Pierre Philippe Mirabeau

“ General Lafayette has to wrestle persuasively with Saint-Antoine.
On one royal person only can Mirabeau place dependence--the queen. Had Mirabeau lived one other year! But man's years are numbered, and the tale of Mirabeau's is complete. The giant oaken strength of him is wasted; excess of effort, of excitement of all kinds; labour incessant, almost beyond credibility. "When I am gone," he has said, "the miseries I have held back will burst from all sides upon France." ”

“ My great table-companion enlarged upon foreign politics, and hardly spoke of politics at home, although it was the latter which occupied him; but he let fall a few words of sovereign contempt for those men who proclaim themselves superior by reason of the indifference which they affect for misfortunes and crimes. Mirabeau was by nature generous, sensible to friendship, ready to forgive injuries. Notwithstanding his immorality, he had not been able to warp his conscience; he was only corrupt for himself: his firm and upright mind did not treat murder as a sublime effort of the intelligence ”

“ There is the same burly thick-necked strength of body as of soul;—built, in both cases, on what the old Marquis calls a fond gaillard. By nature, by course of breeding, indeed by nation, Mirabeau has much more of bluster; a noisy, forward, unresting man. ”

“ The prime agitator is now but the alarmed courtier seeking shelter beneath the throne, and though still stuttering out terrible words in behalf of the nation and liberty, which are in the part set down for him, has already in his soul all the paltriness and the thoughts of vanity which are proper to a court. We pity genius when we behold it struggling with impossibility. Mirabeau was the most potent man of his time ”

“ It is the affliction of history, that, while raising her monuments to gigantic genius, she is compelled so often to record an immorality of parallel proportions. It is right that the infamy of Mirabeau should be as eternal as his greatness. He was a man who, in his political, as in his private life, had no sense of right for its own sake, and from whom conscience never won a sacrifice. ”

“ Mirabeau's education was as rough and rude as the hand of his father, who was styled the friend of man, but [Pg 4] whose restless spirit and selfish vanity rendered him the persecutor of his wife and the tyrant of all his family. The only virtue he was taught was honour, for by that name in those days they dignified that ceremonious demeanour which was too frequently but the show of probity and the elegance of vice. Entering the army at an early age, he acquired nothing of military habits except a love of licentiousness and play. ”

“ He fled to Holland, but was captured and imprisoned. Being at length liberated, he turned to literature and politics, and soon gained celebrity in both. His magnificent oratorical powers brought him rapidly to the front in the period immediately anterior to the outbreak of the Revolution. Mirabeau's "Memoirs, by Himself, his Father, his Uncle, and his Adopted Son," published in eight volumes in 1834, contain no original writings by Mirabeau himself, except in the shape of extracts from his speeches, letters, and pamphlets. ”

“ The love affairs of Mirabeau form a well-known history, owing to the celebrity of the letters to Sophie. Yet it may be asserted that until the more durable and more reputable connexion with Mme 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 marquess, his use of lettres de cachet is perfectly defensible on the theory of lettres de cachet, and Mirabeau, if any son, surely deserved such correction. ”

“ He is very industrious, well read, and has made remarkable attainments in history, mathematics, and all military science." Mirabeau came stalking across the room, lured by curiosity to see what could be the source of the general attraction. "Come here! come here!" said Madame de Staël, with a smile, and in an under tone. "We have found a little great man. I will introduce him to you, for I know that you are fond of men of genius."
Mirabeau very graciously shook hands with Napoleon, and entered into conversation with the untitled young man, without assuming any airs of superiority. ”

“ Cannot Mirabeau stop; cannot he fly, and save himself alive? No! there is a Nessus-Shirt on this Hercules; he must storm and burn there, without rest, till he be consumed. Human strength, never so Herculean, has its measure. Herald shadows flit pale across the fire-brain of Mirabeau; heralds of the pale repose. While he tosses and storms, straining every nerve, in that sea of ambition and confusion, there comes, sombre and still, a monition that for him the issue of it will be swift death.
In January last, you might see him as President of the Assembly ”

“ This debate was the last in which the dramatic side of Mirabeau’s oratorical talent was fully shown. Labours, excesses of every kind, had at last worn out his robust constitution. It was said that poison had been administered to him; but he was the author of his own destruction. The very day after his not-too-creditable understanding with the court he rushed into expenditure of every sort, so that one of his best friends could not help saying: “Mirabeau is badly advised in making such a display of his opulence. He must be afraid of passing for an honest man.” ”

“ Mirabeau was averse to renouncing his country; again and again he applied by letters, written either by himself or mediating friends, to his father, who at last replied, that he renounced having any thing to do with him—told him that no country was so foreign to him as his own; and, banishing him for ever from his family, dissolved all natural and social ties that still held his son to France. ”

“ Mirabeau alone preserved his presence of mind in the midst of this ruin. His character of tribune ceases, that of the statesman begins, and in this he is even greater than in the other. There, when all else creep and crawl, he acts with firmness, advancing boldly. The Revolution in his brain is no longer a momentary idea—it is a settled plan. The philosophy of the eighteenth century, moderated by the prudence of policy, flows easily, and modelled from his lips. His eloquence, imperative as the law, is now the talent of giving force to reason. ”

