The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic: A Tale of The French RevolutionSue, Eugène
History
The Sword of Honor; or, The Foundation of the French Republic: A Tale of The French Revolution
Sue, Eugène
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799 -- Fiction
The Girondins, scenting peril and treachery, sought to conjure away the
dangers of the situation by imposing on Louis XVI three ministers whom
they thought worthy of their confidence: General Dumouriez was charged
with Foreign Affairs; Servan with the Department of War; and Roland with
the ministry of the Interior. Dumouriez was a man of war, resourceful,
bold and fiery, cunning and subtle of policy, but already grown old in
underground intrigue and occult diplomacy; ambitious, cynical,
intemperate of habit, covetous to the point of exaction, unreasonable in
pride, without virtues, without principles, capable of serving valiantly
the Republic and the Revolution, or of shamefully betraying both,
according to the exigencies of his interest or ambition. Servan, an
officer of genius, was a soldier of integrity, industry and modesty. He
was capable and upright, and devoted to the Revolution. Roland was one
of the purest and most beautiful characters of the time--simple,
stoical, austere, disinterested, of scrupulous honesty, and with a
firmness of will equal to the rigidity of his republican convictions,
which were shared by his young and charming wife, the soul of the
Girondin party, where she reigned as much by the loftiness of her spirit
as by her qualities of heart and the attraction of her person.
On April 19, 1792, the Assembly declared war on Austria. Some days after
the opening of the campaign the army corps under Count Theobald of
Dillon, was, at the first engagement, stampeded before the armies of the
coalition. The royalist officers gave the cry "Each for himself!" and
provoked a panic among the troops. The army fled in full rout. The enemy
crossed our frontiers and the heart of France fell under the menace of
the foreign cohorts.
The Girondins recognized the trap into which their patriotism had led
them, and spurred by the realization took three active revolutionary
measures. They pronounced a sentence of exile upon the fractious
priests, the promoters of civil war, who refused to stand by the
Constitution; they had the Assembly decree the dissolution of the paid
guard of Louis XVI; and they ordered the establishment of a camp of
twenty thousand men around Paris, to form a reserve army and to cover
the threatened capital. But Louis entered upon an open war with the
Assembly, maintained his veto in the matter of the refractory priests,
and refused to sanction the organization of the camp at Paris. Roland
and Servan, the two patriot ministers, were unseated the 13th of June,
and Louis formed a new cabinet, choosing its members from among the
enemies of the people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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