Abolition of feudal rights; in derision the king is given the title of 'restorer of French freedom'; disastrous outfall of the decree against feudalism; the king is advised to make a great example of the person of the duke d'Orleans; emigration of the princes and its cause; the assembly wanted that emigration; the English multiply the caricatures against the king and queen; the hatred of Pitt against the French.

The first decree which appeared after the dismissal of the army was the abolition of feudal rights without compensation. This decree was ill-considered and stamped with the seal of greatest injustice. [This same day the duke d'Orleans met with a man named Bellisle, and said to him, "How do you think we performed this evening?" - "Very, very badly, monseigneur." - "Oh? How's that?" - "Because you have just eliminated some fifteen hundred thousand livres of revenue!" The duke hadn't thought of that.]

This famous decree took place on August 4, 1789. Then on the 8th, Louis was proclaimed 'restorer of French freedom' and the Te Deum was sung in his chapel.

"I accept (said the king) with honor the title that you have bestowed upon me. It justifies the reasons which guided me when I gathered around me the representatives of my nation. My earnest desire is to ensure your public freedom through the restoration of peace and order which is so necessary. Your wisdom and intentions resulting from your deliberations inspire great confidence in me. Let us beseech God to grant His assistance to us, and return to Him thanksgiving for the feelings of good-will that reign in your assembly."

What a charade! The assembly mocked her king, and it was impossible that the royal court had any confidence, but the actions of Louis prove that he really spoke from the heart. Following the decree abolishing feudalism, anarchy showed its face in all its hideous forms.

Mayors and administrators were assassinated; there was indiscriminate plundering and the burning of chateaux without anyone even bothering to learn who owned the property. They weren't always professional brigands who did this, but the populace as a whole who had become inflamed by the public orators who had been preaching insurrection. They were irate peasants, who, wishing to free themselves from their lords, found
that fire and the plundering of archives was a very convenient means of erasing records. [The same thing occurred under king Jean. The King of Navarre, who played the same role as the duke
d'Orleans, raised the standard of rebellion, and more than one hundred thousand peasants wanted
to exterminate the nobility. Men, guided by passion, are always the same.]

Equality was permitted and human rights made known, though not sanctioned. Thus this levelling, which was subversive of the monarchical government, had its effect - all the more thanks to the
success of political clubs that each day celebrated the power of the people. They controlled the national assembly, and perhaps drove it with a dictatorial power stronger than anyone had intended.

Then a very decisive fight between the people and the authorities took place.

The taxpayers refused to pay their taxes, a sure means of showing their allegiance to a new regime. Thus it was by a combination of harmful views, a new spirit or 'zeitgeist', and finally by the disregard for elementary principles that the constituent assembly was able to disorganize France.

The general confusion that took place throughout the kingdom foreshadowed a great climax. The king had not yet been completely neutralized. He still had some power since he could at least count on the loyalty of the troops of the regular army. He considered his options. A decisive blow was needed - one that would punish d'Orleans and his conspirators. This counsel was given him by generals worthy of his confidence and by those intimates who spoke frankly and in good faith. However the king preferred to leave his fate in the hands of his people whom he still considered to be friends.

It was pointed out to him what could be made out of what had transpired. The fickleness of the people was explained and he was reminded of previous kings who had been dethroned with the loss of their empires.

However he persisted in his pacifism and was lost. The massacre, plundering, and fires continuing to make progress, the princes felt they would die if they remained in France. Therefore they resolved to emigrate and most of the nobility followed them.

It was highly speculated that the emigration of the princes was the primary cause of all the evils that beset France.

1. ° by removing from the monarch his natural defenders

2. ° by depriving the kingdom of royalists [nobility], which is to say by destroying the only faction that could militate against popular tyranny;

3. ° By diverting any help (against oppression) that the circumstances required.

It is impossible to know what would have happened if there had been no emigration, however one can only make some firm conclusions based on the results.

The nobility saw themselves as the object of the people's hatred, which is to say, being the people's creditors. Now they were standing between fire and daggers without being able to claim compensation, complain, or even to defend themselves.