“ But, when he felt the sure approach of death, he was eager to have them around, and talking with them, holding their hands, and looking affectionately on them, found deep enjoyment in the consciousness of their sympathy and love. Already he spoke of himself as dead—with great reluctance he allowed another medical man to be called in, whose remedies proving ineffectual, Mirabeau said, "You are a great physician, but there is one greater than you; he who created the wind that destroys all—the water that penetrates and produces all—the fire that vivifies or decomposes all." ”

“ It is idle to enquire whether this or any of Mirabeau's busy schemes could have succeeded, and whether even his ability could have driven into one groove of public advantage the Revolution and the Court. It is equally idle to pretend, that, because he laboured to save the Monarchy, he must have been a traitor to freedom, or to rail, as some have railed, against the democrat bought over by the King. Mirabeau never labelled himself with names of uncertain meaning, and he was never bought. He exerted himself to make the Revolution triumphant, because he believed in freedom. ”

“ It will easily be imagined, then, that Mirabeau, who was gifted with brilliant natural qualities, cultivated and polished by education—a man, moreover, who had seen much of the world, and had been engaged in several strange and perilous adventures—occupied the most conspicuous post in this society, many of the component members whereof seemed to have barely reached the first degrees in the scale of civilization. ”

“ Whether Mirabeau could have ever succeeded in saving the monarchy and founding it anew is to this day a subject of dispute. Some will have it that he died too soon, while others think he died a timely death. He did not die of poison, for the aristocracy just then had need of him. Men of the people do not poison; the deadly cup belongs to old-fashioned tragedies of palaces. Mirabeau died because he had enjoyed an hour before two dancing-girls, Mesdemoiselles Helisberg and Colombe, and a paté de foie gras aux truffes. ”

“ But, instead of skimming the surface of democracy, and of filling his brain with theories which could not fit with facts, Mirabeau had tried to understand the new science, and had realised that it was the task of a statesman not to advertise theories, but to apply them. Politics were not to him merely a stage for strayed enthusiasms, but rather the business of conducting government, so as to redress the wrongs from which the men around him suffered, and to give them the opportunity of living in future with satisfaction and self-respect. ”

“ MIRABEAU, VICTOR RIQUETI, Marquis de (1715–1789) , French author and political economist, father of the great Mirabeau, was born at Pertuis, near the old château de Mirabeau, on the 4th of October 1715. He was brought up very sternly by his father, and in 1728 joined the army. He took keenly to campaigning, but never rose above the rank of captain, owing to his being unable to get leave at court to buy a regiment. ”

“ It shows, though in 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 and as a statesman.
With his release from Vincennes (August 1782) begins the second period of Mirabeau’s life. He found that his Sophie was an idealized version of a rather common and ill-educated woman, and she consoled herself with the affection of a young officer, after whose death she committed suicide. ”

“ I am convinced that all mankind are upon an equal footing; and to give you an unquestionable proof that I am in earnest, here is a sensible, civil, well-behaved fellow-citizen—your footman; I beg that he may be allowed to sit down and dine with us. I thus, sir, showed her the absurdity of the levelling doctrine. She has never liked me since.' So Count Mirabeau was unable to tolerate his own theory of equality. Returning one day from the assembly in which he had pressed that doctrine with great power, he ordered and entered a warm bath. ”

“ His first hero is Mirabeau, a man of energy enough doubtless, and who had, in a most remarkable degree, that force of character which gives not only influence over, but a sort of possession of, other men's minds, though they may claim far higher intellectual endowments. ”

“ 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 while 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 emigrés to interfere on behalf of the French monarchy. ”

“ As extempore speaking was a new art, and the ablest men read their speeches, Mirabeau was at once an effective debater—probably the best debater, though not the most perfect orator, that has appeared in the splendid record of parliamentary life in France. His father was one of the most conspicuous economists, and he inherited their belief in a popular and active monarchy, and their preference for a single chamber. ”

“ Out of an isolation like that it was that Gabriel Riquetti had taught him to believe men achieve their greatest successes. You must first of all feel yourself alone, all alone in life, ere you can experience that liberty that ensures free action.
This was one of his axioms which he loved to repeat; and whether suggested by the scene where he had first met that wonderful man, or merely induced by the course of reflection, many of Mirabeau’s early teachings and precepts rose to his memory as he journeyed along. ”

“ Had he lived, he could not have arrested the tide of revolutionary excesses and the reign of demagogues, and probably would have been one of the victims of the guillotine.
As an author Mirabeau does not rank high. His fame rests on his speeches. His eloquence was transcendent, so far as it was rendered vivid by passion. He knew how to move men; he understood human nature. No orator ever did so much by a single word, by felicitous expressions. In the tribune he was immovable. His self-possession never left him in the greatest disorders. He was always master of himself. ”

“ A fall is only majestic when accompanied by virtue.
Poets say that clouds assume the form of the countries over which they have passed, and moulding themselves upon the valleys, plains, or mountains, acquire their shapes and move with them over the skies. This resembles certain men, whose genius being as it were acquisitive, models itself upon the epoch in which it lives, and assumes all the individuality of the nation to which it belongs. Mirabeau was a man of this class: he did not invent the Revolution, but was its manifestation. ”

“ A long-tried friend, who was also a friend of the government and of the nobility, had seen this look of hatred and anger which Mirabeau had cast upon the gallery of the aristocrats; he now approached Mirabeau to salute him, and perhaps to pave a way of reconciliation between the prodigal Count de Mirabeau and his associates in rank.
“Think,” said he, “my friend, that society is not to be won by threats, but by flatteries; that, when once injured, it is difficult to effect a reconciliation. ”