MIRABEAU, HONORÉ GABRIEL RIQUETI, COMTE DE, (1749-1791), one of the greatest statesmen and orators France has ever produced, was born at Bignon, near Nemours, on March 8, 1749. M. de Loménie has shown that the family of Riquet or Riqueti came originally from the little town of Digne, that they won wealth and municipal honours as merchants at Marseilles, and that in 1570 Jean Riqueti bought the chateau and estate of Mirabeau, which had up to that time belonged to the great Provencal family of Barras, and took the title of esquire a few years later. In 1685 Honoré Riqueti obtained the title of Marquis de Mirabeau, and his son Jean Antoine bought honour to it. He served with distinction through all the later campaigns of the reign of Louis XIV., and especially distinguished himself in 1705 at the battle of Cassano, where he was so severely wounded in the neck that he had ever after to wear a silver stock; yet he never rose above the rank of colonel, owing to his eccentric habit of speaking unpleasant truths to his superiors. On retiring from the service he married Francoise de Castellane, a remarkable woman, who long survived him,and he left at his death, in 1737, three sonsæVictor, Marquis de Mirabeau (see next article), Jean Antoine, Bailli de Mirabeau, and Comte Louis Alexandre de Mirabeau. The great Mirabeau was the elder surviving son of the marquis. When but three years old he had a virulent attack of confluent small-pox which left his face for ever disfigured, and contributed not a little to nourish his father’s dislike to him. His early education was conducted by Lachabeaussiére, father of the better known man of letter, after which, being like his father and grandfather destined for the army, then the only profession open to young men of family, he was entered at a pension militaire at Paris, kept by an Abbé Choquart. Of this school, which had Lagrange for its professor of mathematics, we have an amusing account in the life of Gilbert Elliot, first earl of Minto, who with his brother Hugh, afterwards British minister at Berlin, there made the acquaintance of Mirabeau, an acquaintance which soon ripened into friendship, and to which Mirabeau in later life owned his introduction into good English society. On leaving this school in 1767 he received a commission in the cavalry regiment of the Marquis de Lambert, which his grandfather had commanded years before. He at once began love making, and in spite of his ugliness succeeded in winning the heart of the lady to whom his colonel was attached, which led to such scandal that his father obtained a letter de cachet, and the young scapegrace was imprisoned in the isle of Rhé. The love affairs of Mirabeau form quite a history by themselves, and a well-known history, owing to the celebrity of the letters to Sophie; and the behaviour of the marquis in perpetually imprisoning his son is equally well known, and as widely blamed. Yet it may be asserted that until the more durable and more reputable connexion with Madame de Nehra these love episodes were the most disgraceful blemishes in a life otherwise of a far higher moral character than has been commonly supposed. As to the marquis, his use of lettres de cachet is perfectly defensible on the theory of the existence of lettres de cachet at all. They were meant to be used (see LETTRES DE CACHET) by head of families for the correction of their families, and Mirabeau, if any son, surely deserved such correction. Further, they did have the effect of sobering the culprit, and the more creditable part of his life did not begin till he left Vincennes. Mirabeau, it may be remarked at once, was not a statesman of the Alcibiades type, and he did not develop his great qualities of mind and character until his youthful excesses were over. These will be passed over as rapidly as possible, for it was not till 1781 that the qualities which made him great began to appear.

