The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Volume 3 by Fanny Burney
page 22 of 791 (02%)
page 22 of 791 (02%)
|
pervading all France, suddenly rushed into his closet, upon the
privilege of being one of the five or seven pairs de France(12) who have that licence, and, with a strong and forcible eloquence, declared nothing but his concession would save the nation from a civil war; while his entering, unarmed, into the National Assembly, would make him regarded for ever as the father and saviour of his people, and secure him the powerful sovereignty of the grateful hearts of all his subjects. He succeeded, and the rest is public. This incident has set all the Coblenz(13) party utterly and for ever against the duke. He had been some time in extreme anguish for the unhappy king, whose ill-treatment on the 20th of June 1792,(14) reached him while commandant at Rouen. He then first began to see, that the monarch or the jacobins must inevitably fall, and he could scarce support the prospect of ultimate danger threatening the former. When the news reached him of the bloody 10th of August, a plan which for some time he had been forming, of gaining over his regiment to the service of the king, was rendered abortive. Yet all his officers except One had promised to join in any enterprise for their insulted master. He had hoped to get the king to Page 20 Rouen under this protection, as I gather, though this matter has never wholly transpired, But the king could not be persuaded to trust any one. How should he?--especially a revolutionnaire? |
|