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At this meeting the afFeb. 13th, fembly fuppreffed all 1790. monastic establishments for ever, and confifcated all their lands; allowing, however, the prefent friars and nuns to continue in the obfervance of their monaftic vows; granting them fome moderate ftipends for maintenance; and to the nuns, the fpecial favour and privilege, (which was indeed an act of great humanity, independent of its juftice) that they fhould not be removed from the convents in which they then refided, without their own consent and free choice.

As the bufinefs of the clergy was now brought nearly to a conclufion, at least with refpect to fact, though not entirely as to time, we thall purfue it to the end, leaving those intermediate matters which occurred in its courfe fubject to further observation. In the fucceeding month of April, the affembly completed their plan. They voted away, in purfuance of their prior refolution of November, all the territorial poffeffions of the church, deftining them in general, but not specific terms, to the payment of the public debt. They affigned to the churchmen, in return, certain fixed penfions, which though much smaller than their former revenues, were, perhaps, barely fufficient for their existence; although not in any degree fuitable to their past habits, condition, or modes of living; many of them being neceffarily of the first families in the kingdom,and long ufed to fplendour, refpect, and opulence. The affembly likewife, at this time, began to iffue to the creditors of the ate a new kind of paper money

under the name of affignations, that is affignats, on the church lands thus

confifcated, which were to be the general fecurity for all the paper thus iffued. From hence originated that inundation of affignats which have fince deluged France and the neighbouring countries; and which have excited the aftonishment of Europe, through the extraordinary exertions which they have enabled her to make.

It was a curious circumftance that Mirabeau, who had fo lately published a fevere Philippic against the emperor Jofeph for the injuftice of his claim on the Scheldt, and in which he particularly reprobated his conduct with respect to the plunder of the monafteries and convents in the Low Countries, fhould now, in fo fhort a period of time, have so totally departed from the sentiments which he then avowed, that through the whole progress of the present bufine, he was, on every occafion, the itrongest and most determined leader in, or fupporter of all the violent proceedings carried on against the French clergy. The following fentence, addreffed to the emperor, in the treatise we have mentioned, will ferve to illuftrate this conduct as well as to justify the observation :

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Defpife the monks as much as you. please, but do not rob them; for it is unlawful to rob either the most determined atheist or the most credulous capuchin friar." So much do men's fentiments vary with circumftances, even in questions of right or wrong, of justice or injuftice! queftions, which it might be fuppofed did not admit of any change of opinion.

CHAP.

CHA P. VII.

Ineffectual attempts made by the French privileged orders, for procuring redrefs or fuccour from the neighbouring continental powers. State of political affairs in Europe, which, with other causes, tended to produce that indifference with respect to France which now appeared. Courts of Madrid and Turin. Rafh and impetuous proceedings, along with the contemptuous language used by the national assembly, ferves continually to create new enemies abroad as well as at home. Wrong offered to the German princes with respect to their poffeffions and rights in Alface, embitters the whole empire against the new government, and implants deeply the feeds of future contention and war. Weft India colonies thrown into a state of the utmost diforder and confufion, and at length precipitated into the most dreadful fcenes of defolation, conflagration, and massacre, which terminate in final deftruction, by a feries of ill-judged and precipitate measures, of impolitic, impracti– cable, or contradictory decrees. Great disorders in the army. Soldiers throw off all fubordination and difcipline. The people being now in poffeffion of liberty, a defire of uncontrolled rule and fovereignty becomes the leading and general paffion, a circumftance which ferves greatly to unite them, and to ftrengthen the new fyftem. The weak attempts of the royalifts, and the continual reports of plots, confpiracies, and invafions, caufe fucb a general alarm, that the provinces afsociate and arm; fo that France feems covered with camps and armies. State of the ariftocrates and parties adverfe to government. Corfica annexed to France as part of the kingdom. Application from the court of Spain relative to the difpute with England, brings on a debate on the question, in whofe hands the right of peace and war fhould be lodged. Second application from Spain brings on a change of the miniftry. Mutiny of the fleet at Breft. Anacharis Clootz, introduces to the affembly his ambajadors from all mankind. Decree for abolishing all titles, and obliterating all memorials of nobility and family diftinction, for ever in France. Grand national confederation at Paris. Bloody conteft at Nancy. Mr. Neckar quits the kingdom, after various difgraces, and narrowly escaping the fury of the Parifians. Schifm of the French clergy; the greater part of whom fubmit to the lofs of their penfions, and to expulfion from their pastoral duties, rather than to tak ethe newly-prescribed oaths.

