It's Hard to Accept

"It is certainly true, Your Highness the Queen, that you must be on high alert for the Marquis de La Fayette. There is certainly some truth in what the Marquis de La Fayette says, and it could even be argued that, on the whole, the things he says could be called inverted truths.

But, my liege, you must know one thing: to deceive, the truth works much better than a lie. Often times, naturally intelligent people like you, Your Majesty, always see through the lies at a glance. But the same cannot be said of the truth, which, with the right emphasis and implication, is often more deceptive than a lie. Lafayette is one such false Caesar who is good at using truth to deceive.

'Times have changed' and 'constitutional monarchy is the future', that's true. But I'm afraid Lafayette didn't mention the crucial point to you. That is a constitutional monarchy under whose auspices it really is!

Under today's constitutional monarchy, with all due respect, the king is just a hostage who is not universally respected. I'm sure Your Majesty has noticed the various newspapers in Paris, and some of the radical ones, such as the L'Ami du Peuple and things like that, are proclaiming that they want to establish a republic, that they want to put an end once and for all to the Bourbon rule over France, and to make France into a republic. And this theory has a lot of adherents in assemblies. Some moderate people have a tendency to fall back on them. This is a very terrible thing.

Why do these people make the choices they do? The reason for this is simple and that is, those thugs have demonstrated their power, and people know they have it, and they know they are willing to use it. But my sire, our king, because of his generosity, was never inclined to use his power or even to show it.

What is so awe-inspiring about a crown if a king, though he wears it, is unwilling to show his power? In many cases, Your Majesty's unwillingness to show power is almost as effective as the absence of power.

Also, on one point, Lafayette is right, which is that the current royal party is unreliable. With all due respect, my liege, as it says in Macbeth: 'The closer the blood is to ours, the more they want to drink our blood.' You must be vigilant when it comes to them - even if they are your loved ones.

But my liege, in this matter, Lafayette continued to use his usual tactics. He tells you the truth, but he never tells you the whole truth. The truth and the whole truth are quite different. The King's Party is quite different from those Republican rebels in one respect: the King's Party must depend on the King. The king has a natural authority over them. They might be able to countenance the king through various plots or even tricks like killing a man with a borrowed knife, but there was no way for them to turn their swords directly against the king. The king was their natural leader, whether some of them wanted it or not.

As for Lafayette, my wise liege, I called him 'false Caesar' because Lafayette pretended to have mastered the armies, dressing himself up as if he could command a thousand troops with just a word, just like Caesar. In fact, Lafayette's control over his army was nothing like the real Caesar's.

The real Caesar had in his hands a legion that had fought under him for a long time, and every aspect of that legion, including logistics, including the selection and promotion of officers, was decided by Caesar's word. So Caesar was able to easily drive them to do anything, including marching on Rome. But Lafayette, in his hands, had no such army; he had only what he called 'prestige'. And how can this 'prestige' be compared to the orthodox status of His Majesty the King? Nowadays, he was able to control the situation, in fact, not by his own power but by His Majesty the King's orthodox status. Only when His Majesty the King was under his control could he use it to control the French army?

Today, this 'false Caesar' is 'reforming' the army. Your Majesty, this is exactly the kind of action Lafayette intends to take to remedy his weakness. If he can control His Majesty for a long time, then he might have the day when he truly controls the army. At that point, the false Caesar can become the true Caesar. It may be true that Lafayette was sincere in his desire to realize a constitutional monarchy, but one realized in such a situation would be one that would be extremely detrimental to His Majesty the King. The continuance of any covenant depends on the mutual reverence of both parties. The Assembly has shown its power, and the King has never shown any. In such a compact, the Assembly became the party that bestowed from on high and the King, almost a beggar. Such a constitutional system is not sustainable. There will always be those in The Assembly who will try to draw attention to themselves in more extreme ways, and insulting the King will be the perfect way for them to make a spectacle of themselves. This goes on, and in the end, they ask, 'Why do we need a king?'

But that's not the case with Britain's constitutional monarchy. The British Crown has demonstrated its power in many ways, and Parliament and the King respect each other's power and thus each other's interests. That's what makes a stable, reliable constitutional monarchy.

My liege, with regard to your inquiries concerning how the crown should respond to the current situation, your humble subjects have the following suggestions.

