The Swiss.
Unhappy Friends, the tocsin does yield, has yielded! Lo ye, how
with the first sun-rays its Ocean-tide, of pikes and fusils,
flows glittering from the far East;—immeasurable; born of the
Night! They march there, the grim host; Saint-Antoine on this
side of the River; Saint-Marceau on that, the blackbrowed
Marseillese in the van. With hum, and grim murmur, far-heard;
like the Ocean-tide, as we say: drawn up, as if by Luna and
Influences, from the great Deep of Waters, they roll gleaming on;
no King, Canute or Louis, can bid them roll back. Wide-eddying
side-currents, of onlookers, roll hither and thither, unarmed,
not voiceless; they, the steel host, roll on. New-Commandant
Santerre, indeed, has taken seat at the Townhall; rests there, in
his half-way-house. Alsatian Westermann, with flashing sabre,
does not rest; nor the Sections, nor the Marseillese, nor
Demoiselle Théroigne; but roll continually on.
And now, where are Mandat’s Squadrons that were to charge? Not a
Squadron of them stirs: or they stir in the wrong direction, out
of the way; their officers glad that they will even do that. It
is to this hour uncertain whether the Squadron on the Pont Neuf
made the shadow of resistance, or did not make the shadow:
enough, the blackbrowed Marseillese, and Saint-Marceau following
them, do cross without let; do cross, in sure hope now of
Saint-Antoine and the rest; do billow on, towards the Tuileries,
where their errand is. The Tuileries, at sound of them, rustles
responsive: the red Swiss look to their priming; Courtiers in
black draw their blunderbusses, rapiers, poniards, some have even
fire-shovels; every man his weapon of war.
Judge if, in these circumstances, Syndic Rœderer felt easy! Will
the kind Heavens open no middle-course of refuge for a poor
Syndic who halts between two? If indeed his Majesty would consent
to go over to the Assembly! His Majesty, above all her Majesty,
cannot agree to that. Did her Majesty answer the proposal with a
‘_Fi donc;_’ did she say even, she would be nailed to the walls
sooner? Apparently not. It is written also that she offered the
King a pistol; saying, Now or else never was the time to shew
himself. Close eye-witnesses did not see it, nor do we. That saw
only that she was queenlike, quiet; that she argued not,
upbraided not, with the Inexorable; but, like Cæsar in the
Capitol, wrapped her mantle, as it beseems Queens and Sons of
Adam to do. But thou, O Louis! of what stuff art thou at all? Is
there no stroke in thee, then, for Life and Crown? The silliest
hunted deer dies not so. Art thou the languidest of all mortals;
or the mildest-minded? Thou art the worst-starred.
The tide advances; Syndic Rœderer’s and all men’s straits grow
straiter and straiter. Fremescent clangor comes from the armed
Nationals in the Court; far and wide is the infinite hubbub of
tongues. What counsel? And the tide is now nigh! Messengers,
forerunners speak hastily through the outer Grates; hold parley
sitting astride the walls. Syndic Rœderer goes out and comes in.
Cannoneers ask him: Are we to fire against the people? King’s
Ministers ask him: Shall the King’s House be forced? Syndic
Rœderer has a hard game to play. He speaks to the Cannoneers with
eloquence, with fervour; such fervour as a man can, who has to
blow hot and cold in one breath. Hot and cold, O Rœderer? We, for
our part, cannot live _and_ die! The Cannoneers, by way of
answer, fling down their linstocks.—Think of this answer, O King
Louis, and King’s Ministers: and take a poor Syndic’s safe
middle-course, towards the Salle de Manége. King Louis sits, his
hands leant on knees, body bent forward; gazes for a space
fixedly on Syndic Rœderer; then answers, looking over his
shoulder to the Queen: _Marchons!_ They march; King Louis, Queen,
Sister Elizabeth, the two royal children and governess: these,
with Syndic Rœderer, and Officials of the Department; amid a
double rank of National Guards. The men with blunderbusses, the
steady red Swiss gaze mournfully, reproachfully; but hear only
these words from Syndic Rœderer: ‘The King is going to the
Assembly; make way.’ It has struck eight, on all clocks, some
minutes ago: the King has left the Tuileries—for ever.
O ye stanch Swiss, ye gallant gentlemen in black, for what a
cause are ye to spend and be spent! Look out from the western
windows, ye may see King Louis placidly hold on his way; the poor
little Prince Royal “sportfully kicking the fallen leaves.”