On being released from his first imprisonment, the young count, who had always intended to continue his military career, obtained leave to accompany as a volunteer the French expedition which was to effect the reduction of Corsica. The conquest was one of sheer numerical strength, for the whole population was on the side of Paoli, and Mirabeau, perceiving the value of public opinion, is said to have written a treatise on the oppression the Genoese had formerly exercised over the island, which the Government was ready to publish had not the Marquis de Mirabeau thought fit to destroy it because of its divergence from his won philosophical and economical views. For his services in Corsica Mirabeau was made a captain of dragons, though not in any particular regiment, and on his return his father endeavored to make use of the literary ability he had shown for the advancement of his own economical theories. He tried to keep on good terms with his father, though he could not advocate all his ideas, and even went so far in 1772 as to marry a rich heiress, a daughter of the Marquis de Marignane, whose alliance his father had procured for him. He did not live happily with her, and in 1774 was ordered into semi-exile in the country, at his father’s request, where he wrote his earliest extant work, the Essai ser le Despotisme. His violent disposition now led him to quarrel with a country gentleman who had insulted his sister, and his semi-exile was changed by lettre de cachet into imprisonment in the Chateau d’If. In 1775 he was removed to the castle of Joux, to which, however, he was not very closely confined, having full leave to visit in the town of Pontarlier. Here he met Marie Therése de Monnier, his Sophie as he called her, a married woman, for whom he conceived a violent passion. Of his behaviour nothing too strong can be said: he was introduced into the house as a friend, and betrayed his trust by inducing Madame de Monnier to fall in love with him, and all his excuses about overwhelming passion only make his conduct more despicable. The affair ended by his escaping to Switzerland, where Sophie joined him; they then went to Holland, where he lived by hack-work for the booksellers; meanwhile Mirabeau had been condemned to death at Pontarlier for rapt et vol, of which he was certainly not guilty, as Sophie had followed him of her own accord, and in May 1777 he was seized by the French police, and imprisoned by a lettre de cachet in the castle of Vincennes. There he remained three years and a half, and with his release end the first and most disgraceful period of his life. during his imprisonment he seems to have learnt to control his passions from their very exhaustion, for the early part of his confinement is marked by the indecent letters to Sophie (first published in 1793), and the obscene Erotica Biblion and Ma Conversion, while to the later months belongs his first political work of any value, the Lettres de Cachet. The Essai sur de Despotisme was an ordinary by at times eloquent declamation, showing in its illustrations a wide miscellaneous knowledge of history, but the Lettres de Cachet exhibits a more accurate knowledge of French constitutional history skillfully applied to an attempt to show that an existing actual grievance was not only philosophically unjust but constitutionally illegal. It shows, though still rather a diffuse and declamatory form, that application of wide historical knowledge, keen philosophical perception, and genuine eloquence to a practical purpose which was the great characteristic of Mirabeau, both as a political thinker an as a statesman.





With his release from Vincennes begins the second period of Mirabeau’s life. He found that his Sophie was an idealized version of a rather common an dill-educated woman, and she speedily consoled herself with the affection of a young officer, after whose death she committed suicide. Mirabeau first set to work to get the sentence of death still hanging over him reversed, and by his eloquence not only succeeded but got M. de Monnier condemned in the costs of the whole law proceedings. From Pontarlier he went to Aix, where he claimed the court’s order that his wife should return to him. She naturally objected, but his eloquence would have won his case, even against Portalis, the leader of the Aix bar, had he not in his excitement accused his wife of infidelity, on which the court pronounced a decree of separation. He then with his usual impetuosity intervened in the suit pending between his father and mother before the parlement of Paris, and so violently attacked the ruling powers that he had to leave France and again go to Holland, and try to live by literary work. About this time began his connexion with Madame de Nehra, which sweetened the ensuing years of toil and brought out the better points of his character. She was the daughter of Zwier van Haren, a Dutch statesman and political writer, and was a woman of a far higher type than Sophie, more educated, more refined, and more capable of appreciating Mirabeau’s good points and helping him to control his passions. With her the lion became a lamb, and his life was strengthened by the love of his petite horde, Madame de Nehra, her baby son, afterwards Lucas de Montigny, and his little dog Chico. After a period of work in Holland he betook himself to England, where his treatise on Lettres de Cachet had been much admired, and where he was soon admitted into the best Whig literary and political society of London, through his old schoolfellow Gilbert Elliot, who had now inherited his father’s baronetcy and estates, and become a leading Whig member of parliament. Sir Gilbert introduced him freely, but of all his English friends none seem to have been so intimate with him as Lord Lansdowne, and Mr (afterwards Sir Samuel) Romilly. The latter became particularly attached to him, and really understood his character; and it is strange that his remarks upon Mirabeau in the fragment of autobiography which he left, and Mirabeau’s letters to him, should have been neglected by French writers. Romilly was introduced to Mirabeau by D’Ivernois, and readily undertook to translate the Consideration on the Order of Cincinnatus. Romilly writers thus of him in his autobiography:--

