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LAMARTINE

History of the Girondists

Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine, poet, historian, statesman, was born at Macon, in Burgundy, on October 21, 1790.  Early in the nineteenth century he held a diplomatic appointment at Naples, and in 1820 succeeded after many difficulties, in finding a publisher for his first volume of poems, “Nouvelles Meditations.”  The merits of the work were at once recognised, and the young author soon found himself one of the most popular of the younger generation of French poets.  He next adopted politics, and, with the Revolution of February, became for a brief time the soul of political life in France.  But the triumph of imperialism and of Napoleon III. drove him into the background, whereupon he retired from public life, and devoted his remaining years to literature.  He died on March I, 1869.  The publication, in 1847, of his “History of the Girondists, or Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution, from Unpublished Sources,” was in the nature of a political event in France.  Brilliant in its romantic portraiture, the work, like many other French histories, served the purposes of a pamphlet as well as those of a chronicle.

I.—­The War-Seekers of the South

The French Revolution had pursued its rapid progress for two full years.  Mirabeau, the first democratic leader, was dead.  The royal family had attempted flight and failed.  War with Europe threatened and, in the autumn of 1791, a new parliament was elected and summoned.

At this juncture the germ of a new opinion began to, display itself in the south, and Bordeaux felt its full influence.  The department of the Gironde had given birth to a new political party in the twelve citizens who formed its deputies.  This department, far removed from the centre, was at no distant period to seize on the empire alike of opinion and of eloquence.  The names (obscure and unknown up to this period) of Ducos, Gaudet, Lafondladebat, Grangeneuve, Gensonne, Vergniaud, were about to rise into notice and renown with the storms and the disasters of their country; they were the men who were destined to give that impulse to the revolution that had hitherto remained in doubt and indecision, which was to precipitate it into a republic.

In the new parliament Brissot, the inspirer of the Gironde, the dogmatic statesman of a party which needed ideas and a leader, ascended the tribune in the midst of anticipated plaudits which betokened his importance in the new Assembly.  His voice was for war, as the most efficacious of laws.

It was evident that a party, already formed, took possession of the tribune, and was about to arrogate to itself the dominion of the assembly.  Brissot was its conspirator, Condorcet its philosopher, Vergniaud its orator.  Vergniaud mounted the tribune, with all the prestige of his marvellous eloquence.  The eager looks of the Assembly, the silence that prevailed, announced in him one of the great actors of the revolutionary drama, who only appear on the stage to win themselves popularity, to intoxicate themselves with applause, and—­to die.