Volume 10 — Memoirs

Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, Comte de Mirabeau, was born at Bignon, near Nemours, on March 9, 1749, and died at Paris on April 2, 1791. His father was a most eccentric and tyrannical representative of the French aristocracy, and Honoré, a younger son, inherited something of his violent temperament, but was endowed with real genius. Entering the army, young Mirabeau soon displayed an erratic disposition by eloping with the young wife of an aged nobleman. He fled to Holland, but was captured and imprisoned. Being at length liberated, he turned to literature and politics, and soon gained celebrity in both. His magnificent oratorical powers brought him rapidly to the front in the period immediately anterior to the outbreak of the Revolution. Mirabeau's "Memoirs, by Himself, his Father, his Uncle, and his Adopted Son," published in eight volumes in 1834, contain no original writings by Mirabeau himself, except in the shape of extracts from his speeches, letters, and pamphlets. The following epitome has been prepared from the French text.

I.--"The Hurricane"

The Marquis of Mirabeau, father of Honoré Gabriel, the subject of these memoirs, was endowed with a mind of great power, rendered fruitful by the best education. He had, however, become independent at too early an age, and this had brought into play his natural inordinate vanity.

Honoré Gabriel, since so famous under the name of the Count of Mirabeau, was the fifth child of the marquis. Destined to be the most turbulent and active of youths, as well as the most eloquent of men and the greatest orator of his day, Gabriel was born with one foot twisted and his tongue tied, in addition to which his size and strength were extraordinary, and already two molars were formed in his jaw. At the age of three the boy nearly lost his life from small-pox, and was thus disfigured greatly for life; while the other children were, like the parents, gifted with wonderful beauty.

Young Gabriel was a most precocious child, and he received an excellent education. At the age of seven he was confirmed by a cardinal, but his childhood was difficult of control, and chastisement from his father and tutor was continual. His inquisitiveness was irrepressible. He relates that at the family supper after his confirmation, "they explained to me that God could not make contradictions--for instance, a stick with only one end. I asked whether a stick which had but one end was not a miracle. My grandmother never forgave me."

Placed under the kindly teaching of the Abbé Choquart in a military school of high repute in Paris, Gabriel made marvellously rapid progress, assiduously exercising his memory, which afterwards became a prodigious repository of the most diversified knowledge.

On July 10, 1767, Gabriel entered the army, joining the Marquis of Lambert's regiment. The young volunteer, who was now eighteen, behaved well, and speedily gave evidence of the military talents he afterwards displayed. But a quarrel arose over a love affair, which led to harsh punishment by his colonel. The incident was bitterly resented by his father, who condemned him without hearing his side of the matter, and actually procured his imprisonment in the fortress of the Isle of Rhé.

When the young soldier came out of prison he unwittingly offended an officer at Rochelle, who had been dismissed the service. The result was a duel, in which the aggressor was wounded. Gabriel was appointed to service in Corsica, with the rank of second-lieutenant, and here he distinguished himself by his zeal, his military talents, and his constant application.

Young Mirabeau was, in September, 1770, transferred to Limousin, in west Central France. Such was his energy that he was called "the hurricane." Now began a series of troubles caused by bitter quarrels between his parents, who were openly at variance. Each sought to gain an adherent in their son, who was condemned to witness the wickedness and folly of both in their ungovernable passion. The effect on the character of the young count was deplorable.

Then ensued a singular episode. The marquis had determined that Gabriel should marry before the age of twenty-three, and had fixed on Mary Emily de Covet, only daughter of the Marquis de Marignane, eighteen years of age, for his son's bride. She was plain, yet attractive, with a sweet smile, fine eyes, and beautiful hair, and was gay, lively, sensible, mild, and very amiable. Having been neglected by her father and ill-treated by her mother, she showed no disinclination to marriage, and in 1772 young Mirabeau obtained the hand of the wealthy heiress.

No sooner was the young count married than every attempt was made to ruin him. He received no property with his bride, and his avaricious father refused to advance him any money for necessary expenses. His father-in-law offered to lend him 60,000 livres, but his father's consent was indispensable, and this was sternly refused. Mirabeau, harassed by creditors, was dragged into lawsuits, and his embarrassments only set his father entirely against him. The marquis actually procured a lettre de cachet, obliging his son to leave the home he had set up, and to confine himself to the little town of Manosque.