Fremescent multitude on the Terrace of the Feuillants whirls
parallel to him; one man in it, very noisy, with a long pole:
will they not obstruct the outer Staircase, and back-entrance of
the Salle, when it comes to that? King’s Guards can go no further
than the bottom step there. Lo, Deputation of Legislators come
out; he of the long pole is stilled by oratory; Assembly’s Guards
join themselves to King’s Guards, and all may mount in this case
of necessity; the outer Staircase is free, or passable. See,
Royalty ascends; a blue Grenadier lifts the poor little Prince
Royal from the press; Royalty has entered in. Royalty has
vanished for ever from your eyes.—And ye? Left standing there,
amid the yawning abysses, and earthquake of Insurrection; without
course; without command: if ye perish it must be as more than
martyrs, as martyrs who are now without a cause! The black
Courtiers disappear mostly; through such issues as they can. The
poor Swiss know not how to act: one duty only is clear to them,
that of standing by their post; and they will perform that.
But the glittering steel tide has arrived; it beats now against
the Château barriers, and eastern Courts; irresistible,
loud-surging far and wide;—breaks in, fills the Court of the
Carrousel, blackbrowed Marseillese in the van. King Louis gone,
say you; over to the Assembly! Well and good: but till the
Assembly pronounce Forfeiture of him, what boots it? Our post is
in that Château or stronghold of his; there till then must we
continue. Think, ye stanch Swiss, whether it were good that grim
murder began, and brothers blasted one another in pieces for a
stone edifice?—Poor Swiss! they know not how to act: from the
southern windows, some fling cartridges, in sign of brotherhood;
on the eastern outer staircase, and within through long stairs
and corridors, they stand firm-ranked, peaceable and yet refusing
to stir. Westermann speaks to them in Alsatian German;
Marseillese plead, in hot Provençal speech and pantomime;
stunning hubbub pleads and threatens, infinite, around. The Swiss
stand fast, peaceable and yet immovable; red granite pier in that
waste-flashing sea of steel.
Who can help the inevitable issue; Marseillese and all France, on
this side; granite Swiss on that? The pantomime grows hotter and
hotter; Marseillese sabres flourishing by way of action; the
Swiss brow also clouding itself, the Swiss thumb bringing its
firelock to the cock. And hark! high-thundering above all the
din, three Marseillese cannon from the Carrousel, pointed by a
gunner of bad aim, come rattling over the roofs! Ye Swiss,
therefore: _Fire!_ The Swiss fire; by volley, by platoon, in
rolling-fire: Marseillese men not a few, and “a tall man that was
louder than any,” lie silent, smashed, upon the pavement;—not a
few Marseillese, after the long dusty march, have made halt
_here_. The Carrousel is void; the black tide recoiling;
“fugitives rushing as far as Saint-Antoine before they stop.” The
Cannoneers without linstock have squatted invisible, and left
their cannon; which the Swiss seize.
Think what a volley: reverberating doomful to the four corners of
Paris, and through all hearts; like the clang of Bellona’s
thongs! The blackbrowed Marseillese, rallying on the instant,
have become black Demons that know how to die. Nor is Brest
behind-hand; nor Alsatian Westermann; Demoiselle Théroigne is
Sybil Théroigne: Vengeance _Victoire, ou la mort!_ From all
Patriot artillery, great and small; from Feuillants Terrace, and
all terraces and places of the widespread Insurrectionary sea,
there roars responsive a red whirlwind. Blue Nationals, ranked in
the Garden, cannot help their muskets going off, _against_
Foreign murderers. For there is a sympathy in muskets, in heaped
masses of men: nay, are not Mankind, in whole, like tuned
strings, and a cunning infinite concordance and unity; you smite
one string, and all strings will begin sounding,—in soft
sphere-melody, in deafening screech of madness! Mounted
Gendarmerie gallop distracted; are fired on merely as a thing
running; galloping over the Pont Royal, or one knows not whither.
The brain of Paris, brain-fevered in the centre of it here, has
gone mad; what you call, taken fire.