First of all, you and His Majesty must paralyze the assembly by pretending to trust Lafayette and making obsequious appearances to them. On the other hand, you have to make His Majesty understand how dangerous the situation is today. He must make a move.

The humble servant thought that remaining in Paris would not do the king or the whole royal family any good. Therefore, as soon as the opportunity arises, the King should leave Paris for some other, safer place. In my opinion, such a place should have the following characteristics.

First, the place should be universally pro-royal and pro-orthodox.

Secondly, the place should be far from the border. This is due to several considerations. In the first place, it was to show the whole country that the king had not colluded with foreign powers, as the rascals had said in such nasty tabloids as L'Ami du Peuple; and, in the second place, it was to avoid the opportunity of making gains by some ambitious people who were mixed up in the royal party, who were not really loyal to the king, but were trying to make use of the foreign powers in order to gain more for themselves.

Considering all these considerations, I believe that Lyon would be the most suitable location.

Your faithful servant.

Honoré Gabriel Riquetti."

Honoré Gabriel Riccetti was the Speaker of the National Assembly, a staunch revolutionary, and one of the leaders of the French Revolution, the great Marquis de Mirabeau. He has always been seen as the most committed and radical revolutionary. So, if this letter of his to Queen Marie Antoinette had been seen by someone else, it would have caused an uproar. In fact, in the original history, after Mirabeau's death, his remains were honored to be buried in the Pantheon because of his contribution to the revolution. Soon after, however, the king was arrested, and people searched inside the palace for these communications between Mirabeau and the queen, only to discover that Mirabeau had actually defected to the crown. The angry crowd then pulled his body out of the Pantheon again and threw it in the garbage. (Of course, this man, who, like Louis XIV, believed in "After my death, no matter what the storm", would not have cared about such things.)

Mirabeau was a man who lived a lavish life and kept a long list of mistresses around him, so his expenses were always very high. Normal, legitimate income is not enough to support a life like his. Ever since Lafayette banished his good friend (and good purse), the Duke of Orleans, from France, Mirabeau's life has become increasingly difficult, and it is said that he has once again received a higher rate of interest on his loans from those Jews.

The King and Queen, who had become virtual prisoners in Paris after being held hostage by the National Guard, desperately needed someone with influence in the Assembly who could speak for them at this time. At this time, a scholar with whom the court had dealings, a biologist - Jean-Baptiste Lamarck - recommended his friend Mirabeau to the queen.

Lamarck was one of the earliest proposers of the theory of evolution, and in the original history, he published his Philosophy of Zoology in 1809, which introduced Lamarckian evolution. It was also the year that another flag-bearer of evolution, Charles Robert Darwin, was born in England. The two main principles of Lamarck's theory of evolution, i.e., the use of progress and regression and acquired genetics, have been largely discredited by later research, but his scholarly contributions remain indelible.

With Lamarck pulling the strings, Mirabeau, who was once again on the verge of bankruptcy, quietly got in touch with the queen. In fact, as early as last July, Mirabeau tried to contact the queen after the storming of the Bastille. But at that time, the queen still didn't even look down on such a prodigal son like Mirabeau. She rejected his offer without a care in the world as if he were just a repulsive fly.

But today, it would cost much more to buy that person off. The queen is said to have prepared four checks of 250,000 livres each for Mirabeau before she obtained his help. It was also through Mirabeau's underhanded efforts that the King's family was able to move from the Tuileries, which was closer to the center of the city and therefore more difficult to escape, to the more accessible Château de Saint-Cloud. 

"What do you think, dear, is Mirabeau right?" Queen Marie asked. But the man she called "dear" was not King Louis XVI but another Swede named Axel von Fersen. He was the son of a respected member of the Swedish House of Peers and the secret lover and true trustee of Queen Marie.

"Mirabeau is a very talented and crafty man." Fersen sighed, "But because of that, I don't know that we can trust him."

Queen Marie nodded, "You're right. Lafayette didn't have any loyalty to the king, but at least he was a man with ideals and a bottom line. But Mirabeau, he's a bad seed who deserves to go to hell! I have a really hard time believing him. And if they hadn't ... been there in the first place."

Fersen sighed, knowing that neither he nor the Queen could intellectually defeat the old fox Mirabeau. And the Queen is still holding a grudge against Mirabeau for leading the rebellion in the first place. Although everyone knew that it was not the time to pursue such matters, the resentment in their hearts was always hard to be pacified.