Here domestic sorrow and the most painful circumstances assailed the young exile. But these did not prevent him from pursuing serious studies and composing his first work, the "Essay on Despotism." Misfortunes accumulated. Chastising with a horsewhip a baron who grossly insulted him, the count was again imprisoned, this time in the Château d'If, a gloomy citadel on a barren rock near Marseilles.

On May 25, 1770, Mirabeau was transferred to the Castle of Joux, near Pontarlier, where, on June 11, 1775, festivities were held, as at other places, to honour the coronation of Louis XVI. Here Mirabeau enjoyed a sort of half freedom, being allowed to visit in Pontarlier, and the event ensued which, it must sorrowfully be owned, tarnished his name. In a word, we see Mirabeau "ruin himself," by a fatal intimacy with the young wife of the aged Marquis of Monnier. The two fled to Dijon, where Mirabeau surrendered himself at the castle.

He was released after a short time and went on to Geneva, nearly perishing in a storm on the lake. Returning to Pontarlier, he was joined by Sophie Monnier, and the two left for Holland, and arrived at Amsterdam on October 7, 1776. Mirabeau was naturally obliged to draw his principal means of subsistence from his literary labours, and this, perhaps, had been his motive for choosing Holland as his residence, for at that period the Dutch booksellers entered largely into literary speculations.

Mirabeau and Sophie Monnier were arrested at Amsterdam on May 14, 1777. Both were brought to France. She was placed in a convent at Monilmontant, and Mirabeau was deposited on June 7 in the donjon of Vincennes, and was subjected to every sort of privation, remaining in confinement for forty-two months. His release marked the end of his private life; his public and political life was about to begin.

II.--Into Political Life

The "Essay on Despotism" had been the first sign of Mirabeau's political vocation, and the most singular instance, perhaps, of a war audaciously declared against despotism by a young man bearing its yoke. The keynote is that though the natural man may not be inclined to despotism, the social man assuredly is disposed to be a despot. This spirit, maintains Mirabeau, exists even in republics.

In 1784 Mirabeau visited England. One of his motives was to collect materials for his "Considerations on the Order of Cincinnatus," a treatise dealing with Washington and American independence. He was greatly delighted with English scenery. "It is here," he says, "that nature is improved, not forced. All tells me that here the people are something; that every man enjoys the development and free exercise of his faculties, and that I am in another order of things."

But he proceeds: "I am not an enthusiast in favour of England, and I now know sufficient of that country to tell you that if its constitution is the best known, the application of this constitution is the worst possible; and that if the Englishman is as a social man the most free in the world, the English people are the least free of any."

He resided in England from August to February, 1785. During that brief period he began to write his "History of Geneva," and he showed his versatility by composing for a young refugee clergyman a sermon on the immortality of the soul. By the gift of this sermon he drew the exiled preacher from poverty, for it was the means of obtaining for him a lucrative appointment.

Mirabeau sent forth from Paris several most able pamphlets on banking and on share companies. These were written with energy and often with violence. As they attacked many private interests they aroused against their author much hatred, insult, and calumny. He was accused of venality, though he was attacking and driving to despair powerful stock-jobbers, who would have paid him magnificently for silence, could he have been bought.

In July, 1785, Mirabeau went to Berlin. It is a singular fact that in his various journeys some accident always befel him. On the way to Berlin an attempt was made to assassinate him by some unknown enemies, but he safely reached the German capital. King Frederick the Great, now very aged, no longer received foreigners, yet he replied to a letter from Mirabeau and fixed a day for seeing him at Potsdam.

Mirabeau informed the king that he had come to seek permission to study the great military manoeuvres, and that he hoped to push on to Russia. During this period he worked like a labourer all day at his writings. Part of his time he spent at supper parties of the most tiresome etiquette. The same laborious habits attended him everywhere, in prison and in freedom, in his own country and in other lands. It was in Germany that he conceived the idea of his treatise on "The Reform of the Jews," which is acknowledged to be one of his best works.

