A National Guard, a new army of two hundred thousand citizen soldiers, was authorized and formed by the National Assembly, both for the protection of the rights of the people at home and for resistance to possible foreign aggression. Lafayette, now thirty-two years of age, was chosen its commander-in-chief. Thus was born democracy in France.
A foreign peasant, from a land of despotic autocracy, who had just immigrated to the United States, was once haled into one of our police courts, charged with almost murdering his wife with a club. His defense was that he now was in a land of liberty and he thought he could do what he liked. Multiply this by a million-fold and you have the Reign of Terror, the second chapter of the French Revolution.
"_Aimez les amis du peuple et l'enthousiasme pour la liberté, mais réservez l'aveugle soumission pour la loi_," said Lafayette to the Federation of National Guards. The atrocities, both at the storming of the Bastile and afterward, he would not countenance, and on more than one occasion, at the head of his armed troops, he enforced law and order. Finally, Austria and Prussia declared war upon France, and Lafayette was sent from Paris and at the head of a French army of twenty-eight thousand men was stationed at Sedan.
It was inevitable that he and the Jacobins, the leaders in the mad orgy of debauched democracy that succeeded the initial stages of the revolution, should soon split. For a long time the Jacobins had seemed to shrink from a contest with him, probably because they hoped to win him over to their excesses. Finding him inflexible, when at last they controlled the government, they vowed his destruction, and he was deprived of his command. They proposed that a price should be set upon his head and that "_chaque citoyen pût courir sus_"--that is to say, that any one who pleased might murder him.
Deprived of his command, and with destruction awaiting him in the rear, his only resource was flight. Even then he hesitated, but reason prevailed and on a dark and rainy night, with a few companions on horseback, he started for Holland. To get there he had to pass through territory occupied by the Austrian and Prussian troops. Facing the almost certain chance of falling in with a superior force, he determined to make a bold front, and went directly to the Austrian commander at Namur, declaring that he was a French officer attached to constitutional measures and seeking an asylum in Holland. Instead of being given a passport, he was, when recognized, detained, given over to a Prussian commander, sent in a cart to Wesel on the Rhine and there put in a cell in irons. It was then intimated to him that the burden of the situation would be lightened if he would draw up certain plans to be used against France. The Prussians, finding that he would not do this, instead of treating him as a prisoner of war threw him into a dungeon at Magdebourg. His estate at home was confiscated and his wife imprisoned. After a year's imprisonment at Magdebourg in a dirty and humid vault he was transferred by the Prussians from one dungeon to another, and at last confined in the Austrian citadel of Olmutz.