Nature gave to all men the inalienable right to flee tyranny and to seek their well-being elsewhere. Therefore it isn't possible to look upon escape as a crime when fear is the motivation. The majority of those who fled were justified in their fears since they saw their neighbors being massacred and fire being set to their dwellings, but nevertheless they fled their homeland instead of defending it.

The nation owed them security but those in control oppressed them. So who was on their side in defending the nation? Certainly not the men who held the instrument of death and made liberal use of it against patriots! But they supposedly ignored the will of the people. Well, is the will of the people to be found in an endless series of confiscations or in cataracts of blood with which the nation was soaked?

Besides, who are the 'people'? It is a collective being that doesn't even have a will. Like the sea it is never fixed but is always in motion due to some external impulse such as money, brandy, promises and the exaggerations of crafty people skilled in persuasion. Yes, that is the true engine that drives the alleged will of the people.

If the national assembly had any good intentions once it was afflicted by the emigration of the princes,

the intervention of the king could have been solicited to have them return. The national assembly should have made them promise to respect the people and their properties. It should also have taken the steps necessary to stop the violence and the alarming atrocities which were being done in the name of freedom. However, the national assembly did nothing of the sort. On the contrary, it gave support to the massacring horde.

Thus the refugees left in the face of fear and the dreadful fate which obviously confronted them. After two weary years of misfortune and anxiety, it was proposed to open the arms to the fugitives. This measure was reasonable, humane and wise. In fact, for one hopeful moment it looked like it might be a step toward peace and an end to this atrocious war which was destroying a whole generation, and
perhaps the preceding one too, and stripping France of half its strength.

Were they to be punished and made to take part in the expenses of a war which they helped provoke? No, they would be separated from the pleasure of their goods for a few years which would be returned to them in good condition after the expiry of this term. To banish the dangerous man to Athens for ten years did nothing to sever the attachment

which he felt for his homeland. Nothing led him to despair because he could go where he wanted and do what he wanted, and upon his return he would find his family, friends, properties, and enter the citizen class.

In short, nothing prudent, nothing reasonable, nothing just was done because those controlling the French empire simply weren't wise people. Ah! If lacking wisdom, they only had some rudimentary notions of politics, they would have sensed that the spontaneous metamorphosis of the French character was the work of the English. Indeed, they would have seen the connection between the frequent voyages of d'Orleans to England and the ambitions of his cronies. They would have realized that all the caricatures against the monarch were English fabrications designed to undermine the king, to make him a villain, and to assemble the heads to make him perish.

If they had been wise they would have considered this strategy to be a continuation of the argument held by Chatam and George II that as long as the house of Bourbon was on the throne of France, England would never have sovereignty on the high seas.

Nobody doubted Pitt's hatred for France, and each one knew that we
had several debts to pay the English.

For example:

• The massacre and uprising in Ireland fed by 60 millions that Richelieu under Louis XIII had sent to the English Hamden.
  
• The death of Charles I under Cromwell to which the policy of Richelieu could have been complicit. [It was known that Pitt had wanted to discharge on Louis XVI the bill of exchange that Richelieu had drawn in 1641, on the head of Charles I]
  
• Also the revolution in America and its disastrous outcome for England.
  

Péthion went on a journey to London with Madam de Sillery. Carra proposed to the Jacobins that the duke of York become the king of France. It is very probable that Pitt, d'Orleans, Mirabeau, Lafayette, Dumourier, Péthion, Roland, Servan, Brissot, Carra were links in the same chain. For the remainder, one must only have the common direction to convince oneself that England would tear the sceptre away from the hand of the Bourbons if it found an opportunity to do so. In order to entirely upset its rival, England would benefit from all the inconsistencies, blunders and clumsinesses which we would make. Alas! We served England better than it could have dared hope for!

[Never were there so many English in France as at the beginning of the revolution. The duke d'Orleans accomodated them, and probably they were his bankers to fund the insurrections. Amongst them in Marly was a man named ..... who guillotined multitudes of people, men of blood and courage. He had the confidence of the revolutionary tribunal. The fact is, he disappeared when Robespierre was toppled and nobody knows who he was.]