Bouillé at Nanci.
Haste with help, thou brave Bouillé: if swift help come not, all
is now verily “burning;” and may burn,—to what lengths and
breadths! Much, in these hours, depends on Bouillé; as it shall
now fare with him, the whole Future may be this way or be that.
If, for example, he were to loiter dubitating, and not come: if
he were to come, and fail: the whole Soldiery of France to blaze
into mutiny, National Guards going some this way, some that; and
Royalism to draw its rapier, and Sansculottism to snatch its
pike; and the Spirit if Jacobinism, as yet young, girt with
sun-rays, to grow instantaneously mature, girt with hell-fire,—as
mortals, in one night of deadly crisis, have had their heads
turned gray!
Brave Bouillé is advancing fast, with the old inflexibility;
gathering himself, unhappily “in small affluences,” from East,
from West and North; and now on Tuesday morning, the last day of
the month, he stands all concentred, unhappily still in small
force, at the village of Frouarde, within some few miles. Son of
Adam with a more dubious task before him is not in the world this
Tuesday morning. A weltering inflammable sea of doubt and peril,
and Bouillé sure of simply one thing, his own determination.
Which one thing, indeed, may be worth many. He puts a most firm
face on the matter: “Submission, or unsparing battle and
destruction; twenty-four hours to make your choice:” this was the
tenor of his Proclamation; thirty copies of which he sent
yesterday to Nanci:—all which, we find, were intercepted and not
posted.[319]
Nevertheless, at half-past eleven, this morning, seemingly by way
of answer, there does wait on him at Frouarde, some Deputation
from the mutinous Regiments, from the Nanci Municipals, to see
what can be done. Bouillé receives this Deputation, “in a large
open court adjoining his lodging:” pacified Salm, and the rest,
attend also, being invited to do it,—all happily still in the
right humour. The Mutineers pronounce themselves with a
decisiveness, which to Bouillé seems insolence; and happily to
Salm also. Salm, forgetful of the Metz staircase and sabre,
demands that the scoundrels “be hanged” there and then. Bouillé
represses the hanging; but answers that mutinous Soldiers have
one course, and not more than one: To liberate, with heartfelt
contrition, Messieurs Denoue and de Malseigne; to get ready
forthwith for marching off, whither he shall order; and “submit
and repent,” as the National Assembly has decreed, as he
yesterday did in thirty printed Placards proclaim. These are his
terms, unalterable as the decrees of Destiny. Which terms as
they, the Mutineer deputies, seemingly do not accept, it were
good for them to vanish from this spot, and even promptly; with
him too, in few instants, the word will be, Forward! The Mutineer
deputies vanish, not unpromptly; the Municipal ones, anxious
beyond right for their own individualities, prefer abiding with
Bouillé.
Brave Bouillé, though he puts a most firm face on the matter,
knows his position full well: how at Nanci, what with rebellious
soldiers, with uncertain National Guards, and so many distributed
fusils, there rage and roar some ten thousand fighting men; while
with himself is scarcely the third part of that number, in
National Guards also uncertain, in mere pacified Regiments,—for
the present full of rage, and clamour to march; but whose rage
and clamour may next moment take such a fatal new figure. On the
top of one uncertain billow, therewith to calm billows! Bouillé
must “abandon himself to Fortune;” who is said sometimes to
favour the brave. At half-past twelve, the Mutineer deputies
having vanished, our drums beat; we march: for Nanci! Let Nanci
bethink itself, then; for Bouillé has thought and determined.
And yet how shall Nanci think: not a City but a Bedlam! Grim
Château-Vieux is for defence to the death; forces the
Municipality to order, by tap of drum, all citizens acquainted
with artillery to turn out, and assist in managing the cannon. On
the other hand, effervescent Regiment du Roi, is drawn up in its
barracks; quite disconsolate, hearing the humour Salm is in; and
ejaculates dolefully from its thousand throats: ‘_La loi, la
loi_, Law, law!’ Mestre-de-Camp blusters, with profane swearing,
in mixed terror and furor; National Guards look this way and
that, not knowing what to do. What a Bedlam-City: as many plans
as heads; all ordering, none obeying: quiet none,—except the
Dead, who sleep underground, having _done_ their fighting!
