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Updated: June 22, 2025
She had found some means of treating more directly than on any previous occasion, not only with Barnave, but with the far more unscrupulous A. Lameth; and the Assembly had made such progress in completing the Constitution that it was on the point of submitting it to the king for his acceptance.
Dumouriez too was equally earnest in his desire to serve the king and her, with far greater power to be useful than Barnave. He too was admitted to an audience, of which he has left us an account which, while it shows both his notions of the state of the country and of the rival parties, and also his own sincerity, is no less characteristic of the queen herself.
After ten days of leisurely reflection, but without real hesitation, for everything had been arranged with Lameth and Barnave, the leaders of the majority, Lewis gave his sanction to the Constitution of 1791, which was to last until 1792, and the National Assembly was dissolved. Political delinquents, including the accomplices of Varennes, received an amnesty.
On July 15, in a speech which was considered the finest heard in France since Mirabeau, Barnave carried an overwhelming vote in favour of monarchy. He said that the revolutionary movement could go no farther without carrying away property.
Barnave, following, insisted that "Law's paper was based upon the phantoms of the Mississippi; ours, upon the solid basis of ecclesiastical lands," and he proved that the assignats could not depreciate further.
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.
From Sieyès to Barnave, from Barnave to Camus, from Camus to Buzot, and from Buzot the Girondin to Robespierre the Jacobin who killed the Girondins, we traverse the long line of possible politics; but the transitions are finely shaded, and the logic is continuous. In the second week of September the Constitution of Mounier was defeated by the union of these forces.
Jefferson, though deeply embarrassed by that thoughtlessness which made the American Legation the rendezvous for the leaders of opposing factions in French politics, made his unexpected guests as welcome as possible, but, though he was urged again and again to express himself by Lafayette and his friends he had brought with him some of the most brilliant and most influential of the revolutionary leaders, d'Azay, Barnave, Lameth, Mounier, and Duport he yet remained an almost silent spectator of the prolonged debate which took place when the cloth had been removed and wine placed on the table, according to the American custom.
The advice partly succeeded, for Barnave was made a friend. Nothing could be made of Pétion, who states in his narrative that the princess fell in love with him. General Dumas assumed command, and, by posting cavalry on one of the bridges, managed to bring the horses to a trot, and left the crowd behind.
The monarchists, at whose head were Lally- Tollendal and Malouet, two of the principal members of the Mounier and Necker party; Feuillants, directed by the old triumvirate, Duport, Lameth, and Barnave; lastly, Lafayette, who had immense reputation as a constitutionalist, tried to put down the clubs, and to re-establish legal order and the power of the king.
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