was invaded and forcibly entered by an armed mob, which committed the most indecent and disgusting violences against the royal family. The precise object of that insurrection is still a question. We believe it to have been-as it was subsequently on the 10th of August— twofold. The Jacobins hoped that, in the scuffle, the king might be murdered-the Girondins intended only to intimidate him into the recall of Roland and the Girondin Ministry. The attempt. on the king's life was prevented by a combination of accidents; and the general horror which the brutalities of the mob excited throughout France, and, above all, in the armies, defeated the Girondin object: so that the 20th of June turned out to be no more than a rehearsal for the 10th of August,-when we shall see the same actors playing over again the same parts on the same stage, but with, unhappily, a different result. In this June affair the greatest share of blame was imputed to Pétion, the mayor, who, though he eventually suffered death as a Girondin, was at this time so popular with the Jacobins that it seems even to this hour hard to determine whether, on the 20th of June, he acted in concert with the party that intended murder, or the party that meant only intimidation. His conduct, however, was blamed by all honest men. The Council General of the Department of which Roederer was, by his office, a leading member suspended Pétion from his functions; and a violent struggle began, in which the whole Jacobin party-Mountain and Gironde-united in defence of Pétion against Lafayette, the Department, and the Constitutionalists. In this contest Roederer abandoned the Constitutionalists and took the part of Pétion, and, while he admits the atrocity of the insurrection, endeavours to exculpate the mayor from the charge of not having done his duty in suppressing it. Amongst other things, he says, • What • What was the obvious mode of restraining the mob? To guard all the avenues of the palace-to shut the gates of the courts and gardens, and even the doors of the buildings-to place at all the entrances brave men, determined to show a bold front and to support each other-to make a barrier of their bodies-to present an immoveable resistance, and to cover themselves by their bayonets. I once saw at Metz 600 brave men resist for ten hours a mob of 6000, who wanted to destroy a warehouse, and I am convinced that a firm resistance will always be effective for the preservation of persons and property. Now, I ask, whose duty was it to make these preparations on that 20th June? The military commandant-general's, beyond all doubt. The municipality had nothing to do with it. The mayor had given a general order to the commandant-general to double the force at the Tuileries, and to take all other measures for ensuring the public tranquillity, and therefore the mayor had done all he could or ought to do.'-p. 125-7. We do not quote this as presenting the real state of the case as to Pétion and to refute it we should need but to quote M. Roederer's preceding account of the whole of Pétion's conduct;-we shall content ourselves with one out of a hundred passages:towards the conclusion of the affair, Pétion, says M. Roederer, harangued the mob and concluded with these words: The people has done its duty-yes, you have acted with the elevation and dignity of freemen-but you have done enough. Let all now withdraw.'-p. 57. -It is not therefore as regards Pétion that we have quoted the former passage, but we beg our readers, when they shall arrive at the statement of the measures of defence taken on the 10th of August, to bear in mind M. Roederer's recorded opinions of the mode by which such an assault could and ought to be resisted. At this time Roederer did not anticipate that he should so soon have an opportunity of putting his plan into practice. He wrote to the King on the 7th July, 'Sire, The events of the 20th of June will not be repeated-the causes which produced them no longer exist.'-p. 172. This prophecy appears to us to place M. Roederer in an awkward dilemma-either he knew nothing of the state of the capital, or he was acting with insincerity and fraud towards the King. Now, unluckily every page of his work shows that he knew perfectly the state of the public mind, and he must have been deaf and blind not to have known it. But another circumstance which occurred about this time throws additional doubts over Roederer's sincerity in favour of the constitutional monarchy. His colleagues in the council general of the Department-all eminent constitutionalists-La Rochefoucault-Talleyrand, &c. -finding that they could not repress the illegal usurpations of Pétion Pétion and the municipality, resigned in the week between the 18th and 23rd July-Roederer, hitherto their cordial colleague and co-operator, alone kept his place. Without taking upon ourselves to answer the question which he puts- Was I wrong? Were they right? '—(p. 276.)