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Updated: June 2, 2025
If the first Assembly was allowed to accomplish its work, all that had been done to discredit one party and to conciliate another, all the fruit of Mirabeau's expensive intrigues, would be lost. The final determination that sent them along the road to Varennes was the treason hatched at Mantua. They ran the gauntlet to the Argonne in the cause of limited monarchy, to evade revolution and reaction.
At this moment the Lieutenant of Police entered, and Madame said to him, "Have you seen M. de Mirabeau's book?" "Yes, Madame; but it was not I who denounced it?" "What do you think of it?"
For Mirabeau, with his overpowering personality, felt that these things, which his presence inspired, were as much his own, as if he had said them, and that his adoption of them gave them their weight. Much more absolute and centralizing was the successor to Mirabeau's popularity, and to much more than his predominance in France.
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.
This discovery increased the exasperation against Louis XVI. Mirabeau's bust was broken by the Jacobins, and the convention covered the one which stood in the hall where it held its sittings. For some time there had been a question in the assembly as to the trial of this prince, who, having been dethroned, could no longer be proceeded against.
Yet during the winter and early spring the conduct of the Jacobin party in the Assembly, and of the Parisian mob whom they were keeping in a constant state of excitement, increased in violence; while one occurrence which took place was, in Mirabeau's opinion, especially calculated to prompt a suspicion of the king's intentions.
He did not sell himself, it has been said; he allowed himself to be paid. The distinction was too subtle for men doing battle for their lives and for freedom, and Mirabeau's popularity waned towards the middle of 1790. The next favourite was Barnave, the generous and high-minded spokesman of those sanguine spirits who to the very end hoped against hope to save both the throne and its occupant.
This article goes on to cite Mirabeau's former opinion in his letter to Cerutti, published in 1789, the famous opinion of paper money as "a nursery of tyranny, corruption and delusion; a veritable debauch of authority in delirium." Lablache, in the Assembly, quoted a saying that "paper money is the emetic of great states."
And she herself was never so misled by her high estimate of Mirabeau's abilities and influence as to think his judgment unerring.
It was adopted for the sake of committing the remnant of the privileged orders who yielded under protest. Mirabeau's aristocratic brother threw away his sword, saying that there was nothing else for a gentleman to do, when the king abandoned his sceptre.
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