And, behold, Bouillé proves as good as his word: “at half-past
two” scouts report that he is within half a league of the gates;
rattling along, with cannon, and array; breathing nothing but
destruction. A new Deputation, Municipals, Mutineers, Officers,
goes out to meet him; with passionate entreaty for yet one other
hour. Bouillé grants an hour. Then, at the end thereof, no Denoue
or Malseigne appearing as promised, he rolls his drums, and again
takes the road. Towards four o’clock, the terror-struck Townsmen
may see him face to face. His cannons rattle there, in their
carriages; his vanguard is within thirty paces of the Gate
Stanislaus. Onward like a Planet, by appointed times, by law of
Nature! What next? Lo, flag of truce and chamade; conjuration to
halt: Malseigne and Denoue are on the street, coming hither; the
soldiers all repentant, ready to submit and march! Adamantine
Bouillé’s look alters not; yet the word _Halt_ is given: gladder
moment he never saw. Joy of joys! Malseigne and Denoue do verily
issue; escorted by National Guards; from streets all frantic,
with sale to Austria and so forth: they salute Bouillé,
unscathed. Bouillé steps aside to speak with them, and with other
heads of the Town there; having already ordered by what Gates and
Routes the mutineer Regiments shall file out.
Such colloquy with these two General Officers and other principal
Townsmen, was natural enough; nevertheless one wishes Bouillé had
postponed it, and _not_ stepped aside. Such tumultuous
inflammable masses, tumbling along, making way for each other;
this of keen nitrous oxide, that of sulphurous fire-damp,—were it
not well to stand _between_ them, keeping them well separate,
till the space be cleared? Numerous stragglers of Château-Vieux
and the rest have not marched with their main columns, which are
filing out by the appointed Gates, taking station in the open
meadows. National Guards are in a state of nearly distracted
uncertainty; the populace, armed and unharmed, roll openly
delirious,—betrayed, sold to the Austrians, sold to the
Aristocrats. There are loaded cannon with lit matches among them,
and Bouillé’s vanguard is halted within thirty paces of the Gate.
Command dwells not in that mad inflammable mass; which smoulders
and tumbles there, in blind smoky rage; which will not open the
Gate when summoned; says it will open the cannon’s throat
sooner!—Cannonade not, O Friends, or be it through my body! cries
heroic young Desilles, young Captain of _Roi_, clasping the
murderous engine in his arms, and holding it. Château-Vieux
Swiss, by main force, with oaths and menaces, wrench off the
heroic youth; who undaunted, amid still louder oaths seats
himself on the touch-hole. Amid still louder oaths; with ever
louder clangour,—and, alas, with the loud crackle of first one,
and then three other muskets; which explode into his body; which
roll _it_ in the dust,—and do also, in the loud madness of such
moment, bring lit cannon-match to ready priming; and so, with one
thunderous belch of grapeshot, blast some fifty of Bouillé’s
vanguard into air!
Fatal! That sputter of the first musket-shot has kindled such a
cannon-shot, such a death-blaze; and all is now redhot madness,
conflagration as of Tophet. With demoniac rage, the Bouillé
vanguard storms through that Gate Stanislaus; with fiery sweep,
sweeps Mutiny clear away, to death, or into shelters and cellars;
from which latter, again, Mutiny continues firing. The ranked
Regiments hear it in their meadow; they rush back again through
the nearest Gates; Bouillé gallops in, distracted, inaudible;—and
now has begun, in Nanci, as in that doomed Hall of the
Nibelungen, “a murder grim and great.”
Miserable: such scene of dismal aimless madness as the anger of
Heaven but rarely permits among men! From cellar or from garret,
from open street in front, from successive corners of
cross-streets on each hand, Château-Vieux and Patriotism keep up
the murderous rolling-fire, on murderous not Unpatriotic fires.
Your blue National Captain, riddled with balls, one hardly knows
on whose side fighting, requests to be laid on the colours to
die: the patriotic Woman (name not given, deed surviving) screams
to Château-Vieux that it must _not_ fire the other cannon; and
even flings a pail of water on it, since screaming avails
not.[320] Thou shalt fight; thou shalt not fight; and with whom
shalt thou fight! Could tumult awaken the old Dead, Burgundian
Charles the Bold might stir from under that Rotunda of his: never
since he, raging, sank in the ditches, and lost Life and Diamond,
was such a noise heard here.
Three thousand, as some count, lie mangled, gory; the half of
Château-Vieux has been shot, without need of Court Martial.
Cavalry, of Mestre-de-Camp or their foes, can do little. Regiment
du Roi was persuaded to its barracks; stands there palpitating.
