Broglie the War-God.
The Court feels indignant that it is conquered; but what then?
Another time it will do better. Mercury descended in vain; now
has the time come for Mars.—The gods of the Œil-de-Bœuf have
withdrawn into the darkness of their cloudy Ida; and sit there,
shaping and forging what may be needful, be it “billets of a new
National Bank,” munitions of war, or things forever inscrutable
to men.
Accordingly, what means this “apparatus of troops”? The National
Assembly can get no furtherance for its Committee of
Subsistences; can hear only that, at Paris, the Bakers’ shops are
besieged; that, in the Provinces, people are living on
“meal-husks and boiled grass.” But on all highways there hover
dust-clouds, with the march of regiments, with the trailing of
cannon: foreign Pandours, of fierce aspect; Salis-Samade,
Esterhazy, Royal-Allemand; so many of them foreign, to the number
of thirty thousand,—which fear can magnify to fifty: all wending
towards Paris and Versailles! Already, on the heights of
Montmartre, is a digging and delving; too like a scarping and
trenching. The effluence of Paris is arrested Versailles-ward by
a barrier of cannon at Sèvres Bridge. From the Queen’s Mews,
cannon stand pointed on the National Assembly Hall itself. The
National Assembly has its very slumbers broken by the tramp of
soldiery, swarming and defiling, endless, or seemingly endless,
all round those spaces, at dead of night, “without drum-music,
without audible word of command.”[160] What means it?
Shall eight, or even shall twelve Deputies, our Mirabeaus,
Barnaves at the head of them, be whirled suddenly to the Castle
of Ham; the rest ignominiously dispersed to the winds? No
National Assembly can make the Constitution with cannon levelled
on it from the Queen’s Mews! What means this reticence of the
Œil-de-Bœuf, broken only by nods and shrugs? In the mystery of
that cloudy Ida, what is it that they forge and shape?—Such
questions must distracted Patriotism keep asking, and receive no
answer but an echo.
Enough of themselves! But now, above all, while the hungry
food-year, which runs from August to August, is getting older;
becoming more and more a famine-year? With “meal-husks and boiled
grass,” Brigands may actually collect; and, in crowds, at farm
and mansion, howl angrily, _Food! Food!_ It is in vain to send
soldiers against them: at sight of soldiers they disperse, they
vanish as under ground; then directly reassemble elsewhere for
new tumult and plunder. Frightful enough to look upon; but what
to _hear_ of, reverberated through Twenty-five Millions of
suspicious minds! Brigands and Broglie, open Conflagration,
preternatural Rumour are driving mad most hearts in France. What
will the issue of these things be?
At Marseilles, many weeks ago, the Townsmen have taken arms; for
“suppressing of Brigands,” and other purposes: the military
commandant may make of it what he will. Elsewhere, everywhere,
could not the like be done? Dubious, on the distracted Patriot
imagination, wavers, as a last deliverance, some foreshadow of a
_National Guard_. But conceive, above all, the Wooden Tent in the
Palais Royal! A universal hubbub there, as of dissolving worlds:
their loudest bellows the mad, mad-making voice of Rumour; their
sharpest gazes Suspicion into the pale dim World-Whirlpool;
discerning shapes and phantasms; imminent bloodthirsty Regiments
camped on the Champ-de-Mars; dispersed National Assembly; redhot
cannon-balls (to burn Paris);—the mad War-god and Bellona’s
sounding thongs. To the calmest man it is becoming too plain that
battle is inevitable.
Inevitable, silently nod Messeigneurs and Broglie: Inevitable and
brief! Your National Assembly, stopped short in its
Constitutional labours, may fatigue the royal ear with addresses
and remonstrances: those cannon of ours stand duly levelled;
those troops are here. The King’s Declaration, with its
Thirty-five too generous Articles, was spoken, was not listened
to; but remains yet unrevoked: he himself shall effect it, _seul
il fera!_
As for Broglie, he has his headquarters at Versailles, all as in
a seat of war: clerks writing; significant staff-officers,
inclined to taciturnity; plumed aides-de-camp, scouts, orderlies
flying or hovering. He himself looks forth, important,
impenetrable; listens to Besenval Commandant of Paris, and his
warning and earnest counsels (for he has come out repeatedly on
purpose), with a silent smile.[161] The Parisians resist?
scornfully cry Messeigneurs. As a meal-mob may! They have sat
quiet, these five generations, submitting to all. Their Mercier
declared, in these very years, that a Parisian revolt was
henceforth “impossible.”[162] Stand by the royal Declaration, of
the Twenty-third of June. The Nobles of France, valorous,
chivalrous as of old, will rally round us with one heart;—and as
for this which you call Third Estate, and which we call
_canaille_ of unwashed Sansculottes, of Patelins, Scribblers,
factious Spouters,—brave Broglie, “with a whiff of grapeshot
(_salve de canons_),” if need be, will give quick account of it.
Thus reason they: on their cloudy Ida; hidden from men,—men also
hidden from them.