Behold, the fire slackens not; nor does the Swiss rolling-fire
slacken from within. Nay they clutched cannon, as we saw: and
now, from the other side, they clutch three pieces more; alas,
cannon without linstock; nor will the steel-and-flint answer,
though they try it.[505] Had it chanced to answer! Patriot
onlookers have their misgivings; one strangest Patriot onlooker
thinks that the Swiss, had they a commander, would beat. He is a
man not unqualified to judge; the name of him is Napoleon
Buonaparte.[506] And onlookers, and women, stand gazing, and the
witty Dr. Moore of Glasgow among them, on the other side of the
River: cannon rush rumbling past them; pause on the Pont Royal;
belch out their iron entrails there, against the Tuileries; and
at every new belch, the women and onlookers shout and clap
hands.[507] City of all the Devils! In remote streets, men are
drinking breakfast-coffee; following their affairs; with a start
now and then, as some dull echo reverberates a note louder. And
here? Marseillese fall wounded; but Barbaroux has surgeons;
Barbaroux is close by, managing, though underhand, and under
cover. Marseillese fall death-struck; bequeath their firelock,
specify in which pocket are the cartridges; and die, murmuring,
‘Revenge me, Revenge thy country!’ Brest Fédéré Officers,
galloping in red coats, are shot as Swiss. Lo you, the Carrousel
has burst into flame!—Paris Pandemonium! Nay the poor City, as we
said, is in fever-fit and convulsion; such crisis has lasted for
the space of some half hour.
But what is this that, with Legislative Insignia, ventures
through the hubbub and death-hail, from the back-entrance of the
Manege? Towards the Tuileries and Swiss: written Order from his
Majesty to cease firing! O ye hapless Swiss, why was there no
order not to begin it? Gladly would the Swiss cease firing: but
who will bid mad Insurrection cease firing? To Insurrection you
cannot speak; neither can it, hydra-headed, hear. The dead and
dying, by the hundred, lie all around; are borne bleeding through
the streets, towards help; the sight of them, like a torch of the
Furies, kindling Madness. Patriot Paris roars; as the bear
bereaved of her whelps. On, ye Patriots: vengeance! victory or
death! There are men seen, who rush on, armed only with
walking-sticks.[508] Terror and Fury rule the hour.
The Swiss, pressed on from without, paralyzed from within, have
ceased to shoot; but not to be shot. What shall they do?
Desperate is the moment. Shelter or instant death: yet How?
Where? One party flies out by the Rue de l’Echelle; is destroyed
utterly, “_en entier_.” A second, by the other side, throws
itself into the Garden; “hurrying across a keen fusillade:”
rushes suppliant into the National Assembly; finds pity and
refuge in the back benches there. The third, and largest, darts
out in column, three hundred strong, towards the Champs Elysées:
Ah, could we but reach Courbevoye, where other Swiss are! Wo!
see, in such fusillade the column “soon breaks itself by
diversity of opinion,” into distracted segments, this way and
that;—to escape in holes, to die fighting from street to street.
The firing and murdering will not cease; not yet for long. The
red Porters of Hotels are shot at, be they _Suisse_ by nature, or
_Suisse_ only in name. The very Firemen, who pump and labour on
that smoking Carrousel, are shot at; why should the Carrousel
_not_ burn? Some Swiss take refuge in private houses; find that
mercy too does still dwell in the heart of man. The brave
Marseillese are merciful, late so wroth; and labour to save.
Journalist Gorsas pleads hard with enfuriated groups. Clemence,
the Wine-merchant, stumbles forward to the Bar of the Assembly, a
rescued Swiss in his hand; tells passionately how he rescued him
with pain and peril, how he will henceforth support him, being
childless himself; and falls a swoon round the poor Swiss’s neck:
amid plaudits. But the most are butchered, and even mangled.
Fifty (some say Fourscore) were marched as prisoners, by National
Guards, to the Hôtel-de-Ville: the ferocious people bursts
through on them, in the Place de Grève; massacres them to the
last man. “_O Peuple_, envy of the universe!” _Peuple_, in mad
Gaelic effervescence!
Surely few things in the history of carnage are painfuller. What
ineffaceable red streak, flickering so sad in the memory, is
that, of this poor column of red Swiss “breaking itself in the
confusion of opinions;” dispersing, into blackness and death!
Honour to you, brave men; honourable pity, through long times!
Not martyrs were ye; and yet almost more. He was no King of
yours, this Louis; and he forsook you like a King of shreds and
patches; ye were but sold to him for some poor sixpence a-day;
yet would ye work for your wages, keep your plighted word. The
work now was to die; and ye did it. Honour to you, O Kinsmen; and
may the old Deutsch _Biederkeit_ and _Tapferkeit_, and Valour
which is _Worth_ and _Truth_ be they Swiss, be they Saxon, fail
in no age! Not bastards; true-born were these men; sons of the
men of Sempach, of Murten, who knelt, but not to thee, O
Burgundy!—Let the traveller, as he passes through Lucerne, turn
aside to look a little at their monumental Lion; not for
Thorwaldsen’s sake alone. Hewn out of living rock, the Figure
rests there, by the still Lake-waters, in lullaby of
distant-tinkling _rance-des-vaches_, the granite Mountains dumbly
keeping watch all round; and, though inanimate, speaks.