Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XII

But the position of liberal officers was still most trying. In the streets and among the people they were in a congenial atmosphere; behind the closed doors of the drawing-rooms, in the society of ladies, and among their fellows in the mess, there were constraint and suspicion. Out of doors all was exultation; in the houses of the hitherto privileged classes all was sadness and uncertainty. But everywhere, indoors or out, was spreading the fear of war, if not civil at least foreign war, with the French emigrants as the allies of the assailants. On this point Buonaparte was mistaken. As late as July twenty-seventh, 1791, he wrote to Naudin, an intimate friend who was chief of the military bureau at Auxonne: "Will there be war? No; Europe is divided between sovereigns who rule over men and those who rule over cattle and horses. The former understand the Revolution, and are terrified; they would gladly make personal sacrifices to annihilate it, but they dare not lift the mask for fear the fire should break out in their own houses. See the history of England, Holland, etc. Those who bear the rule over horses misunderstand and cannot grasp the bearing of the constitution. They think this chaos of incoherent ideas means an end of French power. You would suppose, to listen to them, that our brave patriots were about to cut one another's throats and with their blood purge the land of the crimes committed against kings." The news contained in this letter is most interesting. There are accounts of the zeal and spirit everywhere shown by the democratic patriots, of a petition for the trial of the King sent up from the recent meeting at Valence, and an assurance by the writer that his regiment is "sure," except as to half the officers. He adds in a postscript: "The southern blood courses in my veins as swiftly as the Rhone. Pardon me if you feel distressed in reading my scrawl."[25]