8 Charles Kuhlmann 



beau not only contradicted his own precedents, but acted squarely 

 contrary to what his plans at the time seemed to require. 



The explanation for this apparently inconsistent course is to be 

 found in a more exact determination of the real convictions of 

 Mirabeau with reference to Lafayette. There is very good reason 

 to believe that many of his strictures on Lafayette were not made 

 in good faith. At the Jacobins he fell in with the prevailing cry 

 because it would strengthen his position in the society and enable 

 him to carry on his campaign against the Lameths to better advan- 

 tage. In spite of all the anathemas Mirabeau heaped upon Lafay- 

 ette in his letters to the court, he did not really fear him as a 

 military dictator, for of the guards he expressly stated that they 

 were not numerous enough to hold out against a revolutionary 

 uprising and not sufficiently disciplined or not sufficiently attached 

 to their commander to make them a ready instrument in his hands. 

 He recognized merely the fact that Lafayette's command of the 

 guards inspired fear at court and that he was strong enough to 

 circumscribe the movements of the king upon whose conduct he 

 thus exercised a pernicious influence.^" Upon the whole, how- 

 ever, Lafayette was to be feared only so long as he acted with the 

 military under his control. In his first note to the court, dated 

 June I, 1790, Mirabeau goes into this subject fundamentally and 

 concludes that Lafayette's power rested exclusively upon Paris 

 and the guards of Paris. The capital, notoriously the most turbu- 

 lent and radically revolutionary of any part of the kingdom, domi- 

 nated Lafayette who would in every instance be constrained to 

 follow its lead and in that way become its instrument in subjecting 

 the executive and the rest of France to its control. Then Mira- 

 beau asked : 



What does it mean, therefore, to give the ministry to M. de Lafayette? 

 It would mean that the whole kingdom would be forced to act in unison 

 with Paris, whereas the sole means of safety is to bring Paris back (to 

 sanity) by means of the kingdom. It would mean that M. de Lafayette, 

 joining to his own resources all the influence of the executive power. 



Haleni. Paris, 1896. Letter of Halem of Nov. 12, 1790. Halem was pres- 

 ent at this session. 

 " Forty-seventh note to the court. Bacourt, II, 414 ff. 



