# Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy/Chapter Four

​Gouverneur Morris Takes a Hand in the French Revolution—His Memorandum to the King—The Man from Home Plans the Escape of Marie Antoinette—The Affair of the King's Money and Papers—Coaching a Despot to Play Republican—The Embassy a Haven for Condemned Aristos—Invaded by the Commune—The Minister Arrested—All the Ambassadors Leave—"Better My Friends Should Wonder Why I Stay Than My Enemies Inquire Why I Went Away"—Morris Stands by His Post of Danger—The King's Legacy Delivered in Vienna.
"Went to court this morning," reads the ancient diary of an American gentleman. "Nothing remarkable, only they were up all night, expecting to be murdered."
Not an unreasonable expectation either, that fatal summer of 1792, when bloody revolution ran riot through the streets of Paris, and the ​guillotine worked overtime to prove the equality of men. Some Americans still harbour the belief that the berth of the American diplomat is a sinecure. The opinion is prevalent among the smart dilettanti at home, that he lacks polish and power to deal with the corps of trained statesmen at the seats of the mighty. It is a safe guess that they never knew the part played by Gouverneur Morris at the most magnificent court in the world—that they never heard of the confidence and dependence placed upon the shoulders of the diplomat from Harlem when hell broke loose in Versailles and the mighty house of Bourbon, the seat of all splendour, glory, and power began to fall.
Under the savage attacks of the rising terror, ministers and cabinets fell in a day, and craven flight or the knife severed the hosts of false friends or staunch adherents from the side of King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, darling of the romancers. And so it came that the last of the great feudal kings was sorely in need of an honest man, a keen counsellor, and ​a fearless friend. What did he know of insurgents—but to shoot them down? Or of the hearts and desires and wills of men—he who had fondly believed himself to be the state? (A delusion still prevalent in certain quarters.)
An assembly of lunatics, in national conclave, demanded a constitution. The Secretary for Foreign Affairs, the Comte de Montmorin de Saint-Hérem, repaired in haste to No. 488 Rue de la Planche, Faubourg, St. Germain. "Your Excellency, the American Minister, what is this demand for a constitution? Pray what is His Majesty to do about this?"
Wise Majesty to ask. The humorous and sturdy American, veteran of revolutions, dictated a memorandum. He also dictated a speech to be made by the King. It is not at all impossible that Carlyle would never have had occasion to write his immortal record, or the Scarlet Pimpernel to rescue the fair daughters of the ancient nobility from the fury of Robespierre, if the King had made use of Morris's document.
​But the Minister did not deliver it until too late. His regret is a matter of record. The party of assassination began mobilizing its brigands by the walls of Paris.
On the 17th day of July there was a brilliant dinner party at the embassy. The foreign ambassadors were there, and the Comte de Montmorin. The old diary says:
"In the evening M. de Montmorin takes me into the garden to communicate the situation of things and ask my opinion. I tell him that I think the King should quit Paris. He thinks otherwise, and fosters a thousand empty hopes and vain expectations."
And at this point the American took a hand in the game. The King's situation was more desperate than any situation in melodrama. In this dilemma he turned to Gouverneur Morris.
Among the obscure characters drawn into the councils of state by the mad political whirlwind was a M. Terrier de Monciel, whose associations were largely revolutionary. But ​Morris knew his man—and in this dire extremity recommended the proud Bourbon to put his fate in de Monciel's hands. And then these two, Morris and de Monciel, called into council the hot-headed and rampant Étienne Brémond, docteur de la Sorbonne, and began, Richard Harding Davis fashion, to meddle with destiny, and to try to rewrite the tragedy.
The crazy mob broke into the palace of the Tuileries and hazed the distracted King. He donned the red cap of insurrection, waved his wooden sword, and cheered his tormentors. There was no time to be lost, so Gouverneur Morris devised a plan. The King and the Queen were to make an escape. The Swiss Guard—that faithful and formidable company—left Courbevoie to cover the retreat. The route was planned to the last detail through the forest of Ardennes and the principality of Beaumont.