Good is grapeshot, Messeigneurs, on one condition: that the
shooter also were made of metal! But unfortunately he is made of
flesh; under his buffs and bandoleers your hired shooter has
instincts, feelings, even a kind of thought. It is his kindred,
bone of his bone, this same _canaille_ that shall be whiffed; he
has brothers in it, a father and mother,—living on meal-husks and
boiled grass. His very doxy, not yet “dead i’ the spital,” drives
him into military heterodoxy; declares that if he shed Patriot
blood, he shall be accursed among men. The soldier, who has seen
his pay stolen by rapacious Foulons, his blood wasted by
Soubises, Pompadours, and the gates of promotion shut inexorably
on him if he were not born noble,—is himself not without griefs
against you. Your cause is not the soldier’s cause; but, as would
seem, your own only, and no other god’s nor man’s.
For example, the world may have heard how, at Bethune lately,
when there rose some “riot about grains,” of which sort there are
so many, and the soldiers stood drawn out, and the word “Fire!
was given,—not a trigger stirred; only the butts of all muskets
rattled angrily against the ground; and the soldiers stood
glooming, with a mixed expression of countenance;—till clutched
“each under the arm of a patriot householder,” they were all
hurried off, in this manner, to be treated and caressed, and have
their pay increased by subscription![163]
Neither have the Gardes Françaises, the best regiment of the
line, shown any promptitude for street-firing lately. They
returned grumbling from Réveillon’s; and have not burnt a single
cartridge since; nay, as we saw, not even when bid. A dangerous
humour dwells in these Gardes. Notable men too, in their way!
Valadi the Pythagorean was, at one time, an officer of theirs.
Nay, in the ranks, under the three-cornered felt and cockade,
what hard heads may there not be, and reflections going
on,—unknown to the public! One head of the hardest we do now
discern there: on the shoulders of a certain Sergeant Hoche.
Lazare Hoche, that is the name of him; he used to be about the
Versailles Royal Stables, nephew of a poor herbwoman; a handy
lad; exceedingly addicted to reading. He is now Sergeant Hoche,
and can rise no farther: he lays out his pay in rushlights, and
cheap editions of books.[164]
On the whole, the best seems to be: Consign these Gardes
Françaises to their Barracks. So Besenval thinks, and orders.
Consigned to their barracks, the Gardes Françaises do but form a
“Secret Association,” an Engagement not to act against the
National Assembly. Debauched by Valadi the Pythagorean; debauched
by money and women! cry Besenval and innumerable others.
Debauched by what you will, or in need of no debauching, behold
them, long files of them, their consignment broken, arrive,
headed by their Sergeants, on the 26th day of June, at the Palais
Royal! Welcomed with vivats, with presents, and a pledge of
patriot liquor; embracing and embraced; declaring in words that
the cause of France is their cause! Next day and the following
days the like. What is singular too, except this patriot humour,
and breaking of their consignment, they behave otherwise with
“the most rigorous accuracy.”[165]
They are growing questionable, these Gardes! Eleven ring-leaders
of them are put in the Abbaye Prison. It boots not in the least.
The imprisoned Eleven have only, “by the hand of an individual,”
to drop, towards nightfall, a line in the Café de Foy; where
Patriotism harangues loudest on its table. “Two hundred young
persons, soon waxing to four thousand,” with fit crowbars, roll
towards the Abbaye; smite asunder the needful doors; and bear out
their Eleven, with other military victims:—to supper in the
Palais Royal Garden; to board, and lodging “in campbeds, in the
_Théâtre des Variétés;_” other national _Prytaneum_ as yet not
being in readiness. Most deliberate! Nay so punctual were these
young persons, that finding one military victim to have been
imprisoned for real civil crime, they returned him to his cell,
with protest.
Why new military force was not called out? New military force was
called out. New military force did arrive, full gallop, with
drawn sabre: but the people gently “laid hold of their bridles;”
the dragoons sheathed their swords; lifted their caps by way of
salute, and sat like mere statues of dragoons,—except indeed that
a drop of liquor being brought them, they “drank to the King and
Nation with the greatest cordiality.”[166]
And now, ask in return, why Messeigneurs and Broglie the great
god of war, on seeing these things, did not pause, and take some
other course, any other course? Unhappily, as we said, they could
see nothing. Pride, which goes before a fall; wrath, if not
reasonable, yet pardonable, most natural, had hardened their
hearts and heated their heads; so, with imbecility and violence
(ill-matched pair), they rush to seek their hour. All Regiments
are not Gardes Françaises, or debauched by Valadi the
Pythagorean: let fresh undebauched Regiments come up; let
Royal-Allemand, Salais-Samade, Swiss Château-Vieux come up,—which
can fight, but can hardly speak except in German gutturals; let
soldiers march, and highways thunder with artillery-waggons:
Majesty has a new Royal Session to hold,—and miracles to work
there! The whiff of grapeshot can, if needful, become a blast and
tempest.
In which circumstances, before the redhot balls begin raining,
may not the Hundred-and-twenty Paris Electors, though their
_Cahier_ is long since finished, see good to meet again daily, as
an “Electoral Club”? They meet first “in a Tavern;”—where “the
largest wedding-party” cheerfully give place to them.[167] But
latterly they meet in the _Hôtel-de-Ville_, in the Townhall
itself. Flesselles, Provost of Merchants, with his Four Echevins
(_Scabins_, Assessors), could not prevent it; such was the force
of public opinion. He, with his Echevins, and the Six-and-Twenty
Town-Councillors, all appointed from Above, may well sit silent
there, in their long gowns; and consider, with awed eye, what
prelude this is of convulsion coming from Below, and how
themselves shall fare in that!