nsurmountable by
any means which he could command in his own country. As has been already
seen, he had had no hesitation in yielding up his own prerogatives, and in
making any concessions or surrenders which the Assembly required, so long
as they touched nothing but his own authority. He had even (which was a
far greater sacrifice in his eyes) sanctioned the votes which had deprived
the Church of its property; but, in the course of the autumn the Assembly
passed other measures also, which appeared to him absolutely inconsistent
with religion. They framed a new ecclesiastical constitution which not
only reduced the number of bishops (which, indeed, in France, as in all
other Roman Catholic countries, had been unreasonably excessive), but
which also vested the whole patronage of the Church in the municipal
authorities, and generally subordinated the Church to the civil law. And
having completed these arrangements, which to a conscientious Roman
Catholic bore the character of sacrilege, they required the whole body of
the clergy to accept them, and to take an oath to observe them faithfully.

Louis was in a great strait. Many of the chief prelates appealed to him
for protection, which he thought his duty as a Christian man bound him to
afford them. But the protection which they implored could only be given by
refusal of the royal assent to the bill. And he could not disguise from
himself that such an exercise of his veto would furnish a pretext to his
enemies for more violent denunciations of himself and the queen than had
yet been heard. He had also, though his personal safety was at all times
very slightly regarded by him, begun to feel himself a prisoner, at the
mercy of his enemies. La Fayette, as Commander-in-chief of the National
Guard of Paris, had the protection of the royal palace intrusted to him;
and he availed himself of this charge, not as the guardian of the royal
family, but rather as their jailer,[1] placing his sentries so as to be
spies and a restraint upon all their movements, and seeking every
opportunity to gain an ignoble popularity by an ostentatious disregard of
all their wishes, and of all courtesy, not to say decency, in his behavior
to them.[2] And these considerations led the king, not only to authorize
the Baron de Breteuil, who, as we have seen, had fled from the country in
the previous year, to treat with any foreign princes who might he willing
to exert themselves in his cause, but even to wri