"The count was difficult enough to please; he was sufficiently impressed with the beauties of the original. He went over every par of the translation with me, observed on every passage in which justice was not done to the thought or the force of the expression lost, and made may useful criticism. During this occupation we had occasion to see one another often, and became very intimate, and, as he had read much, had seen a great deal of the world, was acquainted with all the most distinguished persons who at that time adorned either the royal court or the republic of letters in France, had a great knowledge of French and Italian literature, and possessed very good taste, his conversation was extremely interesting and not a little instructive. I had such frequent opportunities of seeing him at this time, and afterwards at a much more important period of his life, that I think his character was well known to me. I doubt whether it has been so well known to the world, and I am convinced that great injustice has been done him. This, indeed, is not surprising, when one consider that, from the first moment of his entering upon the career of an author, he had been altogether indifferent how numerous or how powerful might be the enemies he should provoke. His vanity was certainty excessive; but I have no doubt that, in his public conduct as well as in his writings, he was desirous of doing good, that his ambition was of the noblest kind, and that he proposed to himself the noblest ends. He was, however, like may of his countrymen, who were active in the calamitous Revolution which afterwards took place, not sufficiently scrupulous about the means by which those ends were to be accomplished. He indeed to some degree professed this; and more than once I have heard him say that there were occasions upon which ‘la petite morale était ennemie de la grande.’ It is not surprising that with such maxims as these in his mouth, unguarded in his expressions, and careless of his reputation, he should have afforded room for the circulation of many stories to his disadvantage. Violent, impetuous, conscious of the superiority of his talents, and the declared enemy and denouncer of every species of tyranny and oppression, he could not fail to shock the prejudices, to oppose the interests, to excite the jealousy, and to wound the pride of many descriptions of persons. A mode of refuting his works open, to the basest and vilest of mankind, was to represent him as a monster of vice and profligacy. A scandal once set a foot is strengthened and propagated by many, who have a malice against the object of it. They delight to talk of what is extraordinary; and what more extraordinary than a person so admirable for his talents and so contemptible for his conduct, professing in his writings principles so excellent and in all the offices of public and private life putting those which are so detestable? I indeed possessed demonstrative evidence of the falsehood of some of the anecdotes which by men of high character were related to his prejudice." -- Life of Sir S. Romilly, vol. i. p. 58.

This luminous judgment, the best that is extant on the character of Mirabeau, deserved to be quoted at length; I must be noted that it was written by a man of acknowledged purity of life, who admired Mirabeau in early life not even was a statesman, but when he was only a struggling literary man. This close association with Romilly, and his friends Baynes, Trail, and Wilson, does credit to Mirabeau, and must have helped that moral revolution against his passions which was passing within him. He was a warm friend, and first made Romilly acquainted with Lord Lansdowne, and tried to get him a seat in parliament. Lord Lansdowne was himself an extraordinary man, and the first of the new Whigs might well fell sympathy with the statesman of the French Revolution. The Considerations sur Pordre de Cincinnatus which Romilly translated was the only important work Mirabeau wrote in the year 1785, and it is a good specimen of his method. He had read a pamphlet published in America attacking the proposed order, which was to form a bond of association between the officers who had fought in the American War of Independence against England; the arguments stuck him as true and valuable, so he rearranged them in his own fashion, and rewrote them in his own oratorical style. He soon found such work not sufficiently remunerative to keep his "petite horde" in comfort, and then turned his thoughts to employment from the French foreign either in writing or in diplomacy. He first sent Madame de Nehra to Paris to make his peace with the authorities, in which she was completely successful, and then turned himself, hoping to get employment through an old literary collaborateur of his, Durival, who was at this time director of the finances of the department of foreign affairs. One of the functions of this official was to subsidize political pamphleteers, and Mirabeau had hoped to be so employed, but he ruined his chances by a series of financial works. On his return to Paris he had become acquainted with Chaviéres, a Genevese exile, who was minister of finance during the Revolution, and who now introduced him to a banker named Panchaud. From them he heard plenty of abuse of stock-jobbing, and seizing their ideas he began to regard stock-jobbing, or agiotage, as the source of all evil, and to attack in his usual vehement style the Banque de St Charles and the Companied des Eaux. This was at least distinguished on his part, for, while his supporters were poor, the bankers he attacked were rich, and would gladly have bought his silence; but Mirabeau, though ever ready to take money for what he wrote, never sold his opinions, or wrote what he did not really believe. The very eloquence of his style rests upon the enthusiastic conviction that he himself was right, and those who differed from him were stupidly and willfully wrong. This last pamphlet brought him into a controversy with Beaumarchais, who certainly did not get the best of it, but it lost him any chance of literary employment from Government. However, his ability was too great to be neglected by a great minister such as M. de Vergennes undoubtedly was, and after a preliminary tour in the early spring of 1786 he was dispatched in June 1786 on a secret mission to the court of Prussia, from which he returned in January 1787, and of which he gave a full account in his Histoire Secréte de la Cour de Berlin. The months he spent at Berlin were important ones in the history of Prussia, for in them Frederick the Great died. The letters just mentioned show clearly what Mirabeau did and what he saw, and equally how unfit he was to be a diplomatist; for, with all his knowledge of men and his influence over them, he thought (and showed he thought) too much of himself ever to be able to surprise this secret thoughts and intentions. He certainly failed to conciliate the new king Frederick William; and thus ended Mirabeau’s one attempt at diplomacy. During his journey he had made the acquaintance of a Major Mauvillon, whom he found possessed of a great number of facts and statistics with regard to Prussia; these he made use of in a great work on Prussia published in 1799, as Romilly says, to show that he could write more than a fugitive pamphlet. But, though his Monarchie Prussienne gave him a general reputation for historical learning, he had in this same year lost a chance of political employment. He had offered himself as a candidate for the office of secretary to the Assembly of Notables which the king had just convened, and to bring his name before the public published another financial work, the Demonciation de l’Agiotage, dedicated to the king and notables, which abounded in such violent diatribes that he not only lost his election, but was obliged to retire to Tongres; and he further injured his prospects by publishing the reports he had sent in during his secret mission at Berlin. But 1789 was at hand; the states-general was summoned; Mirabeau’s period of probation was over, and he was at last to have that opportunity of showing his great qualities both as statesman and orator on a worthy arena.