—we may at least say that Roederer must be understood to have separated himself, by this act, from the constitutional principles of his former colleagues, and to have adopted those of their Jacobin successors. He tells us that his particular attachment (liaison particulière) was to Vergniaud (p. 27)-the eloquent leader of the Gironde, and to Gaudet and Duclos, two of its most remarkable members. We suspect that there is here some little equivocation. We do not believe that Roederer had any liaison particulière with Vergniaud. Roederer's representative life ended before that of Vergniaud began. One came from the north-east, the other from the south-west corner of France, nor have we ever found, except in this assertion, any trace of such a liaison. It is very remarkable, that when, on the morning of the 20th June, Roederer made, at the bar of the Convention, a very judicious and spirited remonstrance against the assembling armed mobs under the pretence of petitioning, and against the countenance given to such disorders by the Assembly itself, his propositions were opposed only by Vergniaud and Gaudet. This proves beyond doubt either that there was an infamous juggle between them, or-as we confidently believe -that there was, at this time, no liaison particulière between Roederer and these two men. We therefore conclude that Roederer's adhesion to the Girondins must have taken place when he broke with his old constitutional friends on the subject of Petion's suspension. M. Roederer-a courtier of the son of Egalité-will not now be offended at our saying that we have always considered him as of the Orleans party, to which Brissot and others of the Gironde originally belonged, and we suspect that any acquaintance he may have had with Vergniaud arose from this connexion. But Vergniaud has become a popular name, and Roederer is not sorry to ally himself to it, though he does not tell us any point of his conduct that was influenced by that liaison. If the truth were told, we believe it would appear that Roederer knew a great deal more of Robespierre than he did of Vergniaud. We, however, so far concur in M. Roederer's statements, as to admit that, on the 10th August, he was acting-probably in concert-certainly in accordance with the Girondins-up to this period only a section of the Jacobins, but who about this time began to place themselves, as they hoped, in a juste milieu between the real Constitutionaliststhe friends of Louis XVI.-and the Mountain; and for this purpose condescended to associate themselves to the intriguers who were were preparing the Tenth of August, in the hope of being able to Ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm.' Indeed Roederer himself gives this-or rather a still more odiousview of the policy of the Gironde at this period: Things were going faster and farther than the Girondins wished; they were terrified at the rapidity of the popular movement. Their situation was, indeed, become perilous between the Court and M. Lafayette on the one side, and the Jacobins on the other. Their policy now was to temporise-to gain time-to work upon the fears of the Court and on its gratitude, and, by at once protecting and menacing it, to reduce it to the alternative of being crushed by the Jacobins, or of throwing itself into the hands of the Girondins. In pursuance of this system a threatening address to the King was resolved upon. Its menacing and insulting language was to be such as should maintain the wavering popularity of the Girondins with the Jacobins, without, however, delivering them up their prey. Gaudet, the most eloquent of the Gironde party, next to, but long behind Vergniaud, drew up and moved the address.'-p. 229. These are candid and valuable avowals. They tell us nothing indeed that we had not before inferred from the acts and speeches of the Gironde, but it is good to have them thus put beyond all question by the voluntary confession of one of the party. Roederer adds another trait, which, though but a corollary, deserves separate notice. The address attributes the existing tumults to the dismissal of the former Girondin ministers, and Roederer, in approbation of this suggestion, says,— This allusion is the mark (cachet) of the Deputies of the Girondethey wished for a constitution and a King-but they wished that the King should be constitutional, and that his ministry should be such as would be a guarantee of his intentions.'—p. 300. That is, they wished for Egalité as king and themselves as ministers. With these glimpses of the secret policy of the Gironde, and these indications that Roederer was anxious to carry it into effect, we now proceed to the account of his own share in the closing scene of these memorable transactions. The 9th August, at a quarter past ten at night, the minister of justice came to the Department, and told me that the king would send for me if necessary. At three-quarters past ten I was summoned to the palace. I arrived at eleven. The drums were beating to arms in all the neighbourhood-in the apartments were several persons, but no crowd. I entered the council-room, or the King's closet-he was there with the Queen, Madame Elizabeth, and his ministers-I gave his Majesty the last accounts which had reached me-nothing remarkable had hitherto taken place, but there was a great agitation. I wrote a note to desire the mayor (Pétion) |