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Updated: June 8, 2025
The crowds at the Palais Royal grew turbulent; threatening letters were sent to those members of the assembly, who, like Mounier, had declared in favour of the absolute veto. They spoke of dismissing them as faithless representatives, and of marching upon Versailles.
Count Martin, in the face of the imperial centrepiece and of the winged Victorys, talked suitably of Napoleon as an organizer and administrator, and placed him in a high position as president of the state council, where his words threw light upon obscure questions. The anecdote was told to him by the son of Mounier himself. Montessuy esteemed in Napoleon the genius of order.
Mounier, who presided over the National Assembly, rejected the idea with horror. The prudence and honourable feeling of several officers of the Parisian guards, and the judicious conduct of M. de Vaudreuil, lieutenant-general of marine, and of M. de Chevanne, one of the King's Guards, brought about an understanding between the grenadiers of the National Guard of Paris and the King's Guard.
A letter from the king was sent to the Assembly, to inform them that he was content with the temporary veto. Mounier did not allow the letter to be read, that it might not influence votes. He was defeated by 673 to 325. The Conservatives had deserted him when he defended the Upper House; and now the king deserted him when he defended the rights of the Crown. It was a crushing and final disaster.
As little, therefore, as the sweet persuasions of a Lally Tollendal, a Mounier, a Malouet, or a Mirabeau could induce a Louis XVI. to cast in his lot with the bourgeoisie, in opposition to the feudalists and the remnants of absolute monarchy, just as little will the siren songs of a Camphausen or a Hansemann convince Friedrich Wilhelm IV.
The Girondists, after the 10th of August, were, between the middle class and the multitude, what the monarchists, or the Mounier and Necker party, had been after the 24th of July, between the privileged classes and the bourgeoisie. The Mountain, on the contrary, desired a republic of the people.
The King quitted Ghent on the 22nd of June, urged by his trustiest friends, and by his own judgment, not to lose a moment in placing himself between divided France and foreign invasion. I set out the next day with M. Mounier, and on the same evening we rejoined the King at Mons, where he had paused in his journey.
Mounier replied with another definition "legitimate assembly of the majority amongst the deputies of the nation, deliberating in the absence of the duly invited minority." The subtleties of metaphysics and politics are powerless to take the popular fancy. Mirabeau felt it. "Let us call ourselves representatives of the people!" he shouted. For this ever fatal name he claimed the kingly sanction.
Nevertheless, the failure of that negotiation is a fatal date in constitutional history. With more address, and a better knowledge of the situation, Mounier might have saved half of the securities he depended on. He lost the whole. The things he refused to surrender at the conference were rejected by the Assembly; and the offers he had rejected were not made again.
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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