Bouillé, armed with the terrors of the Law, and favoured of
Fortune, finally triumphs. In two murderous hours he has
penetrated to the grand Squares, dauntless, though with loss of
forty officers and five hundred men: the shattered remnants of
Château-Vieux are seeking covert. Regiment du Roi, not
effervescent now, alas no, but _having_ effervesced, will offer
to ground its arms; will “march in a quarter of an hour.” Nay
these poor effervesced require “escort” to march with, and get
it; though they are thousands strong, and have thirty
ball-cartridges a man! The Sun is not yet down, when Peace, which
might have come bloodless, has come bloody: the mutinous
Regiments are on march, doleful, on their three Routes; and from
Nanci rises wail of women and men, the voice of weeping and
desolation; the City weeping for its slain who awaken not. These
streets are empty but for victorious patrols.
Thus has Fortune, favouring the brave, dragged Bouillé, as
himself says, out of such a frightful peril, “by the hair of the
head.” An intrepid adamantine man this Bouillé:—had _he_ stood in
old Broglie’s place, in those Bastille days, it might have been
all different! He has extinguished mutiny, and immeasurable civil
war. Not for nothing, as we see; yet at a rate which he and
Constitutional Patriotism considers cheap. Nay, as for Bouillé,
he, urged by subsequent contradiction which arose, declares
coldly, it was rather against his own private mind, and more by
public military rule of duty, that he did extinguish
it,[321]—immeasurable civil war being now the only chance. Urged,
we say, by subsequent contradiction! Civil war, indeed, is Chaos;
and in all vital Chaos, there is new Order shaping itself free:
but what a faith this, that of all new Orders out of Chaos and
Possibility of Man and his Universe, Louis Sixteenth and
Two-Chamber Monarchy were precisely the one that would shape
itself! It is like undertaking to throw deuce-ace, say only five
hundred successive times, and any other throw to be fatal—for
Bouillé. Rather thank Fortune, and Heaven, always, thou intrepid
Bouillé; and let contradiction of its way! Civil war,
conflagrating universally over France at this moment, might have
led to one thing or to another thing: meanwhile, to _quench_
conflagration, wheresoever one finds it, wheresoever one can;
this, in all times, is the rule for man and General Officer.
But at Paris, so agitated and divided, fancy how it went, when
the continually vibrating Orderlies vibrated _thither_ at hand
gallop, with such questionable news! High is the gratulation; and
also deep the indignation. An august Assembly, by overwhelming
majorities, passionately thanks Bouillé; a King’s autograph, the
voices of all Loyal, all Constitutional men run to the same
tenor. A solemn National funeral-service, for the Law-defenders
slain at Nanci; is said and sung in the Champ de Mars; Bailly,
Lafayette and National Guards, all except the few that protested,
assist. With pomp and circumstance, with episcopal Calicoes in
tricolor girdles, Altar of Fatherland smoking with cassolettes,
or incense-kettles; the vast Champ-de-Mars wholly hung round with
black mortcloth,—which mortcloth and expenditure Marat thinks had
better have been laid out in bread, in these dear days, and given
to the hungry living Patriot.[322] On the other hand, living
Patriotism, and Saint-Antoine, which we have seen noisily closing
its shops and such like, assembles now “to the number of forty
thousand;” and, with loud cries, under the very windows of the
thanking National Assembly, demands revenge for murdered
Brothers, judgment on Bouillé, and instant dismissal of
War-Minister Latour du Pin.
At sound and sight of which things, if not War-Minister Latour,
yet “Adored Minister” Necker, sees good on the 3d of September
1790, to withdraw softly almost privily,—with an eye to the
“recovery of his health.” Home to native Switzerland; not as he
last came; lucky to reach it alive! Fifteen months ago, we saw
him coming, with escort of horse, with sound of clarion and
trumpet: and now at Arcis-sur-Aube, while he departs unescorted
soundless, the Populace and Municipals stop him as a fugitive,
are not unlike massacring him as a traitor; the National
Assembly, consulted on the matter, gives him free egress as a
nullity. Such an unstable “drift-mould of Accident” is the
substance of this lower world, for them that dwell in houses of
clay; so, especially in hot regions and times, do the proudest
palaces we build of it take wings, and become Sahara
sand-palaces, spinning many pillared in the whirlwind, and bury
us under their sand!—
In spite of the forty thousand, the National Assembly persists in
its thanks; and Royalist Latour du Pin continues Minister. The
forty thousand assemble next day, as loud as ever; roll towards
Latour’s Hôtel; find cannon on the porch-steps with flambeau lit;
and have to retire elsewhither, and digest their spleen, or
re-absorb it into the blood.
