402 Chapter XVII
family, her husband, and the world lay in a resounding ultimatum that might re-
strain the fury of the Parisians until help arrived.
At Mainz therefore a menacing announcement was drawn up. The two rulers
decided not to issue it in their own names, but to have it signed by their military
commander, the Duke of Brunswick. Readers of the preceding volume may recall,
as more than a historical curiosity, that this same Duke of Brunswick had issued a
manifesto to the city of Amsterdam five years before. At that time the Prussian
forces had pushed through to Amsterdam without difficulty, and the Dutch Pa-
triot revolution had been stamped out.
The Brunswick Manifesto was addressed to the city of Paris—just as Counter-
Revolutionary Russian troops were entering the city of Warsaw. It invited all good
Frenchmen to return to their “former fidelity,” and required “the city of Paris and
all its inhabitants, without distinction... to submit at once and without delay to
the king.” “If any force or insult is used against the Palace of the Tuileries, if the
least violence or the least outrage is done to Their Majesties.. .” the Allied Powers
would “exact an exemplary and forever memorable vengeance by delivering the city
of Paris to military execution and total subversion, and the rebels who are guilty of
such outrages to the punishments they will have deserved.” No one knew exactly
what “military execution and total subversion” might mean, but the words had an
ominous sound. Thousands of copies of the Manifesto were printed and circulated
in all directions. Switzerland was “inundated with copies,” according to a report
from the French minister early in August, and on August 3 the text was published
in the Paris Moniteur.^1
Paris still had newspapers of every political stripe, and those hostile to the Rev-
olution expressed hearty joy. One predicted the return of the émigrés within the
month. Another announced that patriots would soon be chained in pairs to sweep
the streets, under German overseers being trained for the purpose. Marie Antoi-
nette received word to prepare rooms at the Tuileries for the Duke of Brunswick,
and to be thinking about a list of suitable cabinet ministers for her husband under
the new conditions. Calonne, as “prime minister of the emigration,” began to ar-
range the collection of taxes in France to support a restored royal regime. Members
of the former parlements who had emigrated prepared to annul the actions of the
Revolutionary assemblies. The abbé Maury rejoiced that “armed force will de-
cide.... The problem will soon be resolved.”^2
The Paris thus ordered into submissiveness by an international ultimatum, a
royalist and aristocratic pronouncement largely inspired by the French queen, was
the city that had just celebrated the Federation of July 14. It was full of fédérés, or
high- pressure patriots sent in from the departments. Parading about the streets,
falling into tavern brawls with aristocrats, sitting in at meetings of the patriotic
1 For the text of the Manifesto see the Moniteur, August 3. The role of Fersen and Marie Antoi-
nette, though generally known, is clarified and emphasized in a doctoral dissertation at Princeton
University by H. A. Barton, “Count Axel von Fersen: a Political Biography to 1800.” See also Del-
beke, “Le Manifeste de Brunswick,” in La franc- maçonnerie et la Révolution française et autres essais sur
le dix- huitième siècle (Antwerp, 1938), 97–136. For circulation in Switzerland see J. B. Kaulek, Papiers
de Barthélemy, ambassadeur français en Suisse 1792–97, 6 vols. (Paris, 1886–1910), I, 233.
2 A. Mathiez, Le Dix- août (Paris, 1931), 68–69; Maury, Mémoires, I, 93.