On hearing of the king’s determination to summon the states-general, Mirabeau started for Provence, and offered to assist at the preliminary conference of the noblesse of his district. They rejected him; he appealed to the tiers etat, and was returned both for Aix and for Marseilles. He elected to sit for the former city, and was present at the opening of the states-general on May 4, 1789. From this time the record of Mirabeau’s life forms the best history of the firs two years of the Constituent Assembly, for at every important crisis his voice is to be heard, though his advice was not always followed. It is impossible her to detail minutely the history of these two eventful years; it will be rather advisable to try and analyse the manner in which Mirabeau regarded passing events, and then show how his policy justifies our analysis.

Mirabeau possessed at the same time great logical acuteness and most passionate enthusiasm; he was therefore both a statesman and an orator, and the interest of the last two years of life mainly in the gradual but decided victory of the statesmanlike and practical over the impulsive and oratorical qualities. From the beginning Mirabeau recognized that government exists in order that the bulk of the population may pursue their daily work in peace and quiet, and that for a Government to be successful it must be strong. In this practical view of the need of a strong executive lies one of Mirabeau’s titles to the name of statesman. At the same time he thoroughly comprehended that for a Government to be strong it must be in harmony with the wished of the majority of the people, and that he political system of Louis XIV. was now falling for lack of this. He had carefully studied the English constitution in England under the guidance of such men as Lord Lansdowne, Sir Gilbert Elliot, and Romilly, and appreciated it with the wise approval of its powers of expansion which characterized the new Whigs, and not with the blind admiration of Burke. He understood the keynotes of the practical success of the English constitution to be the irresponsibility of the king, the solidarity of the ministers, and the selection of the executive from among the majority of the representatives of the country; and he hoped to establish in France a system similar in principle, but without any slavish imitation of the details of the English constitution.