Over in Lorraine, meanwhile, they of the distributed fusils,
ringleaders of Mestre-de-Camp, of Roi, have got marked out for
judgment;—yet shall never get judged. Briefer is the doom of
Château-Vieux. Château-Vieux is, by Swiss law, given up for
instant trial in Court-Martial of its own officers. Which
Court-Martial, with all brevity (in not many hours), has hanged
some Twenty-three, on conspicuous gibbets; marched some
Three-score in chains to the Galleys; and so, to appearance,
finished the matter off. Hanged men do cease for ever from this
Earth; but out of chains and the Galleys there may be
resuscitation in triumph. Resuscitation for the chained Hero; and
even for the chained Scoundrel, or Semi-scoundrel! Scottish John
Knox, such World-Hero, as we know, sat once nevertheless pulling
grim-taciturn at the oar of French Galley, “in the _Water of
Lore;_” and even flung their Virgin-Mary over, instead of kissing
her,—as “a _pented bredd_,” or timber Virgin, who could naturally
swim.[323] So, ye of Château-Vieux, tug patiently, not without
hope!
But indeed at Nanci generally, Aristocracy rides triumphant,
rough. Bouillé is gone again, the second day; an Aristocrat
Municipality, with free course, is as cruel as it had before been
cowardly. The Daughter Society, as the mother of the whole
mischief, lies ignominiously suppressed; the Prisons can hold no
more; bereaved down-beaten Patriotism murmurs, not loud but deep.
Here and in the neighbouring Towns, “flattened balls” picked from
the streets of Nanci are worn at buttonholes: balls flattened in
carrying death to Patriotism; men wear them there, in perpetual
memento of revenge. Mutineer Deserters roam the woods; have to
demand charity at the musket’s end. All is dissolution, mutual
rancour, gloom and despair:—till National-Assembly Commissioners
arrive, with a steady gentle flame of Constitutionalism in their
hearts; who gently lift up the down-trodden, gently pull down the
too uplifted; reinstate the Daughter Society, recall the Mutineer
Deserter; gradually levelling, strive in all wise ways to smooth
and soothe. With such gradual mild levelling on the one side; as
with solemn funeral-service, Cassolettes, Courts-Martial,
National thanks,—all that Officiality can do is done. The
buttonhole will drop its flat ball; the black ashes, so far as
may be, get green again.
This is the “Affair of Nanci;” by some called the “Massacre of
Nanci;”—properly speaking, the unsightly _wrong_-side of that
thrice glorious Feast of Pikes, the right-side of which formed a
spectacle for the very gods. Right-side and wrong lie always so
near: the one was in July, in August the other! Theatres, the
theatres over in London, are bright with their pasteboard
simulacrum of that “Federation of the French People,” brought out
as Drama: this of Nanci, we may say, though not played in any
pasteboard Theatre, did for many months enact itself, and even
walk spectrally—in all French heads. For the news of it fly
pealing through all France; awakening, in town and village, in
clubroom, messroom, to the utmost borders, some mimic reflex or
imaginative repetition of the business; always with the angry
questionable assertion: It was right; It was wrong. Whereby come
controversies, duels, embitterment, vain jargon; the hastening
forward, the augmenting and intensifying of whatever new
explosions lie in store for us.
Meanwhile, at this cost or at that, the mutiny, as we say, is
stilled. The French Army has neither burst up in universal
simultaneous delirium; nor been at once disbanded, put an end to,
and made new again. It must die in the chronic manner, through
years, by inches; with partial revolts, as of Brest Sailors or
the like, which dare not spread; with men unhappy, insubordinate;
officers unhappier, in Royalist moustachioes, taking horse,
singly or in bodies, across the Rhine:[324] sick dissatisfaction,
sick disgust on both sides; the Army moribund, fit for no
duty:—till it do, in that unexpected manner, Phoenix-like, with
long throes, get both dead and newborn; then start forth strong,
nay stronger and even strongest.
Thus much was the brave Bouillé hitherto fated to do. Wherewith
let him again fade into dimness; and at Metz or the rural
Cantonments, assiduously drilling, mysteriously diplomatising, in
scheme within scheme, hover as formerly a faint shadow, the hope
of Royalty.