OTWITHSTANDING the

NOT
immediate difmay produced

by the late act of the king, in ap-
proving of all the proceedings of
the affembly, and in difclaiming
and reprobating all the measures
purfued in his favour, the ruined
privileged orders foon recollected
themselves, and instead of finking
under that unexpected blow, feem-

ed in a little time to acquire fresh activity and new vigour, from a check which had at firft impressed them with fuch vifible confternation. For though, in order to ftrengthen both, they wished to make their own cause common with that of the crown, in every attempt for the recovery of the loft, or the prefervation of what remained of their [12]

mutual

mutual rights, yet they confidered their own diftinct interefts as being of too great a magnitude, and too immediate an importance, to be facrificed to the weakness, the caprice, or to the perfonal terrors, of their wretched, imprisoned fovereign.

In this ftate they naturally turned their eyes in the first instance to their own refugee princes at the court of Turin, with whom they held a close correfpondence, particularly from the fouthern provinces; but these ruined princes, who were beholden to ftrangers for fhelter and fubsistence, could afford no other means of fupport or affiftance than the little which might poffibly be derived merely from their names and rank; while this fource, weak and confined as it would have been at beft, was ftill farther narrowed, and reduced almoft to nothing, by the peculiar unpopularity in which the rashness and imprudence of the count d'Artois, had very unfortunately involved that prince. The alarmed and diftreffed nobility did not, however, reft here; they are faid to have been inceffant in their applications to all the neighbouring continental powers for their interference in delivering their king, and in affifting to establish in their wretched country fome juft and equitable form of government, which, under the fanction of a limited and well-regulated monarchy, might put an end to the prefent horrid fcene of confufion and anarchy, while it afforded liberty of person and fecurity of property to every order and clafs of the people.

But it happened unfortunately with refpect to the cause of the difureffed, that Europe feldom has +

been, through a long courfe of years, in a state less capable of affording the fuccour now demanded, or in which the minds of the people, or the difpofition of the fovereigns, were lefs calculated for undertaking any enterprize, than at the prefent. The mad ambition of the emperor Jofeph, under the influence of the overwhelming power and vaft defigns of Ruffia, to which he became fo miferable a dupe, besides the ruin and the spirit of revolt which it fpread through his own vaft dominions, had in no small degree deranged the general policy of Europe; for while several states were watching with apprehenfion and difmay, the dreaded evils which the farther progrefs and fuccefs of the dangerous combination between thefe two mighty empires were capable of producing, others, who being more powerful were lefs apprehenfive of danger, were, however, no less occupied in attending to the fame objects, in the hope of deriving fome benefit to themselves in the iffue, from the poffibly difaftrous events, and from the unforefeen circumftances of difunion, which the courfe of fo doubtful a purfuit, and of so impolitic and unnatural an alliance, might be capable of producing. While all fpirit of adventure was thus effectually retrained in the centre and north of Europe, the court of Spain, fo clofely united in blood and alliance with the king and government of France, was, at this critical feafon, when the existence of the great and parent stock of the Bourbon line was more than at ftake, moft induftrioufly involving herself in a ridiculous fquabble with England, the object of difpute scarcely bearing or deferving a name; and was

wante aly

wantonly and blindly rufhing into a conteft which fhe was totally incapable of fuftaining. On the other fide of the Mediterranean, the king of Sardinia, befides his being by nature a peaceable prince totally indifpofed to war, was not, from the state of his finances, of his army, of his fortreffes, or of any of the lead. ing requifites effential to fuch a decifion, in any condition to hazard the experiment, even fuppofing that his own difpofition had prompted him ever fo ftrongly to the meafure.