In the first stage of the history of the states-general Mirabeau’s part was very great. He was soon recognized as a leader, to the chagrin of Mounier, because he always knew his own mind, and was prompt at emergencies. To him is to be attributed the successful consolidation of the National Assembly, its continuance is spite of De Brezé and the carpenters, and the address to the king for the withdrawal of the troops assembled by De Broglie. When the taking of the Bastille had assured the success of the Revolution, he was the one man who warned the Assembly of the futility of passing fine-sounding decrees and the necessity for acting. He declared that the famous night of August 4 was but an orgy, giving the people an immense theoretical liberty while not assisting them to practical freedom, and overthrowing the old régime before a new one could be constituted. Still more did he show his foresight when he attacked the dilatory behaviour of the Assembly, which led to the catastrophes of the 5th and 6th October. He implored the Assembly to strike while the iron was hot, and at once solve in a practical manner the difficult problems presented by the abolition of feudalism. But the Assembly consisted of men inexperienced in practical politics. Who dreamed of drawing up an ideal constitution preluded by a declaration of rights in imitation of the Americans; and for two months the Assembly discussed in what words the declaration should be expressed, while the country was in a state of anarchy, declaring old laws and customs abolished and having no new ones to obey or follow, disowning the old administrative system and having no new one yet instituted, while Paris was starving and turbulent, and the queen and her friends planning a counter-revolution. The result of these two months’ theorizing was the march of the women to Versailles, and the transfer of the king to Paris. Mirabeau now saw clearly that his eloquence would not enable him to guide the Assembly by himself, and that he must therefore try to get some support. He wished to establish a strong ministry, which should be responsible like an English ministry, but to an assembly chosen to represent the people of France better than the English House of Commons the represented England. He first thought of becoming a minister at a very early date, if we may believe a strong contained in the Memoires of the Duchesse d’ Abrantes, to the effect that in May 1789 the queen tried to bride him, but that he refused to be brided to silence, and expressed his wish to be a minister. The indignation with which the queen repelled the idea may have been the cause of his thinking of the Duc d’ Orleans as a possible constitutional king, because his title would of necessity be parliamentary. But the weakness of Orleans was too palpable, and in a famous remark Mirabeau expressed his utter contempt for him. He also attempted to form an alliance with Lafayette, but the general was as vain and as obstinate as Mirabeau himself, and had his own theories about a new French constitution. Mirabeau tried for a time, too, to act with Necker, and obtained the sanction of the Assembly to Necker’s financial scheme, not because it was good, but because, as he said, "no other plan was before them, and something must be done."





Hitherto weight has been laid on the practical side of Mirabeau’s political genius; his ideas with regard to the Revolution after the 5th ad 6th October must now be examined, and this can be done at length, thanks to the publication of Mirabeau’s correspondence with La Marck, a study of which is indispensable for any correct knowledge of the history of the Revolution between 1789 and 1791. The Comte de la Marck was a Flemish lord of the house of Aremberg, who had been proprietary colonel of a regiment in the service of France; he was a close friend of the queen, and had been elected a member of the states-general. His acquaintance with Mirabeau, commenced in 1788, repined during the following year into a friendship, which La Marck hoped to turn to the advantage of the court. After the events of the 5th and 6th of October he consulted Mirabeau as to what measures the king ought to take, and Mirabeau, delighted at the opportunity, drew up an admirable state-paper, which was presented to the king by Monsieur, afterwards Louis XVIII. The whole of this Memoire should be read to get an adequate idea of Mirabeau’s genius for politics; here it must be merely summarized.

The main position if that king is not free in Paris; he must therefore leave Paris and appeal to France. "Paris n’en veut que I’argent; less provinces demandent des lois." But where must be king go? "Se retirer à Metz on sur toute autre frontiére serait déclarer la guerre à la nation et abdiquer le trône. Un roi qui est la seule sauvegarde de son people ne fuit point devant son people; il le prend pour juge de sa conduite et de ses principes." He must then go towards the interior of France to a provincial capital, best of all to Reuen, and there he must appeal to the people and summon a great convention. It would be ruin to appeal to the noblesse, as the queen advised: "un corps de noblesse n’est point une armée, qui puisee combattre." When this great convention met, the king must show himself ready to recognize that great changes have taken place, that feudalism and absolutism have for ever disappeared, and that a new relation between king and people has arisen, which must be loyalty observed as both sides for the future. "Ill est certain, d’ailleurs, qu’il faut une grande revolution pour sauver le royaume, que la nation a des droits, qu’elle est en chemin de les recourse tous, et qu’il faut non seulement les rétablir, mais les consolider." To establish this new constitutional position between king and people would not be difficult, because "I’indivisibilité du monarque et du people est dans le cœur de tous les Francais il faut qu’ elle existe dans I’action et le pouvoir."

