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Updated: June 22, 2025
Did not Henry IV. ascend the throne of a Catholic nation at the head of a Protestant party?" The queen with all sincerity adopted this tardy counsel, and arranged with Barnave all her measures, and all her foreign correspondence. She neither said nor did any thing which could thwart the plans he had conceived for the restoration of royal authority.
Barnave, who perceived in the popular irritation against La Fayette a fresh peril, hastened to mount the tribune; and although up to that period he had been opposed to the popular general, he yet generously, or adroitly, defended him against the suspicions of the people, who were ready to abandon him.
'Such persons, said Her Majesty, 'would, I had hoped, have been the last to interfere with politics. She was about to order all those who preferred their uniforms to their employments to be discharged from the King's service; but my advice, coupled with that of Barnave, dissuaded her from executing so dangerous a threat.
Do not open your minds to the filtering of the fallacious doctrine that it is less infamous to murder men for their politics than for their religion or their money, or that the courage to execute the deed is worse than the cowardice to excuse it. Let us not flinch from condemning without respite or remission, not only Marat and Carrier, but also Barnave.
Suffice it now that I observe generally her want of knowledge of the Princesse de Lamballe; her omission of many of the most interesting circumstances of the Revolution; her silence upon important anecdotes of the King, the Queen, and several members of the first assembly; her mistakes concerning the Princesse de Lamballe's relations with the Duchesse de Polignac, Comte de Fersan, Mirabeau, the Cardinal de Rohan, and others; her great miscalculation of the time when the Queen's confidence in Barnave began, and when that of the Empress-mother in Rohan ended; her misrepresentation of particulars relating to Joseph II.; and her blunders concerning the affair of the necklace, and regarding the libel Madame Lamotte published in England, with the connivance of Calonne: all these will be considered, with numberless other statements equally requiring correction in their turn.
Duport, Barnave, and Lameth's party were of the principles and sustained the interests of that period of the revolution; but this party, composed of young men of ardent patriotism, who entered on public affairs with superior qualities, fine talents, and elevated positions, and who joined to the love of liberty the ambition of playing a leading part, placed itself from the first rather in advance of the revolution of July the 14th.
Constrained, no doubt, by the presence of his rough colleague, Pétion, if he did not openly avow the feeling of pity, admiration, and respect which had conquered him during the journey, he showed it in his actions, and a tacit treaty was concluded by looks. The royal family felt that amidst this wreck of all their hopes they had yet gained Barnave.
These words alone saved the cure, who was already upon the ground, from certain death. Barnave, as he spoke to them, threw himself almost out of the coach window, and Madame Elisabeth, affected by this noble burst of feeling, held him by the skirt of his coat.
Barnave said that all who were set down in it passed for decided Jacobins, but were not so in fact; that they, as well as himself, were in despair at seeing the monarchical government attacked; that they had learnt to dissemble their sentiments, and that it would be at least a fortnight before the Assembly could know them well, and certainly before it could succeed in making them unpopular; that it would be necessary to take advantage of that short space of time to get away from Paris, immediately after their nomination.
"To amend the constitution was to sanction revolt. To unite themselves with the factious, was to become factious themselves. To restore royalty by the hands of a Barnave, was to degrade the king even to gratitude towards a member of a faction. Their hopes had not fallen so low that it was thus they had but the option of accepting a character in a comedy of startled revolutionists.
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