In camp there lay the Marquis de Lafayette, known to the Minister of old, reliable as Ajax.
The vacillation and inherited perversity of ​the doomed King led him to hesitate until the right moment had passed, and the plot was revealed. So the ministers turned back to the arts of statecraft in an endeavour to turn the tide. And it is interesting to observe that in this most critical time of all French history, it was to the American Minister they turned for advice.
On the 22d of July the King asked whether Morris would take charge of the royal papers and the royal money, and on the 24th, de Monciel appeared at the embassy with 547,000 livres. Years afterward in Vienna the ambassador handed a portion of this sum to the Duchesse d'Angoulême—all that was left of the princely inheritance of the Bourbon dynasty to the daughter of Louis XVI.
By this time the King had become hardly more than a figurehead, a prisoner in his own palace. The Revolutionists had their minions in the cabinet, their brigands in the street, and their spies at every keyhole. At the risk of his life, Morris, at this juncture, undertook the ​impossible task of coaching the hereditary despot to play the republican—the mind moulded in the form of arbitrary will to adopt the wiles of the politician and the forms of democratic cajolery and practice so familiar to the authors of the American Revolution. He sat up nights with the King's counsellors—de Montmorin, Bertrand de Moleville, de Monciel, and Brémond—framing speeches and measures with which to feed the Assembly and the Marseillais; letters to be written by the hidebound monarch to his captains and the Provinces—state documents which in other hands perhaps might have saved a kingdom.
It was of no avail. The expected explosion came on the 10th of August—and the constitutional and inevitable hesitation of the royal pigmy resulted in his deserting his own staunch defenders to be sacked with his castle, and himself to be seized and condemned to death.
This left Paris and France at the mercy of a mob-rule whose frightfulness has become a byword for all time. No man's life was worth ​a song. Where kings are killed and beautiful young queens murdered, what chance for an alien and hostile ambassador?
It was at this juncture that Morris established the precedent and tradition of staying by his diplomatic post in time of danger, which has since been the infallible custom of the service—and particularly in Paris. His house became a centre of suspicion—and not without warrant, from the Jacobin point of view. He gave refuge there to aristos in distress, hiding for their lives. Armed men of the Commune invaded his house; he was arrested in the city on the most paltry excuses, and held up on any journey beyond the walls. It was a desperate and dangerous situation. In the end every European ambassador and minister left the accursed city, and the Stars and Stripes alone floated beside the tricolour in Paris. Morris's papers give some idea of his state of mind. He tells of his good-bye visit to the British Ambassador:
"The Venetian Ambassador has been ​brought back and very ignominiously treated; even his papers examined, as it is said, by him. They (he and the British Ambassador) can't get passports. He is in a tearing passion. He has burned his papers, which I will not do."
To Thomas Jefferson he writes:
"The different ambassadors are all taking flight, and if I stay I shall be alone. I mean, however, to stay. * * * It is true that the position is not without danger, but I presume that when the President did me the honour of naming me to this embassy it was not for my personal pleasure or safety, but to promote the interests of my country."
A letter to his brother, General Morris, in London, says:
"The date of this letter will show you that I did not, as you hoped, abandon my post, which is not always a very proper conduct. * * * You are right in the idea that Paris is a dangerous residence. But it is better that my friends should wonder why I stay than my enemies inquire why I went away."
​This sturdy example of Morris was followed by Elihu B. Washburne, Minister to France, at the time of the siege of Paris by the Prussians, and again by Myron T. Herrick when the official exodus from the French capital began to the tune of Von Kluck's guns in August, 1914. These last two faithful performances have become a part of that peculiar tradition of good will and affection between the French and the Americans which has always held the imaginations of the populace, even at times when the diplomats were pulling at the greatest odds.