Such was Mirabeau’s programme, which he never diverged from, but which was far too statesmanlike to be understood by the poor king, and far too positive as to the altered condition of the monarch to be palatable to the queen. Mirabeau followed up his Mémoire by a scheme of a great ministry to contain all men of mark,æ Necker as prime minister, "to render him a powerless as he is incapable, and yet preserve his popularity for the king," the archbishop of Bordeaux, the Duc de Liancourt, the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, La Marck, Talleyrand bishop of Autun at the finances, Mirabeau without portfolio, Target mayor of Paris, Lafayette generalissimo to perform the army, Ségur (foreign affairs), Mounier, and Chapelier. This scheme go noised abroad, and was ruined by a decree of the Assembly of November 7, 1789, that no member of the Assembly could become a minister; this decree destroyed any chance of that necessary harmony between the ministry and the majority of the representatives of the nation existing in England, and so at once overthrew Mirabeau’s present hopes and chance of the permanence of the constitution then being devised. The queen refused to take Mirabeau’s cousel, and La Marck left Paris. However, in April 1790 he was suddenly recalled by the Comte de Mercy-Argenteau, the Austrian ambassador at Paris, and the queen’s most trusted political adviser, and from his time to Mirabeau’s death he became the medium of almost daily communication between the latter and the queen. Mirabeau at first attempted again to make an alliance with Lafayette by a letter in which he says, "Les Barnave, les Duport, les Lameth ne vous fatiguent plus de leur active inaction; on singe longtemps I’adresse, non pas la force." But it was useless to appeal to Lafayette; he was not a strong man himself, and did not appreciate "la force" in others. From the month of May 1790 to his death in April 1791 Mirabeau remained in close and suspected but not actually proved connexion with the court, and drew up many admirable state-papers for it. In return the court paid his debts; but it ought never to be said that he was brided, for the gold of the court never made him swerve from his political principlesænever, for instance, made him a royalist. He regarded himself as a minister, though an unvowed one, and believed himself worthy of his hire. Undoubtedly his character would have been more admirable if he had acted without court assistance, but it must be remembered that his services deserved some reward, and that by remaining at Paris as a politician he had been unable to realize his paternal inheritance. Before his influence on foreign policy is discussed, his behaviour on several important points must be noticed. On the great question of the veto he took a practical view, and seeing that the royal power was already sufficiently weakened, declared for the king’s absolute veto, and against the compromise of the suspensive veto. He knew from his English experiences that such a veto would be hardly ever used unless the king felt the people were on his side, in which case it would be a useful check on the representatives of the people, and also that if it was used unjustifiably the power of the purse possessed by the representatives and the very constitutional organization of the people would, as in England in 1688, bring about a bloodless revolution, and a change in the person entrusted with the royal dignity. He saw also that much of the inefficiency of the Assembly arose from the inexperience of the members, and their incurable verbosity; so, to establish some system of rules, he got his friend Romilly to draw up a detailed account of the rules and customs of the English House of Common’s which he translated into French, but which the Assembly, puffed up by a belief in its own merits, refused to use. On the great subject of peace and war he supported the king’s authority, and with some success. What was the good of an executive which had no power? Let it be responsible to the representatives of the nation by all means; but if the representatives absorbed all executive power by perpetual interference, there would be six hundred kings of France instead of one, which would hardly be a change for the better. Again Mirabeau almost alone of the Assembly understood the position of the army under a limited monarchy. Contrary to the theorists, he held that the soldier ceased to be a citizen when he became a soldier; he must submit to be deprived of his liberty to think and act, and must recognize that a soldier’s first duty is obedience. With such sentiments, it is no wonder that he approved of Bouille’s vigorous conduct at Nancy, which was the more to his credit as Bouillé was the one hope of the court influences opposed to him. Lastly, in matters of finance he showed his wisdom; he attacked Necker’s "caisse d’escompte," which was to have the whole control of the taxes, as absorbing the Assembly’s power of the purse; and he heartily approved of the system of assignats, but with the important reservation that they should not be issued to the extent of more than one-half the value of the lands to be sold. This restriction was not observed and it was solely the enormous over-issue of assignats that caused their great depreciation in value.

Of Mirabeau’s attitude with regard to foreign affairs it is necessary to speak in more detail. He held it to be just that the French people should conduct their Revolution as they would, and that no foreign nation had any right to interfere with them, so long as they kept themselves strictly to their own affairs. But he knew also that neighbouring nations looked with unquiet eyes on the progress of affairs in France, that they feared the influence of the Revolution on their own peoples, and that foreign monarchs were being prayed by the French emigréts to interfere on behalf of the French monarchy. To prevent this interference, or rather to give no pretext for it, was his guiding thought as to foreign policy. He had been elected a member of the comité diplomatique or the Assembly in July, 1790, and became its reporter at once, and in this capacity he was able to prevent the Assembly from doing much harm in regard to foreign affairs. He had long known Montmorin, the foreign secretary, and, as became more strained from the complications with the princes and counts of the empire, he entered into daily communication with the minister, advised him on every point, and, while dictating his policy, defended it in the Assembly. Thus in this particular instance of the foreign office, for the new months before Mirabeau’s death, a harmony was established between the minister and the Assembly through Mirabeau, which checked for a time the threatened approach of foreign intervention, and maintained the honour of France abroad. Mirabeau’s exertions in this respect are not his smallest title to the name of statesman; and how great a work he did is best proved by the confusion which ensued in this department of affairs upon his death.

