The
Church had not only been robbed of her property but had been wounded in
her tenderest part. By a decree of June 12, 1790, the Assembly
transferred the allegiance of the French clergy from the Pope to the
state, and the priesthood everywhere vowed revenge. In May, 1791, the
Marquis de la Rouerie, it is true, journeyed from his home in Brittany
to Germany to obtain the recognition of the royal princes for the
insurrection which he contemplated in La Vendee, but the insurrection
when it occurred was not due so much to him or his kind as to the
influence of the nonjuring priests upon the peasant women of the West.
The mental condition of the French emigrants at Coblentz during this
summer of 1791 is nothing short of a psychological marvel. They regarded
the Revolution as a jest, and the flight to the Rhine as a picnic. These
beggared aristocrats, male and female, would throw their money away by
day among the wondering natives, and gamble among themselves at night.
If they ever thought of the future it was only as the patricians in
Pompey's camp thought; who had no time to prepare for a campaign against
Caesar, because they were absorbed in distributing offices among
themselves, or in inventing torments to inflict on the rebels.
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