Frederick the Great died on August 17, 1786. Feeling that he could do nothing useful, Mirabeau resolved at the close of 1786 to quit Berlin. He was urged also by a special motive in which he took pride, and which he thus described in a letter: "My heart has not grown old, and if my enthusiasm is damped, it is not extinguished. I have fully experienced this to-day. I consider one of the best days of my life that on which I received an account of the convocation of the notables, which no doubt will not long precede that of the National Assembly. In this I see a new order of things which may regenerate the monarchy. I should deem myself a thousand times honoured in being even the junior secretary of this assembly, of which I had the happiness of giving the first idea."

Mirabeau was prodigiously occupied at Berlin. He often did not retire to rest till one in the morning, but regularly rose at five, even in the midst of severe winter. Without anything on but a simple quilted dressing-gown, without stockings or waistcoat, he worked away without even calling up his servant to light a fire. Besides his correspondence in cypher, which occupied him much, he worked assiduously at his "Prussian Monarchy," which was published in 1788.

On departing from Berlin the count wrote a most eloquent letter of counsel to King Frederick William, appealing to him to cultivate peace, reminding him that his illustrious predecessor had conquered the admiration of mankind but never won their love, commending him not to extend the direct action of the royal power to matters which did not require it, advising him not to govern too much, and exhorting him to abolish military slavery; that is to say, the obligation then imposed on every Prussian to serve as a soldier from the age of eighteen to sixty or more, which forced men to go to the battle-field like cattle to the slaughterhouse.

In the same remarkable document Mirabeau raises his voice against the harsh laws which arbitrarily deprived Prussians of freedom to leave the country. The tyrannical prohibition of emigration excited his vehement protest, and he proceeded also to denounce to the new king the right of seizing the property of deceased foreigners, and demanded for burghers the freedom of purchasing the estates of nobles. He urged Frederick William to abolish the prerogatives claimed by nobles and the helotism of all who were not noble, and suggested that judges should be appointed for life and justice rendered free of expense.

III.--For King and People

It was chiefly the meeting of the notables which had hastened Mirabeau's return to Paris. He felt that his proper place was in the centre of the great events announced and begun by this convocation. After the undignified and inglorious prodigality of the previous reign, which had laid the foundation of serious financial vicissitudes, the young King Louis XVI. had brought with him to the throne the private virtues of a good and honest man, but not the qualities of a sovereign.

Though economic to excess himself, he nevertheless suffered to exist and even to increase around him those dilapidations which at last ruined the resources of the state. He had no confidence in himself, and Mirabeau respectfully reproached him with his fatal timidity. Nothing was done either to increase revenue or diminish expenditure.

The possessors of privilege and representatives of personal interest, the courtiers, the great lords, and the parliaments strenuously resisted all reforms and then drove from office the best intentioned, the most virtuous, and the ablest ministers whom the young king, in the sincerity of his patriotism, had chosen on his accession, in deference to public feeling. Among these ministers were Malesherbes, Turgot, Necker, and Calonne.

Mirabeau returned to Paris on January 27, 1787. He at once published that famous "Address to the Notables," in which he denounced the whole corrupt system of finance and in which he demanded local provincial administrations. This and his "Denunciation of Stock-jobbing" made great impression on the public mind.

Nevertheless, the "Denunciation" displeased the government, and the author was much persecuted. He learned that he was to be arrested and sent, not to the Bastille, but to a remote provincial fortress, where he would have been lost to public notice. So he escaped from Paris to Liège, whence he again attacked the administration of Calonne and the policy of Necker, declaring that loans should have been effected on methods less onerous for the state.

His exile from Paris was of brief duration, for friends intervened. But Mirabeau returned only to renew and intensify his attacks. He remained, however, only for a short time, for on May 24, 1787, he set out on a third journey to Prussia, in order to complete his great work on the "Prussian Monarchy." Returning to France, he reached Paris in September. Five months had elapsed since the assembling of the notables. The eloquent Leominie de Brienne, Archbishop of Toulouse, had been the most brilliant figure in the conclave. The first assembly broke up on July 27, 1787. Though gathered by the privileged orders, patriotism had raised its voice within it, and the archbishop, as prime minister, had failed to direct the new current aright.