For indeed in the beginning of 1791 his death was very near; and he knew it to be so. The wild excesses of his youth and their terrible punishment had weakened his strong constitution, and his parliamentary labours completed the work. So surely did he feel its approach that some time before the end he sent all its papers over to his old English friend and schoolfellow Sir Gilbert Elliot, who kept them under seal until claimed by Mirabeau’s executors. In March his illness was evidently gaining on him, to his great grief, because he knew how much depended on his life, and felt that he alone could yet save France from the distrust of her monarch and the present reforms, and from the foreign interference, which would assuredly bring about catastrophes unparalleled in the history of the world. On his life hung the future course of the Revolution. Every care that science could afford was given by his friend and physician, the famous chemist Cabanis, to whose brochure on his illness and death the reader may refer. The people, whose faith in him revived in spite of all suspicious, when they heard that he was on his death-bed, kept the street in which he lay quiet; but medical care, the loving solicitude of friends, and the respect of all the people could not save his life. his vanity appears in its most gigantic proportions in his last utterances during his illness; but many of them have something grand in their sound, as his reported expression, when he looked upon the sunæ"if he is not God, he is at least His cousin-german." When he could speak no more he wrote with a feeble hand the one work "dormer," and on April 2, 1791, he died.

With Mirabeau died, it has been said, the last hope of the monarchy; but, with Marie Antoinette supreme at court, can it be said that there could never have been any real hope for the monarchy? Had she been but less like her imperious mother, Louis would have made a constitutional monarch, but her will a strong as Mirabeau’s own, and the Bourbon monarchy had to meet its fate. The subsequent events of the Revolution justified Mirabeau’s prognostications in his first mémoire of October 15, 1789. The royal family fled towards the German frontier, and from that moment there sunk deep into the hearts of the people not only of Paris, but of the provinces, a conviction that the king and queen were traitors to France, which led inevitably to their execution. The noblesse and the foreign aid on which the queen relied proved but a source of weakness. The noblesse, Mirabeau had said, was no army which could fight; and truly the army of the emigréts could do nothing against revolutionary France in arms. The intervention of foreign aid only sealed the king’s fate, and forwarded the progress of the Revolution, not in a course of natural development, but to the terrible resource of the Reign of Terror. With regard to the Assembly too, and its constitution, Mirabeau had shown his foresight. The constitution of 1791, excellent as it was on paper, and well adapted to an ideal state, did not deal adequately with the great problems of the time in France, and by its ridiculous weakening of the executive was unsuited to a modern state. Surely is events ever proved a man’s political sagacity, the history of the French Revolution proved Mirabeau’s.

A few words must be added on Mirabeau’s manner of work and his character.