Under these circumftances it fo happened, that scarcely in any age ancient or modern, whether among refined or half civilized nations, any fimilar body of men, fo fuddenly involved in the most pitiable ftate of degradation and ruin, ever excited fo little fympathy, or ever met with fo cold and forbidding a reception, as the French nobility experienced upon this occafion in all the neighbouring countries. They were, almoft without exception, every where beheld with a preju. diced and malignant, rather than a kind or benevolent eye; and even while they yet poffeffed money, found it difficult to procure fhelter. It would be in vain to attribute this general public diflike (for it was much stronger than mere indifference) to political causes or motives, any more than to the particular difpofition of fovereigns. For, although the human mind willingly makes many great facrifices to laws, to government, and to power, it is by no means difpofed to refign its fympathies or antipathies to the will or opinion of others; and perhaps lefs fo to its rulers, than to any. In whatever interests the heart it is extremely tenacious; nature feeming

to have implanted that principle in order to afford fome fhelter or refuge, even in defpite of power, to the forlorn victims of oppreffion and diftrefs. There feems much room then for prefuming, unless some more cogent caufe can be produced, than the infufferable vanity and arrogance, which had ever marked the character of that people, whether collectively or individually, through all the days of their profperity, was now, in the hard feafon of their adverfity, too well remembered by thofe neighbours, whom they had heretofore treated with the moft fupreme and mortifying contempt.

But the overweening confidence, the rafh and imperious language, with the precipitate determinations of the national affembly, were fully competent to the creation of enemies abroad as well as at home, who might otherwife have been friends, or at leaft indifferent fpectators. In their rage for the total overthrow and abolition of the feudal fyftem, they had paid as little regard to the rights and interefts of foreigners, as they had done in all cafes with refpect to those of their own nobility and clergy. The duke of Wirtemberg, the prince of Deuxponts, with many other German princes both fecular and ecclefiaftical, held great poffeffions in Alface, and other provinces, which France had heretofore wrenched from the empire in the days of its troubles and diftrefs, and which these princes held by the fame original tenure that they did their other eftates more immediately at home. Thefe feveral districts, with all the ancient rights appertaining to them, were, in the year 1648, after the forcible transfer of paramount dominion by arms had [73] already

already taken place, farther fecured, confirmed, and guaranteed to the poffeffors, in the ftrongeft manner, by the celebrated treaty of Weftphalia, to which France herfelf was a contracting party, and from which alone fhe can derive any legal title or claim to the provinces in queftion, of which these leffer fiefs compofe a confiderable part. Yet these rights, fo authentically confirmed and guaranteed, had been, without the fmalleft explanation or ceremony, totally fet afide and fubverted, by the fimple decree of a new and unheard-of body of men, who fuddenly called themselves a French affembly, while a captive king, in violation of treaties by which he was perfonally, and his country through him directly bound, and in direct contradiction to his own opinion and advice publicly communicated to that affembly, was compelled, moft unwillingly, to give his fanction to this violation and wrong.

We have already feen the indignation excited in the affembly, juft before the king's removal from Versailles, upon receiving his letter, in which he had ventured to expoftulate, in the gentleft terms, upon the impolicy and danger, as well as the flagrant injuftice, of this, and of fome others of their acts, which had been then haftily decreed; we have likewife feen, that at ten o'clock at night, in the midft of that dreadful tumult, in which his life apparently hung by a fingle hair, he was obliged, without comment, explanation, or referve, to give his fanction to this decree, as well as to that which established and confirmed the revolution, and to all others which were then in readi

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nefs. Upon this, as well as upon every other occafion in which the fubject was at all mentioned, the national affembly affected to treat the rights and claims, as well as the perfons and condition of the foreign princes with the most infufferable contempt; nor did their great bond of right and fecurity, the treaty of Weltphalia, which is confidered as the Magna Charta of the Germanic empire, and held by that people as little less than facred, meet with any greater respect.

This occafioned a general outcry against the French, and particularly against the conduct of their affembly, in Germany; while the injured princes, no lefs irritated perhaps by the injurious treatment which they received, than by their immediate loffes, were inceffant in their applications, both individually and collectively, to the diet of the empire for protection and redrefs. The diet took up the bufinefs with great fpirit; and though the untoward ftate of public affairs did not yet afford leifure to the great powers of the empire to take fuch an active share in the bufinefs as might give immediate efficacy to its proceedings and intentions, it was by no means the lefs fenfible of the injury and wrong, and of the infult thereby offered to the whole Germanic body. It is not indeed improbable, that the vexatious inability of enforcing its refolutions which the diet now experienced, ferved much to increase its indignation and refentment. We accordingly find, that the diet became and continued exceedingly adverfe, and avowedly difpofed to be hoftile to the new French government, which they confidered as commencing its career by a flagrant

violation

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