Mirabeau disapproved of what had taken place in his absence, and declined to be employed by the administration, but he offered to undertake any foreign mission in the exercise of the king to which he might be appointed. The application was unsuccessful. The crisis approached nearer and nearer. Archbishop Brienne passed rapidly from violence to weakness. Mirabeau refused to countenance his plans for contracting a new loan of 420 millions. The king was resisted by an almost unanimous opposition, headed by the Duke of Orleans, and the loan was refused at a memorable sitting.

Mirabeau exhorted the government to announce in precise and solemn terms the convocation of the States-General in 1789, that bankruptcy might be averted and the national honour saved. Said he: "The year in which the king assembles the nation will be the finest in his life. Everybody knows that he has been deceived, and could not help being so, and everybody will do justice to his intentions. The assembled nation has a right to vote a tax. In future the nation alone will raise up its political fortunes."

Mirabeau saw that the nation ought to be trusted. He strenuously contended for a policy in accordance with this conviction. But he indefatigably continued his literary labours, sending forth pamphlet after pamphlet, one against the prison system in vogue, another demanding the liberty of the Press, in which he extolled the example of England. He became increasingly impatient with the ineptitude of the government, for the affairs of the state were lapsing into desperate disorder, and the public discontent was being steadily aggravated.

The aim of Mirabeau was at one and the same time to support the monarchy and to subvert the influences by which the throne was environed. He was solicitous of securing popular freedom, but regarded the monarchy as the only form of rule suitable for France in that age, and was led to adopt that peculiar statesmanship identifying the royal interest with the popular cause. Though ready to give his life for the people, he did not hesitate to risk his popularity by his fidelity to the throne.

IV.--President of the National Assembly

The immediate causes of the Revolution were now in full operation. Mirabeau, attempting to practise his own doctrine of the freedom of the Press, turned journalist and brought out a gazette. The famous National Assembly opened on May 5, 1789. He then entered on a career of immense political energy, beginning by issuing a stirring and eloquent "Address to the French People." This was especially a reply to a reactionary protest on the part of the clergy.

Soon there were disturbances everywhere. The Bastille was stormed by the furious Parisians and demolished. Just at this time Mirabeau lost his father, and the event overwhelmed him with grief. He refused to stand for election as mayor of Paris. But he brought about a constitutional organisation of the municipality, and delivered a splendid series of orations on various abuses, such as plural voting, iniquitous monopolies, etc. Yet he proved his studious moderation by strenuously declaiming against the famous "Declaration of the Rights of Man," pronouncing it inopportune and perilous. His heroic harangues provoked disorder in his audience dangerous to himself. But his courage was dauntless, for even when the king and his chief minister abandoned the royal prerogative, Mirabeau defended it.

Throughout the terrible events of 1789 Mirabeau was consistent as a loyalist and as a patriot. But disappointment awaited his generous illusions, for the vacillation of the king rendered the outlook hopeless.

At the end of January, 1791, he was appointed president of the National Assembly, which, during the stormy period of its existence during twenty-one months, had already had forty-two presidents.

He exercised his functions with consummate skill, but the end of his wonderful life was at hand. He had been in weak health from the very first sittings of the Assembly, his condition causing constant anxiety to his intimate friends and his admirers. He was depressed by sad presentiments, and was in constant apprehension of assassination, for it was well-known that there were plots against his life. After a brilliant oration, the great tribune went home exhausted, and, indeed, dying.

One of his last experiences was a pathetic interview with Talleyrand, with whom he had often crossed swords in debate. His weakness dated from February, 1788, when he was attacked with violent internal pains, and was bled to such an extent by a surgeon that he never recovered his wonderful natural vitality. After much suffering, endured with the most heroic fortitude, he passed away as if in sleep, with a sweet smile on his features. France mourned the loss of the greatest orator that had ever graced her tribune. His funeral was celebrated at St. Genevieve with splendid ceremonial. The verdict of those best qualified to judge was that Mirabeau was the most remarkable man of the eighteenth century, and that his premature death, soon after the outbreak of the Revolution, led to the overthrow of a monarchy which he alone could have saved.