No man ever so thoroughly used other men’s work, and yet made it all seem his own. "Je prends mon bien où je le trouve" is as true of him as of Molière. His first literary work, except the bombastic but eloquent Essai sur le Despotisme, was a translation of Watson’s Philip II., accomplished in Holland with the help of Durival; his Considerations sur l’ordre de Cincinnatus was based on an American pamphlet, and the notes to it were contributed by Target; while his financial writings were all suggested by Genevese exile Claviéres. During the Revolution he received yet more help; men were proud to labour for him, and did not murmur because he absorbed all the credit and fame. Dumont, Claviéres, Duroveray, Pellenc, Lamourette, and Reybaz were but a few of the most distinguished of his collaborators. Dumont was a Genevese exile, and an old friend of Romilly’s, who willingly prepared for him those famous addresses which Mirabeau used to make the Assembly pass by sudden bursts of eloquent declamation; Claviéres and Duroveray helped him in finance, and not only worked out his figures, but even wrote his financial discourses. Pellenc was his secretary, and wrote the speeches on the goods of the clergy and the right of making peace, and even the Abbé Lamourette wrote the speeches on the civil constitution of the clergy. Reybaz, whose personality has only been revealed within these last ten years, not only wrote for him famous speeches on the assignats, the organization of the national guard, &c., which Mirabeau read word for word at the tribune, but even the posthumous speech on succession to estates of intestates, which Talleyrand read in the Assembly as the last work of his dead friend. Yet neither the gold of the court nor another man’s conviction would make Mirabeau say what he did not himself believe, or do what he did not himself think right. He took other men’s labour as his due, and impressed their words, of which he had suggested the underlying ideas, with the stamp of his own individuality; his collaborators themselves did not complainæthey were but too glad to be of help in the great work of controlling and forwarding the French Revolution through its greatest thinker and orator. True is that remark of Goethe’s to Eckermann, after reading Dumont’s Souvenirs: "At last the wonderful Mirabeau becomes natural to us, while at the same time the hero loses nothing of his greatness. Some French journalists think differently . . . . The French look upon Mirabeau as their Hercules, and they are perfectly right. But they forget that even the Colossus consists of individual parts, and that the Hercules of antiquity is a collective beingæa gigantic personification of deeds done by himself and by others."

There was something gigantic about all Mirabeau’s thoughts and deeds. The excesses of his youth were beyond all bounds, and severely were they punished; his vanity was immense, but never spoilt his judgment; his talents were enormous, but could yet make use of those of others. As a statesman his wisdom is indubitable, but by no means universally recognized in his own country. Lovers of the ancient régime abuse its most formidable and logical opponent; believers in the Constituent Assembly cannot be expected to care for the most redoubtable adversary of their favourite theorists, while admirers of the republic of every description agree in calling him from his connexion with the court the traitor Mirabeau. As an orator more justice has been done him: his eloquence has been likened to that of both Bossuet and Vergniaud, but it had neither the polish of the old 17th-century bishop nor the flashes of genius of the young Girondin. It was rather parliamentary oratory in which he excelled, and his true compeers are rather Burke and Fox than any French speakers. Personally he had that which is the truest mark of nobility of mind, a power of attracting love, and winning faithful friends. "I always loved him," writes Sir Gilbert Elliot to his brother Hugh; and Romilly, who was not given to lavish praise, says, "I have no doubt that in his public conduct, as in his writings, he was desirous of doing good, that his ambition was of the noblest kind, and that he proposed to himself the noblest ends." What more favourable judgment could be passed on ambitious man! What finer epitaph could a statesman desire!

The best edition of Mirabeau’s works is that published by Blanchard in 1822, in 10 vols., of which two contain his Œuvres Oratoires; from this collection, however, many of his less important works, and the Monarchie Prussienne, in æ vols., 1788, are omitted. For his life consult Mirabeau: Mémoires sur sa vie littéraire et prixée, 4 vols., 1824, and, what is of most importance, Mémoires biographiques, littéraires, et politiques de Mirabeau ecrits par lui-même, par son pére, son oncle, et son fits adoptif, which was issued by M. Lucas de Montigny in 8 vols., Paris, 1834. See also Dumont, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, 1832; Duval, Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, 1832, Victor Hugo, Etude sur Mirabeau, 1834; Mirabeau’s Jugendleben, Breslau, 1832; Schneidewin. Mirabeau und seie Zeit, Leipsic, 1831; Mirabeau, a life History, London, 1848. The publication of the Correspondence entre Mirabeau et le Comte de la Marck, by Ad. Bacourt, 2 vols., 1851, marks an epoch in our exact knowledge of Mirabeau and his career. The most useful modern books are Louis de Loménie, Les Mirabeau, 1878, which, however, chiefly treats of his father and uncle; Ph. Plan, Un Collaborateur de Mirabeau, 1874, treating of Reybaz, and throwing infinite light on Mirabeau’s mode of work; and, lastly, H. Reynald, Mirabeau et la Constituante, 1873. On his eloquence and the share his collaborators had in his speeches, see Aulard, L’Assemblée Constituante, 1882. For his death see the curious brochure of his physician Cabanis, Journal de la maladie et de la mort de Mirabeau, Paris, 1791. (H. M. S)



The above article was written by Henry Morse Stephens, Professor of History and Director of University Extension, University of California; author of History of the French Revolution, Modern European History, Select Documents of English Constitutional History, and other historical works.